Geoffrey Grosenbach / PeepCode

Adam talks with Geoffrey Grosenbach about his quest for greatness as Senior Visionary in building PeepCode Screencasts. Complete with the signature voice that Geoff delivers, he walks us through the various aspects of building Peepcode from scratch, adhering to the Minimal Viable Product methodology (MVP), starting on “the cheap” and the reason he says “no” to DRM to reduce piracy on his digital products.

23 Aug 09:20

Ted Roden / Fancy Hands

Adam talks with Ted Roden, Founder of Fancy Hands, a team of personal assistants in the cloud ready to work for you right now. For those of you who have an over flowing todo list, get back to focusing on what’s important and give Fancy Hands a try.

23 Aug 09:20

Lance Jones and Joanna Wiebe / Page 99 Test

Adam talks with Lance Jones and Joanna Wiebe, Founders of Page99Test.com. People in bookstores often read page 99 of a book to get a taste for the writing - to determine if they’d buy the book. Lance, Joanna and technical Co-Founder, Steven Luke took that time tested idea and have built a brand new platform for book enthusiasts, authors, agents and publishers to get excited about.

23 Aug 09:20

Allan Branch and Steven Bristol / Less Everything

Adam talks with Allan Branch and Steven Bristol, Founders of Less Everything about how things got started, why they hate QuickBooks, what it takes to create a successful partnership and more.

23 Aug 09:20

Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs / Slash7

Adam talks with Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs, Founders of Slash7 about product development, profiting from Open Source, the key to happiness, living a Unicorn-Free lifestyle and how Amy and Thomas met and ultimately fell in love.

23 Aug 09:20

Henk Rogers / The Tetris Company

Adam talks with Henk Rogers, Founder of The Tetris Company, Blue Planet Software and Blue Planet Foundation about the beginnings of and the evolution of Tetris, over-coming brick walls, social and mobile gaming, never giving up, changing the world, getting the planet off carbon-based fuels, ending war, creating a backup of Earth and the power of love!

23 Aug 09:20

Alex Hillman / Indy Hall

Adam talks with Alex Hillman, Co-Founder of Indy Hall and co-conspirator/creator of many things, about all things Coworking, people helping people, how to hustle, get unstuck and more. Alex also mentions something “super secret” that’s sure to please. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

23 Aug 09:20

Maciej Ceglowski / Pinboard

Adam talks with Maciej Ceglowski, Founder of Pinboard about turning this side project into the next Delicious, handling a massive in-flux of Delicious users when they announced its “sunset”, keeping the technology and architecture simple and more.

23 Aug 09:20

Ryan Holmes / HootSuite

Adam talks with Ryan Holmes, Founder of Hootsuite entrepreneurship, establishing and leveraging their relationship with Twitter, from “free” to “freemium” with a plan, and growing to well over 1 Million users in 2 years.

23 Aug 09:20

Rick Perreault / Unbounce

Adam talks with Rick Perreault, Co-Founder & CEO of Unbounce about entrepreneurship and solving your own pain, sticking to an MVP (Minimal Viable Product) launch strategy, becoming an authority by blogging/marketing before you launch, listening to customers and knowing when to take funding.

23 Aug 09:20

Eric Kuhn / Founders Card

Adam talks with Eric Kuhn, Founder of Founders Card about the ups and downs of building an online business during the era of the “dot com” bubble, managing hyper growth, getting listed and de-listed on the NASDAQ and building an exclusive benefits program, coined as “The Amex Black Card for the Entrepreneur”, exclusively aimed at Entrepreneurs and Founders. If you want an invite, get in touch with Adam.

23 Aug 09:20

Chris Nagele / Wildbit

Adam talks with Chris Nagele, Founder of Wildbit about his 11 year journey of building Wildbit and ultimately some awesome web products like Beanstalk, Postmark, and Newsberry.

23 Aug 09:20

Bill Boebel / Rackspace

Adam talks with Bill Boebel, VP Strategy/Corp Dev at Rackspace and Founder of Webmail.us about staying the course, keeping the team motivated during turbulent “cash strapped” times, getting acquired by Rackspace and staying on to continue building the company post-acquisition.

