Louis Knight-Webb is the CEO and co-founder of Bloop.

Bloop helps with modernizing legacy software, particularly focusing on COBOL and mainframes.

This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.

Takeaways:
- Mainframes and COBOL are still foundational in many industries.
- Bloop started with a focus on code search but evolved to address legacy code modernization.
- The transition from COBOL to Java is a significant challenge for many enterprises.
- Innovative approaches are needed to effectively translate legacy code.
- Ensuring code quality during migration is crucial to avoid operational disruptions.
- AI can enhance the code translation process but has limitations with legacy languages.

Links:
- Louis Knight-Webb
- Bloop 

Chapters:
00:00 The Legacy of Mainframes and COBOL
03:05 The Evolution of Bloop and Code Search
05:58 Challenges in Modernizing Legacy Code
08:48 Navigating the Enterprise Code Landscape
12:11 The Transition from COBOL to Java
15:05 Innovative Approaches to Code Translation
18:02 Ensuring Code Quality and Functionality
20:56 The Future of Development and AI Integration
23:52 Building Relationships in the Enterprise Space
26:45 The Long-Term Vision for Legacy Code Modernization

Guy Podjarny is the founder of Tessl - a startup that is rethinking how we build software.

Guy previously founded Snyk - a dependency scanning tool worth billions of dollars. Before Snyk, Guy founded Blaze, which he sold to Akamai.

This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.

In this conversation, we talk about the future of programming and the future of DevTools. 

• The future of programming will focus on writing specifications.
• Trust in AI tools
• Snyk is an example of how tools can integrate into existing workflows.
• Code can become disposable, allowing for flexibility in development.
• Specifications will serve as repositories of truth in software development.
• Developers will need to adapt their skills to leverage AI tools effectively.
• Community collaboration is essential for the evolution of AI development tools.
• AI simplifies and democratizes the process of software creation

Thanks to Anna Debenham for making this happen. 

Tessa Kriesel is the founder of builtfor.dev, where she helps DevTools founders with GTM.

In this episode we talk about how she helps founders improve their go to market strategy in a short sprint.

Links:

• Built for Devs
• Tessa Kriesel 

This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs. https://workos.com/

We dig into the the build vs. buy dilemma for APIs, and the role of OpenAPI in effective documentation.

This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.

We explore how AI is transforming the landscape of APIs and developer tools, and discuss the future of coding.

• The choice between building and buying SDKs depends on company maturity.
• OpenAPI is crucial for generating quality API documentation.
• AI is revolutionizing how APIs are created and consumed.
• Maintaining SDK libraries can be a significant challenge.
• Developer tools must evolve to keep pace with API design changes.
• Trust in AI-generated code is growing among developers.
• The future of coding will likely involve more AI integration.

Links:

• APIMatic
• Sid Maestre

Jake Cooper is the founder of Railway - an infrastructure platform that let's you build powerful infrastructure in a simple way.

This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.

In this episode we discuss:
- Building a remote team with a flat structure
- Railway's sales team doing their best Minority Report impression
- Why leverage matters
- Building their own data centers
- Why it's important to do hard things

P.s. here's news about the tsunami warning 

Links:
- Railway 
- Jake Cooper
- Angelo from Railway 

In this conversation, Daksh Gupta, the CEO of Greptile - an AI code understanding API - shares:

• Why it’s important to do unique types of marketing, like making an energy drink
• Why most people misunderstand sales
• How companies are buying AI tools and why it will probably change soon

This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.

Links:

• Greptile greptile.com 
• Mintlify https://mintlify.com/
• Greptile energy drink https://x.com/dakshgup/status/1769813883194130856 
• Steve Ballmer boxes https://x.com/dakshgup/status/1854224733086359582 
• PostHog competition https://x.com/james406/status/1854557581030670478  

Ankur Goyal is the founder of ​Braintrust​, a year old LLM eval platform that is already used by Figma, Vercel and Stripe and just raised $36m from a16z. It's a rocketship.

This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.

