The Rise of Versel: Insights from Developer Advocate Stephen on Building Viral Products
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Introduction
In the fast-paced world of technology and startups, the journey of a Developer Advocate can be both fascinating and instructive. Today, we delve into the insights shared by Stephen, a notable Developer Advocate at Versel, a leading platform in web development. Stephen's narrative not only reflects his personal experiences but also unveils the underlying patterns that drive viral product success. In this article, we'll explore his journey from a budding developer to his endeavors at Versel, highlighting key strategies to create products that resonate with users.
Early Beginnings: From Data Science to Development
The Shift to Coding
Stephen’s journey began in earnest during the pandemic when he realized he needed to pivot his career. Coming from a data science background, he took it upon himself to learn coding. This transition was pivotal, allowing him to develop a new skill set that would serve as the foundation for his subsequent projects. He was inspired to build "One Word Domains," a platform aimed at offering single-word domain names, which ultimately won accolades like the Product Hunt Golden Kitty Award.
The Decision to Join Versel
While preparing to launch his startup, he received an unexpected offer from the founder of Versel, offering him a chance to join their team as a Developer Advocate. Stephen took the leap, recognizing the immense opportunity to grow professionally in a field he was passionate about. His experiences at Versel have since allowed him to merge his love for coding with user education.
Understanding Viral Products
The Characteristics of Viral Success
During his discussion, Stephen highlights that many successful tech products are deceptively simple to build. Here are some characteristics that contribute to their virality:
- Unique Sharing Features: Products that encourage users to share their experiences tend to gain momentum. For instance, the Emoji app developed by Stephen allows users to create and share customized emojis, which contributes to its virality.
- High Engagement Factor: Engaging users through customization—like generating unique pages for shared emojis—greatly enhances the likelihood of users promoting the product.
- Aesthetic UI/UX: A clean, intuitive, and attractive design draws users in, making them more likely to adopt and recommend the product.
Leveraging Trends and Timing
Stephen stresses the importance of staying attuned to trends, particularly in the fast-evolving tech world. For would-be founders, aligning a product with current market needs can lead to explosive growth. For example, in the current era, AI products are wildly popular, and capitalizing on this can yield significant returns for startups.
The Role of Community and Networking
Building Connections in the Tech Space
In discussing community, Stephen noted that building genuine relationships is crucial for growing a startup. At Versel, fostering an active community of developers is a priority. Regular meetups and events have helped the company establish a strong presence within the tech ecosystem.
- Casual Networking Events: Less formal meetups can open doors to collaborations and partnerships, making them essential for community building.
- Open Source Contributions: Stephen advocates for engaging in open-source projects to build credibility and connect with peers, leading to collaborative growth opportunities.
Developer Advocacy: A Multifaceted Role
Responsibilities as a Developer Advocate
As a Developer Advocate, Stephen wears many hats, which makes his role especially dynamic and exciting.
- Educational Content Creation: Writing tutorials and guides helps educate users on utilizing Versel’s technology effectively.
- User Engagement: Gathering user feedback and interacting with the developer community is vital to understanding their needs and enhancing product development.
- Marketing and Outreach: Promoting new features and tools via social media channels, particularly Twitter, where developers often congregate.
Final Thoughts: Shaping the Future
Embracing the Founder Spirit
As he reflects on his journey, Stephen expresses a deep desire to eventually pave his own path as a founder. He emphasizes the need for risk-taking in pursuing bold ideas and the importance of learning from failures along the way.
Advice for Aspiring Founders
- Just Ship It: One of the paramount pieces of advice he shares is to take action. Many aspiring entrepreneurs hesitate due to self-doubt or the fear of failure. Stephen encourages them to build and launch, regardless of the market landscape.
- Find Your Niche: He emphasizes understanding both B2B and B2C markets and finding a product-market fit that resonates with target users.
- Stay Authentic: Keeping one's voice genuine and engaging with users on platforms where they spend time creates a loyal community.
Conclusion
Stephen’s insights offer a compelling glimpse into the world of tech startups, the importance of community, and the evolving role of a Developer Advocate. His journey encourages aspiring founders to embrace their path boldly and leverage their unique qualities to foster impactful products that resonate with users. As we continue to witness significant shifts in technology, the narratives shared by leaders like Stephen are invaluable to those seeking to navigate the complexities of entrepreneurship in the digital age.
