Dennis Pilarinos is the founder and CEO at Unblocked, a developer tool that lets you talk to your codebase. In 2018, Dennis’ first company, Buddybuild, was acquired by Apple, and he was subsequently appointed Director of Development Technologies. Before that, Dennis was a Senior Director at AWS and a Director at Microsoft.

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In today’s episode, we discuss:

Lessons on culture and product from Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft
Building and scaling DevTools
Finding product market fit and monetizing it
Why AI is complicating product market fit
How Dennis prioritizes mental health as a founder
The common mistake people make when hiring

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Referenced:

Apple’s acquisition of Buddybuild: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/02/apple-agrees-to-buy-buddybuild.html
AWS: https://aws.amazon.com
Bitbucket: https://bitbucket.org
Confluence: https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence
GitHub: https://github.com
GitLab: https://gitlab.com
Looker: https://looker.com
Microsoft Azure: https://azure.microsoft.com
Stewart Butterfield: https://www.linkedin.com/in/butterfield/
Stripe: https://stripe.com
Twilio: https://twilio.com
Unblocked: https://getunblocked.com/

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Where to find Dennis Pilarinos:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dennispi
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/dennispilarinos

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Where to find Brett Berson:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson

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Where to find First Round Capital:

Website: https://firstround.com/
First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/firstround
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital
This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast

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Timestamps:

(00:00) Introduction

(02:18) Why building for developers is different

(07:28) Buddybuild’s origin story

(10:40) Early signs of product market fit

(12:22) Managing mental health as a second-time founder

(21:09) Building and scaling Unblocked

(29:52) Dennis’ cautious take on AI

(34:20) Being customer-obsessed

(35:25) Unblocked’s decision-making process

(38:31) Don’t over-index on competency when hiring

(43:36) Why great product is everything

(45:41) Monetizing product market fit

(48:21) The power of positioning

(51:48) Why Dennis doesn’t do demos

(54:45) How to deal with customer feedback

(57:29) Stewart Butterfield’s impact on Dennis

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