Felix is the founder of Hanko. Hanko is the Open source auth and passkey infrastructure for developers.We talk about:- The challenges of pivoting- Layoffs- The intangible goal of developer loveCheck out Hanko: https://www.hanko.io/

Julien Danjou is the founder of Mergify - a tool that helps merge code safer and faster. Summary (auto-generated): How do you split your time between work and marketing? 0:00 Julian splits 50% of his time between building the product and the other 50% doing marketing and bringing people to the product. Julian talks about mergerfi. Where do you start with product development? 1:23 The goal is to solve a problem for an engineer. They co-founded Mirchi Fi with Mary and wrote their own tool. The role of time is a lot of time. The importance of doing demos and showing the product around to the team, and how that has changed over time. How the product is simple and there are a lot of viable options around it, but it's hard to think about all the tiny details. How did they get started? 5:08 They both started with a full-time job and moved from a platform to get up. They felt naked without any of their tools. They wanted to build their own tools. They found a first rate customer, pitch.com, and then found more startups willing to use a merge request tool. One of the challenges of being a bootstrapped company is that they only have two hours per week to work on the tool. It is easy to not get good at making decisions when you can do everything, but in air quotes, do everything. How long did it take to write the first dashboard? 10:07 Before people started using it internally, they did most of the grunt work of writing the first version. The first version was a mvp. The first dashboard they wrote was like HTML and the bootstrap framework, which was pretty bad, but it was good enough. The first version of the product is the only thing that is going to be out in front of users or customers. The importance of being an entrepreneur-minded person. When they found the first customers, they decided not to build a company right away, but to focus on building a few hours a week into bots. The real trap. Marketing and getting the word out. 16:00 The root problem is that nobody knows about you because you are not doing marketing. You have to go with the event if you have a competitor or inspire something. It is easy to build the things for a year or so, especially when you are a developer. Not everything works, but what works well is open source projects. For example, amazon is using lodgify on their open source project. One of their biggest customers was using one of the engineer's projects on github.com, and they talk to their manager about it. Marketing and marketing budget. 20:30 Marketing is a lot of different channels that they can use, and they have tried almost everything to see if it works, and if it doesn't work, they try to future-harm. They try to provide value for free to open source users and projects and are happy to do that. Adding value in open source is about saving time and giving time to most open source projects using a merge tool. If a company is new to open source, they need a tool to help them with a workflow tool, marketing, etc. How did you find out about rescue? 25:36 The number of people using rescue is small. There are very small projects with just one or two people mentioning it to project being run by 50 or 100 person behind. The main goal is to actually work on the open source projects, not start a new one. Redhat was working on an open source project with Eddie when they started. Redhat is a great leverage for building a company. One takeaway for a dev tool founder, be strict about splitting 50% of your time between building the product and doing the fun stuff.

Escape helps you Find and fix GraphQL security flaws at scale within your DevSecOps process Introduction to Tristan and Antoine. 0:00 How did they get started in cybersecurity? 4:35 How did you get your first few customers? 9:49 Challenges from a product and tech point of view. 13:57 Challenges of integration into the development process. 18:10 How to find the right team? 22:55 Links: Escape.tech https://escape.tech/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=devtools-podcast Tristan's Twitter - https://twitter.com/TristanKalos Antoine's Twitter - https://twitter.com/iCarossio

Zach Goldie is a DevTools messaging consultant Ship code faster is an empty statement. 0:00 How do you position yourself against the competition? 1:56 The problem with free monitoring tools. 6:43 Explain why fast is a good thing. 11:44 Curse of knowledge and how to overcome it. 16:42 The problem with copy length and word count. 21:37 How do you know if a page is good? 27:05 Pitching self-serve to users. 32:42 Links:- Zach's Twitter https://twitter.com/DitchingData- Zach's site https://www.zachgoldie.com/ - Benefit layers https://dx.tips/benefit-layers