It's a combination of the words versatile accelerate and Excel it feels like a lot of the things you're You're
that are seemingly simple to build engineering wise but has a huge fire Factor what was it about Geo that made
you want to work kind of with him it sounds impossible to for someone to know everything but the way he talks it seems
like he knows everything so it's like very very knowledgeable guy incor engineer and now a Founder as well have
you ever considered going like the founder route I considered myself a Founder at hard and it's something that
I definitely want to do uh if I were to leave verel it wouldn't be D joying another company there's a lot of risk in
that obviously but I'm I'm excited and looking forward to taking that risk wait was that it no best advice best advice
came he's right though no one has gotten through it that fast you're the first person that actually like did the
starting to say this every time but this is one of our most requested episode since the last most requested episode no
way so we're on the up I'm so excited to be here I've I've heard a lot of good things watch a bunch of episodes we said
your name a bunch of times in the last episode the second last episode this is that's the secret you ever read the
secret no you know what I said I don't know it's just like if you manifest something it'll come true right so you
just keep saying it and then it disappears yeah like I when I get my Equator Coffee they're like you know
what's your name for the Steven T right so I'm going just keep doing it every time I order food it's manifesting it
but he's here now why do you got to keep doing it huh he's here now cuz I get paid every time I say it you P oh he
doesn't know it's a it's a commission based right it's a commission based it's commission exactly so do you want to
give an introduction about yourself for people that might not know sure yeah uh my name is Stephen I am a developer
Advocate at vers build templates write guides educate people on how to use ral's Technologies like nextjs the SDK
yada yada yada and yeah through that I've um before veral I actually was about to start my own company and I
write about when I was about to sign the safe note um the founder of Ral GM marage actually reached out and he was
like what you join us instead uh and and start a career here learn more about Open Source about B2B sales uh and at
the time I was a huge fan of Rell and I didn't have as much conviction as I wanted in my the the company I was
starting so I said yes and the rest is history W how long ago was that that was two years plus now was July of 2021
versel hasn't been around for that long though they actually have it's funny G actually just celebrated his eighty year
vsel anniversary can you imagine that you can go a little bit back from July of 2021 so I was uh basically building
this company it was more of a site project at the time it was called one word domains it's like this platform for
it was back then you were building it but that just recently reached uh or just recently launched like in the last
year I did a relaunch gota so it I launched a way back when I was in college at the time it was like in the
middle of the pandemic May of 2020 I was like I need to learn how to code because I came from data science background and
I was like I can't just be writing Jupiter notebooks all day long I need to like build something that people can use
so domains was sort of like the way I learned how the code I literally built that in flask HTML CSS none of the fancy
web Frameworks nowadays um and through that experience I learn how to code learn how to listen to users add more
features uh actually won like prod product hunt golden Kitty award at one point which is really cool uh but from
that I actually so I was thinking of turning that into a venture back startup and uh add more features and think about
like how I can raise money and and and uh build a team uh so so forth uh and through that actually reached out to
versel I was like I dm'd no actually didn't DM I sent a code email to Partnerships at versel I was like why
don't we partner up you guys have a domains product I'm building domains product so I can offer you guys you know
like API or something they did not respond and then about a week later I I sent an another email directly to Yo and
that's when he responded he was like we're not focusing on Mains but we love to get to know you H and your company
and that's how how we got to know each other that was about how be before like the um July of 2021 interesting and at
that point what was versel up to kind of how were they still like legit were they already legit yeah they were pretty big
they were uh focused a lot on like frontend development and deployment and and they didn't have any like AI
features back then it was more focused on like helping the developer have the most seamless deployment experience and
I tried out the product huge fan right away uh back then I was still using Hoku sort of bought into the versal drug at
the time and it was it was fantastic yeah what do you think it was that made versel beat out Heroku cuz I also
remember when I first started kind of learning well the first thing I ever tried building was a social app like
every other person it feels like and so when I was trying to build the web component everyone was like oh you have
to use Heroku yeah it's I think there's a lot of factors I think the the main thing that sort of made it stood out was
the focus and developer experience being able to push a change to get which is something that a lot of developers are
already familiar with and have that change be deployed instantaneously to globally to the web that was something
that back in the day like it was unheard of and weel sort of pioneered that now it's like everyone's already doing it
but but back in the day it was like really a v factor and from that like we added a lot of more uh intuitive
features and also focus a lot on great design and that's something that really made it stood up the name is so much
better it was a different it was a different name back it was okay it was like that's why okay was yeah it was
Zite zei t in it was German for time Z knockof how how they land over cell it's so clean I know the story actually I
mean I wasn't part of it at the time I had no idea but I read about it it's basically they partnered with a like an
branding agency that named companies like Sonos like all these big that's a good one Big Brand son is a great one
it's a good one yeah it's like this guy who sits by the river and like gets ideas for names to his head I don't know
I heard this from I heard this around the G find so might not and charge CP ton of money so uh but
it was a great name like he came out with that like they basically came out with the name for us it's a combination
of the words uh versatile accelerate and Excel damn so uh three words combined good man vers pretty good that's pretty
good was pretty good yeah that was yeah it was a good time um but um yeah so that's basically how how um how I got to
ver what was it about guo that made you want to work kind of with with him I know a lot of the time especially when
you're going from like you want to be a founder and then someone tries to convince you to join their company which
is the same boat we were in about a year a little over a year ago it really comes down to I think at least for us it was
like oh I want to work with fan um what was it about Geo for you I think there's a lot of similarities to Fan because
