Changelog Interviews

Building Reflect at sea


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This week we’re talking with Alex MacCaw — he’s well known for his work as founder and CEO of Clearbit. In May of 2021, Alex shared a personal update with the world on his blog. After much reflection, he decided to step down as CEO of Clearbit to go back to his roots. In his words, “I love the early stages of company building. Hacking together code, setting up the Stripe account, getting the first customer. That’s my jam.”

We talk with Alex about this portion of his journey at Clearbit, the Catamaran he bought in South Africa and then sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, and the new thing he’s building called Reflect that let’s you keep track of your notes, books, and meetings.

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Sponsors:

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  • FireHydrantThe reliability platform for every developer. Incidents impact everyone, not just SREs. FireHydrant gives teams the tools to maintain service catalogs, respond to incidents, communicate through status pages, and learn with retrospectives. Small teams up to 10 people can get started for free with all FireHydrant features included. No credit card required to sign up. Learn more at firehydrant.com/
  • SourcegraphTransform your code into a queryable database to create customizable visual dashboards in seconds. Sourcegraph recently launched Code Insights — now you can track what really matters to you and your team in your codebase. See how other teams are using this awesome feature at about.sourcegraph.com/code-insights
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  • Featuring:

    • Alex MacCaw – Website, GitHub, X
    • Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
    • Jerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

    Show Notes:

    • A personal update
    • Alex’s first appearance on The Changelog
    • reflect.app
    • Clearbit
    • Earl Grey Capital
    • Google - “Catamaran”
    • The Manager’s Handbook
    • Ross Moser
    • Beginning of Infinity
    • Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies
    • remirror/remirror
    • Replicache
    • Mimestream
    • The Changelog #455: Building software for yourself with Linus Lee
    • Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

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