WEBVTT 1 00:00:06.559 --> 00:00:10.560 Hey, Welcome to React Roundup, the podcast where we keep you updated on 2 00:00:10.679 --> 00:00:15.839 all things React related. This show is sponsored by Raygun and produced by Top 3 00:00:15.919 --> 00:00:19.399 and Devs and Onvoid. Top and Devs is very great Top and Devs. 4 00:00:19.440 --> 00:00:23.480 We get top and pay and recognition, but working on interesting problems and making 5 00:00:23.519 --> 00:00:29.399 meaningful community contributions. An Onvoid which provides remote design and software development services on 6 00:00:29.440 --> 00:00:33.840 a task basis, so clients only pay when tasks are delivered and approved. 7 00:00:34.359 --> 00:00:40.399 In today's episode, we have a very special guest which is Max Steiber, 8 00:00:40.880 --> 00:00:47.159 the CEO and co founder of Stalt and you might know him as the creator 9 00:00:47.320 --> 00:00:53.079 of Styled components. So we're going to have a very interesting show about his 10 00:00:53.240 --> 00:01:00.799 projects and his career progression from being a contributor as a developer to the role 11 00:01:00.880 --> 00:01:03.920 that he feels currently. My name is Lucas Paganini. I'm your host in 12 00:01:03.959 --> 00:01:08.599 the podcast, and joining me in today's episode are also the amazing hosts Chris 13 00:01:08.760 --> 00:01:18.439 Bruen, Hello everyone, Peter Osa, Hi everyone, And just to give 14 00:01:18.439 --> 00:01:23.680 an opportunity to introduce himself, here is Max Steiber. Thank you for the 15 00:01:23.680 --> 00:01:27.280 beautiful injury, Lucas. That was great. I think for people that are 16 00:01:27.319 --> 00:01:30.159 listening in that might have been in the React ecosystem for a while. I 17 00:01:30.200 --> 00:01:34.120 co created way back when in twenty fourteen fifteen ish when React with Press release 18 00:01:34.159 --> 00:01:38.920 React boilerplates, which at the time was maybe the best way to manage whippak. 19 00:01:38.079 --> 00:01:42.640 This is now ancient technology because afterwards, very quickly people realized that that 20 00:01:42.799 --> 00:01:45.799 was boilerplates were maybe not the best way to do that, and create React 21 00:01:45.799 --> 00:01:48.840 that came around, and later of course Nick Chase and Gatsby and all these 22 00:01:48.840 --> 00:01:53.519 meta frameworks and remix of course, and then as part of that also later 23 00:01:53.599 --> 00:01:57.079 on I co created stock components, which is a CSS and j's library that 24 00:01:57.120 --> 00:02:00.640 got very widely adopted because it moved see this as closer to the components. 25 00:02:01.040 --> 00:02:04.359 So for people that have been in the reacting ecosystem for a while, you 26 00:02:04.400 --> 00:02:06.079 might have heard of some of these, you might have even used some of 27 00:02:06.079 --> 00:02:08.639 these. Uh, and later on a transition to founding a startup in the 28 00:02:08.639 --> 00:02:13.960 graphical space called Stillates. So happy to talk about any and all of those 29 00:02:14.000 --> 00:02:20.039 things today. Nice, Well, let's get started, So why don't you 30 00:02:20.159 --> 00:02:24.960 give us a little bit of history and context, Like I'm sure that if 31 00:02:25.000 --> 00:02:30.520 I just say, let's go from the beginning. Then I'm not sure if 32 00:02:31.400 --> 00:02:40.800 ye five hours here, but I'm thinking perhaps, like most people are gonna 33 00:02:40.840 --> 00:02:45.599 at least most people listening to this episode are probably going to know you as 34 00:02:45.639 --> 00:02:49.960 the creator of stock components, just because it's so widely adopted in the React 35 00:02:49.960 --> 00:02:53.639 community. And well, we're talking about React developers here, so perhaps we 36 00:02:53.680 --> 00:02:59.280 could start with that, and well, why did you created this library, 37 00:02:59.400 --> 00:03:05.280 and how the process of like this in itself was kind of a successful business, 38 00:03:05.360 --> 00:03:08.520 right like, not necessarily bringing you money, but it was a product 39 00:03:08.639 --> 00:03:15.759 that you created and you needed it to create traction. So there were many 40 00:03:15.759 --> 00:03:22.400 different solutions for the same problem that style Components was solving, and for some 41 00:03:22.479 --> 00:03:28.879 reason, the most of the developers preferred your solution. And I wonder if 42 00:03:28.919 --> 00:03:38.439 this was entirely organic or if there were any more directed and strategic steps from 43 00:03:38.479 --> 00:03:45.479 your part to make this library successful. Yeah. Style Components came to be 44 00:03:45.479 --> 00:03:47.919 because I was working at a company and we were building a sort of usable 45 00:03:47.919 --> 00:03:53.560 component library called elementally Wife, and as part of that, we wanted to 46 00:03:53.599 --> 00:03:55.439 publish this component library to impment I have other people be able to use it. 47 00:03:55.520 --> 00:04:00.080 Right This is, you know, sort of an internal science system we 48 00:04:00.120 --> 00:04:03.000 wanted external people to be able to use. But very quickly back in those 49 00:04:03.039 --> 00:04:06.680 days, we started to realize that there was no very consistent way of distributing 50 00:04:06.800 --> 00:04:13.159 CSS with the component library because ultimately what people mostly did in those days is 51 00:04:13.199 --> 00:04:16.560 they used webpac and configured it to publish CSS modules right, which required setting 52 00:04:16.600 --> 00:04:20.079 up a webpac loader correctly with all these options. But the problem is if 53 00:04:20.639 --> 00:04:25.040 our users of these component library didn't use CSS modules, suddenly they had to 54 00:04:25.040 --> 00:04:28.600 add this webpac configuration and it messed up all of the rest of their CSS 55 00:04:28.680 --> 00:04:30.079 right. If they were doing CSS in another way, suddenly they had this 56 00:04:30.120 --> 00:04:32.560 extra webpac loader that would conflict with the way that they were doing CSS, 57 00:04:32.600 --> 00:04:35.800 and they would just break everything. And so basically the component library essentially wasn't 58 00:04:35.839 --> 00:04:41.319 really reusable outside of our specific use case. And so that was the initial 59 00:04:41.360 --> 00:04:44.839 problem that we started with. And I met Glenn Maddon, who's the co 60 00:04:44.920 --> 00:04:47.279 creator of CSS modules and then co created style Components with me, and we 61 00:04:47.319 --> 00:04:51.279 started talking about this problem and we realized that there'd been this at a time 62 00:04:51.560 --> 00:04:58.839 recent new innovation around moving CSS into javascripts. Particularly GSS was one of the 63 00:04:58.879 --> 00:05:02.879 first library to do this really and bring this popularity. And the thing that 64 00:05:02.879 --> 00:05:05.720 we didn't like about all the existing libraries at that point is that they forced 65 00:05:05.759 --> 00:05:12.160 you to write CSS as JavaScript objects, not Jason, but like as objects 66 00:05:12.160 --> 00:05:16.040 in javascripts. Right, And we love CSS and we still do love CSS, 67 00:05:16.240 --> 00:05:19.600 and the problem with moving it into objects and what most of these libraries 68 00:05:19.600 --> 00:05:21.920 did attach it as in line styles is that you lose a lot of the 69 00:05:23.000 --> 00:05:25.519 CSS power. Right. You couldn't do media queries, you couldn't do harverd 70 00:05:25.519 --> 00:05:28.199 states alias, a lot of that in JavaScript, and it was sort of 71 00:05:28.519 --> 00:05:31.240 a very complex way of doing the thing that the browser can already do with 72 00:05:31.360 --> 00:05:33.800 CSS. And so we set out and we were like, hey, what 73 00:05:33.839 --> 00:05:39.399 if we build the CSS and GS library that just let you write actual CSS 74 00:05:39.439 --> 00:05:44.399 in your JavaScript file. It sounds slightly ridiculous and preposterous, but actually that 75 00:05:44.519 --> 00:05:46.879 might be a really good way of distributing the CSS to people because it would 76 00:05:46.920 --> 00:05:50.639 allow us to use all the power CSS while still people who install the component 77 00:05:50.680 --> 00:05:56.079 library to not have to worry about whitepack loaders and all that complexity. And 78 00:05:56.160 --> 00:05:59.040 very quickly, the other pop part we realized also at the time is that 79 00:06:00.040 --> 00:06:01.360 this is you know, very early on in React to evolution. Right. 80 00:06:01.399 --> 00:06:04.079 The style components came out in twenty sixteen, I believe over for twenty sixteen, 81 00:06:04.120 --> 00:06:08.079 so this was like two or three years into React being a publicly available 82 00:06:08.079 --> 00:06:13.680 on Salt projects. It was very early. And this the other innovation that 83 00:06:13.720 --> 00:06:16.319 we saw takes sort of the industry, or the pattern that we saw take 84 00:06:16.319 --> 00:06:19.639 the industry by steam, was this concept of having style components, having a 85 00:06:19.639 --> 00:06:23.920 component called a column, having a component called a row. And often these 86 00:06:23.959 --> 00:06:27.439 components didn't do much other than render a div or a span and attach a 87 00:06:27.439 --> 00:06:29.600 class name. Right, a column component doesn't really have to do much more 88 00:06:29.600 --> 00:06:32.040 than that, But that became a really popular pattern in the React world because 89 00:06:32.120 --> 00:06:34.839 just feels really nice to use, right. And so then the other innovation 90 00:06:34.920 --> 00:06:39.480 that we coupled with having leading you write actual CSS in JavaScript is that we 91 00:06:39.560 --> 00:06:43.360 let you write actual cess in JavaScript, but rather than having you deal with 92 00:06:43.399 --> 00:06:46.279 class names, you had to create a component. For every single sort of 93 00:06:46.360 --> 00:06:49.319 style that you create, you had to encapsulate it in a component like a 94 00:06:49.319 --> 00:06:55.560 column, like a row, like a button. And Glenn and I played 95 00:06:55.560 --> 00:06:58.800 around with a bunch of different apies and ended up with this sort of styled 96 00:06:58.879 --> 00:07:02.439 dotative and then a hacked tempered literal API that allowed you to write literal CSS 97 00:07:02.439 --> 00:07:08.560 syntax in your jiascript file. And that was extremely controversial, of course, 98 00:07:08.600 --> 00:07:12.199 because you're now mixing two programming languages in one file, similar to what React 99 00:07:12.240 --> 00:07:15.600 had done with HTML by moving into jivascript. We did this very similar thing 100 00:07:15.680 --> 00:07:18.519 with CSS. We moved it into JavaScript and into components, and half of 101 00:07:18.759 --> 00:07:23.800 half of the industry hated us. I got so much vitrio for when when 102 00:07:23.839 --> 00:07:26.360 we announced ole components, because people were like, how can you put CSS 103 00:07:26.399 --> 00:07:29.160 in jolskip? That is ridiculous. That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. 104 00:07:29.279 --> 00:07:30.600 The browser is different, it's a different thing. The browsers up to 105 00:07:30.639 --> 00:07:32.959 Master for having that as a separate file, like, why messed with that? 106 00:07:33.000 --> 00:07:35.680 You're just you're just making it worse. And the other half of the 107 00:07:35.720 --> 00:07:40.920 audience actually tried it and went, holy smokes, this feels so much better 108 00:07:40.920 --> 00:07:43.120 to use than any other way I've ever written cess because I don't have to 109 00:07:43.160 --> 00:07:46.120 worry about the stupid cascade anymore. I don't have to worry about class names 110 00:07:46.120 --> 00:07:49.079 clashing over anymore. I immediately confined the CSS that that's affecting my component. 111 00:07:49.120 --> 00:07:53.199 I don't have to go dig through some CSS file fifty files down. And 112 00:07:53.240 --> 00:07:56.000 so it turns out that that half of the audience was actually the one. 113 00:07:56.319 --> 00:07:58.839 The one that tried it turned out to be like, hey, I love 114 00:07:58.920 --> 00:08:01.680 this. I have some performance problems with it, you know, I'm missing 115 00:08:01.720 --> 00:08:03.000 some APIs to handle these edge cases, but overall, I love it and 116 00:08:03.000 --> 00:08:05.759 I want to make this a thing. And so it ended up growing really 117 00:08:05.839 --> 00:08:09.160 quickly. And to go back to that sort of the quick summary of that 118 00:08:09.199 --> 00:08:13.000 story that to go back to your question of what we did that made it 119 00:08:13.040 --> 00:08:16.560 grow, I think it's really two things that helped stock components become very popular. 120 00:08:16.920 --> 00:08:20.199 One or three things, I should say. The two things that we 121 00:08:20.240 --> 00:08:24.040 had controlled over were one, we focused very heavily on making it feel really 122 00:08:24.120 --> 00:08:28.000 nice to use, and in fact, often the initial response that people had 123 00:08:28.120 --> 00:08:31.079 was like, this is stupid, and then I would always just say go 124 00:08:31.120 --> 00:08:33.320 try it, just go build like a component with it, and inevitably, 125 00:08:33.360 --> 00:08:35.639 I think one hundred percent of the time people tried it and it went well, 126 00:08:35.639 --> 00:08:39.360 actually it's kind of stupid, but it feels really nice. I actually 127 00:08:39.440 --> 00:08:41.759 like using this thing, you know. And then the other thing that we 128 00:08:41.799 --> 00:08:43.000 feel that we really focused heavily on that. I think a lot of people 129 00:08:43.080 --> 00:08:46.200 in the open source space miss. A lot of developers in the open source 130 00:08:46.200 --> 00:08:50.320 space miss is that before we released it, I probably spent twenty percent of 131 00:08:50.360 --> 00:08:56.279 my time writing code and eighty percent of my time writing documentation. We shipped 132 00:08:56.399 --> 00:09:01.120 with an immense set of documentation comparatively to how much to how long we worked 133 00:09:01.120 --> 00:09:05.159 on the code, because I knew that if people, even if it feels 134 00:09:05.200 --> 00:09:07.600 nice us and it's somewhat intuitive, right, if people get stuck, they're 135 00:09:07.600 --> 00:09:09.559 not going to want to use it. Right. So we needed to have 136 00:09:09.639 --> 00:09:13.159 the documentation to support people actually doing most of the common things that they needed 137 00:09:13.159 --> 00:09:15.840 to do. And we got to, you know, eighty ninety percent of 138 00:09:15.879 --> 00:09:18.840 covering what people needed to do. And then the other thing I always say 139 00:09:18.879 --> 00:09:22.600 is when you're building something new, focus on making it work fast. Then 140 00:09:22.639 --> 00:09:26.440 make it right, and then make it fast. Any other way doesn't work 141 00:09:26.519 --> 00:09:28.480 because you have to make it work fast and ship it and ship it fast 142 00:09:28.759 --> 00:09:31.519 because then you get feedback. Right immediately, we got feedback from people that 143 00:09:31.639 --> 00:09:35.879 was like, hey, I need these global styles right, this component thing 144 00:09:35.919 --> 00:09:37.600 is great, but I have this one, you know, I want to 145 00:09:37.639 --> 00:09:41.080 inject normalized CSS through stock components as well. I have some of these global 146 00:09:41.120 --> 00:09:43.360 slasts that I just need, so we needed to add an API for that. 147 00:09:43.399 --> 00:09:46.440 And there's many examples, like theming people were like, well, I 148 00:09:46.480 --> 00:09:48.159 need a slightly different theming APN. The way theming work doesn't really make sense 149 