funny thing I actually got to know fan a little while after I joined verel like half a year so I did see the Charisma
and like how smart he is and just like the way he cares himself similar with GMO like the first time I met him in
person was him and his wife actually at uh Lafayette Park we were getting like Bob's donuts and we were just talking
Bob's Donuts that good that's what I was telling about best donut man it's best donuts in bro there a meet and greet
spot at this point anytime you go there between like 12:00 a.m. and 2: a.m. you'll run into someone you know there's
like five seed deals happening it's crazy um but yeah it's a fantastic Place La Park highly recommend
but that's where I first met them um and even before that the way like I met with GMO over Zoom a couple of times and just
the way he cares himself and it sounds impossible to for someone to know everything but the way he talks it seems
like he knows everything so it's like very very knowledgeable guy incredibly incredible engineer and now a Founder as
well so that sort of Drew me in being a technical founder uh something that wasn't before I built Oneal more domains
yeah um it was something that was very appealing to me and I really wanted to get better as an engineer really wanted
to get better at fundraising starting a company hiring and managing people uh and that that really drew me in there do
you think those qualities can taught like the kind of that the energy aspect even with Fran right it's like oh you
just feel like the passion in it I do think can be taught like it's like there's this obviously debate of nature
versus nurture right some people are bound Born to Be Founders some are not but I disagree to to an extent like you
got to put yourself out there you got to be uncomfortable and just like like sometimes like even me being here today
I'm not saying it's uncomfortable but like in my comfort zone I just want to like sit at home like code right but
being out there just by putting yourself in a lot of different potentially um opportunistic scenarios it really gives
you the opportunity to grow uh and learn from it even if you fail even if it's embarrassing so it feels like a lot of
the things you're You're Building kind of have seemed to they seem to blow up now the Emoji app recently first time I
saw it this is uh two days ago now and now it has like what something like 17 million like requests or something crazy
like that why is it that you why is it that you think most of these companies that you seem to share online all end up
blowing up I wouldn't say all there's a lot of try and error but I do through all this like failures or like stuff I
didn't do well in the past I've noticed a pattern um it's hard for me to put to words but I can try but there's a
pattern amongst things that are seemingly simple to build engineering wise but has a a huge viral Factor
things that people would really want to share and talk about and one thing I could give a concrete um example of this
emoji app right and not just the Emoji app itself but the fact that people can share the emojis that it create and each
of those emojis has its own unique page and they also have unique um OG images which is like the display image that you
see on Twitter which is something that we we are very proud of at verel because like it's funny there's this meme there
like verel it's like this you know that organization chart it's like verell and then OG Mage engineering is like the
rest of the company because we put a lot of effort and thought into like creating the best OG images but that's that
contributes a lot to how successful a product or how viral you could potentially get and like the Emoji yeah
leap leap the OG image is like if I send you a message on iMessage you know how there's a link on iMessage there's like
a picture that shows up that's the OG image exactly oh really exactly that's a thumbnail image that pops up and um you
can actually customize that using using xjs did you guys see that thing on Twitter where it's like it basically
turn a photo of you into like a a middle school basketball picture of course that's the one thing that you've seen
about they're making 250k a day holy crap yeah that's all it does like and people are just doing it and then
reposting the picture damn right it's like it's eii wave man this is insane 250k a day like dollars yeah wow I
thought requests you to confirm the currency yeah rupes that's wild I've heard a lot of
Founders get success by literally just like connecting apis and and building a nice front end and you can actually make
a ton of money just by doing a good job at marketing and doing a good job at presenting the end product even though
you don't have like a machine learning PhD I have a template right the template works I use the shth template by the way
to build uh to build basically a way to let you talk to Andrew huberman right and so that theoretically if I go just
put a pay wall on it what's your all your fascination with just talking to Andrew huberman have you ever watched
any of his podcast this is why you guys want to be billionaire Founders so you can speak to someone just built like one
of the first AI apps I saw this year was an app that I think is trained on Andrew huberman's podcast and that blew up
because at the time like no one knew how to like do like vector database and like you know connect all these things
together and it blew up so I don't know what what's the fascination with that but it's interesting but now let's just
say for the examp for the sake of this example I have a chat up that lets me talk to Andrew hubman how do I go and
make that blow up like let's say there are little things like the OG image I could make it so that I could share a
conversation let's say I ask him how do I get over insomnia when I send the link to you it'll like seed it with my entire
conversation with him and the image is like how to get over your insomnia and it's like an andrewman picture exactly
yes okay and that's a good way the next step is probably not do it on inor because it's a very small Market um I
mean relatively big from from from a niche perspective but like for example emoji app everyone related to that
someone's building I think Jordan singer uh he was a diagram guy he's building um he's
building an IOS app for that now and it's like it's something that people can relate because emojis have been in
existence and like literally how people communicate in in this day and age so it's you got to find something that
people can relate to Andrew human a small portion of people okay let's take someone that everyone knows then um
that let you talk to Taylor mhm there's the little image thing where I could have a conversation with her and share
it with fishall so he can see a whole conversation and start a new chat right there y so now the app works how do I go
about getting my users Tik Tok Instagram Tik Tok I not I I'm not the best at Tik Tok marketing to be honest I not done
much of it but people have found success like if you do a really good real or or Tik Tok and it blows up what goes into
the real is it me with the green screen effect like talking about my conversation or what it's like those
actually those actually do well czy someone made a viral video about them like showing their like chat G they were
showing their laptop screen with their phone was it I think so the loom founder literally commented on it and he was
like can I how do I get you to use Loom I saw that the guy replied he was like I love loom but these are the videos that