23 Aug 09:20

Noah Kagan / App Sumo

Noah Kagan, Founder of App Sumo talks with Adam about his journey to success. Send an email to noah@appsumo.com for more details about something special for 5by5 listeners.

23 Aug 09:20

Avner Ronen / Boxee

Avner Ronen talks about his vision of the “Future of TV,” the role Boxee plays in today’s internet video/audio content on the big screen, the backlash of “big media” against Boxee and how they’ve changed their tune and much more.

23 Aug 09:20

Niel Robertson / Trada

Niel Robertson, Founder and CEO of Trada, talks about crowd-sourcing, crowd mechanics, leveraging “the stealth mode”, raising 52 million dollars, community engagement, as well as thoughts on whether or not crowd-sourcing commoditizes freelance expertise.

23 Aug 09:20

Matt Mickiewicz / 99 Designs

Matt Mickiewicz, Co-Founder of SitePoint, 99 Designs, and Flippa talks with Adam about becoming an entrepreneur at a young age, building marketplaces, finding talented people, and using community development and a forum as the spring board for 99 Designs and Flippa.

23 Aug 09:20

Drew Wilson / Valio - Part 1

Drew Wilson joins Adam for part 1 to talk about his journey as an entrepreneur, the lows, the highs and the in-betweens. Drew talks with Adam about digital projects, how to chase your dreams and more.

23 Aug 09:19

Drew Wilson / Valio - Part 2

Drew Wilson joins Adam again for part 2, to talk about his latest venture Advise.me, Valio Con, his ad network Yoggrt (sold) and some future products.

23 Aug 09:19

Mark Jardine and Paul Haddad / Tapbots

Mark Jardine and Paul Haddad join Adam to talk about Tapbots, their side project turned business, designing and developing mobile applications on iOS, establishing and building trust and much more.

23 Aug 09:19

Drew Strojny / The Theme Foundry

Drew Strojny joins Adam to talk about his path in life, playing in the NFL, marrying your business partner, web design and pursuing the unknown, developing digital products and themes for WordPress and the 5by5 logo.

23 Aug 09:19

Vitaly Friedman / Smashing Magazine

Vitaly Friedman, Founder of Smashing Magazine, joins Adam to talk about the beginnings of Smashing Magazine, taking chances, not being copyable, experimenting to find what works, supporting the community, developing content, paying writers, developing publishing principles and philosophies and also shares a bit about what’s next on the horizon for him and his team.

23 Aug 09:19

Dan Cederholm and Rich Thornett / Dribbble

The founders of Dribbble, Rich Thornett and Dan Cederholm, join Adam to talk about how Dribbble came to be, the 3rd edition of Bullet Proof Web Design, product development, new and existing features of Dribbble as well as focusing on revenue producing features … and much, much more.

23 Aug 09:19

Dan Martell / Clarity

Dan Martell, Co-Founder of Flowtown, joins Adam to talk about his road to success with Flowtown, getting acquired, how he met his Co-Founder Ethan Bloch on Twitter, angel investing and being an advisor, giving back to charity and customer development and how to get traction. Dan also shared something super secret (a new project) … as well as much, much more.

23 Aug 09:19

Bryan Zmijewski / ZURB

Bryan Zmijewski (Shme-yes-key), Founder and Chief Instigator of ZURB, joins Adam to talk about his path to starting ZURB, what sharing code and design patterns has done for their business, product, culture and team development, and what it takes to make awesome stuff on the web.

23 Aug 09:19

Ryan Carson / Carsonified

Ryan Carson, the Founder of Carsonified and Treehouse, joins Adam to talk about all the details of starting his new venture, Treehouse.

23 Aug 09:19

Andrew Wilkinson / MetaLab

Andrew Wilkinson, the Founder of MetaLab (an interface design studio) joins Adam to talk about how he started as a one-man band and learned to delegate to succeed. Andrew started MetaLab in 2006 and quickly built the company into a multi-million dollar interface design and products company with over 30 employees. Andrew shares his thoughts on happiness, some crucial advice from his father, Steve Jobs, good design, developing products, leading a team to success and even a teaser to something super secret.

