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2 episodes with appsmith
2 episodes with appsmith
2 episodes with appsmith
From the integrities of the human workforce embracing enhancing soft skills over hard skills in the enterprise tech space to the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) agents in customer service, this conversation covers it all. In this episode of the Tech Transformed podcast, Shubhangi Dua speaks with Nikhil Nandagopal, co-founder and CPO of Appsmith, about the metamorphological impact of AI agents in the workplace. He particularly emphasises the need for organisations to hone in on the advancing capabilities of agentic AI while still maintaining a focus on human collaboration and security. TakeawaysAI agents are autonomous entities designed to achieve specific goals.The centralisation of data through AI agents simplifies workflows.Conversational interfaces are becoming the norm for accessing information.Humans remain integral to AI workflows, acting as moderators.Job roles will evolve, requiring new skills and adaptability.Critical thinking is essential when interacting with AI outputs.Cybersecurity is a major concern with centralised AI systems.Self-hosting AI solutions can mitigate cybersecurity risks.The future of work will reward soft skills over hard skillsChapters00:00 Introduction to AI Agents and Their Impact03:34 The Shift Towards Conversational Interfaces05:07 Assisted Workflows and Human-AI Collaboration10:05 Job Market Evolution in the Age of AI13:23 Critical Thinking in the Age of AI15:29 Cybersecurity Concerns with AI20:31 Preparing for Cyber Threats in AI Systems22:51 The Future of AI Agents in the Workplace
AI is catalysing the evolution of low-code platforms and reshaping the landscape of low-code development tools. These new technologies can provide a strategic advantage in streamlining internal operations. By leveraging AI effectively organisations are able to deliver truly personalised, adaptive, and intuitive interactions.However, organizations face challenges adopting these new technologies and risks like AI hallucinations need to be mitigated to ensure reliable outcomes.In this episode, Paulina Rios-Maya, Head of Industry Relations at EM360Tech, speaks with Nikhil Nandagopal, Co-founder and CPO of Appsmith, about the transformative impact of AI on low-code platforms and application development. Key takeawaysLow-code platforms are revolutionizing application development.AI tools can generate code but require careful review.Routine tasks can be automated, but decision-making still needs human input.AI adoption comes with challenges like hallucinations and misinformation.Organizations must adapt their culture and processes for AI success.Developers need skills in data modeling and security for AI applications.AI can simplify user interfaces and enhance user experience.Interconnected applications will rely on AI to bridge data gaps.Most AI projects fail due to underestimating necessary changes.Enterprises face more challenges in AI adoption compared to SMBs.Chapters00:00 - Introduction to AI and Low-Code Platforms02:59 - The Role of AI in Automating Tasks05:51 - Challenges and Risks of AI Adoption09:08 - Essential Skills for Developers in AI12:01 - Future of Interconnected Applications14:50 - Realities vs. Hype of AI in Enterprises
Today we're going to talk about how focusing on internal processes can provide both internal and external benefits to a business. To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome Nikhil Nandagopal, Co-Founder and CPO of Appsmith. RESOURCES PartnerHero: to waive set up fees, go to https://partnerhero.com/agile and mention “The Agile Brand” during onboarding! The Agile Brand podcast website: https://www.gregkihlstrom.com/theagilebrandpodcast Sign up for The Agile Brand newsletter here: https://www.gregkihlstrom.com Get the latest news and updates on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-agile-brand/ For consulting on marketing technology, customer experience, and more visit GK5A: https://www.gk5a.com Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://www.teksystems.com/versionnextnow The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company
Today we're going to talk about how focusing on internal processes can provide both internal and external benefits to a business. To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome Nikhil Nandagopal, Co-Founder and CPO of Appsmith. RESOURCES PartnerHero: to waive set up fees, go to https://partnerhero.com/agile and mention “The Agile Brand” during onboarding! The Agile Brand podcast website: https://www.gregkihlstrom.com/theagilebrandpodcast Sign up for The Agile Brand newsletter here: https://www.gregkihlstrom.com Get the latest news and updates on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-agile-brand/ For consulting on marketing technology, customer experience, and more visit GK5A: https://www.gk5a.com Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://www.teksystems.com/versionnextnow The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company
We are thrilled to announce the third session of our new Incubator Program. If you have a business idea that involves a web or mobile app, we encourage you to apply to our eight-week program. We'll help you validate your market opportunity, experiment with messaging and product ideas, and move forward with confidence toward an MVP. Learn more and apply at tbot.io/incubator. We look forward to seeing your application in our inbox! Quincy Larson is the founder of freeCodeCamp.org, which helps people learn to code for free by creating thousands of videos, articles, and interactive coding lessons–all freely available to the public. Quincy shares his journey from transitioning from teaching into software development, how freeCodeCamp was born out of his desire to make educational systems more efficient through coding, and discusses the early challenges of bootstrapping the platform, and how it has now grown into a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Quincy and hosts Victoria and Will, discuss the platform's technical architecture, especially their global server distribution and decision to rely on volunteer-led translation efforts rather than machines to ensure both the quality and human touch of their educational content. He also talks about the state of free and low-cost degree programs, the student loan crisis, and the ongoing debate between traditional computer science degrees and coding bootcamps. Free Code Campi (https://www.freecodecamp.org/) Follow Free Code Camp on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/school/free-code-camp/) or X (https://twitter.com/freeCodeCamp). Follow Quincy Larson on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/quincylarson/) or X (https://twitter.com/ossia). Follow thoughtbot on X (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: WILL: This is the Giant Robot Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Will Larry. VICTORIA: And I'm your other host, Victoria Guido. And with me today is Quincy Larson, Host of the freeCodeCamp Podcast, Teacher, and Founder of freecodecamp.org, a community of people around the world who are learning to code together. Quincy, thank you for joining us. QUINCY: Yeah, thanks for having me, Will and Victoria. VICTORIA: Yeah, thank you for being here. So, I understand that you made a big shift personally for yourself from California to Texas. How has that been for your family and for, you know, as a founder who is running a nonprofit? QUINCY: Yeah, things are going great. It was a big move. We had some kids, and it was difficult to find, like, a good place to live in California that didn't cost, like, millions of dollars [laughter]. And so, at least in the San Francisco Bay Area, we were living in East Bay. I grew up here in Texas and Oklahoma. And I was like, well, maybe we could go back to the southwest, and so we did that. And we were able to come back and comfortably purchase a home here in Plano, Texas. We were able to find one that was, like, really close to a really good public school system. And so, every morning, I'm able to walk my kids to school. And I'd say that Texas has been a great change from California, where I lived for seven or eight years over there. And I love California. Texas has a lot of great things about it, too. It is a little bit hotter than California. It doesn't quite have California's Mediterranean climate, but it's been great here. I like it. And I would say if people are thinking about moving to Texas from California, there are definitely some really good spots of Texas that I think they'll feel really comfortable in. WILL: That's awesome, yeah. I'm originally from Louisiana. So, you're bringing back, like, memories of me growing up, always going to Texas and stuff. And I know exactly where Plano is, so that's amazing. How has it been with your kids? Because we were talking, and you said your kid recently started school. How's that been? QUINCY: Yeah, so my daughter started school a couple of years ago, and she just turned eight. And my son he's turning six this weekend. He just started kindergarten. We were having him take classes at the YMCA some pre-school. And he went from doing that for the first few hours of the day, and then we'd pick him up and bring him home and eat lunch with him and everything. And now he's got to go to school from, like, 7:00 a.m. to, like, 3:00 p.m. And he's been freaking out, like, "Why is school so long? Oh my goodness, I'm so tired all the time," [laughs]. So, he didn't realize that school would be as involved a process. He was all excited. But now he's complaining about, like, just the sheer length of school. But meanwhile, my wife and I we're just, like, celebrating because we actually have some time around the house where we can get work done without having kids running around causing chaos [laughs]. So yeah, I think he's adapting. He's making friends. We're doing playdates and stuff, and he's having fun. It's just a transition, you know. But it is nice because before, I would walk my daughter to school, and that was a very quick, 10-minute round trip, and then I'd walk my son to school. And that was, like, an hour round trip because we walked all the way to the YMCA. And I would do that to kind of toughen him up and get him walking a lot. It was a huge chunk of time. And now I can just grab both, one [inaudible 4:04] hand in each hand, and walk them to school, and drop them off, and be done with it and get back to work. So, it's definitely nice having both at the same school. VICTORIA: I love the work-life balance and that you were able to find and live somewhere that's affordable and has enough space for your family. And I wonder if we can draw a connection there between achieving that kind of lifestyle and learning to code, and what the mission of freeCodeCamp is for you, and what that means to people and changing careers. QUINCY: Absolutely. So, my background is in teaching. And I was a teacher and a school director at schools here in the U.S. and over in China. And that involved me being on campus, like working directly with my admin staff, with my instructional staff, and working directly with students. So, working remotely was kind of, like, a foreign concept way back in, like, 2010 or so 2011 when I started my transition into working as a software developer. But being able to work remotely has been a real game changer for me. And also, you can imagine, like, being a developer, you can command much larger compensation, and you have a lot more career options than being a teacher or a school director. So, it's given me a lot of agency in what I wanted to do. Even before, you know, starting freeCodeCamp, when I was working as a software developer and doing freelance work and stuff, I was able to do everything remotely. And that just gave me a ton of flexibility. So, the way that I learned to code personally was I wanted to help our school be more efficient. A lot of our teachers, a lot of our admin they were spending all day kind of chained to their desk entering information into computers for compliance reasons, to be able to produce great reports, to be able to produce attendance reports, immigration documents, all those things. And I just thought, like, is there a way that maybe I could automate some of this? And I didn't know anything about programming. I was about 31 years old. I was just sitting at my desk, and I just started kind of, like, Googling around and learning some very basic programming. And with that, over the course of a few months, I was really able to transform how the school ran. And we, like, won an award. And, like, a whole bunch of the students were, like, having a great time because they were spending so much more time with their teachers. And they were like, "Hey..." like, telling all their friends and family to transfer into the school. So, it was a massive success. And I thought, wow, if one person who doesn't even really know that much about programming can effect such a change with just a little bit of programming skills, imagine what I could do if I actually learned to code properly, so [chuckles] I did that. I spent about nine months going to hackathons every weekend, and reading a lot of books, and using a lot of open courses online, like from MIT, from Stanford, and I kind of taught myself to code for free. And then, I was able to get a job as a developer at a mid-size tech startup in California. And