17 Nov 2024 John O'Nolan is the founder of Ghost, a publishing platform that's grown to $7.2M+ in revenue while tearing up the startup playbook. John was once WordPress.org's VP of Design (a voluntary role) and his experience of the tensions between the open source project and Automattic's commercial interests led him to start Ghost. Ghost is structured as a non-profit, John and his cofounder have no ownership stake and they did not take any external investment. In our conversation, we...
8 days ago • 1 min read
Scaling DevTools Newsletter 11 Oct 2024 I just hit 100 episodes of Scaling DevTools. It feels symbolic for me because of this Mr Beast quote I read early on. "If you are just getting started on YouTube, do not expect to pull any type of viewership in your first year. If this isn't something you can accept, don't start. But if you can, then you need to do this: make 100 videos. It doesn't matter what they are because they will be terrible, but do something you like doing. Your first 10 videos...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Scaling DevTools 01 Sep 2024 One of the things I get asked a lot is "How do open source projects make money"? And this week I chatted with Vlad Matsiiako from Infisical - an open source secrets management tool. So I decided to delve into the how's and why's of Open Source companies. Vlad and I How do Open Source companies make money? Here are the main ways I've seen: SaaS/cloud - like any other SaaS, they sell a hosted version of their software. Within this there might be parts of the product...
3 months ago • 4 min read
Scaling DevTools 21 Jan 2024 This is my first newsletter for a while, hello! I just interviewed DevCycle - they made a huge pivot even though they had a big set of customers. What I admire most about them is that they are doing fewer things but doing them well. Also, I've released a new tools directory (more details below). The DevCycle pivot For most founders, landing Fortune 500 customers like GrubHub, Warby Parker & RBC Royal Bank is the definition of success. Imagine then, telling these...
10 months ago • 2 min read
Josh Twist - the founder of Zuplo, an API Management tool aiming to give you a Stripe-like API experience out-the-box. The API Management tools space is pretty interesting, so this week we're covering the industry and Zuplo's place within it - pulling from Josh's appearance on Scaling DevTools. API Management is growing rapidly Valued at $2.1 billion in 2021 and projected to reach $41.5 billion by 2031 according to Allied Market Research. Note that Banking, Financial Services and Insurance is...
over 1 year ago • 4 min read
Josh Twist - the founder of Zuplo, an API Management tool aiming to give you a Stripe-like API experience out-the-box. The API Management tools space is pretty interesting, so this week we're covering the industry and Zuplo's place within it - pulling from Josh's appearance on Scaling DevTools. API Management is growing rapidly Valued at $2.1 billion in 2021 and projected to reach $41.5 billion by 2031 according to Allied Market Research. Note that Banking, Financial Services and Insurance is...
over 1 year ago • 4 min read
Scaling DevTools Feb 4th, 2023 Consensus kills, busy work kills, flip-flopping kills Last year I set a goal to "build non-time-dependent product & hit $5k MRR" I finished on $0 MRR. To call it a f**k up would be far too generous. A f**k up requires you to actually leave the starting blocks. But in 2023, I promise things will be different. In the past month I've changed a lot of things and I want to share. My goal this year is to build a DevTool with MRR and I want to share what I've learned...
almost 2 years ago • 5 min read
In the last edition, I promised you Developer Marketing lessons from my trip to Japan - you'll find this at the end. We also have: An update on a DevTool launch and some thoughts on validation Takeaways from four Scaling DevTools episodes, including Ramiro from Supabase! Summaries of two great talks I watched this month from swyx and Phil Leggetter. Validating my DevTool idea I am working on validating a DevTool idea for a problem I encountered in my last job as a mobile developer. The...
almost 2 years ago • 5 min read
This will be a shorter email as I'm packing for a holiday! This month, I learned from Sean that developer tools are always doing developer relations. Even if there is no DevRel team yet. I also learned from Zivit that it takes effort and intent to understand the language developers use to describe their problems. And finally from Colin, I got an insight into a market I thought was very mature (auth) but actually still has a long, long way to go. Sean Falconer - Head of Developer Relations &...
about 2 years ago • 3 min read