23 Aug 09:19

Francisco Dao / 50 Kings

Francisco Dao, the Founder of 50 Kings (an invitation-only, private community of thinkers and doers) joins Adam to talk about the importance of building relationships, doing only what interests you, entrepreneurship, all sorts of “insider” knowledge around the tech event planning space and more. If you’ve been dying to get invited or referred to 50 Kings, this show will give you all you need to know.

23 Aug 09:19

Peter Cooper / Cooper Press

Peter Cooper, the Founder of Cooper Press joins Adam to talk about all the stops along the way on his path to where he is today. Peter shares an immense amount of knowledge on tech publishing, what he’s learned about marketing, email newsletters done right, setting and accomplishing goals, as well as some very good advice at the very end.

23 Aug 09:19

Kyle Bragger / Forrst

Kyle Bragger, the Founder of Forrst joins Adam to talk about how everything got started for him, how he met Gary Vaynerchuk - which ultimately led Gary and his brother Aj to provide the initial angel funding that helped Kyle work full-time on Forrst. Kyle also shares lots of knowledge on product design, his focus on community and what it means to say no and focus. Be sure to also stay tuned to his great advice at the end of the show.

23 Aug 09:19

Nathan Ryan / Proxart

Nathan Ryan, the Co-founder of Proxart joins Adam to talk about what to do when you’re bored in Santa Clarita, team development, keeping everyone motivated and on track, and his globalized local focus on art and how artists relate to, react to, and change their environment.

23 Aug 09:19

Nate & Jay / United Pixelworkers

Nate Peretic & Jay Fanelli, the Founders of Full Stop and United Pixelworkers join Adam to talk about plotting and planning to leave old jobs, being outspoken and opinionated, having a core set of principles and not deviating from them, reaching out to people they admired (regardless of popularity) and their side project that has turned into something that could eclipse their entire client revenue in 2012. Also, check out After Dark for an extended chat with Nate and Jay.

23 Aug 09:19

After Founders Talk #33

Adam Stacoviak, Nate Peretic & Jay Fanelli after Founders Talk #33.

23 Aug 09:19

Jon Crawford / Storenvy

Jon Crawford, the Founder of Storenvy joins Adam to talk about how everything began for Storenvy, his road from Kansas to Austin, TX to SF, how he got kicked out of Y Combinator the same week he was accepted then raised $1.5M for Storenvy, and how he’s living the startup dream! Also, listen to After Founders Talk #34 for an extended chat with Jon.

23 Aug 09:19

After Founders Talk #34

Adam Stacoviak and guest Jon Crawford of Storenvy after Founders Talk #34.

23 Aug 09:19

Steve Espinosa / AppStack

Steve Espinosa, the Founder of AppStack, joins Adam to tell his story of hustling his way to the top, gaining the trust and friendship of Jason Calacanis, Dave McClure, Eric Schmidt and the awesome team behind Google Ventures, what it means to focus and much more. This is a jam packed episode with tons of energy and lots to learn from Steve. Also, check out “After Dark” for an extended chat with Steve.

23 Aug 09:18

After Founders Talk #35

Adam Stacoviak and guest Steve Espinosa after Founders Talk #35.

23 Aug 09:18

Sarah Hatter / CoSupport - Part 1

Sarah Hatter the Founder of CoSupport, joins Adam for part 1 of 2 to share her passion for great customer support for web products, being a woman in a man filled industry, her thoughts and history with potentially selling her company and getting aqui-hired, how Allan and Steven of LessEverything have become partners in CoSupport - plus so much more.

23 Aug 09:18

After Founders Talk #36

Adam and guest Sarah Hatter the founder of CoSupport after Founders Talk #36.

23 Aug 09:18

Sarah Hatter / CoSupport - Part 2

Sarah Hatter the Founder of CoSupport, joins Adam for part 2 of 2 to go back in time and dig deep into her history, we learn about “the early days” and how she got started, her passions for TV and her podcast TVBFF, the early days of blogging and “dramaville”, what inspires her, being a crafts-person, how she learned that “you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do”, how TM meditation changed her life, as well as the challenges she’s faced as a female founder - plus so much more.

23 Aug 09:18

After Founders Talk #37

Adam and guest Sarah Hatter the founder of CoSupport after Founders Talk #37.

