Scaling DevTools Great Developer Experience with ngrok founder Alan Shreve
May 25, 2023
29:20
Alan Shreve is the founder & CEO of ngrok.
ngrok is a simplified API-first ingress-as-a-service that adds connectivity, security, and observability to your apps in one line
What we cover:
- Creating a simple experience for users.
- Designing for the 90% use case vs. the 10%.
- How did the idea for ngrok emerge?
- How the first iterations of the product came about.
- The internal struggle to create simple interfaces.
- How do you test your library design?
- One of the best ways to test library design.
- Amazon's one-click checkout.
- Chasing simplicity vs complexity in a complex system.
- Product processes to help chase simplicity.
- How does NGrok measure and track user growth?
- Time to value, kpi, time to value.
- Empowering developers to do their jobs.
- How does a hobbyist use case expand into a commercial use case?
- How do you think about the problems that ngrok solves?
- How do you get an application online with minimal configuration?
- What’s the takeaway for other developers or founders?
Links:
- ngrok: https://ngrok.com/
- Alan's Twitter: https://twitter.com/inconshreveable
- Thanks to Danger Casey https://twitter.com/CaseySoftware for organising this
- swyx article https://www.swyx.io/self-provisioning-runtime
- Joel Spolsky talk https://mixtape.swyx.io/episodes/elegant-software-joel-spolsky