Customer discovery as a solo builder

David Boyne joins us to share his journey from AWS serverless advocate to solo bootstrapper building Event Catalog, an open source tool bringing discoverability to event-driven architectures.

We start by exploring David’s background at AWS, where he spent over two years as a serverless advocate focusing on event architectures, EventBridge, and helping customers navigate the complexities of distributed systems. He shares insights into the problems he consistently saw teams struggling with as they scaled their event-driven systems, particularly around governance and discoverability - noting that event architectures are still 10-15 years behind API documentation, with most organizations lacking machine-readable specifications for their events.

Seeing these governance challenges repeatedly, David made the decision to leave AWS and pursue Event Catalog full-time as a solo bootstrapper. He shares candid insights into the realities of that journey and discusses how Event Catalog evolved from a Christmas side project to a tool used by developers, architects, business analysts, and product owners, each finding different value in the platform.

Topics include:

• David’s journey from AWS serverless advocate to solo bootstrapper
• Visual thinking: how EDA Visuals emerged from David’s Zettelkasten note-taking system
• Event-driven architecture fundamentals and alignment with domain-driven design
• The governance challenge: why EDA needs better discoverability and documentation
• Transitioning from AWS: making the leap to full-time open source work
• Solo developer journey: the highs, lows, and lessons learned from bootstrapping
• Open core business model: balancing open source with sustainable revenue
• Building in public: sharing the journey and making the pie bigger for everyone
• Customer discovery: how to engage with users as a solo builder
• Building for developers: the unique challenges of B2D (business-to-developer) markets
• Pricing strategies: understanding value and avoiding the “too cheap” trap
• Event Catalog: bringing discoverability to event architectures
• Event Catalog Studio: visual design tools for event architectures
• Tech stack decisions: choosing Astro, self-hosting, and GitOps workflows
• AI integration: MCP tools, context-aware documentation, and the future of architecture docs
• The importance of talking to customers and focusing on problems over features

Finally, we explore how AI is changing architecture documentation, with David sharing his experiments with MCP tools that provide context-aware assistance to developers working with event architectures; while recognizing that business context, domains, and ubiquitous language must come from human understanding.

Throughout the conversation, David emphasizes the importance of being human, focusing on problems over features, and advocating for the space rather than just the product. Whether you’re interested in event-driven architectures, considering a solo bootstrapping journey, or curious about building developer tools, this episode offers both practical insights and inspiration.

Show Links

• David Boyne’s Website
• David Boyne on X/Twitter
• David Boyne on LinkedIn
• David Boyne’s Substack
• Event Catalog
• Event Catalog on GitHub
• Event Catalog Studio
• EDA Visuals
• EventBridge Canon
• EventBridge Atlas
• The EventBridge Book
• EventBridge
• Thinking in Events: Principles of Event-Driven Architecture, Part 1 with James Eastham
• Thinking in Events: Principles of Event-Driven Architecture, Part 2 with James Eastham
• Astro
• Docusaurus
• MCP (Model Context Protocol)
• Zettelkasten Method
• How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens
• OpenAPI Specification
• Swagger
• AsyncAPI
• C4 Model
• The Mom Test
• Developer-Facing Startup Book
• Don’t sell to developers. Focus on value, advocacy and creating internal champions - David Boyne’s Blog Post
• A journey from Junior Developer to Technical Lead - David Boyne
• KanDDDinsky
• NDC London - Stars Don’t Pay the Bills: Turning Open Source Into a Business