from there, I just learned more and more, and it was amazing. And it was an amazing transformation for me personally. And I thought, well, I want to help other people be able to do this because I know so many people out there would like to be working in a field where they have more conversation, a higher degree of control. They get to do creative work instead of, you know, tedious work. As a developer, you're constantly doing new stuff because code is infinitely reproducible. So, you could always just go back to code you've previously written if you needed to solve the same problem again. So, you're always in this kind of learning mindset. You're always in this problem-solving mindset. And it's really thrilling. It's just great, impactful work. So, I wanted to help more people be able to do that, hence starting a bunch of different projects that people didn't care about and then eventually starting a project that people did care about, which is freeCodeCamp. And since then, just kind of leading this project in trying to help as many people as possible learn to code. WILL: So, I was looking at your website. And I didn't even realize this until I was doing more research for the podcast, but you have over 10,000 tutorials, and they're in different categories. I saw you just recently released one on finance, which I actually bookmarked it because I'm going to go through it and look at it. You help more than a million people every day. So, how was it when you first started out? Like, how was, I guess, you could say, the grind? How was it in those early days? QUINCY: I'm a big advocate of, you know, for work-life balance, but, like, I kind of, like, exclude founders from that. I really do think that if you're trying to get something started, you're going to have to work really hard and probably way beyond what would be reasonable for a person who's getting a salary or working at an existing company if you're trying to get things started. So, I mean, it was, like, 100-hour weeks, maybe 120 some weeks [laughs]. I would sleep and just wake up and get to my desk and try to, like, put out fires, fix the server, improve the codebase, respond to learners in the community who had feedback, deal with support issues. Like, I was basically doing everything myself. And gradually, we were able to, like, build out the team over a long period of time. But really, the first few years was me self-financing everything with just my teacher savings. I spent, like, $150,000 of my own money just trying to keep freeCodeCamp going. For the first couple of years, we got tax-exempt status from the IRS. When that finally happened, I was like, great, like, let's go out and see if we can get some people to donate. So, we started asking people who were using freeCodeCamp if they'd be willing to donate $3 a month and eventually $5 a month, and we were able to support the organization through that. Really, it's just like a grassroots donor-supported effort. And then, we've been able to get some grants from Linux Foundation, and From Google, from Microsoft, from a whole lot of other big tech companies, and from some other nonprofits in the space. But mostly, it's just been, like, individual donors donating $5. And if you get enough people doing that, you get, like, a budget where you can actually pay for, you know, we have more than 100 servers around the world serving freeCodeCamp in, like, six different languages. We have, you know, all these other, like, initiatives. Like, we've got Code Radio, where you can go listen to Lo-fi while you're coding. And there are servers all over the world. And you can change the bit rate to suit whatever data you have and everything. Like, we wanted to just offer a whole lot of different services. We have mobile apps now. We've got an iOS and an Android app for freeCodeCamp. And then, of course, we've got the podcasts. We've got four podcasts: one in English, which I host, and then we've got one in Spanish, one in Portuguese, and one in Chinese. VICTORIA: Yeah, I absolutely want to ask you more about your podcasts. But first, I wanted to hear–can you tell me a little more about the decision to be 501(c)(3) or a nonprofit status? And were you always firm in that decision? Do people question it? And what was the real reasoning and commitment to that formation? QUINCY: I guess I would consider myself an idealist. Like, I genuinely believe that most educational endeavors should be, you know, nonprofit. They should be driven by either governments or by charities. I'm always kind of skeptical when there's, like, some late-night TV commercial, like, "Viewer, we'll help you get our degree," and it's from, like, a private for-profit university, something like that. So, I was like, in education...and I don't think everything in society needs to be that way, but I do think, like, education and, to an extent, healthcare these should be led by charities. Like, you know, the Red Cross, or, like, Doctors Without Borders, or churches, you know, own many of the universities, many of the hospital systems in the United States. I think that's a good thing. I think it's a very good thing that it's not just, you know, private profit-maximizing, market incentive-bound organizations that are doing all the stuff in education and in healthcare. I wanted to try to create something that, like, a lot of other people would see and say, "Oh wow, this charity can actually survive. It can sustain itself without raising a bunch of VC, without going public," or any of those things that a for-profit entity would do. And, again, I just want to emphasize, like, I don't think that iPhones should be made [chuckles] by nonprofits or anything like that. I'm just saying, like, for the purpose of actually educating people, the incentives are not necessarily aligned when you're trying to get money from...especially when you're talking about people that 60% of people on earth live off less than $10 a day. Those people should be spending their money on food. They should be spending their money on shelter. They should be spending their money on family. They should not be spending money on online courses, in my humble opinion. Like, online courses should be freely available to those people. So, to some extent, freeCodeCamp, we want to make sure that everybody everywhere in the world has access to first-rate learning resources on math, programming, computer science, regardless of their ability to pay. So, that's kind of, like, the ideal logical [inaudible 12:19], I guess, of freeCodeCamp. We kind of live that. Like, we're really serious. We will never pay, well, anything on freeCodeCamp. We won't account email gate anything. We are, I guess, absolutist in the sense that we want all of freeCodeCamp's learning resources to be free for everyone. Because of that, it made sense to like, incorporate as a 501 (c)(3) public charity. And so, we're tax-exempt. And people who donate to freeCodeCamp they can, you know, deduct it from their U.S. taxes. If a large company or even a small startup...we've had lots of startups like New Relic, like Retool, we've had Postman, Hostinger, a whole lot of different startups and mid-sized tech companies, Pulumi, Appsmith, they've all given us these grants that we can use to develop courses. So, we can often develop courses incorporating those resources. But that's tax-exempt, right? They can deduct that from their U.S. taxes. So, it's a big incentive for other people to partner with us and for people to donate funds to us. And it allows us to have the interests aligned in the sense that only people who have, you know, free cash flow or who have disposable income those are the people that are supporting freeCodeCamp. For the people that are, you know, single parents or that are taking care of their aging relatives, or are already working two jobs, or are completely unemployed and don't have any funds to speak of that are using the public library computer to access freeCodeCamp, right? Or using freeCodeCamp on a $50 prepaid phone from Walmart or something like that, right? Like those people can still use freeCodeCamp, and we can have the people who do have resources subsidize everyone else. WILL: Wow. I absolutely love that because...and I wish freeCodeCamp was around whenever I was in, like, high school and, you know, the early 2000s because we just didn't have the resources because I grew up in a small town in Louisiana. And this could have been so beneficial to that community because, like you said, we didn't have the resources–someone to teach coding there. There was no developers around that town that I was in. So, I really appreciate that you're doing this for everyone. And I know for me even...so, when I reached out to you, I did it because I was excited because I've used freeCodeCamp so many times, so many times to learn just in my journey to become a senior developer. Like, freeCodeCamp was one of the resources that I used because, one, it was free. But it wasn't...I think sometimes you can get free resources, and it's not great quality almost. Like, it's almost like you're more confused than before. But with freeCodeCamp, it was very, very amazing quality. And it was very clear on what I was learning. Honestly, thank you for helping me grow as a developer, just, honestly, thank you for that. QUINCY: Absolutely, Will. I feel honored to have helped you. And, yes, we want to help all the kids who are growing up in rural Louisiana or...I'm from, you know, Oklahoma City, not, like, the biggest, most prosperous city in the United States. Like, I want to help all of my friends who growing up who were eating meals provided by the state school system or my older friends who are on disability. Like, I want to make sure that they have resources, too. And in the process of doing that, it's a privilege to also serve all the working software engineers like you out there who just need, like, a reference resource or, like, oh, I've heard about Bun JS or Tailwind CSS. Or something like, I'm going to watch this three-hour course where I'm going to learn how to do Flutter. Like, freeCodeCamp has a 37-hour Flutter course. So, we've got, like, all these courses on using OpenAI APIs and things like that, too, right? So, it's not just for beginners, but we definitely want to, like, first and foremost, we want to serve people who we're kind of, like, the resource of last resort for, if you want to think of it that way. Like, only freeCodeCamp can help these people. Sure, they can probably use some other free courses on YouTube. And there are lots of other blogs that publish good tutorials and stuff. But freeCodeCamp is like an organized effort, specifically to help those people in need. And just kind of a side benefit of it is that you know, more established, experienced devs like you also get kind of, like, some benefit out of it as well. WILL: Whenever you were a developer, and you decided to start freeCodeCamp, how many years of experience did you have? And how did you overcome impostor syndrome, not only as a developer but as a founder? Because I feel like just overcoming it as a developer is hard, but you were also, you know, like you said, you know, handling everything for freeCodeCamp. So, how did you do that? And kind of tell us about that experience. QUINCY: Yeah. So, I didn't really know what I was doing. I think most founders probably don't know what they're doing. And I think that's totally fine because you can learn while you're doing. And we live in the United States, which is a country that kind of rewards experimentation and does not punish failure as much as a lot of other cultures does. Even if you try really hard, you're going to learn a tremendous amount, and you're going to try your next project. And that's what I did. I tried...I launched several educational, like, open learning resource-type projects, and none of them made any dent at all [laughs] in the proverbial universe. Like, nobody cared. Like, I would go and, like, I'd be talking to people. And I'd be explaining, like, "Oh, this solves this problem that you have." And you could kind of tell, like, people would sign in one time just to be polite, but then they'd never sign in again. So, it was very tricky to get traction. And I read a bunch of books. And I went to a lot of founder-focused meetups in San Francisco Bay Area. I had, like, moved out to San Francisco, specifically to try to, like, kind of make up for my deficit, the fact that I didn't know anybody because I was from Oklahoma City. I didn't know anybody in tech. And I didn't have, like, a fancy, you know, pedigree from, like, Harvard, or Wharton, or something like that, right? Like, I went to, like, a state university, and I studied English, right? And [chuckles] so, I didn't even have, like, a CS degree or anything like that. So, I definitely felt like an impostor. I just had to kind of, like, power through that and be okay with that. And it's something a little bit easier for me to do because, you know, I'm a White guy with glasses and a beard. And, like, nobody's walking up saying, "Are you sure you're a developer?" Or like, "Are you in marketing?" You know, like, the typical kind of, like, slight that they may say to somebody who doesn't necessarily look like me. And so I didn't have to deal with any of that nonsense, but there was still a lot of just self-doubt that I had to power through. And I think that was a big advantage for me. It was just, like, I was kind of, like, at war with myself and my own confidence. In fact, I found the