Jeff Lawson, CEO and co-founder of Twilio, discusses the rising influence of developers as a creative class in the digital age. He explores how the shift to cloud and API economies has transformed customer interactions and the necessary role developers play in this evolution. Lawson emphasizes embracing a 'developer first' mindset to address business challenges effectively. He advocates for hackathons as a key source of innovation and highlights the importance of small team dynamics in fostering creativity and collaboration across all industries.
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question_answer ANECDOTE
Software Supply Chain Analogy
Jeff Lawson uses the automotive supply chain as an analogy for software development.
APIs are like specialized parts, enabling faster and more efficient software creation.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Build vs. Buy
Build software that directly faces your customers to differentiate your product.
Buying generic software won't give you a competitive edge in the market.
question_answer ANECDOTE
WhatsApp and Twilio
Jan Koum, WhatsApp co-founder, signed up for a Twilio account with a Yahoo email address.
This highlights how API companies prioritize developers as customers, not just a strategy.
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How to Harness the Power of Software Developers and Win in the 21st Century
Jeff Lawson
In 'Ask Your Developer,' Jeff Lawson provides a playbook for business leaders, product managers, and executives to understand and harness the potential of software developers. The book is divided into three main sections: the importance of developers, how to motivate them, and how to make them successful. Lawson draws from his experiences at Twilio, Amazon, and other ventures to offer practical advice on engaging developers, determining which software to build or buy, and driving digital transformation across various industries. The book emphasizes the critical role developers play in modern businesses and how their creativity and brainpower can be unleashed to solve major business problems and create innovative products[1][3][4].
The rise of developers -- as buyers, as influencers, as a creative class -- is a direct result of "software eating the world", and of key shifts in IT from on-prem to cloud & SaaS to the API economy, where application programming interfaces are essentially building blocks for innovation. Developers therefore not only play an outsized role in high-performing tech companies -- but managing and motivating them is actually critical in ALL companies, since every company is a tech company (whether they know it or not).
As every industry turns digital, and a company's interface to their customers IS software, "asking" one's developer is the key to solving business problems and to thriving not just surviving, argues Jeff Lawson, CEO and co-founder of cloud communications platform-as-a-service company Twilio, in his new book, Ask Your Developer: How to Harness the Power of Software Developers and Win in the 21st Century. So in this episode of the a16z Podcast in conversation with Sonal Chokshi and David Ulevitch (who previously argued "the developer's way" is the future of work), Lawson shares hard-earned lessons learned, mindsets, strategies, and tactics -- from "build vs. buy" to "build vs. die", to the art and science of small teams ("mitosis") -- for leaders and companies of all sizes.
But what does it mean to truly treat developers as creatives within an organization? What does it mean to be "developer first"? And how does this affect customers, product, go-to-market? All this and more in this episode.