Scaling DevTools

Ben Dicken is a developer educator at PlanetScale, he's an incredible writer and teacher, who's made some amazing technical articles that developers actually love reading. We get into his reasons for working so hard on these articles, his process, and how he makes content that genuinely helps engineers understand complex ideas.

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:

   •  Ben's X
   •  B-trees and database indexes article
   •  IO devices and latency article

In this episode, we explore Adam Frankl's concept of a Technical Advisory Board, and how it helps DevTools founders learn directly from potential users. I share personal experience organizing one-on-one interviews to find out real customer problems and gives tips for recruiting members. We explore how to set up the meetings, analyse feedback, and get the most value from the process.

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:
   •  The first tab call
   •  How to recruit TAB members
   •  After the first set of TAB calls
   •  Adam's Linkedin
   •  Adam's book

Sunil Pai, former React core team member and now at Cloudflare, shares why AI agents are poised to revolutionize practical, often overlooked sectors like healthcare and hospitality, and the opportunities in focused, vertical solutions.

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:
   • Sunil's X

Matt Carey from AI Demo Days, shares his experience of organizing developer events in London and San Fransisco. He discusses the real costs involved and how creating fun, community-driven events makes all the difference - plus a spicy take on Hackathons!

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:
   •  AI Demo Days
   •  Matt Carey's links

Gitpod has rebranded to Ona and shifted its focus to building AI tools for enterprise teams. This episode digs into why they made the leap, how they're standing out in a crowded AI space, and what it’s been like rethinking developer workflows from the ground up. We talk about dev environments, differentiating in the AI space, forward-deployed engineers and more.

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:

   •  Ona
   •  Christian's X
   •  Matthew's X

Creating docs that actually work means knowing what to write, how to write it, and where it belongs. In this episode, we break down the diataxis documentation framework—a simple but powerful system that splits docs into four clear types: tutorials, how-to guides, explanations, and reference. We look at examples of tools that have implemented diataxis to write their documentation with clarity and purpose.

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:
   •  Diataxis
   •  Sequin
   •  Layercode
   •  Logdy

Karen from Composio shares how developers are using MCP to connect tools like Slack, Notion, and Gmail with AI agents, growing from nearly zero to 100,000 users in 6 months. They capitalized on key moments when new AI tools, such as Grok versions and Claude releases, came out, creating examples and demos that resonated strongly across social media and got them retweeted by Elon Musk. Hear how the team learns to use these tools better over time, helping each new release work smarter than the last.

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:
   •  Composio
   •  Composio's X
   •  Karan's X
   •  Launch Video

Lee Robinson helped Vercel grow to $200M+ in ARR and scaled the Next.js community to over 1.3 million active developers. I dive into his blog posts to uncover valuable insights and lessons about how he achieved this success, covering topics like docs, community building, developer education, marketing, and product development.

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:
   •  Lee Robinson's blog
   •  Lee Robinson's X
   •  Peter Yang's interview
   •  swyx's interview
   •  Gonto on Scaling DevTools
   •  Developer Marketing Community

P.s. this is a new style of episode, let me know what you think. 

Carter Rabasa, head of DevRel at Langflow, talks about organizing and participating in hackathons, how these events enable developers to break free from routine work, and how they can help accelerate tool development.

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:
   •  Carter's X
   •  Carter's LinkedIn
   •  Cascadia AI Hackathon (and Luma)
   •  AI Tinkerers
   •  Bolt Virtual Hackathon 

Rita Kozlov is the VP of Developers and AI at Cloudflare. We talk about how Cloudflare focuses on building disruptive, efficient technologies like their Workers platform to gain long-term competitive advantages.

They use their own developer platform to ship fast, and hire people who deeply care, with a culture of curiosity and transparency that drives continuous innovation.

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:

• Rita’s X 
• Rita’s LinkedIn
• Cloudflare
• swyx article on cloudflare
• Stratechery article on Cloudflare's disruption