software development community, and especially the open-source community, to be incredibly uplifting and empowering. And, like, they want to see you win. They want you to sit down and build a really cool project over the weekend and in the hackathon and present it. And, you know, they want you to learn. They know that you know, everybody is going to learn at a different rate and that a lot of people are going to get discouraged and leave tech and just go back to working in whatever field they were working in before. And that's totally cool. But I do feel that they're there to support you and to encourage you. And there are lots of different events. There are lots of different communities. I recently listened to the founder of Women Who Code, who was on this very podcast [laughs], Giant Robots Smashing Into Giant Robots, the greatest podcast name of all time. And, you know, there are people out there that are working very hard to make it easier for folks to get into tech. I think that that has been a huge part. Even before freeCodeCamp, you know, there were Harvard professors–Stanford professors putting their entire coursework for free online. You could go to, like, different tech events around California, for example, where I was when I was learning to code. And there'd just be tons of people that were eager to, like, learn more about you and to welcome you. And there would be, you know, recruiters that would talk to you and say, "Well, you may not be ready yet, but, like, let's talk in six months," right? And so, there was kind of, like, that spirit of you're going to get there. It's just going to take a lot of time. Nobody was telling me, "Oh, learning to code is easy," [chuckles] because it's not easy. There were lots of people that were, like, "Learning to code is hard. But you've got this. Just stick with it. If I could be of help, let me know," people who would pair program with me to help me, like, improve my chops, people who would volunteer to, like, look at my projects and give design feedback, all those kinds of things. And I think you're going to find all those things on the web. You're going to find those things in the open-source community. freeCodeCamp has a forum where people volunteer their time and energy to help build one another up and help one another get unstuck on whatever projects they're working on, give feedback on projects. And so, I think, to a large extent, the very giving nature, I almost want to say, like, selfless nature, of the global software developer community that is what saved me. And that's what enabled me to transition into this field, even as a teacher in his 30s. VICTORIA: It's interesting you say that. Because I feel as someone who hires engineers and developers, I love people who have teaching backgrounds because it means they're five-star communicators [laughs]. And I think that you know, in your job, when you're pairing with other developers, or you're talking to clients, in our case, that communicating what you're working on and how you're thinking about something is, like, 50% of the job [laughs]. For freeCodeCamp, I saw you have 40,000 people have found jobs after completing courses on there. I hope you feel like you've really, like, established some success here already. But what's on the horizon? What are you looking forward to in the next six months or six years with freeCodeCamp? QUINCY: Yeah, I'll be happy to answer that. But I want to emphasize what you just said: communication is, like, half the job. That's something that thoughtbot has gotten really early on. And I'll tell you that thoughtbot Playbook was incredibly helpful for me as a software developer and also early on for freeCodeCamp's team. And I think a lot of teams make use of that open resource. So, thank you for continuing to maintain that and kind of drive home that communication really is...like, meetings are essential [chuckles]. And it's not always just, like, leave me alone and let me go back to my cubicle and code. You know, I like to quote the old joke that, you know, weeks of coding can save you hours of meetings because I really do believe that communication is core. So, to answer your question about where freeCodeCamp is headed in terms of what kind of impact we'd like to have, I feel like we're just getting started. I feel like pretty much every Fortune 500 company wants to become a tech company in some way or another. Everybody is pushing things to the software layer because software is infinitely reproducible. It's so much easier to maintain software or fix things in production. Like, you realize, oh, there's a big problem. Like, we don't have to recall all the cars back to the dealerships to go and open up the hood and fix this, you know, mechanical defect. If we're controlling all these things at the software layer, right? We can potentially just deploy a fix and tell people like, "Hey, version update [chuckles], you know, download this security patch," or whatever, right? So, there are so many different things that you can do with software. I feel like the potential growth of the field of software and the number of software developers that the world will ultimately need...currently, we've got maybe 30 or 40 million developers on earth that are professional paid-to-code people. But I think that number is going to increase dramatically over the next 50 years or so. And I'll go ahead and address the elephant in the room [laughs] because pretty much everybody asks me this question like, "Don't you think that, like, tools like large language models like GPT-4 and things are going to obviate the need for so many developers?" And I think they're going to make individual developers more productive. But if you think about what code is, it's really extremely explicit directions for how to do something, whether you're using, you know, machine code, or you're using a scripting language like Python, or you're using English, and you're talking directly to the computer like you would on Star Trek. Essentially, you have to have a really deep understanding of the problem. And you need to know exactly what needs to be done in exactly what sequence. You may not need to manipulate bytecode like you would back in the '70s. But you are going to need to understand the fundamental problems, and you're going to need to be able to address it. So, I'm optimistic that the number of developers is going to continue to grow. The developers are going to continue to command more and more, I guess, respect in society. And they're going to continue to have more and more agency in what they want to do with their careers and have more and more options and, ultimately, be able to command higher compensation, be able to work remotely if they'd like. Developers will continue to be able to ascend through corporate hierarchies and become, you know, vice presidents or even executives like the CEO, right? If you look at a lot of the big tech companies, the CEO is a developer. And I think that that will continue. And the computer science degrees will continue to be extremely valuable. So, what is freeCodeCamp working on now that we think will further help people? Well, we're working on a free four-year computer science degree, a Bachelor in computer science, and there's also an associate in mathematics that we're developing. And those are going to be a progression of 40 university-level courses that have labs and have a substantial block of lectures that you'll watch. And then, we'll also have final examinations and everything. And we're developing that curriculum. We've got one of the courses live, and we're developing the second one, and eventually, we'll have all 40. It'll take till the 2030s. But we're going to have those. And then, once we have some longitudinal data about graduates and their success rates and everything, we are going to apply for the accreditation process, and we're going to get accredited as a university, right? Like, you can go through that process. Not a lot of organizations do that; not a lot of new universities are coming about in the 2020s. But it is something that can be done. And we've done a great deal of research, talked to a bunch of accreditors, talked to a bunch of university admins who go through the accreditation process. We think we can do it. So, again, very long-term goal. But when you're a 501(c)(3) public charity, you don't have to worry about freeCodeCamp getting acquired or all the things that would traditionally happen with, like, a for-profit company. You have a lot more leeway to plan really far. And you've got, like, this really broad mandate in terms of what you want to accomplish. And even if, you know, creating a university degree program in the 2030s would not be a profitable endeavor that, like, a rational shareholder value-maximizing corporation would embark upon, it is the sort of project that, you know, a charity like freeCodeCamp could do. So, we're going to do it. MID-ROLL AD: When starting a new project, we understand that you want to make the right choices in technology, features, and investment but that you don't have all year to do extended research. In just a few weeks, thoughtbot's Discovery Sprints deliver a user-centered product journey, a clickable prototype or Proof of Concept, and key market insights from focused user research. We'll help you to identify the primary user flow, decide which framework should be used to bring it to life, and set a firm estimate on future development efforts. Maximize impact and minimize risk with a validated roadmap for your new product. Get started at: tbot.io/sprint. VICTORIA: I think that's great. And, actually, you know, I got my master's in information technology and project management online way back when. So, I really like the availability of modern computer science bachelor's and master's being available at that low price point. And you're able to pursue that with the business structure you put in place. I'm curious to kind of go back to something you said earlier on how widely available it is and how you spread out across all these multiple countries. Were there any technical architecture decisions that you had to make along the way? And how did those decisions end up turning out? QUINCY: Absolutely. So, one of the things we did was we located servers all around the world. We're multi-cloud, and we've got servers in different data centers in, like, Singapore, Europe, Latin America, and we're trying to reduce latency for everybody. Another thing that we've done is, you know, we don't use, like, Google Translate to just translate all our different pages into however many languages are currently available on Google Translate; I think it's, like, more than 100. We actually have a big localization effort that's led primarily by volunteers. We have some staff that oversee some of the translation. And essentially, we have a whole bunch of people working at translate.freecodecamp.org and translating the curriculum, translating the tutorials into major world languages. Most prominently would be Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Ukrainian. Like, all these different world languages, there's, like, a freeCodeCamp version for those, and you can go into the menu, and you can choose it. And it's actually, like, hand-translated by native speakers of that language who are developers. So, that's been another extremely, you know, time-intensive effort by the community. But we believe that, you know, the quality of the translations is really important. And we want that kind of human touch. We don't want kind of weird artifacts and typos that would be associated with machine translation. And we want to make sure that each of the challenges...because they're extremely tersely worded, again, communication is so important. If you go through the freeCodeCamp curriculum, we try to use as few words as absolutely necessary to effectively communicate what the task the learner needs to accomplish is, and we try to, just in time, teach them concepts. We don't want to present them with a big wall of text. Read this 20-page PDF to understand how, you know, CSS, you know, borders work or something like that. No, we're teaching, like, kind of, like, just in time, like, okay, let's write this line of code. Okay, great, the test passed. Let's go to this next one. This test isn't passing. Here is some contextual-specific hints as to why your code is not passing, why you're not able to advance, right? And we do projects [inaudible 30:30] to learn where we break everything down into steps. So, that's a lot of instructions that need to be very carefully translated into these different world languages to truly make freeCodeCamp accessible to everyone, regardless of whether they happen to be fortunate enough to grow up speaking English at a native level, right? I would say that's our main consideration is, like, the localization effort but also just having servers everywhere and doing everything we can to comply with, like, all the different data rules and privacy rules and everything of all these different countries. It's a lot of work, but in my humble opinion, it's worth it. WILL: I had, like, a two-part question because I wanted to loop back around. When you're talking about the free bachelor's program, one, does anything like that exist where you can get a bachelor-level program, and it's free? And then the second part is, how many countries are you in? QUINCY: Yeah, so currently, lots of governments in Europe, for example, will offer free degrees that are kind