00:09:48.200 --> 00:09:50.320 to me, Like I have this use case, can you support it? 150 00:09:50.440 --> 00:09:54.519 And so through that feedback first making it work, then we were able to 151 00:09:54.519 --> 00:09:56.080 make it right right because we got the feedback, because we've got people to 152 00:09:56.120 --> 00:09:58.960 come back to us, we were able to iterate on the library and add 153 00:10:00.159 --> 00:10:01.879 APIs and a trade on the APIs that we had shipped initially to make it 154 00:10:01.919 --> 00:10:05.799 a really solid, complete experience. And then finally once it was right, 155 00:10:07.000 --> 00:10:09.960 once we knew we had APIs that were stable and we were pretty complete, 156 00:10:09.080 --> 00:10:11.159 then we could focus on making it fast. Right. But if we had 157 00:10:11.159 --> 00:10:13.639 made the old APIs fast, we would have wasted a whole bunch of time 158 00:10:13.679 --> 00:10:16.399 because they turned out to be the wrong APIs in the first place, and 159 00:10:16.440 --> 00:10:18.559 so would have just been a pure waste of time. So always make it 160 00:10:18.600 --> 00:10:22.960 work, make it right, make it fast. And then finally, this 161 00:10:22.000 --> 00:10:26.679 is something maybe that is not as easily reproducible. We were just in the 162 00:10:26.759 --> 00:10:31.600 right place at the right time. Right the React was gaining immense team and 163 00:10:31.639 --> 00:10:35.200 growing really quickly, and everybody that was using React essentially didn't really have a 164 00:10:35.200 --> 00:10:37.279 solution for CSS. Everybody was using global CSSCs as much as came around and 165 00:10:37.399 --> 00:10:41.200 was sort of a first solution, but that had problems attached to it that 166 00:10:41.559 --> 00:10:43.240 some people didn't want to deal with, and so then stock components became the 167 00:10:43.279 --> 00:10:48.879 solutions to those problems and fundamentally just overtook because as we React grew, stock 168 00:10:48.919 --> 00:10:52.080 components just kind of grew with it. So we also just got lucky on 169 00:10:52.120 --> 00:10:54.440 the timing. I think is a big part of it that I don't want 170 00:10:54.480 --> 00:10:56.080 to just you know, I don't want to be like, oh, yeah, 171 00:10:56.080 --> 00:10:58.080 we built a great library and we wrote documentation and then you know, 172 00:10:58.159 --> 00:11:00.159 whenever you do that it's going to be success. No, you also have 173 00:11:00.159 --> 00:11:01.799 to have good timing and gift to solve a really important problem to people at 174 00:11:01.799 --> 00:11:03.840 that time, Right, So there was a lot of timing and luck involved 175 00:11:03.840 --> 00:11:11.120 as well. I really like what you said about the effort put into documentation 176 00:11:11.039 --> 00:11:16.120 that is so easy to be overlooked, Like there are so many people out 177 00:11:16.120 --> 00:11:20.840 there that simply they have the best solution that exists out there, or at 178 00:11:20.919 --> 00:11:26.039 least they think they do, but you just don't know how to use it. 179 00:11:26.440 --> 00:11:31.759 There's just no documentation. Like I am also the host of Adventures in 180 00:11:31.799 --> 00:11:37.720 Angler, which is a podcast focused on Angler development, and one particular feature 181 00:11:37.799 --> 00:11:46.080 of Angler that I absolutely love is something called contra value assesssor It's a native 182 00:11:46.240 --> 00:11:52.240 way inside the Angler framework for you to create components that control an input just 183 00:11:52.360 --> 00:11:56.840 like a regular input. So it's a way for you to create components that 184 00:11:56.879 --> 00:12:03.320 are meant to be used in forms. And it's brilliant, it's so flexible, 185 00:12:03.360 --> 00:12:09.399 it's so powerful, and it's so undocumented. There is literally no documentation 186 00:12:09.480 --> 00:12:13.320 about it in the entire official docks of Angler, Like the only thing that 187 00:12:13.360 --> 00:12:18.360 you can see is the actual docs of the API itself, but there's no 188 00:12:18.519 --> 00:12:22.960 guide on how to use it, how to extend this functionality. Every article 189 00:12:24.000 --> 00:12:30.559 that exists about it is from other creators in the Internet that solve the power 190 00:12:30.639 --> 00:12:33.720 of that feature and create a content about it. And it came to a 191 00:12:33.759 --> 00:12:41.279 point where every senior Angler developer knows about this feature, and there's still no 192 00:12:41.399 --> 00:12:46.399 mention about the Guides of the Dogs. It's crazy. It's like everybody sees 193 00:12:46.440 --> 00:12:52.360 the value in it, but it's just not documented. So I really want 194 00:12:52.399 --> 00:12:58.120 to hammer this down. It's so important for any of you that is currently 195 00:12:58.200 --> 00:13:05.039 creating a library or think about creating a library. If you are going to 196 00:13:05.080 --> 00:13:09.960 publicly share this library with the open source community, you need good documentation. 197 00:13:11.240 --> 00:13:16.480 Like it's just currently, this is a requirement because there are so many other 198 00:13:16.559 --> 00:13:22.480 libraries that get this right currently that there's just no space for you to ignore 199 00:13:22.559 --> 00:13:26.120 this. But at the same time, there are so many others ignoring it 200 00:13:26.679 --> 00:13:35.080 that just by doing this, you're narrowing your competitors so much. So definitely 201 00:13:35.240 --> 00:13:39.759 do that. And if you're doing something internally, it's also interesting to consider 202 00:13:41.000 --> 00:13:48.559 just documented just doc generators and just using regular JS docs and TS docs and 203 00:13:48.600 --> 00:13:56.519 your functions. You obviously don't need to write an entire getting started for internal 204 00:13:56.600 --> 00:14:03.720 libraries, but if you could at least document the main functions and how they 205 00:14:03.720 --> 00:14:07.080 should used, like put up some examples in it, that's definitely valuable, 206 00:14:07.159 --> 00:14:13.039 not just for open source projects but also for internal projects. So yeah, 207 00:14:13.279 --> 00:14:18.960 excellent, excellent mention. Yeah, but if I may object their firsturself Second, 208 00:14:18.039 --> 00:14:22.320 the thing about documentation is that people often think they need to be write 209 00:14:22.320 --> 00:14:24.440 down how the library works. But that's actually the part you don't need to 210 00:14:24.440 --> 00:14:26.480 write down, because that's the part that doesn't matter. But if you think 211 00:14:26.480 --> 00:14:30.879 about style components, it's a cssn jazz library. So the thing that it 212 00:14:30.919 --> 00:14:33.720 does internally that's sort of the difficult and gnarly part of style components and implementing 213 00:14:33.759 --> 00:14:37.440 is that it takes the CSS that you write in your dromascript file, it 214 00:14:37.480 --> 00:14:41.200 parses it because it's written in actual CSS language, and then it compiles it 215 00:14:41.240 --> 00:14:46.759 into sort of handles like tempo literals, injects the props and the theming, 216 00:14:46.000 --> 00:14:50.759 compiles it to the set of styles that need to apply to those HTMIL elements, 217 00:14:50.879 --> 00:14:52.639 creates a unique class name, injects it into the style sheet, into 218 00:14:52.639 --> 00:14:56.679 the dome, and then also manages the cascade as to how those things relate 219 00:14:56.679 --> 00:15:00.840 to each other, particularly as it relates to inheritance style components some inheritance features 220 00:15:00.879 --> 00:15:03.080 that requires to manage to cascade in a certain way so that they work the 221 00:15:03.080 --> 00:15:05.799 way they should. None of that is documented. If you look at Stetle 222 00:15:05.799 --> 00:15:07.840 componentscgmidation doesn't talk about any of that, because the whole point of it is 223 00:15:07.840 --> 00:15:09.840 that you don't have to think about it. Right. The whole point is 224 00:15:11.200 --> 00:15:13.320 you just write your sees as in jovskip, and we figure out how to 225 00:15:13.360 --> 00:15:15.720 get it to the right place and get to the result that you expect based 226 00:15:15.759 --> 00:15:18.360 on the API. Right, the whole point is you don't have to care 227 00:15:18.399 --> 00:15:20.200 about it. If we've written documentation that was like here's how style components work, 228 00:15:20.200 --> 00:15:24.399 here's how it injects nobody, that's the least interesting part of the documentation. 229 00:15:24.519 --> 00:15:26.639 Right. That is valuable in its own right in terms of, like, 230 00:15:26.639 --> 00:15:30.120 you know, documenting the architecture, getting contributors, blah blah blah blah. 231 00:15:30.159 --> 00:15:33.000 But that is a different purpose, right for users. The whole point 232 00:15:33.039 --> 00:15:35.080 is that that is abstracted the way. The whole punt is that it's an 233 00:15:35.080 --> 00:15:37.759 abstraction where you don't have to think about any of that. You can write 234 00:15:37.879 --> 00:15:41.360 a certain code where you expect a certain result, and the library make sure 235 00:15:41.399 --> 00:15:43.559 that the result that you get is the result that you expect, and that 236 00:15:43.679 --> 00:15:46.200 is the part that you need document. Then is the use case and the 237 00:15:46.200 --> 00:15:50.159 examples and how do I actually use this to achieve the goal that I have. 238 00:15:50.360 --> 00:15:52.639 If I want to make a theme from my app where it can quickly 239 00:15:52.679 --> 00:15:56.720 switch between different colors and make it user customized, well, how do I 240 00:15:56.720 --> 00:15:58.360 add that to my app? Right? If I want to inject global styles 241 00:15:58.399 --> 00:16:02.639 because I need normal I CSS, how do I do that with style components? 242 00:16:02.679 --> 00:16:04.320 Right? How do I make a button that's which is color when it 243 00:16:04.399 --> 00:16:07.320 changes variant? Right? All these things are the things that be documented is 244 00:16:07.320 --> 00:16:10.639 how do you use the library? And in fact a lot of it was 245 00:16:10.639 --> 00:16:12.080 actually just documenting CSS features. A lot of it is like how do I 246 00:16:12.120 --> 00:16:15.200 do media cares? You write a freaking media crery, you know what I 247 00:16:15.279 --> 00:16:18.000 mean? Like it we didn't implement anything for media carerise, you know, 248 00:16:18.039 --> 00:16:21.600 like we didn't implement media cares in the or however selectors in CSS, that's 249 00:16:21.639 --> 00:16:23.000 not what we do at all. We just partial CSS and injected. But 250 00:16:23.240 --> 00:16:26.080 from a user's perspective, right, when they come to the documentation, what 251 00:16:26.120 --> 00:16:29.279 do they want to get done? They want to create a media career, 252 00:16:29.320 --> 00:16:30.080 right, they got to create some mobile staff. They want to add a 253 00:16:30.080 --> 00:16:33.840 horverer style because their buttons has as a hover style. They want to create 254 00:16:33.840 --> 00:16:36.360 a variant of a button that has different colors. Or a different outline. 255 00:16:36.679 --> 00:16:38.360 That's what they care about doing, and so that's what the documentation focuses about. 256 00:16:38.519 --> 00:16:41.799 It's not perfect, but fundamentally, think about not how does your library 257 00:16:41.799 --> 00:16:45.080 work and what does it do, because that's the part that shouldn't matter. 258 00:16:45.320 --> 00:16:47.720 It's what is your user trying to do? And how can you help them 259 00:16:47.720 --> 00:16:49.600 achieve that more quickly through the documentation? How can you help them achieve their 260 00:16:49.600 --> 00:16:53.240 goal? And that goal is hopefully not to learn about how style comportis SOCSs 261 00:16:53.240 --> 00:16:56.000 injection right, because otherwise you've done something wrong with your library right and it's 262 00:16:56.039 --> 00:17:02.559 not abstracted enough. That is a great point. There's a great point. 263 00:17:02.639 --> 00:17:08.440 I definitely saw some libraries explaining their internals and I always keep that part because 264 00:17:08.480 --> 00:17:12.960 I'm like, I really don't care. I would much rather if you just 265 00:17:14.039 --> 00:17:18.160 put some benchmarks so that I can see that it is performing. That would 266 00:17:18.240 --> 00:17:22.440 be a lot more interesting to me. But yes, great points. Let's 267 00:17:22.519 --> 00:17:29.599 keep on with the story. Alimax, So cool. Now you created this 268 00:17:29.759 --> 00:17:36.000 library, It got a lot of traction. Currently, are you still maintaining 269 00:17:36.039 --> 00:17:41.920 it or do you have other people maintaining it? Do those other developers are 270 00:17:41.960 --> 00:17:48.720 they in your payroll? Like are people that you hired and you and this 271 00:17:48.880 --> 00:17:53.200 is one of their tasks, or did you found a way to over time 272 00:17:53.759 --> 00:18:00.920 completely delegate the maintenance of this library to the open source community as a whole. 273 00:18:00.400 --> 00:18:06.880 How is that? Yeah? Great question. So initially Glenna I created 274 00:18:06.880 --> 00:18:10.559 the library and then a lot of the step from making it work to making 275 00:18:10.599 --> 00:18:12.240 it right is that it's the part that Glenn and I focused on building the 276 00:18:12.319 --> 00:18:15.240 right API is building the right abstractions, making sure that people could do and 277 00:18:15.319 --> 00:18:18.680 achieve the goals that they wanted to achieve with the libry, making sure that 278 00:18:18.680 --> 00:18:22.640 the result was what they expected. And then over time other contributors on board 279 00:18:22.720 --> 00:18:25.559 onto the code base because they were using it, they were loving it, 280 00:18:25.599 --> 00:18:27.119 then they wanted to help make it better right and their own ideas of what 281 00:18:27.119 --> 00:18:32.440 that means specifically feel even there's a few people that have really contributed the majority, 282 00:18:32.480 --> 00:18:37.000 even in particular. Eventually, then later on took over maintenance completely and 283 00:18:37.000 --> 00:18:40.319 did a lot of work on making it fast and sort of like improving the 284 00:18:40.359 --> 00:18:45.440 performance of it over time by optimizing it for the way the browsers parts childscript 285 00:18:45.480 --> 00:18:51.200 and the execute jilescript and so over time, my expertise and Glenn's expertise, 286 00:18:51.200 --> 00:18:53.079 which is I don't want to speak for Glenn, but my expertise for sure 287 00:18:53.799 --> 00:18:57.400 is around the developer experience, right, and how something can feel and be 288 00:18:57.559 --> 00:19:03.119 as intuitive as possible. And then I'm not an expert on joscript engine performance, 289 00:19:03.160 --> 00:19:06.440 right, I'm not an expert on how do I optimize this JavaScript code 290 00:19:06.440 --> 00:19:07.920 to run this efficiently as possible. I'm not an expert on how do I 291 00:19:07.920 --> 00:19:11.880 inject this thesis in the most efficient way possible. And that was a lot 292 00:19:11.920 --> 00:19:15.960 of the work that happened later as the library gain steam. People were like, 293 00:19:15.960 --> 00:19:17.880 hey, look, performance is one of our concerns, and in fact, 294 00:19:18.119 --> 00:19:19.480 for people that were around back then, emotion was a big driver of 295 00:19:19.480 --> 00:19:22.039 that. Emotion came around and was like, hey, we implemented style components, 296 00:19:22.119 --> 00:19:26.240 but it's two times faster, and we were like, wait, what 297 00:19:26.279 --> 00:19:27.039 are they doing differently? But that is possible, and a lot of it 298 00:19:27.039 --> 00:19:30.519 was STARSCIN engine organizations and then also more efficient way of injecting cuisis and that 299 00:19:30.640 --> 00:19:36.200 kick started a whole sort of like spur of energy around hey how can I 300 00:19:36.200 --> 00:19:38.319 make style components faster? And in fact, eventually style components ended up getting 301 00:19:38.319 --> 00:19:41.279 faster than Emotion ended up getting faster than stal Components ended up getting faster to 302 00:19:41.279 --> 00:19:45.680 where now performance doesn't matter anymore because all the libraries are so fast, and 303 00:19:45.720 --> 00:19:48.119 that's a lot of the work that even and Phil ended up doing, and 304 00:19:48.200 --> 00:19:52.079 they've completely taken over maintenance. I don't think I've written if you look at 305 00:19:52.079 --> 00:19:53.799 the contributed graph, I don't think I've written a line of code for style 306 00:19:53.839 --> 00:19:57.680 components since maybe twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen. I want to say it's been 307 00:19:57.720 --> 00:20:00.839 a long time. And in fact the library also ended up being very stable. 