go more viral if you actually record it with your phone it'll go more viral screen reason for that technical it's
the algorithm people are desensitized to seeing screen recordings now really yeah it feels too artificially like
manufacturer people don't want to get sold they just want to see cool stuff like people say how to Market your gen Z
nowadays is not by you know you're using all these professionally produced marketing posters instead you should be
doing something very like authentic and very seems casual but there's like a Buri message in it I saw this finance
app like back in I think earlier this year that blew up because the founder made videos of um how j z spends money
how billonaire spends money how and Mone no it's I think it's called um oops oops. app anyways it blew up a
Tik Tok that's a really cool case study actually you blew up on Tik Tok because the founder made these videos never
mentioned the app at all and people were like wow this app looks awesome so people are like wow this app looks
awesome oh my God look at the number and then they would be like oh you know it's look look at the number look at the
number show them wow that's crazy yeah 1889 million total dollars oops in the US 2000 this marketing is the way they
Market it is really smart honestly this is a clean landing page too super clean right yeah they don't go into like the
three boxes or like how it works it's l just a screenshot of the app and like minimalist landing pages is that the
better way to do this now under produced is better for Consumer but it still needs to look sharp yeah like it
shouldn't look like the design shouldn't be like mobile phone recording that's funny you mentioned that because GMO
just tweeted out today about how less is better and compared both yaho and Google's landing page oh so Google is
literally Google yeah that's that's a that's a a very good it's very good example for that isn't vsel making a new
website right now oh yeah we teased it out not too long ago but it's going to be a new website I I wouldn't say it's
much that much simpler or like it's just a different vibe and more professional I would say so clean develop you ship do
you know what any of those mean what yes ship yes hell yeah sh shipping it's Fleet Week those are planes
huh plane week no but um that's a it's a very like it's a very Bittersweet moment because
develop preview ship has been in our DNA like maral's DNA for the longest time and now we're moving away do something a
bit more Broad and appeals to a much larger audience and I think it's required for us to get to the next level
but it's definitely you know like parting with your I don't know first car I I told him my first car you totaled
your first car yeah you did wow I just hit somebody something someone something something it was like but the problem
was it was like a steel Dodge like truck like a old one that was something or that was made of steel no no no so I I'm
in a Civic so my Civic crumples that thing doesn't even have a dent like I just sold my first car you did what was
it not too long ago huh what was it it was a it was a 2018 Porsche Maan not not nothing fancy but I it it was a very
nice car okay um sell it because I moved to SF I was in Dallas you just moved to SF like recently it's a long story but I
used to live here moved to Dallas not too long ago okay and now I'm back wow why did you why' you move to Dallas in
the first place my girlfriend partner has a job had a job that was in person that required us to move so we moved
together we both got sort of tired of Texas not having enough like nature stuff or you know beaches or hikes and
also not not a big Tech Community so we're not now we're back here yeah Dallas is tough Austin's a little better
for that still not great exactly remember like we we walked outside for a walk and it was like the we were like on
the side of a freeway I remember yeah like 90° and we were like yeah this isn't the same we were like all right
we're just going to go to a gas station and then we were like walking for a good 30 minutes just to get to the G we were
like on an on-ramp at one point I was like that's the exact experience that we had I was like Hey Google Maps bro like
you don't want to tell me it's an on he he put the car Direction instead of the walking direction so I thought he was a
car it's like a it's always like a five minute drive yeah 2hour walk it's like God damn it's just like a little free
you everywhere that's why I'm always bullish on the SF thing cuz I was like bro you're not going to like go to
Dallas Austin Miami even New York like it's not it's not going to be the same as this 100% 100% New York too yeah like
like New York I mean New York is a different vibe it's great too the vibe like I'm saying like if you want this
Vibe and you like this and you're like oh the vibe is just tech people it's not just like tech people the city has a
very distinct Vibe oh yeah 100% saying you can't find any that also depends on what you work in and like what your job
sure sure like what's your day in the life look like ooh a lot of huh you wake up you cold shower you
meditate none of that no no no he cold showers wakes up and then meditates think no no no I meditate cold
shower and I wake up oh [ __ ] you went up how did you want up me that's crazy sleep is meditation yeah but how do you
answers to no but it's it's a very I don't know like people always say that this like cold showers and meditation
like I it's funny I don't do any of that to be honest um it's a I have a very mundane I would say like day-to-day
routine I just wake up just wake up get to my laptop eat some breakfast and uh haven't been going to the gym enough
recently I'm trying to get back to it but usually I would go to the gym uh and then work and then you know um spend
some time in the evening my girlfriend that's pretty much it what is is your is your like dayto day are you in like a
lot of meetings not as much as I used to um I used to do a lot of meetings back then but now this quarter espe we're
focusing more on um guides and written tutorials and like templates so not as much meetings as I used to do but still
a sizable amount so your job like title officially is like you're like a developer Advocate yeah so what does
that entail like what are your responsibilities that's a good question it's quite a broad spectrum um I do
everything from making guides and templates and tutorials to meeting with um potential customers potential
technology Partners all the way to like dealing with uh user requests and user feedback on on social media or on GitHub
discussions and that kind of stuff so it's a bit of everything uh which is what I like because I'm I'm sort of a
Restless founder at heart and like I I I like just being able to have yeah a hand in everything a lot of it sounds like
like customer success too and just just like client manag it's a big thing yeah customer success is like at the root of
our DNA um verel especially because there's we obsess over the customer experience and make sure that everything
is going well so that's a big thing my favorite part of versell is like the product design team and like it it seems
interesting how you guys managed to get almost every single design person on Twitter to work at verel like you have
Rono you have Paco Emily I think we used to have pacco oh Paco a linear now no way yeah he's he's do fantastic things
there though he he was he was one of the best um but yeah we do have a bunch of really amazing
design Engineers that's what we call them folks who are well vers at design but are also fantastic Engineers oh
