This is our Bot Developer Panel which took place on January 21st, 2022. In this panel, we had developers of some of the biggest bots on Discord share a few details about themselves and their bot!

Participants in this panel are:

- Xavin, Developer of Hydra

https://top.gg/bot/547905866255433758

- BattleEye, Developer of TicketTool

https://top.gg/bot/557628352828014614

- Iara, Developer of Mimu

https://top.gg/bot/493716749342998541

- Veld, Developer of Miki

https://top.gg/bot/160105994217586689

00:00:00 - Waiting for Stage to start

Introductions

00:02:00 - Event Introduction

00:03:02 - Xavin [Hydra]

00:03:35 - Veld [Miki]

00:04:32 - Iara [Mimu]

Regular Questions:

00:05:10 - What inspired you to make your bot?

00:10:00 - What is the biggest misconception of being a bot developer?

00:13:20 - As a bot dev you often go through many stages of project management at once - How's your experience on this?

00:17:00 - How do you balance monetization?

00:20:30 - How did scaling your bot go?

00:25:55 - Have you taken on any extra help with your bot? How did this process go?

00:31:52 - How do you measure success? What's the secret ingredient to your bot's success?

Specific Questions to our panelists:

00:37:15 - Why did TicketTool succeed so well?

00:38:48 - How did the YouTube C&Ds affect Hydra and its Roadmap?

00:40:06 - Mimu is known for its strong branding, what advice would you give to someone who wants to build a strong branded community

00:42:35 - How has the discord dev landscape changed over the years?

AMA Questions:

00:44:30 - [Family friendly] What are your views on open source?

00:46:31 - [big.bun/Phoenix] What are the first steps you took to grow your bot? When did your bot start to grow on it's own?

00:51:11 - [Aurel] What were the most difficult steps you took?

00:52:35 - [big.bun] How does the process of implementing new features look like?

00:53:23 - [alec] Was there ever a point in time where you wanted to quit

00:56:43 - [Bubbly] Where do you get your inspiration?

00:58:37 - [Family friendly] How do you foster/retain a helpful community around your bot?

01:00:10 - [Siri - for Tickettool] How do you plan on handling the Message Content intent?

01:01:05 - [Innovator] What are your views on the Message Content Intent?

01:03:07 - [conqr] How do you feel about Discord adding their own in app bot discovery?

01:06:50 - [big.bun] What was your sanity / mental health like while managing your bot?

01:08:39 - [Mafineeek] Is your bot your main source of income?

01:10:55 - [pog] Have you ever thought about selling your bot/business?

01:14:10 - [big.bun] What's your background? What did you do before developing your bot?

01:16:20 - [Siri] When starting out, what coding experience did you have?

01:17:40 - [hyper] What feature took the longest to make? What made it difficult?

01:19:13 - [Igor] What is your favourite programming language / library?

01:21:20 - As your business heavily relies on Discord, have you ever considered branching out to other platforms?

01:22:49 - [Flare] What do you think of the current state of Discord as a whole?

01:24:08 - [SpaceDoggo] Stuff you wish you knew when you started out?

01:26:35 - [Mafineek] Do you listen to music when you're coding?

01:27:45 - [Mac] What's your favourite bot which isn't your own?

01:29:40 - Do you have one piece of advice to share with new bot devs? 

01:31:10 - Closing off