23 Aug 09:18

Sam Soffes / Nothing Magical, Cheddar - Part 1

Sam Soffes the Founder of Nothing Magical and the maker of Cheddar joins Adam Stacoviak to share all the details of his wild ride as an indie software developer and designer. Sam has worked at Hipstamatic, built YouTube ripoffs, gotten offers from some of the most respected names in the business (some accepted and some turned down) all to circle back around to start Nothing Magical and build his own products. He shares the highs, the lows and all the things he’s learned along the way - plus so much more. And, check out “After Dark” for a short extended chat with Sam.

23 Aug 09:18

Sam Soffes / Nothing Magical, Cheddar - Part 2

Sam Soffes the Founder of Nothing Magical and the maker of Cheddar joins Adam Stacoviak to share more details about the rise of Cheddar, its revenue, metrics, numbers and more. Sam shares lessons learned, his dreams as well as his thoughts on those who build with only the hope of winning what he calls “the acquisition lottery” as their goal - plus so much more.

23 Aug 09:18

After Founders Talk #39

Adam and guest Sam Soffes the Founder of Nothing Magical and the maker of Cheddar after Founders Talk #39.

23 Aug 09:18

Sam Soffes / Seesaw - Part 3

Sam Soffes the Founder of Nothing Magical and NOW the VP of Engineering at Seesaw joins Adam Stacoviak to share some of the most recent details and changes for him in the finale part 3 show. Core take away? Embrace risk. Stay focused.

23 Aug 09:18

Garrett Dimon / Sifter

Garrett Dimon the Founder of Sifter and writer of Starting + Sustaining joins Adam to share his history with becoming a founder and the wisdom he’s gained by bloodying his knuckles over the years with lessons learned.

23 Aug 09:18

Dalton Caldwell / App.net - Part 1

Adam talks with Dalton Caldwell the Founder of App.net. This is a hefty part 1, mainly focusing on the road traveled by Dalton to get to App.net. We barely scratched the surface of the planned conversation around what he’s doing with App.net. We end this call by teeing up the topic of discussion for part 2.

23 Aug 09:18

After Founders Talk #42

Adam Stacoviak talks with Dalton Caldwell the Founder of App.net after Founders Talk #42.

23 Aug 09:18

Daniel Genser & Jamie Smyth / TypeEngine

Adam talks with Daniel Genser and Jamie Smyth, the makers of TypeEngine, to talk about their “beautifully simple” solution to publishing a magazine to Newsstand and the future and democratization of digital publishing.

23 Aug 09:18

Robert Sha / CAPSULE + Minimalist

Adam talks with Robert Sha, the founder of CAPSULE and the maker of Minimalist - a super slim wallet for minimalists popularized by its successful project on Kickstarter.

23 Aug 09:18

Dalton Caldwell / App.net - Part 2

Adam talks with Dalton Caldwell the Founder of App.net. Since we barely scratched the surface of the planned conversation around what he’s doing with App.net in part 1, Dalton agreed to come back on the show for a part 2 to discuss the back story of App.net!

23 Aug 09:18

Drew Strojny / Memberful

Adam talks with Drew Strojny the founder of The Theme Foundry and Memberful. Drew is back again to talk about his latest product, Memberful - a membership as a service site that lets you create a membership in minutes and start selling monthly or yearly subscriptions.

23 Aug 09:18

Tim Smith / The East Wing

Adam talks with Tim Smith, the creator of The East Wing, Tim Likes to Teach, Lustra and more. Tim is a master of the art of design and UX and loves hacking on front-end web codes.

23 Aug 09:18

Kevin Delaney / Charity Hack

Adam talks with Kevin Delaney, the founder of Charity Hack - a simple concept that takes 5 amazing charities and the most talented people you can find to create innovative fundraising campaigns for those charities.

23 Aug 09:17

Geoffrey Grosenbach / PeepCode, Part 2

Adam talks with Geoffrey Grosenbach, founder of PeepCode and now the VP of Open Source at Pluralsight.

23 Aug 09:17

Chad Pytel / thoughtbot

Adam talks with Chad Pytel, founder of thoughtbot.

