Dev Propulsion Labs

In this episode of Dev Propulsion Labs, Abhi Aiyer, CTO and co-founder of Mastra, talks about the power of community and explains why they raised their seed round from 120+ founders. He also gets into how making moves beats perfect execution and his hiring process. Lastly, Abhi shares why TypeScript is winning the AI war and how education became their secret weapon.Follow us on X: https://x.com/dpl_pod Episode notes: https://evilmartians.com/events/podcast-abhi-aiyer-mastra00:00 Introduction and birthday celebration00:49 TypeScript AI Conf and major announcements02:53 Education as a pillar for framework adoption04:30 Converting open source to paid customers06:55 Optimizing onboarding and developer experience08:45 Handling user feedback and criticism09:51 Moving fast in the AI wave and the pressure of getting ahead of the curve11:56 YC experience and the agents batch15:19 Why TypeScript for AI agents19:40 Why Mastra decided to do a coalition from builders (120+ people)22:23 Building culture through friendships25:25 The toughest part of being a founder and CTO27:54 Working in an uncertain environment and planning a roadmap31:49 The devtools community at SF32:48 Advice for new builders35:31 Hardest-earned founder lessons38:30 The YC revelation: location and community matters40:20 Mastra in five years41:13 Warm fuzzies: first agent in 5 minutes41:46 Getting started with MastraEvil Martians is the go-to agency for early-stage developer tools startups: https://evilmartians.com/devtoolsRecorded at Chroma. Vector, full-text, regex, and metadata search. Develop locally and scale to petabytes in the cloud backed by object storage. Serverless search and retrieval that is fast, cheap, and reliable. https://www.trychroma.comLinks:Mastra: https://mastra.aiAbhi Aiyer on X: https://x.com/abhiaiyerEvil Martians on X: https://x.com/evilmartiansVictoria Melnikova on X: https://x.com/vmelnikova_en

In this episode of Dev Propulsion Labs, WorkOS founder Michael Grinich reveals why product always beats sales methodology in enterprise, how being the "plumbing" behind AI companies became his life's work, and why forcing yourself to talk to users is the only algorithm that burns out bad ideas. He shares why WorkOS built in stealth while talking to everyone, the moment he fired his entire marketing team, and how infrastructure companies survive by being better than all their customers combined.Episode notes: https://evilmartians.com/events/podcast-michael-grinich-workosFollow us on X: https://x.com/dpl_podRecorded at Chroma. Vector, full-text, regex, and metadata search. Develop locally and scale to petabytes in the cloud backed by object storage. Serverless search and retrieval that is fast, cheap, and reliable. https://www.trychroma.comEvil Martians is the go-to agency for early-stage developer tools startups: https://evilmartians.com/devtoolsLinks:WorkOS: https://workos.com/Michael Grinich on X: https://x.com/grinichEvil Martians on X: https://x.com/evilmartiansVictoria Melnikova on X: https://x.com/vmelnikova_en

Ivan Burazin, Founder and CEO of Daytona, dives into his bold decision to walk away from $300K ARR to rebuild for the AI era. He discusses the exponential growth of AI agents, predicting they may outnumber humans tenfold. The conversation touches on creating composable computers on demand and the importance of a seamless developer experience. Ivan emphasizes his team's unique approach to market positioning, community engagement, and the urgent need for innovative tools tailored for agents, all while racing against competitors in a rapidly evolving landscape.

In this episode of Dev Propulsion Labs, Supabase CEO Paul Copplestone reveals why hiring ex-founders with beaten-down egos builds better products, how internal meme workshops became part of their culture, and why vibe coding isn't a bubble that will burst. He shares the accidental origin of Launch Weeks, explains why Supabase is building for a 30-year timeline, and breaks down how they scaled to 5 million developers across 40 countries with barely any meetings.Episode notes: https://evilmartians.com/events/podcast-paul-copplestone-supabaseFollow us on X: https://x.com/dpl_podRecorded at Chroma. Vector, full-text, regex, and metadata search. Develop locally and scale to petabytes in the cloud backed by object storage. Serverless search and retrieval that is fast, cheap, and reliable. https://www.trychroma.com Evil Martians is the go-to agency for early-stage developer tools startups: https://evilmartians.com/devtoolsLinks:Supabase: https://supabase.comPaul Copplestone on X: https://x.com/kiwicoppleEvil Martians on X: https://x.com/evilmartiansVictoria Melnikova on X: https://x.com/vmelnikova_enEvil Martians for devtools: https://evilmartians.com/devtools

