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Stories from the trenches about tech startups and businesses.
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Changelog Interviews Changelog Interviews #445

Funds for open source

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2021-06-18T21:00:00Z #oss +2 🎧 32,824

This week we’re talking with Pia Mancini about the latest updates to the mission of Open Collective. Earlier this year Open Collective announced “Funds for Open Source.” The idea is simple, make it easy for companies to invest in open source, and they will. Also, since recording this episode, Pia and the team at Open Collective along with Gitcoin announced fundoss.org as part of Maintainer Week announcements. And right now, they have a matching fund of $75,000 dollars funding open source that you can support.

Changelog Interviews Changelog Interviews #443

Exploring Deno Land 🦕

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2021-06-08T12:00:00Z #deno +3 🎧 31,524

This week we’re joined by Ryan Dahl, Node.js creator, and now the creator of Deno - a simple, modern and secure runtime for JavaScript and TypeScript that uses V8 and is built in Rust.

We talk with Ryan about the massive success of Node and how it impacted his life, and how he eventually created Deno and what he’s doing differently this time around. We also talk about The Deno Company and what’s in store for Deno Deploy.

Go Time Go Time #177

Building startups with Go

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2021-04-29T15:45:00Z #go +1 🎧 18,007

Startups are all about iterating quickly, building MVPs, and finding that elusive product market fit, so how does Go fit into that picture? Is Go a good choice for startups, or is it exclusively for the larger corporations? In this episode Jon is joined by four startup founders to learn about their experience building a startup with Go.

Founders Talk Founders Talk #75

The journey to massive scale and ultra-resilience

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2021-03-26T18:00:00Z #startups +2 🎧 6,762

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

Go Time Go Time #169

Go at Clever

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2021-03-04T16:30:00Z #go +1 🎧 14,068

In this episode we explore how Clever started using Go. What technologies did Clever start with, how did they transition to Go, and what were the motivations behind those changes? We then explore some of the OS tech written by the team at Clever.

Founders Talk Founders Talk #74

Intensely focused on building a software company

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2021-02-23T20:30:00Z #startups 🎧 5,903

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

Founders Talk Founders Talk #73

Balancing business and open source

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2020-11-23T22:00:00Z #startups +2 🎧 6,141

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

Founders Talk Founders Talk #72

Slow and steady wins

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2020-08-03T19:30:00Z #startups 🎧 6,593

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

Changelog Interviews Changelog Interviews #402

What's next for José Valim and Elixir?

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2020-07-10T17:30:00Z #elixir +2 🎧 26,766

We’re joined again by José Valim talking about the recent acquihire of Plataformatec and what that means for the Elixir language, as well as José. We also talk about Dashbit a new 3 person company he helped form from work done while at Plataformatec to help startups and enterprises adopt and run Elixir in production. Lastly we talk about a new idea José has called Bytepack that aims to help developers package and deliver software products to developers and enterprises.

Founders Talk Founders Talk #71

From acquisition to full conviction

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2020-07-03T18:15:00Z #startups +1 🎧 5,468

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

JS Party JS Party #130

Betting on Svelte for pace.dev

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2020-06-12T16:00:00Z #javascript +2 🎧 10,745

We often try new frameworks and tools in side projects or throwaway contexts, but you don’t learn that much about a thing until you use it to build something real. That’s why we have Mat Ryer and David Hernandez joining us to share their experience of using Svelte while building their new startup, Pace.dev.

Founders Talk Founders Talk #70

Leading GitLab to $100M ARR

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2020-06-09T21:00:00Z #startups +2 🎧 6,646

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

Founders Talk Founders Talk #69

Building a real programmable robot

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2020-05-08T21:00:00Z #startups +1 🎧 5,406

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

Backstage Backstage #9

Ten years of Changelog 🎉

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2019-11-21T16:00:00Z #startups +2 🎧 2,330

On this special re-broadcast of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Quincy Larson (freeCodeCamp’s founder) interviewed Adam and Jerod in the ultimate Backstage episode to celebrate a decade of conversations, news, and community here at Changelog. Yes, this month we turn 10 years old! We go deep into our origin stories, our history as a company, becoming and being a leader, the backstory of our branding, our music from Breakmaster Cylinder, and where we might be heading in the future.

Changelog Interviews Changelog Interviews #369

Five years of freeCodeCamp

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2019-11-15T18:00:00Z #learn +2 🎧 25,920

Today we have a very special show for you – we’re talking with Quincy Larson the founder of freeCodeCamp as part of a two-part companion podcast series where we each celebrate our 5 and 10 year anniversaries. This year marks 5 years for freeCodeCamp and 10 years for us here at Changelog. So make sure you check out the freeCodeCamp podcast next week when Quincy ships our episode to their feed. But, on today’s episode we catch up with Quincy on all things freeCodeCamp.

Changelog Interviews Changelog Interviews #368

Finding collaborators for open source

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2019-11-10T04:00:00Z #oss +1 🎧 24,488

Jeff Meyerson, host of Software Engineering Daily, and the founder of FindCollabs (a place to find collaborators for open source software) joined the show to talk about living in San Francisco, his thoughts on podcasting and where the medium is heading, getting through large scale market changes. We talk at length about his new project FindCollabs, the difficulty of reliably finding people to collaborate with, the importance of reputation and ratings systems, and his invite to this audience to check out what he’s doing and get involved.

Founders Talk Founders Talk #67

Mastering the art of quitting

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2019-07-05T11:00:00Z #startups 🎧 8,497

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

Founders Talk Founders Talk #66

Failing to build a billion-dollar company

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2019-06-14T17:00:00Z #startups 🎧 5,879

Sahil Lavingia is the founder and CEO of Gumroad, a platform for creators to sell the things they make. Since 2011 Gumroad has sent over $200 million dollars to creators. That’s a big number. Sahil’s ambitions lead him to believe that Gumroad would become a billion-dollar company, have hundreds of employees, and eventually IPO. That didn’t happen.

We talk through Sahil’s journey with Gumroad, why it failed to meet his goals, the path he’s on today and the things he now values…but to understand why Gumroad didn’t live up to his expectations, we really have to understand the backstory of Gumroad.

Founders Talk Founders Talk #65

What are you optimizing for?

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2019-05-31T11:00:00Z #startups +2 🎧 5,549

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

Founders Talk Founders Talk #64

Building a hardware/software product company

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2019-05-23T11:00:00Z #startups +2 🎧 5,419

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

Founders Talk Founders Talk #63

Zero up-front costs for a CS education

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2019-04-19T14:00:00Z #startups +1 🎧 5,528

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

Founders Talk Founders Talk #61

Isaac Schlueter on building npm and hiring a CEO

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2019-01-25T12:05:00Z #npm +1 🎧 6,621

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

Away from Keyboard Away from Keyboard #11

Adam Clark wants to be independently wealthy

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2019-01-17T04:13:57Z #culture +1 🎧 3,243

Adam Clark and I met back in 2013. We started a podcasting company together (which we both left), he shut down his consulting business to move to California and work for Apple, and now he’s back in Tennessee. Last year he launched a new business, Podcast Royale, a company he says will afford him more freedom to do whatever he wants to do.

He talks to me about growing up in a cult, losing his father, marriage, and how being a parent gives him a purpose in life.

Founders Talk Founders Talk #60

Leading data-driven software teams and products

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2018-12-21T22:30:00Z #leadership +2 🎧 6,752

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

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