they're Engineers yeah like for example Shaden you probably heard of it of course we were that's half of the Dylan
episode was talking about Shaden that's awesome yeah he basically he's a fantastic at both having a design sense
and also building out design systems engineering it and and making sure everything works well so there's a lot
of these folks that are veral and and those are like yeah I'm I'm I'm a huge fan of those people too what's is the
events they do too right in terms of like building that Community cuz like a lot of a lot of guys in your stage
they'll stick to online and build that community and they won't spend a lot on events what was the last event called it
was ship Rell ship yeah yeah I think that was that was also we had an iners component to it but in the past we've
always stuck it online I think it was not until last year that we did our first inperson hybrid what was the
reason for like the switch I think it's more like Enterprise pipeline want to generate more of those and it's better
to build those relationships in person yeah okay uh and as we we scale and we focus more on Enterprise um I think
that's sort of the direction we're going into but it's really funny literally today my team like team meeting with
rest of dev's everell um lero who is like the head of their he actually shared this image about uh the uh what's
it called like the there was a survey that was done on a bunch of developers as well as a bunch of Dev leaders at
different companies yeah and turns out developers don't care as much about inperson conferences as much as they do
about documentation or tutorials or even answers on stack Overflow so there's definitely a balance that has to be
struck between doing iners conferences especially when you're a smaller company that makes sense I feel like a lot of
the let's take Abe for example he doesn't strike me as the guy who would like go run around to conferences he's
just like yeah building I think but and then so the accelerator comes into play there I do think
was interesting I feel like everyone I talked to Fel like said it was really it was awesome they got a lot of credits
but it was mostly just a marketing thing more so than like versel try to build an accelerator yeah so the versal
accelerator was more of a like an investor connecting investors with uh AI Founders and we've heard a lot of good
reviews from those Founders about like so many investors reaching out to them and like quality investors as well uh
that they they did really well but I really want to go back to the point about uh iners conferences and how much
sometimes like this is becoming like a distraction in in a bit so like it's important to be shipping like the funny
thing is when I was in Dallas the fact that I wasn't a big Tech Community gave me the time and ability to focus on give
yourself permission to stay at home exactly I was just shipping all day and it was like it was great for like being
able to to ship stuff on Twitter um but obviously like being in person is different and and this this event right
here proves that like you have a much stronger connection with people in person when did you you learn to code
again so I I did I was I came from a data science background but when it comes to V def that was like in 2020 so
not too long ago damn that's not long ago at all yeah when you started do you feel like you were more so inclined to
go to these conferences no really I I have no idea though you just don't like people but but I don't think that's a
him problem I think that's more like how these conferences like you said like you go to a conference you're not shipping
like what's the point what's the opportunity cost yeah so I feel like what what does the ideal like actual fun
conference that you want to go to look like we hosted a thing um almost a month ago now I called it after hours I just
got all my friends together at the office and we locked them in from like 7:00 p.m. to like 12:00 a.m. God and so
everyone brought their laptops and so the idea was like you can come and we'll all work and we'll hang out order pizza
B whatever I love that something less something less programmed something more casual and like that's that works better
with developers people worked for like the first 2 hours and then for the last like four we we all just hanging out
like playing Smash Bros or whatever D that sounds amazing there was this there was this event uh I think it was by
Thomas Schult the Newton guy we were just talking about yeah yeah yeah the Newton house that that's that was really
great I was he actually invited me I was I was playing to go but then my sister my sister came into town so I I was I
wasn't able to make it but that sound awesome and that that's sort of like I think what you guys have here to the
sort of combination of um something a bit the combination of casual and also doing really smart things um
that's that's a good balance cuz I see all these people in New York posting like late night coffee shops yeah and
like kind of the vibe the worst part about SF is everything closes at 8:00 p.m. I was about to say like like the
thing like it's probably way more in demand here than other cities that's why I go to
Dela wow shout out Bob snuts opens 24/7 I think you're going to hack in there there's no tables bro that's CRA you
yeah ER you got to put a picture of zho shout out zho no idea what's that it's a company called z Oh Z
yeah he just he like stands around our office with his laptop against his stomach and like looks down in codes
like this oh my God that's how he does it that's what you do in Bob's Donuts right space
posture but like going back like the events thing too like Roi right CU you're talking about Enterprise and like
doing these kind of you about to sell you on an event aware in this place I it's not even necessarily selling you on
event I'm just curious like how companies like yours evaluate that versus a much smaller company that isn't
making let's say as much revenue with Enterprise clients that's the I think that's that's the good that's a million
dollar question if you're a smaller company I'm not sure if events like large scale events would be the thing
but you could potentially do smaller less formal meetups of 20 to 40 folks that you think could be a good fit for a
pipeline obviously if you're a B2B sass right from the start you got to start making pipeline you got to start working
with our customers and that's how like uh folks like Jared Palmer who joined Rell um about two like a year and a half
ago I don't remember but he was also he had like 20 plus Enterprise customers already for for literally the product
turbo I think it was called turbo repo at the time yeah um and that's that's like it's important to be able to build
those relationships and conferences might not be necessary for that you could do small events you could even do
it online async yeah um what's important it's the brand and like how you represent like if you're already well
known you have a good audience that's a big thing too so I feel like the highest Ro I think is for me at least a year ago
where like the 10 to 15 to 20 person Meetup cers like we did Cory's rooftop a year ago so you'd meet like a few people
you had time to connect with exactly was Curry ly yeah nice so like love meetups yeah the cool thing with with those
meetups in general is just like you know the caliber of people is really high and you know you know that there are few
enough people to where everyone gives each other time to have a conversation and so those are the people you actually