23 Aug 09:17

Sam Soffes / Onward

Could this be Sam’s final appearance on Founders Talk? Only time will tell. Sam says he’s moving onward. New things await. The future is bright and he’s wearing shades. Follow along.

23 Aug 09:17

🔥 Founders Talk is back!

It’s been just shy of 5 years since I’ve published a new episode to this podcast. The break was planned actually. Long story short, I had to focus. If you want to hear the slightly longer explanation, you should listen.

23 Aug 09:17

Growing Open Collective

Pia Mancini joined the show for the first episode back from a nearly 5 year hiatus. We talked about her work at DemocracyEarth, being a mother, her new role as CEO of Open Collective, their focus, supporting ad-hoc community formation all around the world, their revenue and growth plans, and their path to sustainability.

23 Aug 09:17

Starting over from zero

Danielle Morrill joined the show to talk about how she’s starting over from zero after the recent acquisition of Mattermark to FullContact where she held the role of CEO and co-founder who walked away with “zero dollars and a job”. We talked through the details of the company, the acquisition process, the deal — which she brokered herself — as well as her outlook on the startup grind and silicon valley today, and what she’s planning to do next.

23 Aug 09:17

From side project to $7.25M for Unsplash

When Mikael Cho started Unsplash from its small beginning as a Tumblr blog and side project, he had no idea it would have such a huge impact and ultimately disrupt the photography industry. In this episode, Mikael shares the backstory of Unsplash, how it got started, keeping things focused, levers of growth, flipping the marketing funnel, turning free into a business, raising $7.25 million to build a new economy for photography, and the impact of an API.

23 Aug 09:17

Side hustle to $35M ARR at Zapier

Bryan Helmig, Wade Foster, and Mike Knoop started Zapier in 2011 as a side hustle. They ultimately applied to Y Combinator, twice. And this year they hit $35 Million dollars in annual revenue. I talked with Bryan Helmig (CTO) through the backstory of starting this company, being 100% distributed, the flexibility as well as the constraints of being remote-only, how they reached product market fit, growth, scaling their teams, and how they bring everyone together for company wide retreats.

23 Aug 09:17

Eric Berry is funding open source with CodeFund

Eric Berry started Code Sponsor a year ago because of his passion for finding ways to sustain and fund open source developers. He ultimately had to shutdown due to potential legal issues with GitHub, but was given new life as CodeFund when he went to work for ConsenSys and Gitcoin. We talked through the backstory of this idea, why he’s so passionate about funding open source, ethical advertising, being unapologetically focused on your mission, the value of honesty and openness, and the future direction of CodeFund.

23 Aug 09:17

BONUS: Growing a successful sales team at Sentry

Here’s a bonus segment from episode #57 of Founders Talk with David Cramer, co-founder and CEO of Sentry. Check the feed for the full length episode (later today). We talked about sales in the full length episode, but this BONUS segment is a completely isolated conversation that’s not included in the full length episode — so don’t gloss over this thinking it’s just a teaser.

23 Aug 09:17

From dropout to CEO of Sentry and taking on New Relic

David Cramer dropped out of high school AND college, but that didn’t stop him. He ended up teaching himself programming and eventually landed his first job as the webmaster of a World of Warcraft community website. What a beginning… We talked through “the rough slog” period of Sentry and how David powered through to traction and enough profit for him and his partner to go full time, raise three rounds of funding, and take on New Relic.

23 Aug 09:17

Tidelift's mission is to pay open source maintainers

Donald Fischer and the team at Tidelift are on a mission of making open source work better — for everyone. To pay the maintainers of open source software they are putting a new spin on a highly successful business model that’s a win-win for the maintainers as well as the software teams using the software. In this episode we dig into that backstory and Donald’s journey.

23 Aug 09:17

How $3.8M in seed funding started Gatsby as an open source company

Kyle Mathews is the founder and CEO of Gatsby, a new company he’s building around an open source project of the same name. Gatsby as a project describes itself as a flexible modern website framework and blazing fast static site generator for React.js. At the macro level — Kyle’s career has been focused on a better way to build and ship websites. It seems he’s done just that with Gatsby’s launch in late May 2015…since then he’s taken on a co-founder and a seed round of $3.8M to form Gatsby Inc.