308 00:20:00.920 --> 00:20:04.000 Right once we had figured out the APIs and sort of like what is 309 00:20:04.039 --> 00:20:07.680 the API that we want to present and what is the result that people expect 310 00:20:07.720 --> 00:20:10.519 from that API? There isn't that much more to do. We had to 311 00:20:10.640 --> 00:20:11.440 you know, there were bugs to fix, and there were you know, 312 00:20:11.599 --> 00:20:15.960 certain edge cases to iron out, and again performance was a big, big 313 00:20:15.000 --> 00:20:18.200 focus, and eventually it was just stable, like it just worked for people, 314 00:20:18.319 --> 00:20:22.160 right. People didn't really run into problems anymore. It was fast, 315 00:20:22.839 --> 00:20:26.039 it had all the APIs that people needed, and so the maintenance went over 316 00:20:26.160 --> 00:20:29.839 into really largely Evans hands, Evan Jacob's on the score probably up on X 317 00:20:29.880 --> 00:20:32.920 on Twitter really took over a lot of the sort of like long term maintenance 318 00:20:32.920 --> 00:20:34.039 over the last five years, and it's been the main person sort of like 319 00:20:34.039 --> 00:20:37.799 fixing all these small bugs, making improvements to the code base, making it 320 00:20:37.839 --> 00:20:40.640 even faster, making it or maintainable, and really pushing a lot of that 321 00:20:40.680 --> 00:20:44.559 forward, while I ended up going and doing lots of other things. So 322 00:20:44.759 --> 00:20:48.079 it's really in the open source community's hands. It also never became or we 323 00:20:48.119 --> 00:20:51.599 never tried to make it a business like it's very much an open source project 324 00:20:51.599 --> 00:20:53.839 that would just shipped because we thought the world needed it. That we never 325 00:20:53.880 --> 00:20:56.240 really made any money. There's an open collective that I think over the course 326 00:20:56.279 --> 00:21:00.319 of the last eight years has collected maybe ten thousand dollars or something to that 327 00:21:00.480 --> 00:21:03.319 in order of magnitude that we never even spent. It was very much like 328 00:21:03.839 --> 00:21:07.279 we just want the open source community to have this, and so nobody was 329 00:21:07.319 --> 00:21:11.160 really ever paid to maintain it. I think there was once a bug bond 330 00:21:11.240 --> 00:21:12.440 that we want to fix and we want to send somebody to a conference, 331 00:21:12.440 --> 00:21:17.240 and that was the extent of it. We never really paid anybody for it. 332 00:21:17.160 --> 00:21:19.759 It really was very much a community thing and sort of like ended up 333 00:21:19.920 --> 00:21:23.920 shifting out of my hands and to people who knew more about the problems that 334 00:21:23.920 --> 00:21:29.880 we were facing later on. I think most interestingly, the thing that I 335 00:21:29.920 --> 00:21:32.119 live and try to live a free data is that it is that I default 336 00:21:32.160 --> 00:21:34.319 to open. And what I mean by that is I default it being open 337 00:21:34.359 --> 00:21:40.119 to new experiences and new opportunities and sort of like external input and external feedback. 338 00:21:40.440 --> 00:21:42.640 And one of the ways that showed in my stories that after after we 339 00:21:42.680 --> 00:21:45.759 released start Components, this person that I had known from online Bring Jackson, 340 00:21:45.799 --> 00:21:48.759 pinned me via Twitter and was like, Hey, we've been using stock components 341 00:21:48.759 --> 00:21:52.079 to build this new product, but we're running into this weird bug. How 342 00:21:52.079 --> 00:21:55.000 can we fix it? And I just replied, I was like, hey, 343 00:21:55.119 --> 00:21:56.160 let me just go look at your copase, I actually don't know why 344 00:21:56.200 --> 00:21:59.880 this bug you're hitting, Like, I don't have enough context. Just give 345 00:21:59.880 --> 00:22:02.359 me the copies and I'll take a look at the code. And ended up 346 00:22:02.359 --> 00:22:03.680 looking at the code and that what they were building. The park they were 347 00:22:03.680 --> 00:22:08.039 building was called Spectrum and was a community platform for their podcast network. And 348 00:22:08.079 --> 00:22:10.480 I looked at it and I was like, wait, hold on, I 349 00:22:10.519 --> 00:22:11.880 need this for my open source communities. I need a place for them to 350 00:22:11.880 --> 00:22:15.640 go because at the time Slack had just sort of kicked out all the communities. 351 00:22:15.839 --> 00:22:18.880 Kitter was a thing, but it was sort of shitty excuse me for 352 00:22:18.880 --> 00:22:22.680 people that worked on Gether, it just not a good experience. There was 353 00:22:22.720 --> 00:22:25.519 no real place for open source communities to hang out. And so I ended 354 00:22:25.559 --> 00:22:27.039 up talking to Brindan Bryan, the two people who built Spectrum, and I 355 00:22:27.079 --> 00:22:29.880 was like, Hey, I want to go do this with you, and 356 00:22:29.880 --> 00:22:32.279 I ended up co founding that startup together with them, and we built this 357 00:22:32.319 --> 00:22:36.519 community platform for developers that was eventually two years later acquired by kits up and 358 00:22:36.559 --> 00:22:40.799 turned into kits to Discussions, right. But that came to be ostensibly through 359 00:22:40.839 --> 00:22:42.720 style Components and my work on style Components, but really came to be because 360 00:22:42.759 --> 00:22:45.279 I was open to new opportunities and I was open to helping people, and 361 00:22:45.279 --> 00:22:48.680 I was open to connecting with people through that experience of having created this library, 362 00:22:48.720 --> 00:22:55.480 and that kickstarted a lot of my career. That's amazing. So in 363 00:22:55.519 --> 00:23:02.440 a way, you were like the designer of the project, and then after 364 00:23:02.519 --> 00:23:07.079 you designed it and you made sure that it was what the audience wanted, 365 00:23:07.319 --> 00:23:14.319 it was aligned with their expectations and the best experience possible. Then it's almost 366 00:23:14.359 --> 00:23:19.880 like you handed this design to the engineers that would maintain it. Right, 367 00:23:21.000 --> 00:23:25.240 of course you actually implemented it, but just to make an analogy between design 368 00:23:25.319 --> 00:23:30.240 and development, it was pretty much it. That's an interesting position to be 369 00:23:30.319 --> 00:23:37.039 in because I think a lot of people think about projects in a way that 370 00:23:37.079 --> 00:23:41.359 they have to code it, they have to architect it, implement it, 371 00:23:41.440 --> 00:23:48.519 and maintain And it's always good to take a step back and realize that there 372 00:23:48.559 --> 00:23:55.000 are actually spaces available for every different type of professional. So you can definitely 373 00:23:55.039 --> 00:24:00.920 be the type of person that enjoys a lot more the architecture in structuring the 374 00:24:00.960 --> 00:24:07.519 project and designing the APIs and then kind of leaving the maintenance and the rest 375 00:24:07.559 --> 00:24:15.599 of the implementation to other engineers that might prefer that better and other people that 376 00:24:15.640 --> 00:24:21.440 we want to refactor this endlessly to make it to extract as much performance, 377 00:24:21.519 --> 00:24:26.000 juice and broader compatibility as possible. So really interesting to also keep in mind 378 00:24:26.039 --> 00:24:32.119 that this is a possibility for people. But yeah, let's keep on with 379 00:24:32.200 --> 00:24:38.400 the with the storyline because I'm interested in how we're now getting into your entrepreneurial 380 00:24:40.799 --> 00:24:48.039 opportunities. Right, So you became the confounder of Spectrum, and when did 381 00:24:48.119 --> 00:24:52.400 you, like, did you ever left this position? You left that after 382 00:24:52.519 --> 00:24:57.359 it was bought by GitHub. How did it came to be for you to 383 00:24:57.400 --> 00:25:02.839 be the founder of Spectrum up until the point where you are now the CEO 384 00:25:03.079 --> 00:25:07.480 and co founder? Off stallied, so we Spectrum. Let me we start 385 00:25:07.480 --> 00:25:11.920 where I left off with Spectrum. We built a product that worked well for 386 00:25:11.960 --> 00:25:15.599 the purposes it served, and then eventually get Up acquired and turned it into 387 00:25:15.640 --> 00:25:18.880 get the Discussions to help open source communities talk about things other than issues right, 388 00:25:18.920 --> 00:25:26.599 which was really previously the only main conversation piece on gitub. After I 389 00:25:26.680 --> 00:25:32.640 left Kidsup, eventually I joined Gatsby, the static site generator startup that built 390 00:25:32.720 --> 00:25:37.160 this framework based around Graphkill that helped people build static websites with Gatsby. Sorry, 391 00:25:37.319 --> 00:25:44.480 with React and graphkill and really broad The main innovation to mean in Gatsby 392 00:25:44.519 --> 00:25:47.839 at the time was really the graphicilled data layer, where you could use the 393 00:25:48.000 --> 00:25:51.799 data lader that could very easily tie in lots of data sources from your CMSs, 394 00:25:51.920 --> 00:25:56.000 from a databasis, from whatever other systems you're using into one graph and 395 00:25:56.079 --> 00:26:00.440 then allow you to build static sites with that graph. Very very easily, 396 00:26:03.079 --> 00:26:06.200 and I came to against me because I was working on some of their more 397 00:26:06.240 --> 00:26:11.039 future looking sort of visual editing experiments. We did a lot of work around 398 00:26:11.400 --> 00:26:17.039 how could you build a visual editing system that is that generically solves the problem 399 00:26:17.079 --> 00:26:21.400 of editing REACT components. Right, So we had first versions of something COMPLEXI 400 00:26:21.519 --> 00:26:23.759 that allow you to literally go into your browser, click on a component and 401 00:26:23.880 --> 00:26:29.000 change a prop and it would propagate back to your code base from there, 402 00:26:29.039 --> 00:26:32.240 like you literally visually edit code. You could move components around and it move 403 00:26:32.279 --> 00:26:34.480 it around in the in the jsex stuff like that. We never ended up 404 00:26:34.480 --> 00:26:38.440 getting that production ready because there's a lot of complexity to editing codes visually. 405 00:26:38.599 --> 00:26:41.400 That's not a very simple problem to solve, and trying to solve the sort 406 00:26:41.400 --> 00:26:45.559 of biggest scope of that, which is you can edit anything, it's very 407 00:26:45.599 --> 00:26:48.799 very difficult. And in fact, it turns out that probably better approaches are 408 00:26:48.799 --> 00:26:52.160 more similar to Framer or web Studio if you've seen those things, where you 409 00:26:52.160 --> 00:26:56.240 have a more constrained approach where you get to use these pre po components and 410 00:26:56.240 --> 00:27:00.119 you get to move them around, but fundamentally that eventually generates code that you 411 00:27:00.160 --> 00:27:03.960 can deploy but it's not a two way sinc right, it's not a back 412 00:27:03.000 --> 00:27:06.279 and forth street. You can at your own costom components, but it's not 413 00:27:06.359 --> 00:27:10.160 like framers editing your code base, right, because that part is really really 414 00:27:10.160 --> 00:27:12.400 difficult. To have humans be able to edit the code base and have a 415 00:27:12.440 --> 00:27:17.039 system for visual editing edit your code base just proved to be an immensely difficult 416 00:27:17.039 --> 00:27:19.599 problem. We never actually got it to work reliably enough to ship to production 417 00:27:19.640 --> 00:27:25.119 and make a product out of it. And then through working on Spectrum, 418 00:27:25.160 --> 00:27:29.400 where we're using Graphicill really heavily and gets up where I was using their graphically 419 00:27:29.559 --> 00:27:32.160 and then gas PEP, which obviously was based around Graphkill. I had been 420 00:27:32.200 --> 00:27:33.880 in the graphicill space for many, many years, and then back in twenty 421 00:27:33.920 --> 00:27:41.160 twenty one, I realized that at Spectrum one of our core problems was grow 422 00:27:41.279 --> 00:27:44.079 that we were growing really quickly, but our infrastructure couldn't keep up with the 423 00:27:44.119 --> 00:27:48.480 growth that we had because I chosen a database reading dB that just wasn't mature 424 00:27:48.559 --> 00:27:52.960 enough to really scale to the scale that we're ad and so we were using 425 00:27:52.960 --> 00:27:53.839 graphkill and we had, you know, a use case where lots of our 426 00:27:53.920 --> 00:27:56.920 data was public and rehavy, and so my immediate thought was, let me 427 00:27:56.960 --> 00:28:00.759 just put a cash in front of our graphical API, because ninety percent of 428 00:28:00.759 --> 00:28:03.519 our traffic is re traffic, that traffic never actually has to hit our infrastructure, 429 00:28:03.559 --> 00:28:07.160 right that that doesn't have to put load on our database. But nothing 430 00:28:07.200 --> 00:28:11.839 existed. So I ended up building a cashing system internally that was, you 431 00:28:11.880 --> 00:28:15.759 know, a first MVP, but wasn't nearly as powerful as I thought a 432 00:28:15.759 --> 00:28:18.680 graphical caching system could be. Because graphicill because of the unique ways that it's 433 00:28:18.680 --> 00:28:22.400 works, which'm happy to talk about too, allows you to do really really 434 00:28:22.400 --> 00:28:25.759 smart caching if you can do it right right, and graphical clients actually end 435 00:28:25.839 --> 00:28:30.279 up doing a lot of that. And so I ended up taking that meeting 436 00:28:30.279 --> 00:28:33.400 my co founder Tim, and he had actually built a prototype of a first 437 00:28:33.400 --> 00:28:36.680 graphical hitch cash that runs at the CDN level, and we made a company 438 00:28:36.680 --> 00:28:38.880 out of that that's not called Stelly. And so for the last three years 439 00:28:38.920 --> 00:28:42.559 I've really been on this journey of co funding this company and then transitioning built 440 00:28:42.559 --> 00:28:45.279 the initial product, of course, but then also transitioning out and transitioning to 441 00:28:45.640 --> 00:28:49.720 being a CEO leading a team of now fourteen people and and sort of like 442 00:28:49.759 --> 00:28:53.920 all the complexities that come with being a founder and building a team that are 443 00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:59.759 very different problem sets and very different and require very different growth than what it 444 00:28:59.799 --> 00:29:02.880 took to be an engineer and what it took to build you know, large 445 00:29:02.880 --> 00:29:07.200 open source projects and other products. And so that's that's really been my journey 446 00:29:07.240 --> 00:29:10.920 with the last you know whatever eight years, going from hey, I'm an 447 00:29:10.920 --> 00:29:14.519 engineer, I build open source projects, I build products. So now running 448 00:29:14.559 --> 00:29:19.440 a whole organization and leading a team to hopefully success, which is just requires 449 00:29:19.480 --> 00:29:22.359 a very different skill set. And so that's been a lot of the journey 450 00:29:22.359 --> 00:29:25.319 of the last three years, specifically with still It. It's both the graphicill 451 00:29:25.319 --> 00:29:26.720 part and sort of like building the best product that we can to help people 452 00:29:26.720 --> 00:29:32.440 operate their graphic COALPI and then also building an actual company from scratch and team 453 00:29:32.599 --> 00:29:34.200 from scratch, you know, and all the complexities that come with that. 454 00:29:34.640 --> 00:29:41.920 Awesome. Awesome. I have several questions, the first one being not directly 455 00:29:42.000 --> 00:29:48.839 related to your story per se, but well, directly related to your story 456 00:29:48.880 --> 00:29:56.079 but not directly about you, which is when you were working at Gatsby, 457 00:29:56.480 --> 00:30:00.720 did you got to meet Josh Camillo. I never met him in person. 