end up having the chance to work with later or like you could ask them like you could you know send investor to them
or get an intro from them or like actually like actually become friends whereas at conferences when there's like
a thousand people and everything's moving super fast the ROI is kind of low unless you're one of these companies
looking for something or selling something yeah 100% it's better to do a a smaller event with higher Cali people
than just like blow out if you had to if you had to host an event then a 15 person event who's on the list
specifically for let's just say like developer web devs damn putting me on a spot here I don't know um obviously k
else can work at verell who else are you going to invite you don't have to the whole list but yeah there a lot of
awesome like is does it have to be SF specific or just let's host NSF this is going to be a real thing in like a month
I'm telling you I just literally the funny thing is I know them but their screen name but like I I know their
picture I know their screen name but I don't know their actual name it's the weird thing it's like the most crypto
that's the most gamer thing ever you don't know their name you just know what their like icon is exactly oh my God
that's like when Uber didn't know he was playing with the son of like one of the Lakers owners oh yeah right wait what's
the you should tell the story well it's it's a Kurt ramus's kid do you know who Kurt rambus is okay are you a sports guy
at all not so much okay but Uber so be runs our investments here but he's a huge gamer nice but he's got like all
these people in his Network that he just games with they're like super famous and like well connected people that he's
just oblivious to because all they do is like play games and like you know just just kind of hang out with each other
like they don't really talk about like the business stuff and it's like he's like mentions like oh yeah I know Kurt
ramus's son we're like what you mean you know kurtt Rim is this who's like the GM of the Lakers like a legend Hall of fam
or whatever and then he was like he's like oh he always takes pictures at the Lakers on the Lakers court that makes
sense I was like you never wanted to ask you're a Laker fan or yeah oh my God it's crazy I also think there should be
less well no I I I think that one of the coolest types of events is where you bring together people that are all
somewhat related in the same industry but it has like the event has nothing to do with industry M so one of the things
we've been talking about is there's a movie theater in Fort Mason it cost $10,000 to rent it out and it's a 400
person movie theater with a really big Lobby wow I want to host a movie night for all of SF like all of people in Tech
nice we'll make the tickets free we'll pay for it ourselves but like we should just do a marathon of like Dune and
Interstellar and like 2001 oh my God yes yes I will like literally sign up the me are you going to co-host it with me you
don't got to do anything you just got tweet what's the movie what the movie you would those three movies are
fantastic all right do you Stellar give us like sleeper SciFi one sleeper I have one I have one that everybody needs to
watch if they haven't watched it Inception it's not in so sleeper you get what I'm saying something a little low
like less well known but underrated yeah huh cuz I got a good one her what is it exmachina oh the new one or the old one
the old one oh my God it's fantastic that's so good oh sorry I'll s you a Blade Runner okay sorry is but but blad
run is a good one cuz I feel like a lot of younger people haven't seen the original yeah like
fantastic awesome uh wow I got I should have came prepared for this but there are there are so many like I used to
watch I I'm a huge fan of hen Zimmer I mean hmer is more of he's he's the one who makes the the music in in the films
but why you like Inception David Fincher films are your Fincher guy okay yeah soci it's a bunch of sci-fi movies and
then the Joker because we're an SF I think social network works oh we was Joker no I just like the Joker oh okay
okay just a good movie that's half Gotham the social network is a great one right all right yeah this is happening
by the way end of the month we're going to do it you down yeah actually actually I'm super down yeah we're going to this
I sent you the quote it's not he actually it's not too much oh my God that's that's great maybe a little you
know little versel sponsorship there is this going to be the first versel I in K wait where is it going to be which
theater is it this right here across the street there's a theater on the water it's like up to it seats nearly 500 it's
a really nice theater like red seats everything damn okay I I'll definitely be interested I mean personally I can't
speak with verel but yeah it's you and me don't it don't got to be verel heck yeah but you should bring as long as you
tweet about it it works you just got to tweet about it I'm Happ to and then we're also going to show the AI
want context on what this AI girlfriend video is well of course so um me and Stephen's Mentor a dill pickle yes made
a legendary video called how I made an AI girlfriend I don't know if it's called that but one of the greatest
YouTube videos of all time yeah if not the greatest YouTube video of all time so there's YouTube Rewind 2018 and then
there's there going to be why was that one so good I was it the one with like uh the guy looking through the like U do
you know what I'm talking about like oh it's rewind time no dude guys come on I feel old now I know what you're talking
I just don't know if that's the one actually that one might have even been after oh
probably that one after which was the one that uh Will Smith opened oh that one sucked no offense will big fan big
fan that's a slap to the face I haven't watched YouTube rewinds in so long I feel like YouTube Rewind was hot during
like the Logan Paul era they stopped doing it cuz they made the last one really bad and they got so much hate
they just stopped doing that is true they stopped right that's terrible man will YouTube ever do rewind again that's
what you get if you Google YouTube rewind I know someone did did Mr Beast do a a YouTube rewind on on behalf of
YouTube Rewind people do their own now yeah yeah the want I think it was Mr Beast or Ryan he I don't remember would
you guys ever do like a like a master YouTube video of everything that's been shipped on verel I think that's what we
did for ship Oh you mean like everything that's been ship in history imagine like a full like it's it's like 20 minutes
and it's like just a quick no actually even what would even be cooler is you know that like you can buy a pixel on a
website yeah D that did a long time ago you just build like a mega website just a big canvas of all the coolest projects
resel has ever shipped oh wow that's a lot of Legacy ones that don't even exist anymore but it could be a good like time
machine yeah so now now you've been at versel for like the last 2ish years how long do you see yourself being at versel
it feels like you know you've built dub. sh you build one word domains a bunch of other projects it feels like most of
your projects end up going viral have you ever considered going like the founder route that's definitely always
been at my heart like I I I consider myself a Founder at heart and it's something that I definitely want to do
uh if I were to leave versel it wouldn't be to join another company or to join like I don't know big tag or Fang it