Steve Krouse is the founder of Val.town - a social website where you can write and run code. Introduction to Val.Town's vision 0:00 How long it took Github to make money on Steve Val Town is a social website where you can write and run javascript or typescript, run the code on servers, and see the results. Knocking down friction points 2:12 Val Town is making it so that programmers can create cool stuff without having to go through the pain of sending an email. Zapier for developers is another kind of tagline that has been seen other people that you've interviewed on this podcast. Categorising use cases on the website. 4:45 Val Town recently made a list of favourite use cases and categorised them on the website. The challenge is explaining to people what it is and what it can be used for. What can be made with Val.town section How to get people to make cool things with your tool 15:51 People hear about Val Town because other people are using it. The more people sign up, the more people are signing up for it. Val Town has a smaller number of people who are excited about it and use it a lot, but it's not a mythical product market fit. Every Thursday, the team is not allowed to work on the product. They all have to try and make Vals to go viral, which is a really fun creative day. The last one that went viral was hacker news follow, which was branded as an installable script. How do you think about notifications? 24:30 Val Town is perfect for programmatic customization of notification emails, so that installing those into your account will be part of the tutorial. Val is passionate about education, and it feels like that's a big challenge because there's lots of new stuff with val. Medium-term ambition, build a learn to code interactive course on top of Val Town. Long term ambition is to have hundreds or thousands of Learn to Code courses on Val Town, embedded in the product. Future of coding meetups. 29:36 An interview with Brian Dougie, early at Github, and how he helped with bootcamps and how to run code with Netlify. Future of coding meetup in london. Managing a community is a funny thing. The people who start and manage communities are often weird people. Date Me Docs 35:33 Some people are looking for a unique snowflake, while others are sensitive and don't want attention on their date me docs. The future of dating is a great exercise to go through to get clear in words about who you are and what you're looking for. Links:- Val Town - https://www.val.town/- Steve's Twitter - https://twitter.com/stevekrouse

Dax Raad is building SST - an open-source framework that makes it easy to build serverless apps. What Is SST? 0:00 The theory in January was to make content that has nothing to do with SST and still convert people. Dax validated the theory within the first hour. Dax tells us a little bit about SST, a framework for building applications on AWS, and how it works. The importance of marketing and content. 2:42 The focus now has to be on marketing.  The top of the funnel is when someone has no idea who you are. Pitching the idea to his boss. 5:16 Dax pitched the idea and Fred Schott was immediately down. He spent a day just watching every single episode of Between Two Ferns and wrote down all the patterns of jokes. He learned a lot from the first one, and is doing another one today at 230. How much goes into the show? 8:04 The original show is fully done and edits, and that is true of the one that video was made. The video was not close to what actually happened, but it was his response to the video. The original is very specific and it's funny how specific the jokes are. The importance of having a unique angle. 10:40 For most companies, announcing an integration is not the most exciting thing to announce. The bar is incredibly low, and the expectations are super low. Invest more in marketing and content. 12:35 They are looking to hire a comedian or someone who makes good content on YouTube. They are planning a series A, and are looking for people who are talented and can help them. Educational vs entertaining content. 14:57 The only way to capture someone like you is through a different angle. The theory in January was to make content that has nothing to do with SST and still convert people into trying out SST. Finding an angle that is genuine for yourself. How he got over the hump of clickbait. 17:54 He went through the same hump that everyone goes through when trying to publish content on youtube. He was sent a video by a guy who was very successful on youtube and he was explaining why he does what he does. The importance of having a good content. 20:51Youtube is an amazing place. People will watch it if it's good. Marketing is a huge lever. 23:20 They are a very small company. They are able to do a lot given their small size and they are going to continue to be a small company, so they need to find ways to find leverage anywhere they can. They are excited about what they can invest in. Dax would love to work with someone who is good at filmmaking and editing to keep it engaging and keep it fun. He also thinks about shows that are authentic. Key takeaways for anyone listening, remember that if you're building a company you do need to do marketing. Links:- SST https://sst.dev/- Dax's twitter https://twitter.com/thdxr- Between Two Nerds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I2Xep0GTQY&ab_channel=SST 

Gabriel Savit is the founder and CEO of Runway - a tool to coordinate and automate mobile app releases. Introductions 0:00 Introduction to Gabe Underlying themes of runway mobile release management. What’s it like to work with mobile teams? 2:19 Challenges for mobile teams to keep tabs on. The third party ecosystem problem. The origin story of the team. The process of running a release was something that resonated immediately. Different teams set this up differently. 8:23 What was the next step after you gathered the feedback? 10:38 The first round of interviews to validate the problem space. How the interviews were conducted. The feedback loop is not always closed. The next step after gathering the feedback. How do you get an MVP out quickly? 15:31 Starting with one integration, one part of the process. The first few pilots. How did you get your first customer to buy in? 18:24 Onboarding the first customer or first user. Getting the first cohort involved. Aligning with the overall vision of the platform. What is the go to market motion? 33:14 Go-to-market motion, demo, sync, sign up, demo. Self-service, keeping the entry point open. What’s the future direction of the platform? 36:18 Links:- https://twitter.com/gabrielsavit- https://runway.team/ 