Sam Lambert, CEO of PlanetScale and expert in distributed databases, shares insights on surviving major AWS outages with extreme fault tolerance. He discusses the explosive growth of Vitess, emphasizing that operational excellence is more vital than flashy marketing. Sam also highlights the importance of community and events, along with how successful DevTools founders leverage product intuition and branding. Plus, he reveals the real costs of building reliable databases and advises against premature scaling while celebrating PlanetScale's rapid evolution.

Zeno Rocha, founder and CEO of Resend, discusses his journey from Brazil to building an $18M email API company. He shares insights on the importance of brand in attracting customers and talent, advocating for a zero-ego hiring approach. Zeno emphasizes cutting scope to deliver high-quality products quickly and the value of seeking rejection to accelerate sales. He also highlights the strategic role of open source and the need for a proactive customer focus in a competitive market.

Jeff Huber, Co-founder and CEO of Chroma, shares insights from his decade in applied machine learning. He discusses how small, opinionated teams with low egos create the best developer tools, emphasizing that consensus stifles innovation. Jeff critiques the RAG approach, introduces the concept of context engineering, and outlines Chroma’s strategy of keeping their core open source while monetizing complementary services. He also highlights the importance of design, company culture, and the mission to democratize AI-powered services.

Sarah Wooders, CTO and co-founder of Letta AI, dives into the intriguing world of stateful AI agents. She compares current LLMs to forgetting characters in 'Memento,' emphasizing their lack of memory. Discussing the AI landscape, she suggests 2025 mirrors the early internet's potential. Wooders critiques the distinction between true agents and mere marketing hype, while also stressing the necessity for better standardization in AI protocols. Open-source tools, she argues, are vital for fostering genuine advancements in AI capabilities.

In a compelling discussion, Adam Frankl, a renowned author and partner at Alchemist Accelerator, shares why 2025 is an ideal year to launch a developer tool startup amid the chaos of AI-driven changes. He highlights that founders should focus on the problem rather than the product, emphasizing the importance of becoming an authority on specific challenges. Adam also advises utilizing social media strategically to build authority and engage with the developer community, while pointing out that enterprise clients are eager to invest in AI solutions.

Jason Bosco, CEO and co-founder of TypeSense, shares how he and his co-founder built a profitable search engine serving 10 billion searches monthly without taking VC funding. From Dollar Shave Club VP of Engineering to bootstrapped founder, Jason reveals the unconventional path to building sustainable developer tools.Key insights from this episode:"If it is hard for you as a founder to convince someone to pay you, it's never gonna get easier from there." Find what people are willing to pay for early - don't build first and monetize later."We're opinionated and we want search to work out of the box right from the get-go." TypeSense chose simplicity over configurability, targeting 80% of use cases with zero-config search versus Elasticsearch's thousands of parameters."We don't want the gamble on TypeSense the company to end up affecting TypeSense the product." Jason explains why they chose profitability over VC funding to build a multi-generational product without the pressure of 10x returns."Doing dev tools in closed source is like playing it on hard mode." Open source creates better feedback loops with developers, leading to faster product iteration and stronger community adoption.Links:- TypeSense: https://typesense.org/- TypeSense Cloud: https://cloud.typesense.org/- Jason Bosco on X: https://x.com/jasonbosco- Evil Martians on X: https://x.com/evilmartians- Victoria Melnikova on X: https://x.com/vmelnikova_enEvil Martians is the go-to agency for early-stage developer tools startups: https://evilmartians.com/devtools