would be just our company and I think there's a lot of risk in that obviously but I'm I'm excited and looking forward
to taking that risk and obviously a lot of the projects I've launched so far I the reason I Haven been sort of like
acted on them was because they were all I consider them them to be like lifestyle businesses stuff that you can
definitely get to like a million dollars a year or even a million dollars a month but not something that's Venture back
scale like for example dub it's a open source bitly alternative for those who don't have contacts and it's it's been
doing fantastic like Mr has been going up uh there are a lot of customers using it uh but at the end of the day it's
something that I think unless if I go more into like the affiliate tracking uh business that could potentially turn it
into a billion dollar company but if it's keeping itself as it is a link management tool I'm not sure if it's
Venture backal but on the contrary I've heard that folks like bit.ly uh obviously they've been in market for 10
plus years they're the market leader they're making bank they're making like nine figures which is insane making nine
figures yeah fitly yeah it's insane um so there's definitely there's definitely a lot of money to be made but I I'm not
sure if that's something that's like my life's calling that I want to be building for the next 10 years would you
see yourself building something that's more like very technical or more kind of simple with a very heavy distribution
arm that's a question I ask myself every single day because both have obvious benefits like
B2B SAS products that are highly technical you can get to million AR or 10 million or more uh fairly quickly and
and without Luck playing a huge Factor whereas with b2c apps like you got to know the strategy you got to also have
like be lucky enough to get to that um I guess escape velocity and that's what they call it so uh but at the same time
I I'm a huge like I feel like I'm also b2c at heart like I love building stuff that my mom can talk about to their
friends or like my my sister oh man that guy's a freaking Legend yeah the stuff you've spelled
like but it's funny because he's done twice and sold it yeah one to Discord and one to I think Facebook gas and do
we know the numbers are those public nobody knows do you know the I don't think so I think it's private yeah going
back to the question B2B versus b2c honestly for for myself it's up for grabs I think it really comes down to
what the Zeitgeist is I recently found out about this term called founder Zeitgeist fit or product Z fit to be to
be precise it's it's coined by a16z and it's basically talking about how you should be building products that fit the
Zeitgeist for example right now you definitely should be building something in AI if you want to even if it's just a
rapper on gbt you you will learn a lot get a lot of traction um and the the startup has a higher higher chance of
being successful then if you were to build something that's less like for example like dub you know dub is great
but like I don't know if it's something that people can get excited about every single day and talk about it so it's
harder for you to get traction and momentum in the beginning um but if you're building something AI obviously
people are going to talk about it but how do you look at that versus like something like notion slack and it's
like if you told like you know notion hey you should be building in web 3 and crypto or like you know slack when they
were coming up it's like well that's not part of the cultural relevance I don't know I don't know if there's a better
way of phrasing that but yeah I think there's also obviously um there are I I wouldn't say this is like a
silver bullet like products that get fed but there are stuff it's something that you should be considering when you're
building a company so like there so the concept of build shovels not uh whatever like when during a gold rush us be buing
shovels people building vory databases right now are making Banks and like you're blowing up everywhere uh
obviously there's going to be competition during these times but it's definitely a great time to be building
in that space um but yeah or maybe something like it'll have a deeper integration long term with AI I don't
know yeah I like What's um it's it's people have called it um uh a little black muray but like stuff that uh for
example avi's building tab what is it yeah what did were you there when he did it wasn't that was the was the event
yeah there was the event at at Newton I I was oh yeah that's what yeah that's that's something really
interesting though I'm like a huge fan of it because it's like it's something like it's literally from the movie Her
he loves that movie remember I think everyone everyone's a huge fan of movie and like being able to build something
but the thing is like it's hard because of latency right now I think that's something that rale is also trying to
help with is like how do you make those responses instantaneous like when I'm talking to my AI I don't I don't want to
be waiting for like in his demo no offense to him it was fantastic but there was you can notice a latency
between when you speak to the AI and when it responses so if being able to build something that's offline first you
don't need an internet and it responds right away basically Siri but like 10 times better in terms of like um the the
speech processing like every time it say Siri he does not recognize me yeah bro Siri's so for for for the scale of like
what Apple can do Siri's like the worst thing they've ever done I know I don't use it at all you you it you don't like
VI K series start a workout and it's like hi I just booked you an Uber I'm like bro this not what I want you you
get that far for me it's just like uh sorry when you use I've never seen you use Siri yeah cuz it's so bad okay like
I would try to use it I would try to use Siri and it would just say like it'll take me a minute sorry it's taking me a
minute like it's loading it just doesn't work but voice is still I remember like this was like five six years ago but
everyone was like this Amazon Alexa thing is everything I know but it's not has it has it actually penetrated in the
way that it was kind of hyped to be it's mainly people use it to turn off lightsy Google turn off the lights cuz what I
mean what they wanted you to do was essentially be like you're just sitting on your couch and you're like order
peanut butter exactly there's too much Nuance right like I care about the specific peanut butter I care about the
specific Pizza yeah I do I think it's AI just like figure out your be a you probably can store your preferences and
like do stuff like rag which is like retrieval augment generation it was a really cool app that was built last year
and it was like you could text Amazon it wasn't by Amazon but this guy basically built a bot where it was kind of it was
AI so you could say like get me peanut butter and it'll just show you like a specific like it'll show you like the
icon and like how much it costs you could say no like get XYZ instead or you could just say yes and it would buy it
for you CU it has everything on the back end of your credit card your address everything yeah that's pretty cool I
don't want to be building just a just an AI application just for the sake of it but uh I want to be building something
or or I encourage people to be building something that's deeply engraining our lives like stuff like you know like the
comes to um interacting with thei and being able to create something that feels like a like a life companion
