Dev Propulsion Labs

José Valim, the creator of Elixir and founder of Dashbit, shares insights from his journey in developing a beloved programming language. He discusses how prioritizing personal curiosity over market trends led to genuine community engagement. Valim emphasizes decentralization in the Elixir ecosystem, enabling diverse innovation. He also highlights the importance of transparent marketing through clear trade-offs. Currently, he's focused on Tidewave, aiming to create intuitive AI tools that enhance web development experiences.

Adam Wenchel has been building AI infrastructure since before it was cool. As CEO and co-founder of Arthur AI, he's spent six years solving the "last mile problem" - getting AI from impressive demos to reliable production systems. In this conversation, we dive deep into why Adam open sources million-dollar tools, how his enterprise experience at Capital One shaped his approach to developer empathy, and his provocative prediction that we'll soon need fewer developers but better "code bot coaches."What we cover:- Why the gap between 90% demo accuracy and 99% production reliability is make-or-break for AI adoption- The strategic decision to open source Arthur Shield and Bench instead of keeping them proprietary- How working inside a 50,000-person company taught him to build better developer tools- Whether AI will eliminate junior developers (and why the answer isn't what you think)- The future of software development: from 50-person teams to 5 expert coaches- What makes the perfect developer tool (hint: simplicity + a sprinkle of cleverness)Adam's journey from acquiring a 5-person startup to Capital One to building Arthur offers rare insights into both enterprise AI deployment and the evolving landscape of developer productivity. If you're building AI tools, selling to enterprises, or wondering how to future-proof your development career, this conversation is packed with actionable wisdom.Links:- Website: https://www.arthur.ai/- GitHub: https://github.com/arthur-ai/arthur-engine- Adam Wenchel on X: https://x.com/apwenchel- Evil Martians on X: https://x.com/evilmartians- Victoria Melnikova on X: https://x.com/vmelnikova_en

In this episode of Dev Propulsion Labs, we sit down with Sam Bhagwat, the dev tools visionary who co-founded Gatsby and is now transforming AI development with Mastra - the TypeScript framework that's rapidly gaining adoption among serious AI developers.After selling Gatsby to Netlify, Sam identified a critical gap in AI tooling that was forcing developers to build complex infrastructure themselves. Now, his YC-backed framework is helping startups and enterprises build production-grade AI agents with far less overhead.You'll discover:- The pivotal moment Sam realized existing AI tools weren't solving the right problems- Strategic insights from his YC Winter 2025 experience that accelerated Mastra's growth- Why TypeScript-first is the right approach for building maintainable AI applications- The thoughtful licensing strategy that balances open-source principles with business sustainability- What current AI frameworks are missing and how Mastra addresses these limitationsFor founders and technical leaders building in the AI space, this conversation offers valuable perspective on navigating the rapidly evolving agent ecosystem while creating a sustainable developer tools business.Links:- Dev Propulsion Labs podcast: https://evilmartians.com/devpropulsionlabs- Try Mastra: npm create mastra@latest- Website: https://mastra.ai- GitHub: https://github.com/mastra-ai/mastra- Book: "Principles of Building AI Agents" on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Building-Agents-Sam-Bhagwat/dp/B0DYH5GHDD- Sam Bhagwat Twitter: https://twitter.com/calcsam- Victoria Melnikova Twitter: https://twitter.com/vmelnikova_enBest comment on YouTube will be rewarded with a free copy of Sam's book

Your dev tool needs to harness the power of community — whether you’re building your own or connecting to larger forums. The new episode of the Dev Propulsion Labs podcast is packed with Jono Bacon’s insights on building relationships with your audience: he has built over 300(!) open source communities, including GitHub and Ubuntu, and he still backs many of them on their continued path to sustainability as part of the Community Leadership Core accelerator.Evil Martians transform growth-stage startups into unicorns, build developer tools, and create open source products. The podcast is hosted by Irina Nazarova.

We’re blasting off the third season of our podcast with a new host, Irina Nazarova, CEO at Evil Martians, and a new guest—Alice Chen, CTO & Co-Founder at OpenContext, a platform that drives clarity of context across the organization. Prior to co-founding OpenContext in 2021, Alice rose up in the ranks of massive companies like HP and Informatica. In our conversation, we dug into her strategies to sell open source to enterprise giants—to help you accomplish your next big sell.Evil Martians transform growth-stage startups into unicorns, build developer tools, and create open source products.

David Heinemeier Hansson also known as DHH is the creator of Ruby on Rails, cofounder of Basecamp & HEY, best-selling author, Le Mans class-winning racing driver, antitrust advocate, investor in Danish startups, frequent podcast guest, and family man. Evil Martians transform growth-stage startups into unicorns, build developer tools, and create open source products. The podcast is hosted by Victoria Melnikova

This week's guest is Hahnbee Lee, Co-Founder at Mintlify. Prior to founding Mintlify, Hahnbee co-founded pe•ple and worked as a software engineer at Duolingo. The best developer companies (think Stripe, Twilio, MongoDB) have effective and user-centric documentation at their backbone. Mintlify helps any company achieve the documentation they need effortlessly, so that they can focus on building what they do best.Evil Martians transform growth-stage startups into unicorns, build developer tools, and create open source products. Podcast host is Victoria Melnikova

As the CTO of Builder.io, Miško Hevery directs the technological prowess behind the platform's innovative projects including Qwik, a web framework for building instant loading apps and sites. Prior to this, Miško played a pivotal role in Google, not only pioneering Angular and AngularJS but also co-creating Karma.Evil Martians transform growth-stage startups into unicorns, build developer tools, and create open source products.Host: Victoria Melnikova

Shanea Leven is CEO and co-founder of CodeSee. CodeSee is a developer platform that helps developers master understanding codebases. CodeSee's mission is to build software better.Evil Martians transform growth-stage startups into unicorns, build developer tools, and create open source products.Host: Victoria Melnikova

Ivar Østhus is the Co-founder and CTO at Unleash, an open-source feature management software for Enterprises. What started as a side gig in a basement in Norway, Ivar and his brother turned their SaaS into a full time business in early 2021. The tool allows teams to build features together, ship new features in small increments, and enables transparency within teams and stakeholders.TooltipsEvil Martians transform growth-stage startups into unicorns, build developer tools, and create open source products.https://evilmartians.com/