Brian speaks with Tom Preston-Werner, founder of GitHub and creator of RedwoodJS. They discuss the benefits of using Redwood for web applications, sending local emails with RedwoodJS, an AI tool set called repo query and their visit to the Jelly Belly Factory. They also share excitement about an upcoming event and introduce Spoke, a new platform for project sharing and community building.

Tom Preston-Werner, founder of GitHub and creator of RedwoodJS, talks about React server components, the origin story of RedwoodJS, the tedious lifecycle of application development, RedwoodJS as a seamless and integrated web application development framework, sending emails in the Redwood application, AI tools and Jelly Beans, and connecting with Redwood builders through spoke.run.

In this episode, we continue our community series with a recent discussion that applies to many kinds of community building. Today’s topic: How do you create a platform that people not only use, but tell their friends about? One that goes beyond just being useful and actually connects deeply with the user? In this discussion, which was recorded at our Crypto Startup School in April 2020, a16z General Partner Chris Dixon talked about building communities — specifically, communities of open-source developers — with GitHub cofounder Tom Preston-Werner. They discussed how to engage early users, how to turn them into your biggest advocates, how to create superfans, and more. Today, GitHub is the leading community for open-source developers and others. They also discuss in-person communities vs. distributed communities, a topic that is very top of mind today.