458 00:30:02.079 --> 00:30:03.119 But oh, actually no, I think made even in person in one of 459 00:30:03.119 --> 00:30:06.400 our off sides, and I spoke with him a bunch of times internally of 460 00:30:06.400 --> 00:30:10.960 course. Yeah, oh gotcha. Yeah, just mentioning that because he is 461 00:30:11.000 --> 00:30:15.759 definitely one of my top ten content creators out there. I really enjoy the 462 00:30:15.880 --> 00:30:21.599 quality of his content is really really really good, really simple too. So 463 00:30:22.359 --> 00:30:26.200 it almost feels like everyone that I see that had a background and gets be 464 00:30:26.400 --> 00:30:33.480 are excellent developers. It seems like you guys all came from all got together 465 00:30:33.559 --> 00:30:41.839 at that point. That's kind of interesting. Yeah, And I'm also curious 466 00:30:41.880 --> 00:30:48.759 about gets be itself, like just just from a pure curiosity because gats be 467 00:30:49.160 --> 00:30:56.279 is well, I'm not sure how stellid is with regards to open source, 468 00:30:56.839 --> 00:31:03.759 but gets me itself is an open source solution that has a company behind it 469 00:31:03.799 --> 00:31:14.160 and actually generates money and pays employees. So, since we're talking about entrepreneurial 470 00:31:14.279 --> 00:31:23.839 spirit here, how do you see tech startups that are trying to create profitable 471 00:31:23.920 --> 00:31:33.079 model based on open source technology, Because I, for one think it's probably 472 00:31:33.160 --> 00:31:37.680 way more challenging than just having a closed sourced system. Like I'm well, 473 00:31:38.599 --> 00:31:42.880 maybe there's pros and cons right there, is a lot more traction because you 474 00:31:42.960 --> 00:31:47.480 have more people that get to know your product because they can just get started 475 00:31:47.519 --> 00:31:51.279 for free. But at the same time, if they can get started for 476 00:31:51.359 --> 00:31:56.279 free, and most of it can be done for free, then how hard 477 00:31:56.319 --> 00:32:00.559 it is to actually convert them into paying becausts the merge right. So, 478 00:32:00.720 --> 00:32:06.759 I'm not sure if stell it also has an open sourced version of it, 479 00:32:07.480 --> 00:32:12.640 but if so, perhaps you could even bridge get to the install it and 480 00:32:12.720 --> 00:32:15.480 tell us how do you see those types of business models? I think it's 481 00:32:15.480 --> 00:32:20.920 a very interesting question that a lot of people in the industry are battling with 482 00:32:21.359 --> 00:32:27.279 right now. Because during the zero interest rate phase of the world, where 483 00:32:27.440 --> 00:32:30.039 money was sort of free in many regards and there was a lot of investment 484 00:32:30.079 --> 00:32:32.119 and there was a lot of money to spend on lots of different things, 485 00:32:34.319 --> 00:32:37.279 that business model was more tenable than it is in twenty twenty three and twenty 486 00:32:37.319 --> 00:32:42.000 twenty four, because there just isn't the same amount of money anywhere right not 487 00:32:42.000 --> 00:32:45.400 to buy things, not to hire people, not to do much of anything 488 00:32:45.480 --> 00:32:50.599 right, And in truth, pulling off an open source business model to me 489 00:32:51.240 --> 00:32:57.119 is in many ways more difficult than just building a business because already. Just 490 00:32:57.160 --> 00:33:00.799 building a business that provides value and makes money is an immensely difficult task that 491 00:33:00.880 --> 00:33:06.880 most people fail at. Right. It is unbelievably challenging to do that in 492 00:33:06.920 --> 00:33:09.160 the digital space, particularly because in the digital space everything is global. Right. 493 00:33:09.319 --> 00:33:13.079 If I'm building a local bakery, assuming you have a good you know, 494 00:33:13.119 --> 00:33:15.000 I can find a good location with the rent that makes sense, and 495 00:33:15.000 --> 00:33:16.759 I can find suppliers that charge money that allows me to have a margin that 496 00:33:16.759 --> 00:33:21.559 allows me to pay my employees. It's very difficult to build a local business, 497 00:33:22.000 --> 00:33:23.960 and you're only competing with other local businesses. Right, you only have 498 00:33:24.000 --> 00:33:27.160 to be better than the big career around the door. You only have to 499 00:33:27.200 --> 00:33:30.039 have a better location than the calf coffee shop around the corner. In the 500 00:33:30.039 --> 00:33:32.720 digital world, you're competing with the whole world. Right. If you ship 501 00:33:32.759 --> 00:33:37.119 a product, if you're colendly, you're now a large company that shipped the 502 00:33:37.119 --> 00:33:38.680 product. Suddenly, Savig Call and cal dot com are like, Hey, 503 00:33:38.720 --> 00:33:40.480 what if we built the same thing, but we made it nicer, or 504 00:33:40.519 --> 00:33:43.519 we made it more specific to certain use cases and made it work better for 505 00:33:43.559 --> 00:33:45.599 certain us cases. You're literally competing with the whole world, and so building 506 00:33:45.599 --> 00:33:51.440 a digital business, I think is often peddled online as something that's easier, 507 00:33:51.599 --> 00:33:52.480 and in some ways it is. Right. In some ways, the friction 508 00:33:52.599 --> 00:33:55.279 is lower than building a physical business. There's less overhead, there's less initial 509 00:33:55.319 --> 00:34:00.559 costs. You often have immense margins because your cost of actually, you know, 510 00:34:00.920 --> 00:34:02.480 having a lot of customer essentially zero. Right. If somebody buys a 511 00:34:02.480 --> 00:34:06.960 croissant, you still have to pay for the for that croissant. If you 512 00:34:06.960 --> 00:34:08.360 have software, you can sell it a million times and it doesn't cost you 513 00:34:08.360 --> 00:34:13.800 anything anything anymore. Right, there's no extra cost to selling software outside obviously 514 00:34:13.960 --> 00:34:15.320 the sales of it and whatever. But but largely your margin's going to be 515 00:34:15.480 --> 00:34:17.920 insane. Right, So in some ways it's easier, but in other ways 516 00:34:17.920 --> 00:34:22.639 it's harder because you're competing with the whole world. And I think a lot 517 00:34:22.639 --> 00:34:29.360 of businesses think they can or a lot of the difficulty with building a business 518 00:34:29.400 --> 00:34:34.119 around open source is that it becomes very difficult to assess what goes into open 519 00:34:34.119 --> 00:34:37.800 source and what is paid, and you sort of a very slippery slope if 520 00:34:37.840 --> 00:34:40.840 you're looking to get more revenue to move features into the paid offering that you 521 00:34:40.920 --> 00:34:44.280 have that really should be in the open source world, and actually that was 522 00:34:44.320 --> 00:34:45.719 a lot of what Gatsby ran into even before I was there. This is 523 00:34:45.920 --> 00:34:50.000 I have no internal information on this, but a lot of the sentiment around 524 00:34:50.039 --> 00:34:52.800 Gatsby was, hey, GASB's builds are slow, right, I have a 525 00:34:52.800 --> 00:34:55.599 static website with a thousand pages within thousand pages, and my site every time 526 00:34:55.679 --> 00:35:00.360 make an update takes four hours to build. And so Gatsby really gats be 527 00:35:00.480 --> 00:35:05.000 Cloud, which was a Gasby specific hosting service that in some ways just understood 528 00:35:05.000 --> 00:35:07.880 gaspe really well and the data layer really well and could very efficiently do rebuilds 529 00:35:07.880 --> 00:35:10.760 of only the pages, incremental builds of only the stuff that actually needs to 530 00:35:10.760 --> 00:35:14.800 be updated. They kept track of data depends on all that stuff, which 531 00:35:14.800 --> 00:35:16.559 is awesome, and that was a paid thing that gats Be charged for. 532 00:35:17.000 --> 00:35:20.960 But then externally, the sentiment was, well, you just made me use 533 00:35:20.960 --> 00:35:22.960 an open source projects and the static site generator that is slow, and then 534 00:35:23.000 --> 00:35:28.000 you're selling me it being fast. But why is it slow in the first 535 00:35:28.039 --> 00:35:30.639 place? Why can't that be Why can't the open source project just be fast 536 00:35:30.639 --> 00:35:34.119 and you offer me hosting? Right? That was often the tension that people 537 00:35:34.159 --> 00:35:37.760 felt with that business model, and that's very difficult to execute on the counter 538 00:35:37.800 --> 00:35:39.719 example, and I think the shining star of a company that has done this 539 00:35:39.840 --> 00:35:45.519 well is Verssell, who've built next years and they have a very clear sort 540 00:35:45.559 --> 00:35:49.800 of differentiation between what nixt Chios does, and they make nextchures the open source 541 00:35:49.880 --> 00:35:52.480 version or the open source project as good as they humanly can, and then 542 00:35:52.559 --> 00:35:55.960 rosell is the platform where people host it, and through that they get you 543 00:35:57.039 --> 00:36:00.000 know, pre deployments and you know, great infrastructure and edgewares and all this 544 00:36:00.159 --> 00:36:04.679 all these features that they want that require infrastructure that you cannot have in an 545 00:36:04.719 --> 00:36:07.840 open source project, right, And so suddenly they've sort of drawn that line 546 00:36:07.840 --> 00:36:09.519 in a beautiful way where the community loves what they're doing with mixture is. 547 00:36:09.719 --> 00:36:13.000 And then a lot of them also end up deploying on ver Cel, which 548 00:36:13.039 --> 00:36:15.360 is great for Versil because obviously they're also a business and they need to make 549 00:36:15.360 --> 00:36:17.360 money. But Versale to me is an outlier. Right. There's Resale, 550 00:36:17.360 --> 00:36:21.519 there's hashally Corp. There's a few other companies that do this, but most 551 00:36:21.559 --> 00:36:25.880 companies that do this fail and it's because it's really really difficult to figure out 552 00:36:25.880 --> 00:36:30.440 that distinction. And then also you're immediately sp splitting your company in half. 553 00:36:30.440 --> 00:36:32.239 Again, it's really difficult to build a viable business online. That's not an 554 00:36:32.239 --> 00:36:37.199 easy tasks. It's a monumental challenge that people I think underestimate that I certainly 555 00:36:37.280 --> 00:36:39.880 underestimate it. It's really freaking difficult. And suddenly you're having to build a 556 00:36:39.880 --> 00:36:43.760 business, and then you're also having to build an open source project. Right 557 00:36:43.960 --> 00:36:46.280 is that is an immense amount of work that you suddenly have to do with 558 00:36:46.400 --> 00:36:50.199 a small new company that has very few resources, right, that has to 559 00:36:50.239 --> 00:36:53.400 move really quickly. That's just that's a Mount Everest to climb, you know, 560 00:36:53.400 --> 00:36:57.639 And that's why I think so few people ever managed actually climb that Mount 561 00:36:57.679 --> 00:37:00.880 Everest. It's just because it's freaking difficult, right. It seems simple, 562 00:37:00.920 --> 00:37:04.239 but it's it is immensely difficult to execute upon. And so I have a 563 00:37:04.239 --> 00:37:06.760 lot of respect for people that try that and that pull it off, like 564 00:37:06.760 --> 00:37:07.960 Briceille, and I have a lot of respect for people to try it and 565 00:37:07.960 --> 00:37:10.800 don't pull it off. I think that they amount equally much respect because it 566 00:37:10.800 --> 00:37:15.760 is a really difficult challenge. Stelle, it's specifically we're not open source. 567 00:37:15.159 --> 00:37:17.599 We are a graph col CDN. As a way you could think about it, 568 00:37:17.599 --> 00:37:21.679 and so we're based around graph Kill, which is open source up within. 569 00:37:21.719 --> 00:37:23.840 Lots of people use Graphkill without stell it, but then once they hit 570 00:37:23.840 --> 00:37:28.480 certain scaling problems, once they have performance problems, once they have too high 571 00:37:28.480 --> 00:37:30.559 infrastutional costs, once they need better observability, then they put stell it in 572 00:37:30.599 --> 00:37:34.119 front of their graphical EPI, which is sort of, you know, just 573 00:37:34.159 --> 00:37:38.679 our product, and they get edge caching performance benefits through that, and metrics 574 00:37:38.719 --> 00:37:44.159 and security through using our product. But our product itself is not open source 575 00:37:44.159 --> 00:37:45.280 at all. It's only a paid offering. And in fact, you could 576 00:37:45.360 --> 00:37:49.400 argue that stell It itself doesn't really have an open source offering because we're just 577 00:37:49.440 --> 00:37:52.719 based around around the framework of Graphkill. And sure, we contribute to GRAPHICI 578 00:37:52.760 --> 00:37:55.199 and we build graphical clients and we help graphical and you know, we do 579 00:37:55.199 --> 00:37:59.360 a lot of open source work, but it's actually kind of unrelated to our 580 00:37:59.360 --> 00:38:01.519 business. Our business is really a product that's faith that's built around graftkilling. 581 00:38:01.559 --> 00:38:05.880 We are not I would not describe Stalite as an open source company, even 582 00:38:05.880 --> 00:38:09.760 though we're sort of open source adjacent maybe, but really we're not an open 583 00:38:09.760 --> 00:38:12.960 source company. We're really just a business that makes the product that we sell 584 00:38:13.000 --> 00:38:17.480 to customers. Yeah, that was a long tigent answer to your original question. 