of subsidized by the state. There may be some other kind of degree equivalent programs that are offered that are subsidized by corporations. For example, if you work at Starbucks, I think you can get a degree from Arizona State University. And that's a great benefit that Starbucks offers to people. Arizona State University, of course, being one of the biggest public universities in the United States in terms of enrollment. As far as free degrees, though, in the United States, there's nothing like that where, like, literally anyone can just go and get a degree for free without needing to enroll, without needing to pay any sort of fees. There are tuition-free programs, but they still charge you fees for, like, taking exams and things like that. What I like to call ultra-low-cost degree providers–there's Western Governors University, and there's University of the People. And both of these are accredited institutions that you can go, and you can get a degree for, you know, $5,000, $10,000, $15,000. And it's a full-blown four-year degree. Now, that is amazing. I applaud those efforts. I've enjoyed talking to the folks at those different schools. I think the next step is to go truly free. There's nothing blocking you at all. You don't have to be banked. You don't have to have a credit card. You don't have to have any money. You can still get this degree. That's what we're chasing. And I think we'll get there, but it's just a lot of work. WILL: So, it's blowing my mind. It's just blowing me away because, like, you know, we talk about the student loan crisis, I would say. The impact if...when—I'm not going to say if—when you do this, the impact that can have on there, have you thought about that? And kind of, if you have, what has been your thoughts around that? QUINCY: Yeah, so there are $1.7 trillion in outstanding student loans in the United States. That's money that individual people, most of whom don't make a ton of money, right? Like, many of those people didn't actually finish the degree that they incurred the debt to pursue. Many of them had to drop out for a variety of different reasons or defer. Maybe they'll eventually finish those degrees. But as you can see from, like, the macroeconomic, educational, like, labor market data, like, having a partial degree doesn't make a big difference in terms of your earning power. You really need to finish the degree to be able to realize the benefits of having spent all that time studying, and a lot of people haven't. So, yes, there are, like, a lot of people out there that went to medical school, for example, and they're working as physicians. And they are going to eventually be able to pay that off because they're doctors, and they're commanding a great compensation, right? And they've got tons of career options. But if you studied English like I did and you incurred a whole lot of student debt, it could take a very long time for you to make enough money as a teacher, or as, like, a grant writer, or working at a newspaper, or something like that. Like, it can take you years to pay it off. And, in the meantime, it's just continuing to accumulate interest in your, you know, you might be a very diligent person who pays their student loan bill every single month, and yet, you could see that amount, the total amount that you owe continuing to grow despite this. That's just the nature of the time value of money and the nature of debt. And I thank my lucky stars that I went to school back in, like, 2000. Like, my tuition was $1,000 a semester, right? I mean, it's incredible. But that was, like, at a state school, like, a public university in the middle of Oklahoma. And it's not, like, a university you've heard of. It's basically, like, the cheapest possible option. I think community colleges can make a huge dent. I always implore people to think more about community colleges. I've talked with so many people on the freeCodeCamp podcast who were able to leverage community colleges and then transition into a, you know, research university, like a state school, and finish up their degree there. But they saved, like, basically half their money because they were paying almost nothing to attend the community college. And in California especially, the community colleges are just ridiculously worth it. Like, you're paying a few hundred dollars a course. I mean, it's just incredible value. So, I think the community college system is going to play a big role. But my hope is that, you know, freeCodeCamp can thrive. And it'll take us years for people to realize because if you go on, like, Google Ads and you try to run a Google Ad for, like, any sort of educational-related topic, anything related to higher education, it's, like, hundreds of dollars per click because there are all these for-profit universities that make a tremendous amount of money from getting people who just came back from serving in the military and getting, like, huge chunks of their GI Bill, or getting, like, all these federal subsidies, any number of things. Or basically just tricking families into paying huge amounts of money when they could have attended a much more sensible public university, you know, a private nonprofit university that doesn't charge an arm and a leg. So, I think that we are going to have an impact. I just want to say that I don't think that this is a panacea. It's going to take many years for freeCodeCamp to be adopted by a whole lot of people. It will take a long time for employers to look at the freeCodeCamp degree and say, "Oh, this is comparable to a computer science degree from..." say, Ohio State, or UT Austin, or something like that, right? Like, it's going to be a long time before we can get that level of buy-in. I don't want anybody listening to say, "Oh, I'd love to get a computer science degree. I'm just going to hold out and get the degree from freeCodeCamp." Like, my humble advice would be: go to a community college, then go to a state school. Get that four-year computer science degree. It is worth its weight in gold. But you don't want to accumulate a lot of debt. Just try to like, minimize your debt in the meantime. And, hopefully, over time, you know, the free model will prove out, and it'll just be a whole bunch of alumni supporting freeCodeCamp. And that's the dream is that, like, you know, Michael Bloomberg gave a billion dollars to Johns Hopkins University, a billion dollars. Like, Johns Hopkins never needs to charge tuition again with a billion dollars. They can just basically operate their institution off the interest from that, right? And lots of institutions...like, Harvard has, I don't know, like, 60-plus billion dollars in their endowment, right? So, the idea would be freeCodeCamp continues to get this, you know, huge alumni network of people who are doing great and who went to freeCodeCamp and who basically donate back in. And then, we can essentially have the deep pockets subsidizing everybody else who's just at the beginning of their careers who don't have a lot of earning power. You know, when I was a teenager, when I was in my 20s, I worked at convenience stores. I worked at Taco Bell. I did all kinds of, like, literally showing up at 6:00 a.m. to mop the grocery store-type jobs, right? And that is not a path to being able to afford an education in 2023. University tuition is out of control. It's, like, ridiculously high. It's grown way faster than inflation for decades. So, what can we do to alleviate that pressure? In my humble opinion, we just need to come up with free options and support ultra-low-cost options that are already out there. VICTORIA: I was going to ask, but you might have already answered this question somewhat. But I get this question a lot for people who are interested in getting into tech, whether they should get a computer science degree or go to a bootcamp. And I think you've mentioned all the positive things about getting a degree. I'm curious if, in your degree program, you would also tailor it more to what people might expect in a modern tech market and industry in their first job. QUINCY: Yeah. So, the way that we're developing our degree program is we essentially did, like, an analysis of the top 20 computer science programs in the United States: Carnegie Mellon, Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, all those schools that you would think of as being, like, really good computer science programs. And we basically drew a best-fit line through all their course offerings and looked at all their textbooks and everything that they cover. And, essentially, we're teaching a composite of those top 20 programs. Now, there are some things that, surprisingly, those programs don't offer, such as a course on ethics. It's something like 13% of those degree programs require an ethics course. And I think every developer should take a developer ethics course, or at least some sort of philosophy course to, like, understand what does it mean to be a good person? [laughs] Like, what is, you know, an anti-pattern? What is Blackhat user experiences? [laughs] I'm like, when should I, like, raise my hand during a meeting to say like, "Hey, should we really be doing this?" You know. So, ethics–security courses–I was surprised that not very many of those degree programs offer a course in information security, which I believe should be required. So, I'm kind of editorializing a little bit on top of what the composite says. But I feel very strongly that, you know, our degree program needs to have those courses. But in general, it's just everything that everybody else is teaching. And yes, like, a coding bootcamp...I've written a lot about coding bootcamps. I wrote, like, a Coding Bootcamp Handbook, which you can just Google, like, "Coding bootcamp book" or something like that, probably then you can find it. But, essentially like, those programs are usually private. Even if it's at a big, public university, it's often run by a big, private for-profit bootcamp chain. I don't want to say, like, all bootcamps are a bad deal, but buyer beware [laughs]. Frankly, I don't think that you can learn everything you need to know to be a software engineer within the compressed timelines that a lot of those bootcamps are operating under. There's a reason it takes four years to get a computer science degree because: there's a tremendous amount of math, programming, computer science, engineering knowledge that you need to cultivate. And you can absolutely get a developer job without a computer science degree. I don't have a computer science degree [chuckles], and I worked as a software engineer, right? And I know plenty of people who are doing that that didn't even go to college, right? People who were truckers or people who were doing construction work who just sat down and hit the books really hard and came out the other side being able to work as a software developer. But it is going to be vastly easier for you if you do have a computer science degree. Now, if you're in your 30s, if you've got kids, if you've got a whole lot of other obligations, should you go back to school? Maybe not. And so, it's not cut and dry, like, oh, just drop whatever you're doing and go back to...The situation is going to be nuanced. If you've already got a job working as a developer, should you go back and get a CS degree? Probably not. Maybe you can get your employer to pay for you to go to, like, a CS master's program, for example. There are a lot of really good online master's degree programs. Like, Georgia Tech has a master's in computer science that is very affordable, and it's very good. Georgia Tech is one of the best computer science programs in the United States. So, definitely, like, everybody's situation is going to be different. And there's no blanket advice. I would just be very wary of, like, anybody who's talking to you who wants your money [laughs]. freeCodeCamp will never want your money for anything. Like, we would love to have your donation long after you're a successful developer. You turn around and, like, send the elevator back down by donating to freeCodeCamp. But just be skeptical and, like, do your research and don't buy into, like, the marketing speak about, like, being able to get a job immediately. "Oh, it's easy. Anybody can learn to code." Like, I do believe any sufficiently motivated person can learn to code. But I also believe that it's a process that can take years, especially if you're doing the safe thing and continuing to work your day job while you learn these skills over a much longer period of time. I don't believe learning in a compressed kind of bootcamp...like, if you think about, you know, bootcamp in the military, like, this is, like, you're getting shipped away, and you're doing nothing but, like, learning these skills and everything like that. And I don't think that that's right for programming, personally [laughs]. I think there's a reason why many of these programs have gone from 9 weeks to 12 weeks to 6 months. Some of them might be, like, an entire year now. It's because it's them kind of admitting that, like, oh, there's quite a bit to learn here, and it's going to take some time. And there's diminishing returns to learning a whole bunch of hours in a day. I think you'll make much better gains studying programming 1 hour a day for 365 days than you'll make studying, you know, 8 hours a day for, like, two months or something like that if that makes sense. I'm not sure if the math works out there. But my point is, it's totally fine, and it's actually quite optimal