23 Aug 09:17

Leading data-driven software teams and products

For the final show of 2018 I’m talking with Travis Kimmel, the CEO of GitPrime. Travis has spent years as an engineering manager. Travis’s mission at GitPrime is to bring crystal clear visibility into the software development process and bridge the communication gap between engineering and stakeholders. This communication gap is often an ongoing plague in product development lifecycle. We talked through focus, tech debt, leading teams, predictability, and more.

23 Aug 09:17

Isaac Schlueter on building npm and hiring a CEO

With JavaScript in every corner of software development and npm in every corner right along with it, the rise of npm can be drawn as a hockey stick up and to the right with Isaac Schlueter at the top grinning ear to ear. After reading their recent announcement to hire a CEO, I knew it was time to talk one-on-one with Isaac about building npm and the journey of hiring his successor.

23 Aug 09:17

Zero up-front costs for a CS education

What would be the impact on the world if a Computer Science education was available to you completely free of charge until you get a job in that field paying $50,000 or more? That’s the question that drives Austen Allred and the team behind Lambda School. Lambda School is a revolutionary new school that invests in its students and they completely align their interests with their students. Seems like a novel idea, right? But Austen’s path to Silicon Valley was where things began for him, so that’s where we’ll start today’s conversation.

23 Aug 09:17

Building a hardware/software product company

Colin Billings is the founder and CEO of Orro where they’ve built the first truly intelligent home lighting system. It knows when you’re in the room, and adjusts the lights automatically for you. But Colin’s path to starting this company wasn’t a straight line. Like most innovative products, Orro has an interesting beginning — after-all, they’re going up against the giants.

23 Aug 09:16

What are you optimizing for?

Saron Yitbarek is the founder and CEO of CodeNewbie — one of the most supportive community of programmers and people learning to code. Saron hosts the CodeNewbie podcast, Command Line Heroes from Red Hat, and she’s also the creator of Codeland Conference taking place on July 22 this year in New York City. We talk through getting started, lessons learned, mental health, developing and running a conference…but our conversation begins with a pivotal question asked of Saron…“What are you optimizing for?”

23 Aug 09:16

Failing to build a billion-dollar company

Sahil Lavingia is the founder and CEO of Gumroad, a platform for creators to sell the things they make. Since 2011 Gumroad has sent over $200 million dollars to creators. That’s a big number. Sahil’s ambitions lead him to believe that Gumroad would become a billion-dollar company, have hundreds of employees, and eventually IPO. That didn’t happen. We talk through Sahil’s journey with Gumroad, why it failed to meet his goals, the path he’s on today and the things he now values…but to understand why Gumroad didn’t live up to his expectations, we really have to understand the backstory of Gumroad.

23 Aug 09:16

Mastering the art of quitting

Lynne Tye is the founder of Key Values, a platform where developers find engineering teams that share their values. To be more precise, Lynne is a solo-founder. She’s also a team of one. Lynne’s path to becoming a founder was anything but typical. She had plans to follow in her parent’s and sister’s footsteps to go into academia, and got two years into pursuing her PhD in Neuroscience before she made one of the best choices in her life — she quit. Lynne has mastered the art of quitting, at the right time of course, and she’s used that art as her secret weapon in her quest to become a founder.

23 Aug 09:16

Becoming an accidental founder

Mike McDerment is the founder and CEO of FreshBooks. Believe it or not, Mike became a founder by accident. Like many of us, Mike had an itch that he just had to scratch. One thing led to another and soon enough FreshBooks became a key tool in the belt of many freelancers and agencies looking for an easy way to send invoices and get paid quickly online. We talk through the early days of FreshBooks and how things came to be, why they created a secret competitor to iterate on a bold idea for the future of FreshBooks, and we also cover what keeps Mike excited.

23 Aug 09:16

Building a real programmable robot

The role of a father plays a pivotal role in a child’s life. Ian Bernstein is a former Founder of Sphero and is now the Founder and Head of Product of Misty Robotics — they’re building the first programmable robot for the home and business. It’s called Misty II. The journey of building Misty II started when Ian was 5 years old and his dad bought him an Apple IIe.