585 00:38:17.480 --> 00:38:22.440 I hope that that makes sense. It did, So what you said 586 00:38:22.519 --> 00:38:29.320 is basically that the companies that well, at least the ones that you saw 587 00:38:30.239 --> 00:38:37.800 executing this model really well are the ones that separated the products. So Versull, 588 00:38:37.920 --> 00:38:43.280 for example, has different products and one of them is fully paid or 589 00:38:43.599 --> 00:38:47.800 well, actually they do have a free tier, but it's it's closed source 590 00:38:47.880 --> 00:38:52.199 and it's meant to be paid, and the other is open sourced and it 591 00:38:52.280 --> 00:38:59.039 is meant to be fully open sourced and fully free and fully owned and used 592 00:38:59.079 --> 00:39:04.159 by the community. That's interesting. Have you seen other companies that are like 593 00:39:04.280 --> 00:39:07.519 you mentioned call Con. I think that's a good example of a company that 594 00:39:07.760 --> 00:39:17.199 is open sourced, but they are generating profits or not sure if profits, 595 00:39:17.239 --> 00:39:24.360 but they're generating money at least, And maybe that is because they are positioning 596 00:39:24.400 --> 00:39:34.239 themselves directly against a competitor that has already established himself as a fully paid solution. 597 00:39:34.400 --> 00:39:42.000 Right, so call Con even publicly positions themselves as an alternative to Calendly 598 00:39:42.199 --> 00:39:45.559 that is also open source. So if you are already a user of Calendly, 599 00:39:45.599 --> 00:39:51.159 you already have this previous expectation that is going to be this way. 600 00:39:51.599 --> 00:39:55.079 Also, it's just so much harder for you to It's so much easier for 601 00:39:55.119 --> 00:39:59.400 you to just click on a bottom and create a cloud account than it is 602 00:39:59.400 --> 00:40:05.079 for you to actually host the entire thing on your own services. Even if 603 00:40:05.320 --> 00:40:09.920 you can just get a droplet on Digital Ocean and put it up and running, 604 00:40:10.159 --> 00:40:15.400 it's still a little bit more effort and you actually have to maintain it. 605 00:40:15.400 --> 00:40:19.840 It's different from a technology that you're going to introduce in your code base, 606 00:40:19.880 --> 00:40:22.039 and you're already going to have to maintain your code base anyways, so 607 00:40:22.079 --> 00:40:27.079 it's not like you're adding too much of a burden in terms of maintenance. 608 00:40:27.599 --> 00:40:34.159 But call Con, for example, it's a full standalone product that if you 609 00:40:34.320 --> 00:40:38.679 were to integrate it, it would probably be via API calls directly to a 610 00:40:38.840 --> 00:40:46.159 hosted instance, which is completely different from just an open sourced library that you're 611 00:40:46.159 --> 00:40:52.639 going to integrate in a larger code base that is proprietarily yours. So I 612 00:40:52.639 --> 00:40:59.440 think that's also one difference in that. So we have here examples of companies 613 00:40:59.440 --> 00:41:05.760 that did by completely separating the products. We have an example of a company 614 00:41:05.760 --> 00:41:07.880 that got it right by having a single product that is open sourced, but 615 00:41:08.159 --> 00:41:17.039 it is a standalone it's a standalone product. Now just open source code bases 616 00:41:17.320 --> 00:41:22.599 that also have a paid version, and they are meant to be used within 617 00:41:23.039 --> 00:41:30.400 your proprietary cobase. I can literally only think of one which I think is 618 00:41:30.599 --> 00:41:37.280 very very clever, and it is boo MQ. It's a library for you 619 00:41:37.360 --> 00:41:45.199 to connect to a read this instance and generate an asynchronous Q so you can 620 00:41:45.320 --> 00:41:49.480 just use it to create micro services. And what they did is they created 621 00:41:49.639 --> 00:41:55.880 a fully free, open source version of the library, and they created a 622 00:41:55.960 --> 00:42:02.440 pro version that requires a lice sense. But the pro version has a few 623 00:42:04.079 --> 00:42:12.559 advanced features that are particularly interesting for companies that want to extract a little bit 624 00:42:12.639 --> 00:42:16.679 more from their cues. So for example, they have groups, so you 625 00:42:16.719 --> 00:42:22.760 can't have grouped queues in the free version. You need to pay to get 626 00:42:22.760 --> 00:42:27.440 that. So that it's like you're you literally have a plan, right, 627 00:42:27.480 --> 00:42:29.760 you have the free plan, and then you have the problem, and the 628 00:42:29.800 --> 00:42:34.519 problem is not open sourced at all. And we're not talking about making it 629 00:42:34.639 --> 00:42:37.800 faster. We're talking about not having something and now you have it. So 630 00:42:37.840 --> 00:42:43.519 perhaps that's one difference from Gatsbee. It's not making it. It's not a 631 00:42:43.559 --> 00:42:47.800 feature that is just about making it faster. It's about adding support for one 632 00:42:47.880 --> 00:42:53.199 way of doing things that were simply not possible in the free version. I 633 00:42:53.280 --> 00:42:57.960 sort of have a hot take on businesses like Carlocom, which is I think 634 00:42:58.000 --> 00:43:04.039 they're successful despite being opened not because they're open source. My guess is that 635 00:43:04.360 --> 00:43:07.360 because there's a whole swath of these products now, like cal dot com, 636 00:43:07.360 --> 00:43:10.639 like documents o, which is a document alternative that's open source, a lot 637 00:43:10.639 --> 00:43:13.519 of people are trying to be you know, I'm going to build this product 638 00:43:13.519 --> 00:43:15.559 that's really successful, but I'm going to make it open source. In truth 639 00:43:15.599 --> 00:43:22.159 though, where I think maybe prefaces that has some advantages, right, It 640 00:43:22.159 --> 00:43:24.159 comes with great marketing, particularly you know indie hackers and software engineers. We 641 00:43:24.199 --> 00:43:27.519 love these open source products. We can look at the code base. It 642 00:43:27.559 --> 00:43:29.880 feels cool to use, like it's nice that it's open source. It's awesome. 643 00:43:30.039 --> 00:43:31.639 It has some marketing benefits. It also has some benefits in terms of 644 00:43:31.639 --> 00:43:37.039 like making it easier to sell that solution into governments, into healthcare, into 645 00:43:37.320 --> 00:43:40.320 these industries where there's a lot of security and data requirements that are hard to 646 00:43:40.320 --> 00:43:44.480 meet otherwise if you're a proprietary product, but if you have a source open 647 00:43:44.519 --> 00:43:47.360 source, then it might be easier to get into those industries. I think 648 00:43:47.400 --> 00:43:51.719 the sort of the thing that I'm not sure about is how often do this 649 00:43:51.840 --> 00:43:53.840 end these use kids in there paying you because there's self if they're just self 650 00:43:53.880 --> 00:43:58.360 forcing it on their government cloud infrastructure, how do you make money of that? 651 00:43:58.440 --> 00:44:00.679 Right? Like, I don't really see how what benefits there, but 652 00:44:00.000 --> 00:44:06.239 I don't know if enough context. But I think the downside is actually like 653 00:44:07.199 --> 00:44:12.719 you don't have a competitive advantage compared to your competitors outside of those specific use 654 00:44:12.719 --> 00:44:15.880 cases. Because fundamentally, if cal dot com is open source but a shitty 655 00:44:15.960 --> 00:44:19.840 version of Calendle, people are still going to be using Clendly. Right, 656 00:44:20.079 --> 00:44:23.000 the product has to be better than what other competitors can offer in order for 657 00:44:23.039 --> 00:44:27.119 you to win in the market the open Like making a shitty version of cleanly 658 00:44:27.159 --> 00:44:29.960 making it open source in no way, shape or form is going to help 659 00:44:29.960 --> 00:44:31.760 you win the market. There's no way that you're going to win a lot 660 00:44:31.800 --> 00:44:36.000 of revenue through that approach, Right, you have to build a better product 661 00:44:36.039 --> 00:44:38.159 than Clendly. Now, the other part of that is building a better product 662 00:44:38.199 --> 00:44:42.280 than a than a large established competitor. In some ways is easier. In 663 00:44:42.280 --> 00:44:44.000 some ways, it's really hard. And one of the ways that it's really 664 00:44:44.039 --> 00:44:47.199 hard is that you have to be the Only way that I see companies that 665 00:44:47.360 --> 00:44:52.280 win at sort of like taking over niches of from established competitors is that they 666 00:44:52.360 --> 00:44:55.880 choose niches. They choose a use case and audience a persona that is very 667 00:44:55.880 --> 00:45:00.280 specific where Clendly works for everybody. And then Savikaal came around was like, 668 00:45:00.320 --> 00:45:02.320 hey, we're for people that want Calendi, but it looks nice, right. 669 00:45:02.360 --> 00:45:05.599 That was sort of the initial framing that they had, Right, It's 670 00:45:05.639 --> 00:45:07.840 like, it works nice, it integrates your calendar that they use. Experience 671 00:45:07.840 --> 00:45:09.440 as great for both you and for people that schedule links. So if you 672 00:45:09.480 --> 00:45:12.880 don't want to look shitty like calend lye, go use us, then you 673 00:45:12.880 --> 00:45:15.079 will have a better impression with the people that you schedule meetings with. That 674 00:45:15.119 --> 00:45:15.920 was sort of the initial pitch. Now it's shifted a little bit. That 675 00:45:15.960 --> 00:45:17.960 was the initial pitch, and that was the initial wedge into the market. 676 00:45:19.360 --> 00:45:22.960 Whether or not Savocal is open source doesn't matter to that pitch. It's completely 677 00:45:22.960 --> 00:45:24.400 irrelevant. They could have attached and were open source at the end, and 678 00:45:24.440 --> 00:45:28.280 it wouldn't have mattered, right, because today what mattered was they chose a 679 00:45:28.280 --> 00:45:30.719 persona which is design oriented people that like good use experience, and they were 680 00:45:30.719 --> 00:45:32.960 like, hey, Calendly, it sucks in this way. We're gonna build 681 00:45:32.960 --> 00:45:37.079 a version of clently that works great in this way. And the other part 682 00:45:37.079 --> 00:45:38.239 of that is too. If you're doing that, you have to let go 683 00:45:38.280 --> 00:45:40.840 of a lot of the other stuff that Calendly does. Right, Calenly doesn't 684 00:45:40.840 --> 00:45:44.559 have a shitty user experience and looks ugly because they want to look ugly. 685 00:45:44.639 --> 00:45:46.360 They have a shitty user experience and they look ugly because they realized that for 686 00:45:46.440 --> 00:45:50.199 their business, it's more important to focus on other things, right, because 687 00:45:50.199 --> 00:45:52.199 everybody has constrained resources, and so for Klendle, it was more important to 688 00:45:52.239 --> 00:45:55.400 build SoC two compliance. It was more important to build data compliance. It 689 00:45:55.440 --> 00:45:59.000 was more important for them to build global deployments. It was more important for 690 00:45:59.039 --> 00:46:01.400 them to build and single sign on because that is their audience, right, 691 00:46:01.559 --> 00:46:06.159 And so they just realized the researchers are better spent. I have no internal 692 00:46:06.159 --> 00:46:08.039 context on Calendia and making this up, but I'm assuming they realize their internal 693 00:46:08.079 --> 00:46:12.519 means are better spent on all these enterprise features then on making the user experience 694 00:46:12.519 --> 00:46:15.280 better because the market for the enterprise features was just so much larger. And 695 00:46:15.280 --> 00:46:16.960 SAVIACL came around and was like, well, we're just gonna ignore all the 696 00:46:17.079 --> 00:46:20.880 enterprise stuff. We're only going to focus on us experience. We're gonna take 697 00:46:20.880 --> 00:46:22.199 this niche, We're gonna take the slice of your market away from you. 698 00:46:22.480 --> 00:46:28.079 We're gonna take over that that that specific wedge, and we're gonna win in 699 00:46:28.079 --> 00:46:30.880 the market. But for that persona that way, the fact that CalCon Com 700 00:46:30.960 --> 00:46:34.960 is open source is not helping them win. It doesn't matter right If again, 701 00:46:34.960 --> 00:46:37.760 if it was a worse product, people would still be choosing Saviaca or 702 00:46:37.199 --> 00:46:39.840 Cleanly, but calum Come in some way is better. Now. The big 703 00:46:39.880 --> 00:46:45.039 downsid of being open source is that suddenly you have a lot of people contributing 704 00:46:45.079 --> 00:46:46.719 a lot of crap. Excuse my language, if if any of you have 705 00:46:46.760 --> 00:46:51.880 ever contributed or run a large open source projects, the amount of terrible contributions 706 00:46:51.920 --> 00:46:53.920 that people propose are immense. The amount of issues that you get that are 707 00:46:53.960 --> 00:46:57.760 complete crap is immense. Like it is a lot of work to manage large 708 00:46:57.760 --> 00:47:00.280 open source projects in large parts because a lot of people think they can grow 709 00:47:00.320 --> 00:47:02.920 their career through contributing to open source, which is great and it's true, 710 00:47:04.000 --> 00:47:07.079 and then they just submit bullshit contributions so that they can say they contributed to 711 00:47:07.159 --> 00:47:09.079 Notches or to react or to whatever. Right, that is a very common 712 00:47:09.119 --> 00:47:13.679 pattern that is very frustrating for source mantainers. Now, for Caldacom, that 713 00:47:13.760 --> 00:47:16.960 means that I'm sure they're spending a lot of resources on managing their issues, 714 00:47:16.960 --> 00:47:20.880 on managing their pre requests, and managing external contributors, on submitting bounties, 715 00:47:20.920 --> 00:47:23.280 on giving feedback, and then in turn, though, they also have to 716 00:47:23.320 --> 00:47:27.840 be very strict about saying no, because I'm sure what's happening is that a 717 00:47:27.840 --> 00:47:30.480 lot of people are submitting contributions for their use cases, for their thing that 718 00:47:30.519 --> 00:47:36.199 they need from Caldocom. What in turn means though that Caldacom's feature said is 719 00:47:36.199 --> 00:47:38.679 just going to explode and be everything for nobody, right, They're just going 720 00:47:38.719 --> 00:47:42.159 to end up being if they're not careful, They're just going to solve all 721 00:47:42.199 --> 00:47:45.480 the problems for no specific audience, for no specific persona, and then in 722 00:47:45.480 --> 00:47:46.559 the end they're going to be a worse product right, So they have to 723 00:47:46.559 --> 00:47:51.679 spend a lot more time on actually product managing the contributions that external people are 724 00:47:51.679 --> 00:47:54.039 making who have no idea what Caldacom is doing right, many of them won't 725 00:47:54.039 --> 00:47:58.239 have the time or resources or in interest to dig into you know, calocom's 726 00:47:58.280 --> 00:48:00.159 persona definition and what is the audience that that and what is the product roode 727 00:48:00.159 --> 00:48:02.599 map, and how do these features align with their product comap and why do 728 00:48:02.639 --> 00:48:06.360 they want to have these features and how do they think about their producthilosophy. 