to just work your day job, take care of your kids, spend time with your parents, you know, do all those things, hang out with friends and have a social life, all those things in addition to just having programming be one of those things you're working on in the background with your mornings or your evenings. WILL: Tell us a little bit about your podcast. Yeah, tell us kind of what's the purpose of it and just the history of it. QUINCY: Yeah. Well, I learned from the best. So, I'm a longtime listener of this podcast, of course. My friend, Saron Yitbarek, hosts CodeNewbie, which is an excellent podcast, the Changelog, which is an open-source podcast. I've had a great time interviewing the Changelog hosts and being on their show several times. So, I basically just learned as much as I could, and then I just went out and started interviewing people. And so, I've interviewed a lot of devs. I've interviewed people that are, like, learning to code driving Uber. I've interviewed the founder of Stack Overflow [chuckles], Jeff Atwood. I'm going to interview the founder of Trello in a few weeks when I'm back out in New York City. And I do my interviews in person. I just have my mobile studio. When I'm in San Francisco–when I'm in New York, I just go around and do a bunch of interviews and kind of bank them, and then I edit them myself and publish them. And the goal is just to give people exposure to developers. What are developers thinking? What are developers talking about? What do developers care about? And I try to hit, like, a very broad range of developers, try to talk to as many women as possible and, you know, striving for, like, 50% representation or better on the podcast. And I talk to a lot of people from different countries, although that's a little harder to do when you're recording in person. I may break down and do some over Zencastr, which is a tool we used in the past. I just like the spontaneity and the fun of meeting with people in person. But yeah, it's just like, if you are looking for, like, long-form, some of these are, like, two-and-a-half-hour long discussions, where we really delve into people's backstory and, like, what inspired them to become a developer, what they're learning along the way, how they feel about different aspects of software development. Like, for example, earlier, Will, you mentioned impostor syndrome, which is something I think virtually everybody struggles with in some capacity, you know, the freeCodeCamp podcast, tune in [chuckles] and subscribe. And if you have any feedback for me, I'd love to hear it. I'm still learning. I'm doing my best as a podcast host. And I'm constantly learning about tech as it evolves, as new tools come out, as new practices are pioneered. There's entire new technologies, like large language models, that actually work. And, I mean, we've had those since, like, the '60s, like, language models and stuff, but, like, only recently have they become incredibly impressive, exploring these tools and exploring a lot of the people behind them. VICTORIA: Okay, great. Do you have any questions for me or Will? QUINCY: Yeah. What inspired you all to get involved in tech, in...I don't know if somebody...did somebody at thoughtbot actually approach you and say, "Hey, we want you to run this"? Or was it something where like, "I'd love to run this"? Like, because podcasting is not easy. You're putting yourself out there. You're saying things that are recorded forever [laughs]. And so, if you say something really naive or silly or something like that, that's kind of always there, right? It takes a certain amount of bravery to do this. What got you into hosting this podcast? VICTORIA: For me, I mean, if I go way back before getting into tech, my mom she got her undergraduate degree in horticulture to become a florist, and then realized she couldn't make any money off that and went back to school for computer science. And so, she taught me how to use a computer really early on. And when I was in school, I had started in architecture, and then I wanted to change into business intelligence. But I didn't want to apply to the business school, so I got a degree in economics and a job at the IT help desk. And then from there, I was able to kind of transition into tech as a teacher, which was oddly enough...my first job in tech was training a 400-person program how to do, like, version management, and peer reviews [laughs], and timekeeping. And the reason I got the job is a friend from rock climbing introduced me, and he's like, they're like, "Oh, well, you train people how to rock climb. You can train people how to, like, do this stuff." [laughs] I'm like, oh, okay, that sounds great. But anyways, I worked my way up into project management and ended up getting my masters in IT. And when I came to thoughtbot, I had just moved to California, and I wanted to rebuild my network. I had a big network in D.C., organizing meetups and DevOps D.C., Women Who Code, teaching people, and communicating. And I ran a very small podcast there with a friend. So, when I joined thoughtbot, a podcast was a great way to just meet different people, expand my network, give people something to talk to me about when I go to events [laughs] that's not just, like, let me sell you some DevOps work. For me, it's been really fun to just reach out to people that we admire in the community and hear their story, and a little bit about them, and what advice they have for themselves or for other people. And, usually, that ends up benefiting me as well. So, it's been very fun for me. QUINCY: So, your less conventional path into tech combined with your own experience doing podcasting, it sounds like you were a natural choice for hosting a podcast. VICTORIA: Right. And I think I said before we started the show I didn't realize that it was such a well-loved and long-running podcast [laughs] [inaudible 49:01]. But I think we've really come into our own a little bit with hosting, and it's been super fun to work with Will and Chad on it as well. QUINCY: Awesome. And, Will, what's your story, man? How did you get onto the coveted Giant Robots Smashing into Giant Robots podcast? WILL: I actually went to college for sports medicine, and I was on track to go to med school, but my senior year...which I wish I would have had this conversation with myself a lot earlier, didn't have to do the hard work that I did at undergraduate. But my senior year, I was like, why am I really going to med school? And, honestly, it was more for the money, for the...yeah, more for the money. I just wanted to get paid a lot of money. I was like, yeah, that's not going to sustain me. I need to just pivot. So, I pivoted–started working at some nonprofits. And I ended up losing my job and got another job at Buckle, the clothing store, which was not a great fit for me. It helped me provide, but that's just not who I am. I'm not a fashion icon [laughs]. And then I changed to a travel agency insurance company, which it paid the bills. I wasn't passionate about it at all, and it paid the bills. And I was still struggling from losing my job. It was the first time that I lost my job. And my spouse came to me one day and is like, "All right, we're going to have the serious talk." And we almost flipped roles because that's usually who I am. I'm like, "All right, let's have a real talk. Let's get down to it." But I was just in a bad place. And she was like, "All right, we have to change because we can't keep going down this path." So, she was like, "If you had a choice to do anything, what would you want to do?" And I was like, "Well, probably something with computers and coding because I never had that opportunity when I was growing up because of the small town." And she looked at me, and she's like, "Go sign up right now." And I was like, okay, I'm going to sign up. When you mentioned that you made a transition in your 30s, I was around my 30s when I made the transition into coding. And so, it was a big transition. It was a big pivot for me because I'm having to learn, almost like I'm in college again, which was eight years ago. And so, it was just tough, and it wasn't new. So, that's how I got into coding. How I got on the podcast: I think I was talking to Chad and my direct report. I was just talking to them about challenging myself, and so it was multiple things. But, like, writing blog posts that was actually very challenging to me. I still don't like to write. It's not my favorite thing. Give me math or something like that or science; that's where I feel at home. But whenever, you know, you talk about writing and stuff, I can do it, and I'm decent at it. But it's not something that I feel comfortable in. The same thing with the podcast. The reason why I got on here is because I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and I wanted to grow. And I also wanted to get a chance to talk to people who's making a difference–who's impacting the world. So, like, this conversation today is like, yes, this is why I wanted to be a part of this podcast. So yeah, that's how I got started in tech and on the podcast. QUINCY: Awesome, Will. I'm thrilled that you went ahead and persevered and got into tech. It doesn't sound like it was a straight line, and it rarely is for people. But I'm always excited to meet somebody who learned to code in their 30s who stuck with it and is prospering as a result. So, congratulations to you. WILL: Thank you. VICTORIA: I'm still learning. I haven't quite got [inaudible 52:42] "Hello, worlds," multiple times [laughs]. But I don't really code every day for my job. I just kind of need to know what stuff is to be able to talk to people and in that way as a managing director. So, I appreciate Will bringing that backstory to this episode in particular. What else? Any other final takeaway that you'd like to leave our listeners with? QUINCY: I just want to thank you all for continuing to host this podcast, thoughtbot for operating the excellent Playbook, which, for anybody listening who is unfamiliar with, you should check it out. Again, it's just chock full of institutional wisdom accumulated over the years. And I hope everybody out there who's thinking about taking the plunge and learning coding or software development, or even, like, a semi-technical area of being in the software development process of learning visual design, learning how to do user experience research, any number of the different roles in tech, I hope you'll go for it. And I hope you will be as undaunted as you can. And just know that freeCodeCamp and the freeCodeCamp community we are in your corner. If you need to learn something, there's a very good chance that we have some tutorials written by thoughtful teachers who want people like you to come forward and like, read these resources and use it. There's a saying: like, the thing that programmers want the most is to have their code running in production somewhere. And, as a teacher, the thing you want the most is for you to have students, for you to have learning resources out there that are making a positive difference. So, again, I just count my blessings every day that I'm able to be involved in this community. I hope anyone listening who wants to transition into tech or to become even more technical gets involved in the freeCodeCamp community as well. We welcome you. WILL: Are there any opportunities? I know we talked about donations. So, for one, where can they go if they want to donate? And then also, like, you know, if developers want to get to be a part of the open-source network you have, is that possible? And how can they do that? QUINCY: Absolutely. So, if you want to donate to freeCodeCamp, just go to donate.freecodecamp.org. And you can become, like, a $5 a month donor, if you'd like. If you want to give a larger amount, I've got this article; just Google "How to Donate to freeCodeCamp." And I've written this detailed guide to, like, all the different ways like mailing checks. We had a gentleman who passed away and left a whole lot of money for freeCodeCamp in his will. So, those kinds of legacy gifts are definitely something. We've had people donate stock, like, any number of different things. I will bend over backwards to make sure that we can receive your donation, and we can give you a tax receipt so you can deduct it from your taxes as well if you'd like. And then, for contributing to freeCodeCamp, of course, we're an open-source project, and we welcome your code contributions. We have spent a great deal of time trying to make freeCodeCamp as hospitable as possible for both new developers who want to get involved and more senior developers who just want to do some, like, 20%-time type contributing to open-source projects: contribute.freecodecamp.org. So, again, donate.freecodecamp.org and contribute.freecodecamp.org. Those will take you where you need to go. VICTORIA: Wonderful. Thank you so much again, Quincy, for joining us. And you can subscribe to the show and find notes along with a complete transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. And you can find me on Twitter @victori_ousg. WILL: And you could find me on Twitter @will23larry. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening. See you next time. ANNOUNCER: This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot, your expert strategy, design, development, and product management partner. We bring digital products from idea to success and teach you how because we care. Learn more at thoughtbot.com. Special Guest: Quincy Larson.
