The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source

Building for application developers (Interview)

Feb 27, 2025

Anurag Goel, the visionary Founder/CEO of Render, discusses how his platform simplifies cloud challenges for application developers. He dives into the $80M funding, emphasizing the need for user-friendly cloud solutions beyond traditional services. The conversation highlights the shift towards smaller, autonomous development teams and the importance of product flexibility. Anurag also shares insights on building reliable tech to solve real problems and the evolving landscape of application development, reflecting on his journey in the tech industry.

01:52:33

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Episode guests

Anurag Goel

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Episode notes

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Quick takeaways

Anurag Goel aims to revolutionize cloud infrastructure for application developers by simplifying operations and enhancing developer productivity through Render.

Render has experienced organic growth, successfully attracting over 110,000 developer sign-ups by prioritizing user feedback and community trust over traditional marketing.

With $80 million in recent funding, Render plans to expand its engineering team and develop enterprise-focused features, ensuring compliance and security.

Deep dives

Anurag Goel's Journey to Founding Render

Anurag Goel shares his background as the fifth engineer at Stripe before founding Render, highlighting the pivotal moments that steered him towards this venture. He emphasizes a desire to tackle significant problems within the cloud infrastructure space that he encountered while building applications. Goel’s experience showcased the challenges developers faced with existing platforms, which drove him to create a solution that prioritized ease of use and developer productivity. The motivation to innovate stemmed from witnessing inefficiencies during his tenure at Stripe, leading him to a path of solving these prevalent issues in cloud computing.

Intro

4min

Building a Better Cloud: Lessons Learned

11min

Organic Growth and Developer-Centric Product Development

3min

Two Pizza Teams and Developer Autonomy

14min

Innovative Troubleshooting and CEO Evolution in Startups

5min

Navigating Startup Growth and Personal Interests

12min

Navigating the Challenges of Application Resilience and Integration

3min

Building Reliable Tech for Real Problems

25min

Navigating the Future of Application Development

2min

10.

Navigating Talent Density and Leadership Engagement

16min

11.

Navigating Cloud Choices: Render vs. Fly

13min

12.

Exploring Cloud Innovation and Developer Empowerment

4min

Anurag Goel, Founder/CEO of Render, joins Adam to discuss what they’re doing to solve cloud problems for application developers. They just raised $80M they don’t even need and they’re poised to solve boring problems like object storage, and less boring things like building for the AI era.

Join the discussion

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Featuring:

Anurag Goel – LinkedIn, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

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