729 00:48:06.519 --> 00:48:09.000 If all of that's very clearly defined and documented, then maybe, But even 730 00:48:09.039 --> 00:48:12.519 just documenting all of that and defining all of that is a lot of effort, 731 00:48:12.679 --> 00:48:15.039 right And so to me, looking at cal do com, if they 732 00:48:15.079 --> 00:48:17.559 win in the market, the reason they will win in the market is not 733 00:48:17.599 --> 00:48:20.639 because they're open source. To me, the reason they're going to win in 734 00:48:20.679 --> 00:48:23.440 the market is despite them being open source almost at best. I think it's 735 00:48:23.440 --> 00:48:27.159 a neutral thing that they can do when it gives them some marketing. But 736 00:48:28.400 --> 00:48:30.199 I don't see a world in which they win because they're open source. Now, 737 00:48:30.199 --> 00:48:32.559 I would love for pere Rich to come around and tell me I'm completely 738 00:48:32.599 --> 00:48:35.519 wrong, and I'm it and I'm completely missing the point. That will be 739 00:48:35.519 --> 00:48:38.280 awesome, But in my view, I don't understand why they would win in 740 00:48:38.280 --> 00:48:40.880 the market because they're open source. That's me just not a thing. And 741 00:48:40.920 --> 00:48:45.159 so I think, to go back to your differentiation, there's businesses built around 742 00:48:45.239 --> 00:48:49.519 open source libraries and frameworks like versus Nextture is like gads peoples around gats speachres 743 00:48:49.559 --> 00:48:52.519 the framework, and there's a few old examples of this. And then there's 744 00:48:52.559 --> 00:48:55.400 a category of businesses that open source the whole product, right, gidlab being 745 00:48:55.400 --> 00:49:00.719 the most famous large scale one. But again gidlab, maybe if they, 746 00:49:00.679 --> 00:49:02.920 like if they had built a better version of kid up, maybe they would 747 00:49:02.920 --> 00:49:06.360 have won in the market they lost. Kidsub clearly took over, at least 748 00:49:06.400 --> 00:49:08.880 in the open source world. Right, they're the predominant COT solding platform on 749 00:49:08.920 --> 00:49:13.599 the platform in the world. I don't know what the specific distribution of of 750 00:49:13.719 --> 00:49:15.400 like market share is, but there's no way the good lab has even closer 751 00:49:15.400 --> 00:49:19.679 the same market share the gidub does. If they had built a better product 752 00:49:19.679 --> 00:49:21.960 and gets up, maybe they would have won. Then being open source, 753 00:49:22.960 --> 00:49:23.599 they didn't win, you know, you know what I mean, Like, 754 00:49:23.639 --> 00:49:27.960 they didn't even win the open source community. By being open sourced. All 755 00:49:28.000 --> 00:49:30.599 of the open source stuff happens on gidsub. I don't want to know this, 756 00:49:30.920 --> 00:49:32.599 I don't know the statistic, but I'm one hundred percent certain that ninety 757 00:49:32.719 --> 00:49:37.119 ninety five percent of open source packages on MPM are hosted on gid ub, 758 00:49:37.159 --> 00:49:38.599 not on good lab. Good lab itself. The product is open source, 759 00:49:38.639 --> 00:49:43.519 and nobody cares. Right, they built the worst product and they didn't win. 760 00:49:44.519 --> 00:49:46.800 Like for that category of business, you just have to build a better 761 00:49:46.800 --> 00:49:50.360 product. That's all that ultimately matters to me. Whether or not your open 762 00:49:50.400 --> 00:49:52.719 source is sort of an implementation detail and maybe a marketing thing, but it 763 00:49:52.760 --> 00:49:55.760 doesn't make the big difference in you winning in the market or not outside of 764 00:49:55.840 --> 00:49:59.239 maybe you know, government, health care and all that stuff. But I 765 00:49:59.360 --> 00:50:01.400 yeah, see it, and so to me, the true open source businesses 766 00:50:01.400 --> 00:50:06.360 are the ones that are building around an open source framework and whose success is 767 00:50:06.360 --> 00:50:07.599 attached to the success of that open source framework. That is, to me, 768 00:50:07.639 --> 00:50:12.719 a true open source business, not unlike some you know, I don't 769 00:50:12.760 --> 00:50:14.639 care if you callage if an open source business or not. But to me, 770 00:50:14.880 --> 00:50:17.880 the riskier thing is versell basing their whole business on their freaking next Chress 771 00:50:17.920 --> 00:50:22.880 framework. If next Chus stops working, versill has a huge problem. Right. 772 00:50:22.079 --> 00:50:24.840 If cal dot com skits have been put us stops getting stars, it 773 00:50:24.880 --> 00:50:28.039 doesn't matter. If they built a better product, people will still buy, 774 00:50:28.079 --> 00:50:30.800 you know, it doesn't. It's completely irrelevant to the success of their business. 775 00:50:30.960 --> 00:50:32.719 To Versel though, if people stop using next Chress and start adopting something 776 00:50:32.760 --> 00:50:36.920 else that is better deployed somewhere else, holy smokes, that is a huge 777 00:50:37.000 --> 00:50:38.559 risk to their business. You know, same thing with gasps because gats we 778 00:50:38.559 --> 00:50:42.760 stop getting a lot of adoption in the market. Gas pick Out only had 779 00:50:42.760 --> 00:50:45.800 a very limited market to sell to, and so the revenue potential wasn't there, 780 00:50:45.880 --> 00:50:49.000 right fundamentally because more people started using next Chress for various reasons that I'm 781 00:50:49.000 --> 00:50:52.280 happy to talk about. But like, that is a core risk to your 782 00:50:52.280 --> 00:50:53.960 business on me for cal dot com, for kid lab, I don't know, 783 00:50:54.000 --> 00:50:57.679 people look at their open source core is completely irrelevant. The thing that 784 00:50:57.719 --> 00:51:00.519 matters is have they built a better product? Sorry for the right, That 785 00:51:00.280 --> 00:51:01.800 was a whole take that I that I've been sitting on for a while, 786 00:51:01.800 --> 00:51:07.559 but so apologies for the ten but I just don't see it nor is nower 787 00:51:07.679 --> 00:51:12.239 Is. I definitely appreciate it. It's always good to listen to the opinions 788 00:51:12.280 --> 00:51:15.679 of other people that have been thinking about this for a while. It's really 789 00:51:15.719 --> 00:51:23.000 interesting to think about, Like you said, Calcom is gaining traction despite being 790 00:51:23.079 --> 00:51:29.039 open source, right. I think that I disagree with this in parts, 791 00:51:29.480 --> 00:51:34.599 just in the specific case of Calcom. I'm not generalizing it, but for 792 00:51:34.800 --> 00:51:39.480 Calcom specifically, I believe that they did got a lot of traction, and 793 00:51:39.559 --> 00:51:45.119 still most of the traction that they have are developers that just thought it was 794 00:51:45.239 --> 00:51:50.199 nice that they were doing it open source and got interested and decided to use 795 00:51:50.239 --> 00:51:58.280 it because of that. But it's just a branding and marketing positioning. It's 796 00:51:58.400 --> 00:52:05.880 not really an operational advantage, as you were saying. They probably spend a 797 00:52:05.880 --> 00:52:13.000 lot more time trimming down and filtering the work that their open source contributors are 798 00:52:13.039 --> 00:52:16.920 doing then actually directing the product and the company to where they would like it 799 00:52:16.960 --> 00:52:22.360 to go. And there's also so much more exposure for everything that they do, 800 00:52:22.519 --> 00:52:30.039 Like there are so many downsides, but at the same time, this 801 00:52:30.320 --> 00:52:38.320 level of visibility I think created a very specific brand for them that made other 802 00:52:38.440 --> 00:52:44.679 developers resonate with their mission. It's almost as if people are using call call 803 00:52:44.880 --> 00:52:52.000 not because it is better than the alternatives, but because they emotionally like what 804 00:52:52.119 --> 00:52:58.599 they are trying to do. So I do think that they are growing because 805 00:52:59.159 --> 00:53:04.079 of them being open source, not despite of it. But I also think 806 00:53:04.159 --> 00:53:12.199 that this is going to eventually become a problem because unless their target audience is 807 00:53:12.440 --> 00:53:17.079 only developers or very tax savy people that care about the open source community, 808 00:53:19.039 --> 00:53:23.760 then at some point they're going to have to consider closing the source. And 809 00:53:24.239 --> 00:53:30.639 this is if that happens, it's going to generate so much frustration. I 810 00:53:30.679 --> 00:53:38.360 remember there was this company that had open source designs for three D printers. 811 00:53:38.440 --> 00:53:45.800 I think it was Maker Bought, I don't know, it was something like 812 00:53:45.840 --> 00:53:50.679 that. I don't know if you guys recall it. But they had a 813 00:53:50.760 --> 00:53:58.239 three D printer and they had all the all the project information, how you 814 00:53:58.280 --> 00:54:04.400 can build it, how the software. Everything was open sourced and anyone could 815 00:54:05.360 --> 00:54:08.559 build on top of it. And then they started actually having competitors that were 816 00:54:08.880 --> 00:54:15.760 building products based on their specifications, and the competitors were just closed source. 817 00:54:15.960 --> 00:54:22.480 Right. It's it's just like open AI. At some point it's gonna buy 818 00:54:22.599 --> 00:54:27.679 you, you know, Okay, where we have this mission of making AI 819 00:54:27.800 --> 00:54:31.320 open and now you just have a company that is called open ai, but 820 00:54:31.400 --> 00:54:38.360 there's there's no open model in it. So at some point it becomes a 821 00:54:38.360 --> 00:54:45.320 communication problem because you keep getting reminded of how you got to the point that 822 00:54:45.880 --> 00:54:52.840 you got, like how you you found your initial product market fit, and 823 00:54:52.880 --> 00:54:58.559 then suddenly, at some point you decide to turn around something that was so 824 00:54:58.760 --> 00:55:04.400 core in your positioning, in your messaging, in your brand, and it 825 00:55:04.519 --> 00:55:08.920 definitely hurts, and it hurts kind of forever because that was how it started 826 00:55:09.000 --> 00:55:14.239 and then it changes. So also curious, like do you have any takes 827 00:55:14.280 --> 00:55:20.159 on companies that start open source and then eventually become closers. I think this 828 00:55:20.199 --> 00:55:22.360 goes back to what I was talking about earlier, and then sort of like 829 00:55:22.400 --> 00:55:24.920 one of my main learnings over the last three years of being a co founder 830 00:55:24.920 --> 00:55:29.920 and a CEO and and sort of transitioning from an engineering role building a business 831 00:55:29.920 --> 00:55:35.039 that makes money really freaking difficult. It is extremely hard to do that, 832 00:55:35.719 --> 00:55:38.599 and in many ways for these companies at scale, like even recently Radis Labs 833 00:55:38.679 --> 00:55:49.119 right realized that their business was a risk of just flatly dying because the other 834 00:55:49.519 --> 00:55:52.159 companies were taking the open source projects that they invested so much money into and 835 00:55:52.199 --> 00:55:54.960 that hosted it and made a better hosting version of rais labs, which makes 836 00:55:54.960 --> 00:55:58.760 total sense, right if you just think about it from like a purely logical 837 00:55:58.800 --> 00:56:04.000 sense. Raddis lab has invest in number of resources to make reddis grade, 838 00:56:04.119 --> 00:56:06.760 and then they can only invest you know, X number of resources to make 839 00:56:06.760 --> 00:56:12.480 reddist labs the hosting grade. Everybody else can ignore the in part they don't 840 00:56:12.480 --> 00:56:15.800 have to make retis grades because riz labs is doing that. They can invest 841 00:56:15.199 --> 00:56:19.880 in plus x the whole resources just to make the hosting grade, and so 842 00:56:20.000 --> 00:56:24.679 inevitably and totally logically speaking, they are hosting will be better than reddis Labs. 843 00:56:24.719 --> 00:56:28.400 Right, radist labs has no way of competing because they don't have the 844 00:56:28.400 --> 00:56:30.519 same amount of resources. Now this is very simple for of course, truly 845 00:56:30.559 --> 00:56:34.119 in a market of more differently, there's you know, many confining factors whatever. 846 00:56:34.280 --> 00:56:37.079 I don't want to pretend like the world works in this oversimplified way, 847 00:56:37.199 --> 00:56:39.519 but just purely logically speaking, you just end up in a situation as a 848 00:56:39.519 --> 00:56:44.079 business where you literally cannot compete. How are you going to do that? 849 00:56:44.159 --> 00:56:46.400 And so in fact, many businesses like Century as well, like like reddist 850 00:56:46.440 --> 00:56:50.280 Labs. They're moving to a model where the source is available. Right. 851 00:56:50.320 --> 00:56:52.000 It's a source available model where you can read the source code of the thing 852 00:56:52.599 --> 00:56:55.440 and you can use it for non commercial use, but if you want to 853 00:56:55.519 --> 00:57:00.480 use it for commercial use especially, and then there's some nuances there where you 854 00:57:00.519 --> 00:57:04.119 know, some open source paces are like you can even use it for commercial 855 00:57:04.199 --> 00:57:06.440 users in like in your business, you can host it yourself, but you 856 00:57:06.440 --> 00:57:08.639 cannot sell a hosted version to somebody else, right, Because often what ended 857 00:57:08.679 --> 00:57:12.960 up happening with these businesses, aws would come around, they would offer they 858 00:57:12.960 --> 00:57:15.280 would just take your code, offer a service that paid service of it, 859 00:57:15.599 --> 00:57:19.280 and just eat your whole business because everybody uses it bus and they don't want 860 00:57:19.280 --> 00:57:21.440 to onboard a new vendor. Right, And that's it again, going back 861 00:57:21.480 --> 00:57:23.519 to building a business is freaking hard. That is an existential risk for your 862 00:57:23.559 --> 00:57:27.119 business. That is an existential ways for any business. Right. If ITA 863 00:57:27.199 --> 00:57:29.239 suddenly comes around and it's like, oh, thank you for building the green 864 00:57:29.320 --> 00:57:31.119 up source portuct, We're just going to offer the same hosting service, you 865 00:57:31.159 --> 00:57:35.639 have no way to compete BECAUSEWS has all the customers, so they can just 866 00:57:35.639 --> 00:57:37.079 go with all their customers and they can be like word Scale, we can 867 00:57:37.079 --> 00:57:38.920 make this cheaper. It's much easier for you to do because you don't have 868 00:57:38.920 --> 00:57:43.320 to onboard a new vendor and your whole business skill goes out of business right 869 00:57:43.360 --> 00:57:46.079 like you literally don't have a choice. And so to me, it's unsurprising. 