Brian Douglas - or bdougie - is the founder of OpenSauced - an open source intelligence tool. Brian was previously Developer Experience Lead at Netlify and Director of Developer Advocacy at GitHubSummary Every engineer is an advocate. 0:00 Joining GitHub with a 30/60/90 plan. 1:17 What was the goal when you joined Netlify? 3:16 How to get started with bootcamps. 7:53 What are the top projects in open source? 10:52 The bottom up strategy for adoption at GitHub. 15:22 Netlify’s Aha moment. 21:19 How do you get started in reaching out to community and consistently? 25:57 Links: https://opensauced.pizza/  https://twitter.com/bdougieYO

Ruben is the founder of Windmill https://www.windmill.dev/ which helps you turn scripts into workflows and UIs in minutes Some of the things we talk about: Getting to the threshold of being useful. Speed is the key to success. The second mover advantage Getting early users of the product. Why infra is an interesting market for him. The challenges of being a solo founder. The recipe for a digital startup is to be really passionate about the project. Advice for founders who are building ambitious projects. Doing everything that no one wants to do. You can find Ruben at https://twitter.com/rubenfiszel

Josh Twist is the founder of Zuplo, an API gateway Introducing Josh Twist, the founder of Zuplo. 0:00Zuplo vs Azure API management. How do you make this fit into the developer workflow? 3:06 How Zuplo fits into the development workflow. How to democratize API management and make it something every business wants to use. Best practices for implementing API key authentication. Stripe quality API out of the box. The power of removing friction in creating a better experience. 8:58The power of removing friction from the process. How do you create a product that is easy for beginners but still has a powerful experience? 11:31 Loom is a great example of a product that exists only because it removes friction. Building a product is like building a video game. How to keep both the developer and the customer experience in mind. The formula one analogy for designing a product from scratch. What’s going to go into the next generation of Zuplo? 17:27How Zuplo keeps things simple and makes decisions. Why you have to have a lot of customer empathy and invest in tools. 19:39 The importance of customer empathy. Why Josh made the decision to switch over to OpenAPI. Killing features can be hard as a business-to-business company. One chart to think about. The importance of partnerships and content. 24:29 Making videos for supabase customers. Partnerships with other small businesses. How Zuplo got their first customers. Zuplo rate limiting feature. 28:02 Rate limiting in Zuplo and Supabase. Developers who are small-scale loving Zuplo Making videos Removing friction and building an 11-star experience. Zuplo - https://zuplo.com/Josh Twist - https://twitter.com/joshtwist

Dan is head of DevRel at FusionAuth - Auth Built for Devs, by Devs FusionAuth’s journey from moderation to auth provider. Introduction to Dan Moore, head of DevRel at fusion. Fusion's journey Free to use for many users, but also a cloud offering. Synchronous communication vs asynchronous communication. Synchronous communication vs asynchronous communication. 10% of their traffic is coming from forum pages. No one ever searches on Stack Overflow. What are some of the experiments that have gone well?  Efforts to promote community feel. Community stories, finding out user pain points and wins. The importance of getting your community to know each other. Getting 20 or 30 blog posts on the blog. Dan's experience on Screaming into the cloud. Dan's Twitter - https://twitter.com/mooredsFusionAuth - https://fusionauth.io/ 

Nikolaus West is the founder of Rerun.io - Visualize computer vision.What we discuss: Finding a problem to work on  What are some of the features that will be free and open source? What’s the difference between a commercial and a free service? The most important thing is that we’re building something that will be useful How to get into the minds of computer vision developers Why build in Rust Rerun - https://www.rerun.io/Niko's Twitter - https://twitter.com/NikolausWest

How do you do onboarding in a way developers actually like?Kilian is the founder of Polypane - The browser for ambitious web developers https://polypane.app/Kilian's Twitter - https://twitter.com/kilianvalkhof

Karl Clement is the founder of https://codeowners.com/ CODEOWNERS is the single source of truth for code ownership.Summary Introducing Karl  Code ownership What are the types of people that are implementing code Code Ownership How to find and reach platform engineers. What are some of the key metrics that organisations are looking for to measure the value of their tooling? Dora metrics Mean time to resolution, MTTR What is Backstage and how has it been used? Improving the developer experience with Backstage. Backstage implementation is essentially a signal that a company is willing to invest in the organisation but the developer experience as a whole, which is great Backstage implementation is a signal of investment in the organisation. How venture capital can help with product development. If you’re building a product in a space that no one else is in, you are reducing your odds

