Sam Bhagwat on Gatsby and Mastra, YC and tapping into your inner child

In this episode of Dev Propulsion Labs, we sit down with Sam Bhagwat, the dev tools visionary who co-founded Gatsby and is now transforming AI development with Mastra - the TypeScript framework that's rapidly gaining adoption among serious AI developers.

After selling Gatsby to Netlify, Sam identified a critical gap in AI tooling that was forcing developers to build complex infrastructure themselves. Now, his YC-backed framework is helping startups and enterprises build production-grade AI agents with far less overhead.

You'll discover:

- The pivotal moment Sam realized existing AI tools weren't solving the right problems

- Strategic insights from his YC Winter 2025 experience that accelerated Mastra's growth

- Why TypeScript-first is the right approach for building maintainable AI applications

- The thoughtful licensing strategy that balances open-source principles with business sustainability

- What current AI frameworks are missing and how Mastra addresses these limitations

For founders and technical leaders building in the AI space, this conversation offers valuable perspective on navigating the rapidly evolving agent ecosystem while creating a sustainable developer tools business.

Links:

- Dev Propulsion Labs podcast: https://evilmartians.com/devpropulsionlabs

- Try Mastra: npm create mastra@latest

- Website: https://mastra.ai

- GitHub: https://github.com/mastra-ai/mastra

- Book: "Principles of Building AI Agents" on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Building-Agents-Sam-Bhagwat/dp/B0DYH5GHDD

- Sam Bhagwat Twitter: https://twitter.com/calcsam

- Victoria Melnikova Twitter: https://twitter.com/vmelnikova_en

Best comment on YouTube will be rewarded with a free copy of Sam's book