To celebrate three years of the Behind the Product podcast, we're revisiting the top three episodes from the past year.Lindsay Boccardo - Episode 26Speaker, trainer, and coach Lindsay Boccardo shares how we can navigate generational divides and bridge the gap between a variety of perspectives. You can find our full conversation with Lindsay on Episode 26.Bob Moesta - Episode 30Author, speaker, and thought leader Bob Moesta shares tools, philosophies, and practices for optimizing product management. You can find our full conversation with Bob on Episode 30.Abhishek Nayak - Episode 25Abhishek Nayak, Co-Founder and CEO of Appsmith, shares what he's learned through founding multiple startups and how he pursues simplicity at scale. You can find our full conversation with Abhishek on Episode 25.We'd love to hear from you! Reach out to podcast@sep.com to share your feedback on this show.You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!
Open source software is freely available to use, modify, and distribute. By learning how to integrate it with your product-led growth (PLG) strategy, you'll unlock innovation and success for your business. In this episode, we are joined by Nikhil Nandagopal, a co-founder of Appsmith, who imparts his insights and experiences in building team tools with open source. Nikhil delves into the hurdles associated with growing a PLG business, open source technology, and the delicate task of balancing the requirements of both the vocal minority and the silent majority. Key Takeaways: [2:00] How security and data are core parts of open source software [3:30] The importance of having a core product or market insight to base your PLG strategy on [5:45] Advice on integrating open source into your PLG strategy [7:30] Benefits of open source [8:15] How to make open source easy for developers to try out and use your product [10:00] Leveraging your community to drive growth and how to measure success in open source [12:30] The future of open source and PLG [15:00] How open source will continue to play a role in PLG and how it will evolve in the future About Nikhil Nandagopal: Nikhil Nandagopal is a co-founder of Appsmith, the first open-source low-code platform for developers. He is a software engineer and entrepreneur with 10 years of experience building apps. Links: Nikhil Nandagopal's LinkedIn https://www.appsmith.com/
https://youtu.be/917-i0k9-Tk Abhishek Nayak is the CEO and Founder of Appsmith, the first open-source, low-code platform that helps businesses with all types of custom internal applications. We discuss business models for open-source software, the steps to creating a remarkable product, and the main tenets of a solid remote culture. --- Build A Remote Org On A Written Culture With Abhishek Nayak My guest is Abhishek Nayak, CEO and Founder of Appsmith, the first open-source low-code platform that helps businesses with any customer internal application within hours. Abhishek, welcome to the show. Thanks, Steve. Thank you so much for having me on your show. I'm excited to talk to you. I'm very curious about some of the stuff that you guys are doing at Appsmith. Let's start with your journey. How did you come up with this idea of Appsmith? What were you doing before? How did you get here? Appsmith is my third startup. I've been an entrepreneur for the better part of the previous decade. Every single startup that I did was always with Arpit, who's my Cofounder and CTO at Appsmith. We've always had to build some sort of custom applications, for example, to run customer support. I also did a gaming startup before Appsmith which is a consumer startup. There we had to build things to manage user data, game levels and design game levels. My previous startups have ranged to be in the payment space and also the gaming space. My Cofounder, Arpit, was always responsible for building a custom tool to do customer support or run operations. That's where the idea for Appsmith emerged. We realized we are doing a lot of repetitive work in every single startup. It's the same interface. You need to display some charts, maybe some data in a table and show a form so that you can modify some data. Maybe you have a workflow. Let's say you're a FinTech startup or a payment startup and you have a customer onboarding workflow. You need to build an onboarding workflow, which is custom for your business. We realize all of these tools have something that is common and some things are customized. We decided to put all those common features together in a low-code open-source platform so that people don't have to build things from scratch. That is Appsmith. The idea of Appsmith originated from scratching my cofounder's itch. My cofounder was the person who was always in charge of building this. He realized he doesn't want to build stuff from scratch all the time. We should build something that helps other engineers build on top of a framework that does a lot of heavy lifting for you. That's how we landed on Appsmith. These modules that you're talking about and building, are they not available before? I was under the impression that most of the new software that is being built is being modularly constructed rather than from scratch. It depends on what kind of modularization and how much effort it still takes. For example, if you need to show some data on a chart, you need to create an API in the first place and connect to that API. You need to write the code for the charting library that you use. You might be using a charting library so you're not writing every chart from scratch. You don't need to figure out how to transform the data so that you can use this particular charting library or if you need to create a form, you need to write the logic for the form. In this process, maybe about 15% to 20% is modularized. You're not doing everything from scratch but 80% of the work is not modularized. It does take a lot of effort. Those are the bits that we are trying to convert in Appsmith so that you're only doing 20% of the work, 80% of the work is done out of the box for you. It's a different level of modularization and automation for the developer. If in the past or if currently someone begins a new software, 20% of them of the components are available off the shelf. You're going to take this 20% to 80% so that people will have to do a 20% customized or code...