Alan Shreve is the founder & CEO of ngrok. ngrok is a simplified API-first ingress-as-a-service that adds connectivity, security, and observability to your apps in one lineWhat we cover: Creating a simple experience for users. Designing for the 90% use case vs. the 10%. How did the idea for ngrok emerge? How the first iterations of the product came about. The internal struggle to create simple interfaces. How do you test your library design? One of the best ways to test library design. Amazon's one-click checkout. Chasing simplicity vs complexity in a complex system. Product processes to help chase simplicity. How does NGrok measure and track user growth? Time to value, kpi, time to value. Empowering developers to do their jobs. How does a hobbyist use case expand into a commercial use case? How do you think about the problems that ngrok solves? How do you get an application online with minimal configuration? What’s the takeaway for other developers or founders? Links:- ngrok: https://ngrok.com/- Alan's Twitter: https://twitter.com/inconshreveable- Thanks to Danger Casey https://twitter.com/CaseySoftware for organising this- swyx article https://www.swyx.io/self-provisioning-runtime- Joel Spolsky talk https://mixtape.swyx.io/episodes/elegant-software-joel-spolsky 

Fred Schott is the founder of Astro.build and the Astro technology company. Astro is the all-in-one web framework designed for speed. Pull your content from anywhere and deploy everywhere, all powered by your favorite UI components and libraries.Snowpack is a lightning-fast frontend build tool, designed for the modern web. Before this, Fred founded Snowpack  What is Astro and what is it doing? 0:00 Fred introduces himself and talks about astro. Fred explains what astro is and what it does. What’s changed in the web over the last 10 years. 2:20 The last decade has been defined by full stack javascript. Astro is a server-first HTML rendering. Astro’s unique model of building an open source company. 4:51 Building a sustainable company around an open source project. The astro technology company model. How Fred got started in open source. What Fred worked on before astro. How Fred got started in open source software. Pika was the first project that I really sunk my teeth into. 11:15 Pika was the first project Fred really sunk his teeth into. Building snowpack and Why is it so bad to create a slack channel for your open source project? 14:00 Stop creating slack communities for open source projects. The importance of community What it’s like at the beginning of an open source project. 16:26 The first users are essential for an early-stage open source project. The power of responding quickly to feedback from the community. The first version of astro The spirit of open source and the importance of licencing code. The importance of having fun working on something that’s your own. 22:29 The drive to just build it. The importance of having fun working on free software. The psychology of over-architecture. The importance of dog-fooding and how to use it. 26:13Dog fooding projects, how to build a tool for someone to use by seeing what they are doing. How do you get people to use the tool if they’re not already using it? 29:16 Finding a real use case for snowpack. How to approach feedback from users. Using a Github repo to test new changes. Prioritising what to work on. Death by 1000 paper cuts. The importance of listening to users for feedback. Links: Fred's Twitter https://twitter.com/FredKSchott Astro https://astro.build/ Snowpack https://www.snowpack.dev/ 5 Things I Learned Building Snowpack to 20,000 Stars https://dev.to/fredkschott/5-things-i-learned-while-building-snowpack-to-20-000-stars-b9d 6 More Things I Learned Building Snowpack to 20,000 Stars (Part 2)https://dev.to/fredkschott/5-more-things-i-learned-building-snowpack-to-20-000-stars-5dc9

Anh-Tho is the founder of Lago https://www.getlago.com/ Lago gives you open-source metering and usage-based billing

Jamie Barton is a DevRel Engineer at Grafbase https://grafbase.com/ and the host of https://graphql.wtf/

Pranay Prateek is the founder of SigNoz - Open Source Observability with Traces, Logs and Metrics in a single pane. Topics covered: How SigNoz has grown to 12k stars How did you get started with the open source model?  And have there been any teething challenges.  Apart from growth, have there been any other benefits? What is the path to monetization (question from Utpal Nadiger)? Could you talk about your technical writer program?  Links: SigNoz https://signoz.io/ Pranay's Twitter https://twitter.com/pranay01?s=20

Adam DuVander is an expert in developer marketing and the author of two books: Developer Marketing Does Not Exist and Technical Content Strategy Decoded. In this episode, we dive deep into the world of developer marketing, specifically focusing on early-stage companies building tools for developers and how to create engaging content for your audience.What we cover: Adam's journey from journalism to developer marketing The importance of developer marketing for early-stage companies and its role in product growth Identifying your target audience and understanding their pain points How to create content without directly promoting your product, yet staying relevant to your target audience The concept of becoming a media company within your niche and providing value through content The importance of engagement metrics over vanity metrics for early-stage companies The Jedi Developer Mind Trick: how to showcase the value of your product without directly promoting it, especially for early-stage companies Examples from successful early-stage companies like LogRocket and Stoplight How to measure the success of your content and know if it's working for your early-stage company Tips on choosing the right topics that resonate with your audience and relate to your product Adam's new book, Technical Content Strategy Decoded Buy Adam's new book here