Engineering Founders

Determining bets, using customer insights to pivot, and gaining developer buy in & trust w/ Tomas Reimers @ Graphite

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Tomas Reimers, Co-Founder & CPO @ Graphite, reveals his journey to becoming a founder and some of the major moments from Graphite’s product development story. He dissects frameworks for determining when it’s time to quit your full-time job to pursue becoming a founder and analyzing the costs vs. benefits of that decision. We cover how to decide what customer problems to solve, understanding how software development trends impact what you’re building, and product market fit and selling considerations. Lastly, Tomas shares valuable strategies when it comes to selling to developers.

 

ABOUT TOMAS REIMERS

Tomas Reimers is the CPO and co-founder of Graphite, the a16z and Anthropic-backed AI code review platform that Cursor acquired in December 2025. Previously, he was an engineer at Facebook. Passionate about advancing developer velocity, Tomas holds a BS in Computer Science from Harvard University.

 

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SHOW NOTES:
  • The origin story behind Graphite (1:05)
  • Signs that it’s time to quit your job / found a company (4:03)
  • How Tomas & his co-founders knew it was time to break up with their jobs (5:40)
  • Understand what leaving your job will mean career-growth wise (7:33)
  • Embracing regret minimization (9:28)
  • Pros & cons of developing in blue ocean vs. red ocean areas as a founder (11:49)
  • Strategies for determining what software to build / how is software dev evolving (14:00)
  • Tomas’s framework for determining bets (15:50)
  • Recommendations for selling as a founder (17:52)
  • Identifying if sales isn’t working or if product market fit is off (20:35)
  • Using customer insights to experiment & make a PMF pivot (23:05)
  • Why developers don’t want to be sold to, they want to be taught (24:42)
  • How to apply teaching vs. selling into early GTM strategy (27:20)
  • Utilizing demonstrations to gain developer buy in & trust (29:24)
  • What Tomas is looking forward to in Graphite’s future / software dev in general (32:04)
  • Rapid fire questions (33:34)
    • LINKS AND RESOURCES
    • The Mom Test - Rob Fitzpatrick’s quick, practical guide that will save you time, money, and heartbreak.
    • Founding Sales - The Startup Sales Handbook - rhe distillation of Pete Kazanjy’s experience at his first software startup, TalentBin going from a founder with a product marketing and product management background to early sales guy, early sales manager, and eventual post-acquisition sales leader at Monster Worldwide in addition to his later experience founding Modern Sales, the nation’s largest sales operations, enablement, and leadership community.
    • Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts - Annie Duke, a former World Series of Poker champion turned business consultant, draws on examples from business, sports, politics, and (of course) poker to share tools anyone can use to embrace uncertainty and make better decisions.

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      This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

      Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

      Jerry Li - Co-Host

      Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

      Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

      Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/


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      Engineering FoundersBy The Engineering Leadership Community (ELC)