Throughout his career, Nikhil Nandagopal has always looked for a better way to do things: he's built out a logistics operation for the largest e-commerce company in India (a direct competitor to Amazon), helped build up a travel company with over 5 million users, and even worked to scale a food delivery service from 50 meal deliveries a day to over 50,000. Now, his focus is on internal tools. From developer to product manager to entrepreneur (twice!), Nikhil's experience lends itself to both sides of the internal tool development conversation. Engineers need helpful internal software, but hate actually sitting down and making it for themselves. And businesses must use tools if they want to scale properly. Nikhil wanted to find a way to turn the arduous work of app-making into a streamlined process that would only cost engineers hours instead of months. So he teamed up with Arpit Mohan and Abhishek Nayak to create Appsmith, a program built to put easily customizable tools directly into developers' hands. What started as a small open-source project has become a program that is used daily by over 10,000 teams, employs people in eight different countries, and has raised over $50 Million in capital. With a project built by engineers, for engineers, Nikhil is helping companies work better and dream bigger. You can follow Nikil on Social Media https://twitter.com/NikilNandagopal https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikhil-nandagopal-05534241/ Also check out these links from Nikil https://www.appsmith.com/ https://twitter.com/theappsmith https://www.instagram.com/the_appsmith/ https://www.youtube.com/c/Appsmith PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST - Spotify: http://isaacl.dev/podcast-spotify - Apple Podcasts: http://isaacl.dev/podcast-apple - Google Podcasts: http://isaacl.dev/podcast-google - RSS: http://isaacl.dev/podcast-rss You can check out more episodes of Coffee and Open Source on https://www.coffeeandopensource.com/ Coffee and Open Source is hosted by Isaac Levin (https://twitter.com/isaacrlevin) --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/coffeandopensource/support
We dig into the fascinating world of open source platform development with Nikhil Nandagopal, one of the founders of Appsmith, in this episode of the Hacking Open Source Business podcast, hosted by Avi Press and Matt Yonkovit. Learn how Appsmith's open core approach allows developers to create powerful applications while addressing the needs of managers and CXOs. Dive into their strategy for balancing core features, user feedback, and value-added features, prioritizing data security over managed hosting. Find out how Appsmith's journey has evolved with user understanding and how open source offers better security, auditing, and self-hosting capabilities. Join us as we discuss developer retention, networking insights, and the importance of building a solid open-source community before monetizing. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from the experiences of a successful open source founder!Some of the things you will uncover in this episode:1. Appsmith uses an open core approach, focusing on features developers care about vs. features managers and CXOs care about.2. Developer retention is a core metric for Appsmith, with a focus on building the open-source community before monetizing.3. Open source offers better security, auditing, and self-hosting capabilities for Appsmith users.4. Appsmith addresses the challenge of limited engineering bandwidth for internal tools and aims to make them as good as the best SaaS software.5. The platform's direction evolved with user understanding, and data-critical needs influenced the open-source decision.6. Appsmith doesn't de-emphasize code; it reuses existing building blocks in low/no-code environments.7. Appsmith is an open-source low-code framework focused on developers, aiming to make the platform extensible and community-driven.8. Networking is highly valuable for personal growth, learning, and connecting with like-minded individuals.9. Appsmith has been closely collaborating with early customers to build their enterprise offering, focusing on self-serve features.10, Many users embed Appsmith in their existing React projects, leading to a better overall experience.Chapters:00:00:00 Get to Know Nikhil Nandagopal, Founder Appsmith: Rapid Fire Questions00:08:10 Introduction to Appsmith00:09:55 In a Low or No Code Environment Does Open Source Matter?00:12:32 Deciding to Open Source or Not00:14:53 Deciding on Which Features Should be Open Core00:21:16 Customers Paying for Your Engineering Team to Focus on Features00:22:51 What Metrics Should Open Source Companies Focus on Until their Product is Ready?00:26:37 Turning Down Short Term Revenue to Focus on Building the Open Source Community00:30:50 Measuring Developer Retention00:33:33 Talking Open Source Telemetry or Call-Home Functionality: Is it Worth Trying?00:38:01 Choosing the Right Messaging and Positioning for Your Open Source Software00:42:25 Learning from the Early Days of Your First Commercial Open Source Offering00:44:39 Time Traveling Founder Advice: Network More Early on!00:49:07 Final Thoughts:Checkout our other interviews, clips, and videos: https://l.hosbp.com/YoutubeDon't forget to visit the open-source business community at: https://opensourcebusiness.community/Visit our primary sponsor, Scarf, for tools to help analyze your #opensource growth and adoption: https://about.scarf.sh/Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite app:Spotify: https://l.hosbp.com/SpotifyApple: https://l.hosbp.com/AppleGoogle: https://l.hosbp.com/GoogleBuzzsprout: https://l.hosbp.com/Buzzsprout
In this episode of Backstage With Millionaires podcast, Caleb Friesen sits with Abhishek Nayak, founder and CEO of Appsmith, to discuss his entrepreneurial journey. Abhishek started his entrepreneurial journey in 2011, when he built 'GharPay', a platform to let e-commerce companies collect cash payments. He then started 'Clink', a product in the transaction marketing space with the Gharpay team and investors. After Ezetap acquired Clink, Abhishek worked as director of products at Ezetap before moving on to his next venture. He started 'Wise' in 2015, a hardware startup, where their team built two products, but couldn't find a product-market fit, and hence pivoted to an AI started called Bicycle AI. Bicycle AI applied deep learning and machine learning to automate customer service for companies. The team saw success there but had issues with the working on AI and hence shut it down. Abhishek started Appsmith in 2019, an open source project that makes it easy to build and maintain custom internal business tools. It has since raised over $51 Million, and is currently valued at over $250 Million. Appsmith currently has a team of 140, and their clients are present in every country on the globe. Connect with us: Twitter: https://twitter.com/bwmillionaires/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/backstagewithmillionaires/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/backstagewithmillionaires/ Discord: https://discord.gg/XySGGhXKepSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5rGPalovc6AKsfbOyjh32p #startup #entrepreneur #saas
Nikhil placed the start of his journey in high school, where a teacher managed to light the programming flame in his heart. A few years later, Nikhil graduated with a CS degree and joined a startup. He learned the value of thinking about the problem, embracing the whole system, and not just the solution. This set him up to create his own company. We talked about why the first one failed and then about AppSmith. We finally talked about how he leads the company in embracing the problem by dog-feeding their product and being in constant dialog with the users.Here are the links from the showhttps://www.twitter.com/NikilNandagopalhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/nikhil-nandagopal-05534241/https://www.appsmith.com/https://github.com/appsmithorg/appsmithhttps://discord.com/invite/rBTTVJpnikhil@appsmith.comCreditsCover Legends by HoliznaCC0 is licensed CC0 1.0 Universal License.Your host is Timothée (Tim) Bourguignon, more about him at timbourguignon.fr.Gift the podcast a rating on one of the significant platforms https://devjourney.info/subscribeSupport the show
Unleashing the Potential of AI: Expert Insights on Capital Management, Investor Relationships, Team Building, and Scaling Artificial Intelligence (AI) has rapidly evolved into a promising field of computer science that aims to create intelligent machines capable of performing tasks that require human-like intelligence. The continuous growth of technology has already transformed how we live and work, and the potential impact of AI is even more significant. In this episode of Beyond 7 Figures, we explore the vast potential of AI with Abhishek Nayak, a renowned entrepreneur, expert in technology, and co-founder of Appsmith. Abhishek Nayak shares his wealth of knowledge and experience in entrepreneurship, fundraising, and technology, emphasizing AI's roles in our daily lives. The discussion also delves into his various strategies and tactics to build successful ventures, highlighting critical aspects such as capital management, investor relationships, team building, and scaling. Key Takeaways: Learn how to manage capital effectively while running a business or company. Make smart decisions as a CEO. Build a high-performance team, address misalignment, and foster productivity and harmony. Gain valuable insights on working with different investors. Adopt Product-Led Growth (PLG) as a market strategy. Learn how to scale your business beyond seven figures. Understand the roles AI can play in our daily lives. All this and more, on this week's episode of Beyond 7 Figures. Don't miss out on our next episode featuring branding expert Re Perez, where we'll dive deep into the world of strategic branding to help scale up your market figure. So, don't forget to subscribe to the show to get that episode as soon it gets released. Until then, be profitable. Links & resources: www.appsmith.com twitter.com/arey_abhishek
Abhishek Nayak, CEO & Co-Founder of Appsmith, talks about his passion for pottery, how it has helped him improve his skills as a manager, creating an open work culture in a remote environment, and much more!
This week Nikhil Nandagopal and I talked about building teams. Teams are the heart and soul of software development in all of its many aspects. Nikhil provides pragmatic advice for organizing people into teams. We also discussed the democratization of coding that low-code platforms deliver. Nikhil Nandagopal, a co-founder of Appsmith, leads the development of the company's product – the first open-source low-code platform for developers. He is a software engineer and entrepreneur with 10 years of experience building apps. Nikhil's GitHub Website: https://app.appsmith.com/applications Nikhil's Profile: linkedin.com/in/nikhil-nandagopal-05534241 Twitter NikilNandagopal Re-read Saturday News! Chapter 17 of Extraordinary Badass Agile Coaching: The Journey from Beginner to Mastery and Beyond is titled “The Badass Agile Coach's Guide to Starting Your Day” which provides a structure or ritual for beginning each coaching day. I almost see this as a macro planning arc that Bob has recommended for all coaching sessions. Thinking about Christmas presents for your coaching friends? (302 days from today!) Buy a copy and beat the rush - Badass Agile Coaching: The Journey from Beginner to Mastery and Beyond Week 16: Badass Agile Coach's Guide to Starting Your Day - http://bit.ly/3Y4Kcgy Week 15: Situational Awareness as a Badass Agile Coach - http://bit.ly/3KnoJMv A quick advertisement: Controlling work entry requires preparation, knowledge, and building to establish a path to control work entry (magic wands are normally not available), which is why Jeremy Willets and I have developed a work entry workshop. Interested? Please email us at tcagley@tomcagley.com or willetsjm@gmail.com Next SPaMCAST In the next Software Process and Measurement Cast, I want to talk about one of the great enemies of change - fatalism. Phrases like “that's not our culture” or “that won't work here” are discussion killers. We will also have a visit from Tony Timbol who brings his To Tell A Story column to the podcast.