870 00:57:46.159 --> 00:57:49.159 It makes a lot of sense to see a lot of these businesses moving 871 00:57:49.199 --> 00:57:54.280 to source available licenses that restrict either commercial usage or just making a hosted service 872 00:57:54.679 --> 00:57:59.239 out of the thing outside of the business that makes it. It makes the 873 00:57:59.280 --> 00:58:04.880 tonal sense to me. And now with for example, reddis Labs in truth 874 00:58:05.000 --> 00:58:07.880 the competition that they're now running into like upstash And if you folks have seen 875 00:58:07.960 --> 00:58:12.079 upstash, Upstash just completely re implemented reddits on a completely different architecture that's faster 876 00:58:12.159 --> 00:58:15.599 and better and h compatible and in some ways just more modern. And so 877 00:58:15.599 --> 00:58:20.400 now reddits Labs has to compete with upstash on who can build the better reddits 878 00:58:20.440 --> 00:58:22.280 right and upstash is building really upstash. It just happens to use the reddest 879 00:58:22.320 --> 00:58:27.480 api. But fundamentally they're now competing at that level and they're because they're if 880 00:58:27.480 --> 00:58:30.360 they there's a timing question. But if they had made reddis stores available from 881 00:58:30.360 --> 00:58:34.840 the start, then they wouldn't even have had to compete with other reddits hosting 882 00:58:34.840 --> 00:58:37.840 services. They would only have had to compete with businesses on an even footing 883 00:58:37.079 --> 00:58:40.400 where every business has to build the reddest thing itself, right, the actual 884 00:58:40.400 --> 00:58:44.320 storage engine, and then build the hosted service on top of that. Every 885 00:58:44.320 --> 00:58:46.239 business would upstairch is competing in that way, and reddis laps is competing in 886 00:58:46.280 --> 00:58:49.920 that way. That's a fair under air quotes fight. As far as fights, 887 00:58:50.280 --> 00:58:52.320 the market's never fair. But you know what I'm saying, So to 888 00:58:52.360 --> 00:58:54.119 me, that makes a lot of sense. I can totally see why business 889 00:58:54.159 --> 00:58:57.920 have to do that, and why even companies that are very, very successful, 890 00:58:57.920 --> 00:59:00.199 like Hashikorp, there were recent news that looking to get acquired by another 891 00:59:00.239 --> 00:59:05.119 company because they're just running into market issues but being built around these open salt 892 00:59:05.119 --> 00:59:07.880 projects, and somebody else can build terraform cloud around Terraform, but doesn't have 893 00:59:07.920 --> 00:59:12.559 to invest the resources into building Terraform. Right again, Hashi Corp. Has 894 00:59:12.599 --> 00:59:15.920 invested all these resources into making Vault and Nomad and hot and Terraform and then 895 00:59:15.920 --> 00:59:17.400 build hosting services on top of that, which is great for branding. But 896 00:59:17.440 --> 00:59:21.159 then if somebody else comes around and just focuses on the hosted services, they 897 00:59:21.199 --> 00:59:23.360 can outcompete them on the product, and people will generally choose the better product 898 00:59:23.360 --> 00:59:25.960 in many ways, not always in it that you know, Hashi Cook gets 899 00:59:25.960 --> 00:59:28.559 a lot of advantage of being the people that make the thing, and so 900 00:59:28.599 --> 00:59:30.880 people trust them more. Whatever. There's a lot of confounding factors. But 901 00:59:30.880 --> 00:59:32.360 probably speaking, if you can make it t an next better Terraform hosting platform 902 00:59:32.360 --> 00:59:37.960 because you can invest all your all your resource into making the hosted platform versus 903 00:59:37.000 --> 00:59:40.239 making Terraform better, very likely many people will buy you just because you're the 904 00:59:40.239 --> 00:59:43.039 better product that they will go O, hey, let me look at I'm 905 00:59:43.079 --> 00:59:45.239 using Terraform. Let me look at teroform cloud. But also there's a new 906 00:59:45.239 --> 00:59:46.719 observe vendor that I've heard about that might be better. Oh, actually, 907 00:59:46.760 --> 00:59:49.880 there's so much better for our use kids. I'm just gonna pay for them, 908 00:59:49.920 --> 00:59:52.199 even though they're not Hashi Court. So I totally get it. I 909 00:59:52.239 --> 00:59:57.519 totally get my businesses to do that, and I think it's I think it's 910 00:59:57.519 --> 01:00:02.320 the right choice. So I think there's one exception I can think of, 911 01:00:02.639 --> 01:00:08.800 and I guess I should also say I'm also still I think we could probably 912 01:00:08.800 --> 01:00:12.920 talk about this for hours, like the open source firsut closed source thing. 913 01:00:13.000 --> 01:00:16.119 I'm still I don't know which is better. But a huge exception that I 914 01:00:16.119 --> 01:00:20.559 can think of is super Base, right, and I think they even had 915 01:00:20.679 --> 01:00:24.320 one of like the world record of if there is such a thing for like 916 01:00:24.440 --> 01:00:30.239 seed funding around And I think it depends on the product. Like I agree, 917 01:00:30.280 --> 01:00:32.760 if you offer like an open source tool where you can just I don't 918 01:00:32.760 --> 01:00:37.400 know, like I'm saying, like MPM install something and that is the product, 919 01:00:37.920 --> 01:00:43.159 then you're at high risk that basically someone will just hire a dev and 920 01:00:43.280 --> 01:00:45.880 do whatever they want with your product. Right. They can always go faster 921 01:00:45.960 --> 01:00:49.960 than that if you're not, if you're the one who has to fight the 922 01:00:50.000 --> 01:00:53.199 triage of issues and all this stuff. But with something like super base, 923 01:00:54.280 --> 01:01:00.519 I really think it depends on the nature of what the product is and case 924 01:01:00.119 --> 01:01:05.679 it's if anyone has done this before. It's like a series of Docker images, 925 01:01:05.719 --> 01:01:08.880 like you can really recreate their entire cloud offering product on your own instance, 926 01:01:09.519 --> 01:01:13.400 but you have to like you have to install like Kong, which is 927 01:01:13.400 --> 01:01:17.119 like a more modern engine X, you have to install their their UI container 928 01:01:17.159 --> 01:01:22.360 and anybody who knows like the pain of doing that. I think a lot 929 01:01:22.400 --> 01:01:24.480 of companies may even like they may even go so far like, hey, 930 01:01:24.519 --> 01:01:29.199 we can you know, we can do the open source version of this, 931 01:01:29.519 --> 01:01:32.199 but we need like, I don't know, three weeks, three devs and 932 01:01:32.239 --> 01:01:37.400 we have to configure everything. So I think if if companies stay like kind 933 01:01:37.440 --> 01:01:42.519 of a should I say, like like crafty with with how they offer their 934 01:01:42.519 --> 01:01:46.719 open source tooling. Of course you're always on the edge. Of course you're 935 01:01:46.719 --> 01:01:51.119 always going to have people who will just copy it and reuse it. But 936 01:01:51.159 --> 01:01:54.079 I think that's only on the margin. And like for me, like I 937 01:01:54.360 --> 01:01:59.559 have a paid like the Mini Superbase instance, just because I don't want to 938 01:01:59.599 --> 01:02:02.960 go through the whole thing like the tooling of you know, of doing that. 939 01:02:04.320 --> 01:02:06.800 So yeah, I'm only whatever twenty five bucks a month, so I'm 940 01:02:06.840 --> 01:02:10.519 not a huge consumer. But I can imagine for larger, much more large 941 01:02:10.559 --> 01:02:14.800 corporations, they'd be more than happy to pay for whatever there they have some 942 01:02:15.199 --> 01:02:19.280 enterprise offering. So I don't know, I like I said, I think 943 01:02:19.280 --> 01:02:23.159 you could talk about this and argue forever, because I also like the one 944 01:02:23.199 --> 01:02:29.400 product that I have that is profitable is closed source. So I'm experimenting right 945 01:02:29.440 --> 01:02:32.199 now with the open source. So maybe I'll be eating eating my words in 946 01:02:32.239 --> 01:02:37.039 a few months once there's like twenty clones of my product somewhere and I'm not 947 01:02:37.079 --> 01:02:44.400 getting any money, so oh boy. Yeah. And well, we are 948 01:02:44.440 --> 01:02:51.519 at one hour and in four minutes of show already, so I imagine that 949 01:02:52.280 --> 01:02:57.960 we will soon start wrapping things up. But I really want to give you 950 01:02:58.119 --> 01:03:02.559 Max a space for you to talk more about your current company, because I 951 01:03:02.639 --> 01:03:10.320 do think that it is not just giving you space to promote yourself just because 952 01:03:10.800 --> 01:03:15.480 of that, but because I actually believe it's Zach is very valuable for the 953 01:03:15.519 --> 01:03:22.079 audience that is listening to this. So please sell your company to us, 954 01:03:22.119 --> 01:03:28.079 Like I do think it's a really great idea, So tell us a little 955 01:03:28.119 --> 01:03:32.639 bit more about the problems that you solve and how does it work. Yeah, 956 01:03:32.679 --> 01:03:38.480 thank you. Probably speaking lots of companies, especially at the enterpase level 957 01:03:38.519 --> 01:03:43.519 or adopting graphical as their central API. And many of these businesses, particularly 958 01:03:43.559 --> 01:03:46.159 for US, we largely see e commerce and news, retail and media organizations. 959 01:03:46.960 --> 01:03:50.320 They have use cases where they have lots of public and redtavy data. 960 01:03:50.360 --> 01:03:52.079 Right if you think about an e commerce webshop, everybody's looking at the same 961 01:03:52.079 --> 01:03:54.880 shoe. If you're thinking about a news website, everybody's looking at the same 962 01:03:54.960 --> 01:03:58.559 article. Right. That data is very public, it's very reat heavy, 963 01:03:58.719 --> 01:04:01.440 it doesn't change very frequently, and so by putting us our graphicll cited in 964 01:04:01.519 --> 01:04:04.639 front of your graphical EPI, we can cash those responses at the edge, 965 01:04:04.719 --> 01:04:08.719 really close to the user, and that has really three main benefits. One 966 01:04:09.159 --> 01:04:13.199 is it's much cheaper. Some of our customers literally have ninety nine percent cash 967 01:04:13.199 --> 01:04:15.639 itIt rates, meaning their origin infrastructure has to handle ninety nine percent less traffic 968 01:04:15.639 --> 01:04:19.199 because we just respond with the result from the age immediately that we have cashed. 969 01:04:19.679 --> 01:04:25.400 Now, that in turn means that they can reduce their infrastructure significantly, 970 01:04:25.440 --> 01:04:28.199 and in fact they say, you know, thirty forty percent of the infustry 971 01:04:28.239 --> 01:04:30.960 costs just by pure virtue of having us in the front and cashing all the 972 01:04:30.039 --> 01:04:33.559 data at the age. And then the other part is traffic spike handling, 973 01:04:33.559 --> 01:04:36.559 because if you think about news website, for example, if everybody's reading the 974 01:04:36.559 --> 01:04:41.519 same article, it's very spiky traffic. Right if something happens, if some 975 01:04:41.559 --> 01:04:44.519 tragedy happens then a news website, We've got an immense traffic spike on that 976 01:04:44.559 --> 01:04:47.159 specific article, and everybody's looking at that same article. Now, by default, 977 01:04:47.199 --> 01:04:50.119 your origin infrastucture has to handle that traffic spike, right, And many 978 01:04:50.280 --> 01:04:55.440 or news organizations just keep their infrastructure scaled up to the maximum so that when 979 01:04:55.480 --> 01:04:58.199 the traffic spike comes in, which is when their business makes money, they 980 01:04:58.239 --> 01:05:01.599 can handle the traffic spike. Choose. All of that traffic is almost always 981 01:05:01.639 --> 01:05:04.719 accessing the same data, right, And so fundamentally, if you can catch 982 01:05:04.760 --> 01:05:08.639 that at the IG, your origin doesn't even notice the traffic spike because we 983 01:05:08.719 --> 01:05:10.960 handle it for you, right, you literally don't have to worry about traffic 984 01:05:11.000 --> 01:05:13.519 spikes anymore. And then finally, of course, the main benefit from the 985 01:05:13.559 --> 01:05:16.599 edge catching is performance that a lot of developers love. Where because it's at 986 01:05:16.599 --> 01:05:19.960 the edge, we can serve a cash result to your users in about thirty 987 01:05:19.960 --> 01:05:24.280 five to fifty million seconds no matter where you are on the planet, right, 988 01:05:24.320 --> 01:05:27.559 And so if you have your origin of such you're sitting in US is 989 01:05:27.639 --> 01:05:31.119 one in aws. Then even if your users are in Italy, or they're 990 01:05:31.159 --> 01:05:34.159 in Australia, or they're in Asia or they're in North America or they're in 991 01:05:34.199 --> 01:05:36.679 South America. It doesn't matter. If something is cash, they're going to 992 01:05:36.679 --> 01:05:40.760 get it within about thirty to fifty million seconds, depending on their Internet connection. 993 01:05:41.000 --> 01:05:44.880 It's just going to be ridiculously fast. And the interesting thing I think 994 01:05:44.920 --> 01:05:46.559 for a lot of people that are listening. Of course, if you're if 995 01:05:46.559 --> 01:05:49.079 you are an e commerce or a news organization, you use graphicill, please 996 01:05:49.079 --> 01:05:50.840 come talk to us. We'd love to figure out if you our products can 997 01:05:50.920 --> 01:05:54.559 work for you. But really the interesting thing is that a lot of what 998 01:05:54.599 --> 01:05:57.920 we do is only possible because of graph kill, right, one of the 999 01:05:58.079 --> 01:06:00.239 one of the sort of historical If you look at any ur online that's comparing 1000 01:06:00.280 --> 01:06:04.280 rest to graphicill, almost always you will see rest is great for cashing and 1001 01:06:04.320 --> 01:06:08.840 graphicill sucks for cashing, and the truth is actually much more nuanced than that. 1002 01:06:08.840 --> 01:06:11.760 In fact, graph killing in many ways is better for cashing than rest 1003 01:06:11.880 --> 01:06:15.679 because it tells us what data is in the response. It tells us, 1004 01:06:15.719 --> 01:06:18.599 through its in respectability, what is the actual data that's coming back for this 1005 01:06:18.719 --> 01:06:21.639 query, And so that allows us to do things like partial quarry cashing. 1006 01:06:21.679 --> 01:06:25.440 We can at the edge, look at loop through your cash rules or a 1007 01:06:25.480 --> 01:06:29.400 cash configuration, figure out which parts of this query are how cacheable, make 1008 01:06:29.440 --> 01:06:31.360 them distinct cash entries, and then only have to fetch the data from the 1009 01:06:31.400 --> 01:06:34.079 origin to fulfill the rest of the data that we don't have in the cash 1010 01:06:34.320 --> 01:06:38.519 yet. Right, that is literally impossible. With rest, we can do 1011 01:06:38.559 --> 01:06:42.400 really smart cash validation because when imutation passes through us, we know exactly what 1012 01:06:42.480 --> 01:06:45.519 data has changed, and so we can invalidate only the specific cash entries that 1013 01:06:45.519 --> 01:06:47.840 contain that specific data. And it's not like, oh yeah, if a 1014 01:06:47.920 --> 01:06:51.199 post for if a post request for slash user comes in, then invalidate the 1015 01:06:51.239 --> 01:06:56.719 corresponding gets for slash user. It's much more advanced to that because when a 1016 01:06:56.840 --> 01:07:00.559 mutation comes in for edited user, we know every single quarry that fetched the 1017 01:07:00.559 --> 01:07:02.840 blog post author that was written by that user, We know every single quarry 1018 01:07:02.880 --> 01:07:05.760 were the user settings for fetched for that user, and we can invalid it 1019 01:07:05.840 --> 01:07:10.199 only and exactly that within about one hundred and fifty million seconds globally. And 1020 01:07:10.239 --> 01:07:14.079 again that's only possible because graphicill tells us what data is in the what data 1021 01:07:14.079 --> 01:07:16.119 we're actually cashing, right, what objects, what entities are in the data 1022 01:07:16.159 --> 01:07:18.840 that was fetched and that are cash at the agent that are changing over time, 1023 01:07:19.360 --> 01:07:23.199 and so a lot of the things that we do are we've really built 1024 01:07:23.599 --> 01:07:28.559 the most advanced API casing solution. It just happens to be graphical specific because 1025 01:07:28.559 --> 01:07:31.440 graphicill allows us to build this advanced API cashing solution, and through the way 1026 01:07:31.440 --> 01:07:34.119 graphic will works, we can do a lot of things that otherwise wouldn't be 1027 01:07:34.159 --> 01:07:38.400 possible. And so we're focused on Graphkill simply because it allows us to build 1028 01:07:38.400 --> 01:07:41.519 the best product and because we believe and we love graphicill quite