23 Aug 09:16

Leading GitLab to $100M ARR

Sid Sijbrandij is the Co-founder and CEO of GitLab — an all-remote company and complete DevOps platform. As a company, they have their eyes set on taking the company public to IPO and they’re very outspoken about their culture, open handbook, and how they work as an all-remote company. We talk through where Sid came from, the early days of GitLab, why IPO vs a private sale (like GitHub), what it means to put “family and friends first, work second,” how we should view work, and his biggest fear — the company failing.

23 Aug 09:16

From acquisition to full conviction

Guy Podjarny is the Founder of Snyk, a security platform that empowers software-driven businesses to develop fast and stay secure. Prior to Snyk, Guy founded Blaze which was acquired by Akamai and became CTO. We talked through the topic of acquisition — the sale, the merge, the learnings, and why Guy might not be planning for Snyk to be acquired anytime soon. We started the conversation with Snyk’s recent raise of $150 million dollars.

23 Aug 09:16

Slow and steady wins

Jeff Sheldon is the founder and creator of Ugmonk. Jeff is a designer by trade, and an entrepreneur by accident. I been following Jeff’s journey for the better part of Ugmonk’s existence. I’m also a customer. Jeff and I hold several similar values near and dear to our hearts. In addition to my appreciation for Jeff’s product design abilities, and how he leads his business, I also appreciate Jeff’s awareness and focus on the long hard path.

23 Aug 09:16

Balancing business and open source

Raj Dutt is the founder and CEO of Grafana Labs. Grafana has become the world’s most popular open source technology used to compose observability dashboards (we use Grafana here at Changelog). Raj and team are 100% focused on building a sustainable business around open source. They have this “big tent” open source ecosystem philosophy that’s driving every aspect of building their business around their open source, as well as other projects in the open source community. But, to understand the wisdom Raj is leading with today, we have to go back to where things got started. To do that we had to go back like Prince to 1999…

23 Aug 09:16

Intensely focused on building a software company

This week Adam talks with John-Daniel Trask, co-founder & CEO of Raygun. Raygun is an award-winning application monitoring company founded by John-Daniel Trask (better known as JD) and Jeremy Boyd in Wellington, New Zealand. They have revenues in the 8 digits annually, and have done it with very little funding (~1.7M USD). Today’s conversation with JD shares a ton of wisdom. Listen twice and take notes.

23 Aug 09:16

The journey to massive scale and ultra-resilience

This week Adam talks with Spencer Kimball, CEO and Co-founder of Cockroach Labs — makers of CockroachDB an open source cloud-native distributed SQL database. Cockroach Labs recently raised $160 million dollars on a $2 billion dollar valuation. In this episode, Spencer shares his journey in open source, startups and entrepreneurship, and what they’re doing to build CockroachCloud to meet the needs of applications that require massive scale and ultra-resilience.

23 Aug 09:16

From disrupting the cloud to IPO

This week Adam is joined by Mitch Wainer, previously CMO at DigitalOcean and a member of the founding team. They talk about his journey as an entrepreneur and marketer, the early days at DigitalOcean, and everything that went into disrupting the cloud with blazing fast SSDs. Back in March (2021), DigitalOcean started trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) — this obviously earned Mitch and many others a very large payday. They also talk about the work Mitch is doing now with Welcome and Sponsored.

23 Aug 09:16

From open source to commercially viable

This week Adam is joined by Asim Aslam, the founder of Micro - a new cloud platform entirely focused on the developer experience of consuming and publishing public APIs. Asim’s journey spans many years of open source work on Micro. His sole focus right now, is evolving that work into a commercially viable business. This episode is jam-packed with stories of great timing, grit, resilence, success and failure, and, of course, lessons learned.

23 Aug 09:16

Leading Auth0 to a $6.5 billion acquisition

This week Adam is joined by Eugenio Pace, co-founder and CEO of Auth0. Auth0 is a for developers, by developers identity, access, security, and authentication platform built for the cloud that secures billions of logins every year. Mid 2020 they raised $120 million at a $1.92 billion valuation after being told no several times. Then, earlier this year in March they announced they were being acquired by Okta for $6.5 billion, in a bold and future-thinking all stock deal. This episode is full of wisdom, inspiration, and tactical advice that Eugenio has used to build Auth0.

23 Aug 09:16