Key Success Factors
- Started with a targeted list of ~50 companies already working with AI
- Focused on early adopters and innovators in the space
- Strategy: If they could make the frontrunners happy, others would follow

Links:
- Braintrust
- Ankur Goyal
- Alana Goyal
- Basecase 
- Elad Gil 
- Martin Casado

Chapters:
* 00:00  Introduction to BrainTrust and Its Success
* 02:52  The Importance of User Research in Product Development
* 06:11  Building Relationships with Key Customers
* 09:05  The Role of Feedback in Product Improvement
* 11:54  The Impact of Mentorship on Entrepreneurial Success
* 15:11  Identifying Market Opportunities in AI Development
* 18:00  Effective User Interviews and Problem Validation
* 20:59  The Evolution of BrainTrust's Product Features
* 23:55  Advice for Aspiring DevTool Founders
* 26:48  Exciting Developments in the DevTool Space

​Samuel Colvin​ - the creator of ​Pydantic​ - the most popular data validation library for Python. Used by literally everyone (Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, NVIDIA, even the NSA). He shares the story behind his startup ​Logfire​ which just raised $12.5m from Sequoia.

This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.

Key takeaways:
- You can just build a different product to your open source project and leverage your brand
- Quality of product matters a LOT (if you can build a popular open source project, can probably build a quality paid product)
- Really helps to be part of a movement. Hard to predict but Pydantic benefited from two (types and LLMs)
- GitHub stars are a vanity metric compared to download numbers

Links:
- Pydantic
- Logfire
- Samuel Colvin

Chapters
00:00 The Genesis of Pydantic
02:46 The Evolution of Software Development
06:02 Building a Successful Open Source Library
08:52 The Impact of Community and Adoption
11:51 Metrics of Success in Open Source
15:08 Transitioning from Pydantic to LogFire
17:59 The Vision Behind LogFire
20:50 The Connection Between Pydantic and LogFire
24:05 Navigating the Challenges of Building a Startup
26:56 The Future of Observability and Databases

P.s. thanks to my friend Abeed for making the episode happen!

There are more and more open source DevTools startups. I’ve interviewed dozens. But I am still confused about open source licenses. So I decided to ask questions to two people who actually understand them: my friends Eric and Matt - founders of open source background jobs tool Trigger.dev.

This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.

What we discuss:

• Two Key Questions for License Selection
• What are the benefits of permissive licenses?
• What are the main licenses?
• Why shouldn’t you write your own (open source) license?
• What is Copyleft?
• Post Open Source" Movement

• (00:50) - Open Source Licensing

Trigger:

• Eric Allam - https://x.com/maverickdotdev 
• Matt Aitken - https://x.com/mattaitken
• Trigger.dev https://trigger.dev/
• JSON Hero https://jsonhero.io/ 

Licenses

• MIT License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License - Matt’s “most permissive license”
• Apache-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_License - “Like MIT but with trademarks”
• FSL / Fair Source License https://fair.io/ - created by Sentry
• Heather Meeker - Open Source Licencing expert https://www.linkedin.com/in/heathermeeker/ 
• A practical guide to Open Source Licencing https://www.amazon.co.uk/Open-Source-Business-Practical-Licensing/dp/1544737645 

References

• Sentry https://sentry.io/welcome/ 
• Redis https://redis.io/ 
• Valkey https://valkey.io/ 
• Clickhouse https://clickhouse.com/ 
• Background to Continue.dev and PearAI https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/30/y-combinator-is-being-criticized-after-it-backed-an-ai-startup-that-admits-it-basically-cloned-another-ai-startup/ 

John O'Nolan is the Founder and CEO of Ghost.org. Ghost is an open source blog & newsletter platform. We use them for the Scaling DevTools' blog.

Note: this episode was recorded on 17th October 2024.

We talk about:

• How to communicate the benefits of Open Source to non-developers
• How Ghost manages to align open source and money making
• John's thoughts on the Automattic/Wordpress drama
• Advantages and disadvantages of VC funding and open source
• What would John do with VC dollars

Resources:

• Ghost https://ghost.org/
• John's website https://john.onolan.org/
• The WordPress vs. WP Engine drama, explained https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/07/wordpress-vs-wp-engine-drama-explained/ 
• Indie Hackers podcast https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/139-john-onolan-of-ghost
• Cursor cursor.com
• Ben Thompson's blog https://stratechery.com/

This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.