frankly, like 1029 01:07:41.559 --> 01:07:44.840 as an organization, everybody that works here loves graphical We've all used graphkilled at 1030 01:07:44.880 --> 01:07:46.360 large skill. We freaking love it. And then later on, so that's 1031 01:07:46.360 --> 01:07:48.920 what we started with, and then later on also we added now on graphicel 1032 01:07:49.000 --> 01:07:53.480 metrics that give you very graphical specific insights into the operations where we're seeing in 1033 01:07:53.519 --> 01:07:56.079 production, into what types and fields are, how used or how slow, 1034 01:07:56.119 --> 01:07:58.760 and how many areas. You're getting very specific air tracking for graphicill. And 1035 01:07:58.800 --> 01:08:01.079 then also now we've shipped the security features around graphkill, both for sort of 1036 01:08:01.199 --> 01:08:05.119 common exploits like aliases and pipths and and all kinds of limits, but also 1037 01:08:05.119 --> 01:08:09.920 persisted operations and rate limiting sort of help you protect your graphic COLPI in many 1038 01:08:09.920 --> 01:08:12.719 ways similarly to what you would do with the rest API, but very graphicill 1039 01:08:12.760 --> 01:08:15.239 specific again with a deep understanding of graphill and how it works. And so 1040 01:08:15.960 --> 01:08:18.760 that's really if you're using graphkill scale. If you're if you're running into operationalizing 1041 01:08:19.000 --> 01:08:23.800 issues either because you're you know, you have large traffic backs in your news 1042 01:08:23.880 --> 01:08:27.359 organization, or because you don't have the observability that you need, or you're 1043 01:08:27.359 --> 01:08:30.359 getting malicious actors trying to deal with your API, come talk to us. 1044 01:08:30.359 --> 01:08:32.399 We've built products around graphkill, going back to the open source point, our 1045 01:08:32.439 --> 01:08:35.600 product are fully proprietary. Will bullet on graphkill, but come talk to us, 1046 01:08:35.760 --> 01:08:39.600 Go go use our CDN in front of your graph CLIPI and we'll happily 1047 01:08:39.600 --> 01:08:43.720 solve those problems for you. So just to make sure I get this right, 1048 01:08:43.800 --> 01:08:48.880 Max, And first off, congratulations on the product. It's definitely a 1049 01:08:49.039 --> 01:08:55.399 major thing, and I can only imagine how long it took for you guys 1050 01:08:55.439 --> 01:08:58.760 to build this thing and the effort that it takes to actually maintain it. 1051 01:08:59.800 --> 01:09:03.439 So congrats for that. My question is just to make sure that I fully 1052 01:09:03.520 --> 01:09:11.000 understand the product. So from your description, my understanding is that it's kind 1053 01:09:11.000 --> 01:09:15.920 of like cloud flare in the sense that it's a proxy that sits on top 1054 01:09:16.000 --> 01:09:25.119 of your API and on an application layer. It can interpret the graph QL 1055 01:09:25.239 --> 01:09:31.760 requests parts that query and figure out in a smart way which parts of that 1056 01:09:31.880 --> 01:09:36.319 querry can be cashed or not, and then the parts that can be cashed 1057 01:09:36.439 --> 01:09:43.279 it already returns directly without even going to your API, and if it can't 1058 01:09:43.319 --> 01:09:45.800 be cashed, then it goes to your API, waits for the response, 1059 01:09:46.439 --> 01:09:51.000 saves that response in a cash database that I don't even need to carry to 1060 01:09:51.279 --> 01:09:57.119 care about, and then returns that to the end user. Is that correct? 1061 01:09:57.840 --> 01:10:00.159 Yeah, that's right. And if you think about you know what ret 1062 01:10:00.239 --> 01:10:03.319 API, you have an endpoint like slash gate users slash one. If you 1063 01:10:03.359 --> 01:10:06.439 have some of that user data cash from another quarry, that doesn't help you 1064 01:10:06.479 --> 01:10:10.079 in cashing the get slash user slash one route. Right, that's a completely 1065 01:10:10.119 --> 01:10:13.560 distinct endpoint that that returns opaque data where you don't know what it is. 1066 01:10:13.880 --> 01:10:16.159 With graphkill, we can know exactly when you're fetching user number one whether or 1067 01:10:16.159 --> 01:10:19.439 not we have that cash entry already and we can just return that immediately without 1068 01:10:19.439 --> 01:10:21.880 even having to go ask the origin. And on top of that, if 1069 01:10:21.920 --> 01:10:27.600 you're fetching say users, and in one quarer you're fetching some of the data, 1070 01:10:27.600 --> 01:10:29.880 then another quarer you fetching more of the data, we can know that 1071 01:10:29.920 --> 01:10:32.399 we have some of the data in the cash already and take those fields out 1072 01:10:32.399 --> 01:10:35.279 of the graphicill career and only send a request for everything else that we need 1073 01:10:35.399 --> 01:10:39.279 to the origin. Because graphicill allows us to select the exact fields that we 1074 01:10:39.319 --> 01:10:43.800 need to fulfill the data requirements, right, and so we can do essentially 1075 01:10:43.800 --> 01:10:46.720 the most efficient API level caching that you can do at that layer, because 1076 01:10:46.760 --> 01:10:50.159 we have full control over which fields that we have in the cash, however 1077 01:10:50.159 --> 01:10:53.840 we cash them, and how do we get the rest of the fields from 1078 01:10:53.880 --> 01:10:57.920 the origin. So yeah, you're totally right. Nice. I really like 1079 01:10:58.079 --> 01:11:02.520 the end user experience of it, and I really like how it doesn't force 1080 01:11:02.640 --> 01:11:08.880 me to conform to any specific way of writing my APIs. I can just 1081 01:11:09.479 --> 01:11:15.479 do whatever whatever I'm used to and build my APIs in whatever way I want 1082 01:11:15.520 --> 01:11:20.079 to, and then put your service on top of it. That's pretty cool. 1083 01:11:20.399 --> 01:11:29.840 That's pretty cool. Nice, okay, and to which types of businesses 1084 01:11:29.880 --> 01:11:35.680 do you think this is more interesting? Because well, I imagine that anyone 1085 01:11:35.720 --> 01:11:40.399 that has a graph quol API could benefit from it, probably right, Like, 1086 01:11:40.439 --> 01:11:45.760 there's no specific use case besides having your API built on graph qol. 1087 01:11:46.079 --> 01:11:51.439 But what if I am just not so close to the edge of technology yet 1088 01:11:51.520 --> 01:11:56.159 and I'm not built on graph quol. Is there any way for me to 1089 01:11:56.359 --> 01:12:00.479 steal extract value from your solution or is it really just graph l specific. 1090 01:12:01.479 --> 01:12:05.039 It's really graphical specific. And it's like I said, a lot of what 1091 01:12:05.119 --> 01:12:09.479 we do we couldn't actually do any other way, Like we couldn't do for 1092 01:12:09.520 --> 01:12:14.479 rest APIs we really have to go figure that out for for graph kill, 1093 01:12:14.520 --> 01:12:16.960 and it really only works with graphicills. So the kind of companies that we 1094 01:12:16.960 --> 01:12:20.000 do with our large organizations that use graphkill at a really large scale, and 1095 01:12:20.319 --> 01:12:26.439 for the edge caching, it's businesses that have you know, very what we 1096 01:12:26.560 --> 01:12:29.359 call it read heavy and public traffic. And then for the matrix in the 1097 01:12:29.399 --> 01:12:31.119 security is just any company that uses graph kill and that is that doesn't have 1098 01:12:31.079 --> 01:12:35.760 the observability they need or the security that they are a need to protect from 1099 01:12:35.800 --> 01:12:42.960 malicious actors. Gotcham Okay, I just sent the link to stell it on 1100 01:12:43.399 --> 01:12:48.319 the comment section, So if you're listening to the show from a player that 1101 01:12:48.399 --> 01:12:54.279 doesn't have a comment section, just know that is s T E l l 1102 01:12:54.520 --> 01:13:01.439 A t E dot co so stell it dot co it to house. You 1103 01:13:01.479 --> 01:13:08.840 can also just search online for stell It, Max Stoiber, and Google is 1104 01:13:08.880 --> 01:13:12.640 going to somehow figure out what it is that that you typed and point you 1105 01:13:12.680 --> 01:13:15.000 in the right direction. So yeah, definitely check it out. If you're 1106 01:13:15.039 --> 01:13:23.000 working with APIs guys, I think we can start wrapping things up. So 1107 01:13:23.640 --> 01:13:28.520 unless Max, you have anything that you would like to say that you haven't 1108 01:13:28.600 --> 01:13:30.920 yet that you think it's really important, I will just say thank you for 1109 01:13:30.960 --> 01:13:33.359 letting me rent about a whole bunch of different tangents. I don't know that 1110 01:13:33.399 --> 01:13:36.840 this went in the direction that any of you expected here this podcast, given 1111 01:13:36.840 --> 01:13:40.760 that the title style components. We went a bit prower than that. But 1112 01:13:41.159 --> 01:13:44.079 I hope it's most insightful to people, and I hope you all enjoy it. 1113 01:13:44.239 --> 01:13:47.760 I circle enjoyed the conversation. I hope your listeners will too. Thank 1114 01:13:47.800 --> 01:13:50.880 you. Yeah, I don't think that people looking at the title of the 1115 01:13:50.920 --> 01:13:58.000 episode are going to grasp the entire context. But yeah, thank you for 1116 01:13:58.359 --> 01:14:03.079 those rents, like it's it's actually really good that you you were so open 1117 01:14:03.119 --> 01:14:10.439 to sharing your opinion because oftentimes people just don't want to share those rents in 1118 01:14:11.640 --> 01:14:17.279 a public content such as this, So I definitely appreciate your honest opinion about 1119 01:14:17.279 --> 01:14:21.600 such topics. So yeah, let's start wrapping things up. Let's do a 1120 01:14:21.680 --> 01:14:27.520 quick round of promos, so we can do you for last Max, but 1121 01:14:27.600 --> 01:14:33.079 I'm pretty confident that you kind of already did your promo. But in any 1122 01:14:33.119 --> 01:14:38.000 case, if you want to promote other stuff, you can definitely do that. 1123 01:14:38.399 --> 01:14:45.680 So starting on my end, really not in major, just gonna promote 1124 01:14:45.720 --> 01:14:49.319 the companies producing the show. So for any of you that want to learn 1125 01:14:49.319 --> 01:14:55.079 more about software development, you can check out the other content produced by top 1126 01:14:55.119 --> 01:14:59.479 and dovs. There are several other podcasts that top and Devs produces, and 1127 01:14:59.560 --> 01:15:03.600 they are all courses that they offer. So yeah, definitely check out the 1128 01:15:03.680 --> 01:15:10.159 website topendewth dot com if you're interested in that. And void dot com is 1129 01:15:10.479 --> 01:15:15.439 U n voi d dot com. So the opposite of void unvoid. Some 1130 01:15:15.479 --> 01:15:19.279 people think that it's on in terms of like On and Off, but it's 1131 01:15:19.439 --> 01:15:28.239 u N and they offer task based design and software development services. So the 1132 01:15:28.319 --> 01:15:33.399 difference being that whenever you need to hire external professionals to do work for your 1133 01:15:33.439 --> 01:15:38.960 company, you generally have to pay them by the hour, and that incentivizes 1134 01:15:39.000 --> 01:15:43.000 them to just take their time because they're going to get more money. Right. 1135 01:15:43.800 --> 01:15:49.840 So Void completely flips that business model by making sure that the clients only 1136 01:15:49.920 --> 01:15:57.560 pay after the tasks are delivered and approved, and the clients know beforehand how 1137 01:15:57.640 --> 01:16:01.079 much the tasks are going to cost because Void estimates points for each task, 1138 01:16:01.159 --> 01:16:08.000 and the clients pay on top of this point estimation. So clients get cost 1139 01:16:08.079 --> 01:16:14.560 pervisibility and they also get quality assurance because they can just request changes until they're 1140 01:16:14.600 --> 01:16:18.840 happy with what is delivered. So if you're interested in that, definitely check 1141 01:16:18.880 --> 01:16:25.800 Outvoid dot com. These are just gonna be my my promos for this episode. 1142 01:16:25.920 --> 01:16:29.439 So, Peter, do you have anything you'd like to mention? Okay, 1143 01:16:30.239 --> 01:16:32.319 how about you, Chris? Anything new? Yep? Yeah, I'm 1144 01:16:32.319 --> 01:16:38.560 just going to post something from Superbase. The founder posted. I mean, 1145 01:16:38.600 --> 01:16:41.000 you can take it with a grain of salt. Maybe it is all marketing, 1146 01:16:41.039 --> 01:16:44.439 but he talks about if you should open source your company. I think 1147 01:16:44.439 --> 01:16:47.800 it's I think it's interesting. And then the product I've been working on, 1148 01:16:48.039 --> 01:16:54.279 I've posted it quite a bit the last few weeks. I actually recently got 1149 01:16:54.680 --> 01:16:57.520 into the finalist stage. I don't know if you guys have heard of backdrop 1150 01:16:57.560 --> 01:17:00.439 build before. So it was like one thousand or so devs or so when 1151 01:17:00.439 --> 01:17:05.560 they pick like fifty finalists, but you can it's basically a decorative way to 1152 01:17:05.600 --> 01:17:12.800 create software engineering videos, perhaps later other types of videos. But over the 1153 01:17:12.800 --> 01:17:15.760 weekend I got the API n point up, so it's not on that website 1154 01:17:15.840 --> 01:17:18.800 yet, but it'll be up soon. Basically, you can think about it 1155 01:17:18.840 --> 01:17:23.439 from a very high level. You give Jason to an endpoint, and you 1156 01:17:23.520 --> 01:17:28.439 get an animated video, like a lifelike animated video of you know, dictating 1157 01:17:28.520 --> 01:17:35.399 whatever you're coding or whatever you're building back as an MP four URL. So 1158 01:17:35.560 --> 01:17:42.159 pretty good. And I sent all those links in the show notes in the 1159 01:17:42.199 --> 01:17:45.439 comment section, So definitely check it out if you're interested in that. So 1160 01:17:45.920 --> 01:17:49.680 Max, just circling back to you, is there anything else you'd like to 1161 01:17:49.720 --> 01:17:54.920 promote? Well, I sure, hope I didn't. I've set any open 1162 01:17:54.960 --> 01:17:58.560 source funnels that are listening to this episode. I would love to hear a 1163 01:17:58.600 --> 01:18:00.560 country and thinking, I'm definitely going to take that super based article. I'm 1164 01:18:00.600 --> 01:18:04.600 very curious how they thought about open sourcing their company. I have nothing else 1165 01:18:04.640 --> 01:18:08.880 to plug. Go go check out Stilly if you using graph pill. I'm 1166 01:18:08.880 --> 01:18:13.159 at mx SDBR on all platforms, Twitter, get up, Instagram, wherever 1167 01:18:13.199 --> 01:18:17.600 you want to follow people, even blue sky Master it on whatever at MXSTBR, 1168 01:18:17.960 --> 01:18:20.560 which is my name which looks really complicated, but it's really just my 1169 01:18:20.640 --> 01:18:25.439 name without vowels, so you can find me anywhere. And thank you all 1170 01:18:25.479 --> 01:18:28.479 so much for having me. Thank you very much. Max. Feel free 1171 01:18:28.520 --> 01:18:31.960 to join and rent a little bit more about other subjects whenever you want. 1172 01:18:32.680 --> 01:18:39.600 And congratulations on your company. I hope you are very successful. I'm pretty 1173 01:18:40.279 --> 01:18:44.880 sure it will be because everything else that you've worked on thus far has been 1174 01:18:44.960 --> 01:18:50.920 so I'm pretty excited about the next steps in this journey. So yeah, 1175 01:18:51.000 --> 01:18:55.880 man, congrats, and feel free to hit me up if you want to 1176 01:18:56.119 --> 01:18:59.479 join the podcast any other time. Thank you