instead of just something that leaves in a like a Chrome extension too weird though like let's say I mean you have a
partner right it's like at what point is this if if it is that realistic as a tab like at what point is that going to be
like a an issue in your own relationship both it's more of like a yeah that's a good question I think it's also a way
for people to I don't know it could be something that shared between partners like people can use it together uh it's
like an assistant cuz I'm going be nervous bro if that tab remembers everything she tells it I'm going to be
really nervous your life is over like I'm going to be really like there are definitely a lot of like um privacy and
like right Black Mirror concerns cuz the tab thing isn't thinking about football so that's true you like how's how's it
yeah you know what's interesting we were watching up in the air last night and I was like it was it was shot in like what
like I was young at that point right right but so there's something about that time that just feels so nostalgic
like there are even Instagram pages that are popping up that are going viral of just like Nostalgia pages I don't know
feel like now we're going too far into Tech I say this while working in an fund I was in high school during that point
yeah of like that transition but all I remember is the economy collapsed that was when a lot of large companies
got uh created though like Airbnb and like it all kind of stemmed from like that that recession period right and
then they all you know exactly came up yeah people say that recessions are our best time to build companies do you see
this as the same thing are we only time canel if you're like aren't we in a venture VC from like a preced standpoint
aren't there less preed checks I saw this thing earlier today it's like the precede chart versus like how many how
many Investments and then how much money they're getting and then it just like dropped yeah right like this year's like
super down yeah yeah czy the people who know what they're doing are still going to get money regardless fair enough
right now if you don't know what you're doing it's a good time to work at a startup and figure out what you like
learn how to do the things you need to do to build a startup you think hiring will come back in Tech or is it has it
come back I don't I don't know anything about big Tech hiring is tough like you guys are still hiring I we are we are
hiring but it's also a long process I don't know it's kind of interesting cuz I feel like Tech has there are uh an AB
an abundance of candidates for Tech but not every like it's kind of inversed between Tech and the rest of the
industries like my my partner is in finance and it's really hard to find like job listings because a lot of large
companies are like actually closing down and like cutting down and hiring but then with tech it's actually harder I
feel like it's my personal experience but it's it feels harder to find quality candidates at this time at least really
is is that like engineer versus like a you know developer like a deell is that is I think it's like technical in
general like just engineers and support and like cuz they saybe it's just my experience but now it's more it's more
important than ever to actually have a personal brand related to what you do for work like oh yeah the design
Engineers who have Twitter presences are not going to struggle to find work the guys who have a brand of being like the
best frontend Engineers are always going to be someone who wants to hire them do you think that's it's the same case for
like a full-time role at a big company or like a contract job like do you think it's the same thing like at the end of
the day it's people making those decisions okay right it's still there there's still a hiring manager whether
or not they're hiring five people a year or a thousand people a year is different but people will always default to like
what they know or what they like kind of like and when you put yourself in a position of authority when you make
content is it like under your own personal brand you make it that much easier to like prove that you are who
you say you are cuz that's all recruiting and Engineering or like hiring is 100% And like especially in
open source too like if you have a get up profile and it clearly shows that you've worked on all these different
projects that has bunch of traction that's also a big thing so that's why I'm really glad that I made that
decision two plus years ago to join Rell because I've grown so much both in terms of Twitter following and also becoming
better engineer and doing more open source work all of these are I wouldn't have gotten it if I was just doing my
own company uh and I definitely encourage people to to do more open source work and build a name for
yourself like what shatan did uh with his UI um design system there's so much uh good stuff to be made in open source
just because like people like literally like beginning of this year I dropped this template called
president it has like I don't know it's has a crazy amount of stars like 4,000 stars on GitHub it's president. death
and it's literally just a Rebo of all of the utilities and components that I often find myself reusing between all my
projects and it blew up on Twitter it got like 3,400 likes and people really liked it even though it was something
super simple so there's definitely a lot of value in just building these open open source projects that deliver value
to people and has a good design so highly recommend doing it oh I'm in your Twitter oh boy I don't know why I twied
today but how active are you on Twitter with the trend stuff because obviously you post a lot about brel but it's like
or do you see yourself like writing your own threads kind of being a thought leader in the space without versel
that's a good question I don't know I try to there are a lot of like things I love sharing like best design principles
or like I don't know best principles when it comes to next JS or building a company and that's something that I try
to do from time to time but there's obviously a lot of resell stuff too because we're constantly shipping new
products and and new features so that's a that's a that's a balance there and I also maintain a few open source project
like novel which is like this Noel actually all the time now when I when I have to like send really long slack
messages like send really long messages where it shows so and so is typing I just write it out a novel and then I
that's amazing I use that find I find myself using it too when I'm writing an article and I just don't know how to
continue I'm like just just put it in there and let the AI do the job yeah it's just fun fun to use but it's
something that people actually incorporate into their own projects and it's really amazing to see how do you
how do you find your users for like you have dub you have one word you have novel you have so many of these like
kind of Open Source projects how do you find users for them is it just tweeting so all these projects have different I
use different ways like one domains back in the day I didn't really have an audience I was trying to build it so
product hand was the main thing it got to number two product of the day and it got to the FR B I can use so that's how
how I found the initial users T Hacker News okay exactly that was like back in 2020 and then um dab was on Twitter I
launched it on Twitter it actually got to number one on hecken too for you launch everything on half of the day