A positive workplace culture can be the difference between a thriving and barely surviving team; between people staying because they love their job and people eagerly searching to work somewhere else. When managers create an environment that is welcoming, trusting, and encourages creativity and feedback, people will find more overall satisfaction in their work. But how does a manager actually create this type of culture, especially on remote teams? Today’s guest is Abhishek Nayak. As a co-founder and CEO of four startups, one of which was funded by Sequoia Capital, Abhishek is well-versed in the art of starting and scaling a business. But during a stint as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Accel, he discovered how much time engineers spend building internal applications, so he and two co-founders created Appsmith to put customizable app tools directly into developers’ hands. The once-small, open-source project is now used by over 10,000 teams, employs people in sixteen countries, and has raised over $51 million in capital. Abishek and I talk about how he’s built an incredible team and culture for his fully remote business. He shares the lessons he’s learned and steps he’s taken to support his people along the journey from a small co-located team, through the disruption of COVID, to a fully remote, global company with over 120 employees. Members of the Modern Manager community get a Template and Guidelines for Requesting Feedback. This internal document is used by Appsmith to guide employee feedback. Outlining feedback guidelines and questions for specific feedback outcomes, this resource can help any manager give and receive more valuable feedback. Get it when you join the Modern Manager community. Subscribe to my newsletter to get episodes, articles and free mini-guides delivered to your inbox. Read the related blog article: Do These Five Things to Effectively Manage a Remote Team KEEP UP WITH ABHISHEK Website: Appsmith.com Twitter: twitter.com/arey_abhishek LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/abhisheknayak/ Email: abhishek@appsmith.com Key Takeaways: Know the advantages of remote work, including more focus time, a larger talent pool, and better customer service availability. Invest in technology
Nikhil Nandagopal, Founder and CPO of Appsmith, joins me to chat about building trust, the importance of starting as an open source offering, and how the community continues to shape the future of Appsmith.In this episode, Nikhil and I discuss the origins of Appsmith, building a business edition as well as a community one, and the challenges he and his team encountered along the way. We compare the community and business editions, discuss the importance of community and an educational, product-led approach to marketing, and even touch on the stigma of the “low code” label with which Appsmith has chosen to align. Listen to learn Nikhil's views and insight on open source, community, education, developer relations, and more. Highlights: Nikhil introduces himself and Appsmith (0:49) Why open source? (2:37) Lessons learned by starting with an open source approach (4:57) Appsmith community edition vs. business edition (6:33) Nikhil recounts his most significant mistakes in creating Appsmith (9:59) Nikhil shares Appsmith's marketing strategy (12:20) The importance of nurturing your community in open source (16:01) Unexpected challenges Nikhil encountered in the early days of Appsmith (18:03) Links:Nikhil LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikhil-nandagopal-05534241/ Twitter: @NikilNandagopal Company: https://www.appsmith.com/
Robby has a chat with Arpit Mohan, the Co-Founder and CTO of Appsmith, an open-source low-code tool that helps developers build dashboards and admin panels very quickly. Appsmith helps businesses build any custom internal application within hours. In regard to well-maintained software, Arpit points to the importance of engineers writing code for humans and not machines while also focusing a lot on readability. He believes useful code comments are also very crucial in facilitating well-maintained software.Arpit will share his wisdom on the importance of conveying the why over the how behind any code being developed, how open source and closed source projects have different code commenting/documentation needs, why engineers should always keep an eye out for code smells and friction in their ability to deliver software functionality, the problems that AppSmit helps organizations solve, the differences between B2C vs B2B when it comes to the benefits of automated testing, performance concerns, etc, and much much more. Stay tuned, enjoy, and if you like the episode, don't forget to share.Book Recommendations:The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership by Bill Walsh - https://www.amazon.com/Score-Takes-Care-Itself-Philosophy/dp/1591843472Helpful Links:https://twitter.com/mohanarpithttps://twitter.com/theappsmithhttps://www.appsmith.com/Subscribe to Maintainable on:Apple PodcastsOvercastSpotifyOr search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts.Join the discussion in the Maintainable Discord Community
Me oleme Algorütmis poppidest terminitest nagu low-code ja no-code rääkinud enne mitmel korral, aga see jutt ei lõppe otsa. Täna on meil külas Solita Eesti juht Märt Ridalaga, kes oma ettevõttega seda teemat Eestis jõudsalt veab ja proovime teada saada, millised on low-code ja no-code rakendamise praktilised asjaolud ning edukad tulemused. Saate teemad: Sageli eeldab low code, et andmed on olemas, kes andmekihti disainib? Milline on täna sobivaim platvorm suure süsteemi loomiseks? Openblocks, Appsmith, Power Platform (Power Pages), Webflow, Bubble, Hasura Rakendamise näited Läbi lukuaugu arendamine Versioonihaldus Erinevad keskkonnad Algorütmi veavad Priit Liivak Nortalist, Martin Kapp Pipedrive'ist ja Tiit Paananen Veriffist.
How I Raised It - The podcast where we interview startup founders who raised capital.
Produced by Foundersuite (www.foundersuite.com), "How I Raised It" goes behind the scenes with startup founders and investors who have raised capital. This episode is with Abhishek Nayak of Appsmith, an open source workbench for building internal software tools (https://www.appsmith.com/). In this episode, we discuss his time as EIR at the VC firm Accel India, the Indian startup scene and how it's different from the USA scene, tips for raising capital, and more. We also go deep into how to engineer growth for a startup without paying for marketing (highly valuable tips!). Appsmith has raised $52 million over three rounds, including a $41 million Series B funding led by Insight Partners, with participation from Accel, Canaan, OSS Capital, and angel investors including Jeff Hammerbacher, co-founder of Cloudera, and Abhinav Asthana, co-founder of Postman. How I Raised It is produced by Foundersuite, makers of software to raise capital and manage investor relations. Foundersuite's customers have raised over $9.7 Billion since 2016. Create a free account at www.foundersuite.com.
Abhishek Nayak is the CEO and founder of Appsmith, the first open-source, low-code platform that helps businesses with all types of custom internal applications. We discuss business models for open-source software, the steps to creating a remarkable product, and the main tenets of a solid remote culture Time Stamps [00:40] Abhishek's entrepreneurial journey [02:55] Understanding app modularization [04:32] Steps to finding product-market fit for your products [08:05] How to uncover your product's unique selling point [09:50] There's no shortcut to experience and knowledge [11:17] Tips for creating a remarkable product [13:54] Business models for open-source software [16:30] Startup funding processes and stages [18:18] The pros and cons of selling to developers [22:56] How to shape company culture in remote organizations [26:21] The science of reading versus listening [29:41] Parting thoughts Links and Resources Steve and Greg Cleary's Book: Pinnacle: Five Principles that Take Your Business to the Top of the Mountain Abhishek's LinkedIn Appsmith | Open-source platform to build internal tools
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Abhishek Nayak the co-founder and CEO of Appsmith, which is an open-source, low code internal tool builder. 00:00 Intro 03:15 Entrepreneur in Residence at Accel 05:52 Third time at the Rodeo 09:55 Validating a startup idea at his wedding 11:38 Built for Internal facing apps 13:48 The Appsmith Customer Persona 15:06 From Dataset to app 15:42 What Appsmith is replacing 17:07 The Appsmith killer feature 18:29 Getting to the first 100 users 21:40 Customer love + product iteration 23:07 Competition 25:24 Open source vs. closed source 27:53 Open source applications vs. infrastructure 31:07 Open core model 34:12 Traction and metrics 36:43 Metrics tracked over time 37:43 Fundraising for 3rd time 39:27 Fundraising journey 43:50 Remote company discounts 45:27 Call to action
In this conversation with Mike Lynn, Arpit Mohan Appsmith CTO talks about his journey into engineering and programming, from dismantling home electronics, building soccer playing robots and ultimately about founding Appsmith. Appsmith is Open source, sharing the same roots as MongoDB, and can be used on prem or in the cloud. Arpit talks about why Appsmith went the open source route in the beginning, and the benefits that brings and talk us through their current implementation of Appsmith and their future roadmap.
Nikhil Nandagopal is the Co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Appsmith, a quickly growing open-source project that is used by over 7,000 teams, employs people in sixteen countries, and has raised over $51 million in capital. Kevin & Nikhil discuss everything from building products in public to building scalable product teams from 0 to 1. Follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Twitter & check out our website @ productcoffeepodcast.com ☕️ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/product-coffee/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/product-coffee/support
Appsmith is an open-source, low-code platform for building and maintaining internal tools like custom dashboards, admin panels, and, of course, CRUD apps.Watch Arpin's talk on how a low-cost, low-tech solution can simplify online payments.Arpit isn't the first engineer we've talked to whose career was sparked by the digital pets of the 90s. Listen to Episode #431: Words of wisdom for self-taught developers.It's time to get excited about Hacktoberfest, an annual DigitalOcean event that encourages people to contribute to open-source projects throughout the month of October.Connect with Arpit on LinkedIn or Twitter.Last but not least, today's Lifeboat badge goes to user Belzebub for their answer to the question Custom alert dialog with rounded corners and a transparent background.
Founders Unfiltered Ep-60: Brought to you by the Founders Unfiltered podcast by A Junior VC - Unscripted conversations with Indian founders about their story and the process of building a company. Hosted by Aviral and Mazin. Join us as we talk to Abhishek Nayak, the Co-Founder & CEO of APPSMITH about their story. Abhishek Nayak is the co-founder and CEO of Appsmith. After earning his degree from BITS Pilani in 2010, he went on to co-found businesses like Gharpay, Wise Mobile Technology, and Bicycle AI. He also served as director of product for Ezetap Mobile Solutions. About APPSMITH: It is the first open-source low-code tool that helps developers build dashboards and admin panels very quickly. It's a platform that helps businesses build any custom internal application within hours. The business was established in the middle of 2019, and its open-source software has been downloaded more than 5 million times by users at more than 1,000 businesses in more than 100 countries. For more visit - https://ajuniorvc.com/podcast/
Great digital products don't just happen. They're the result of a strong designer-developer relationship. That is because the two groups bring different but complementary skill sets. By understanding and respecting each other's strengths, the designer and developer can work together to create user-friendly and technically sound products. In this episode, Abhishek Nayak talks about how their company, Appsmith, addresses some of the common issues in the designer-developer relationship and how they have set up both sides for success. Abhishek is the CEO and Co-founder of Appsmith, an open-source low-code tool that helps developers build dashboards and admin panels very quickly.Abhishek also shared with us Appsmith's design system in a bonus video, and showed us how the designers and developers collaborate on files, and get feedback on work-in-progress from customer in real time: View video on our Youtube channelLinksAppsmithUX Cake – YouTubeAbhishek Nayak – Twitterhttps://www.Linkedin.com/in/AbhishekNayak/https://GitHub.com/AppsmithOrg/AppsmithIf you enjoy this podcast, there are some really simple ways you can help us: follow us on twitter - like and reshare our postssubscribe to the newsletter for updates and bonus contentshare this episode, or any of our episodes, with a friend. rate & review us on Apple Podcast or iTunes on desktop!Connect with UX Cake!UX Cake Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Linked In | Email - we love feedback!Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/uxcake. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In this week's show, Phil talks to Arpit Mohan, who has always been fascinated by technology, from taking apart has Tamagotchi to creating a mobile game that went viral. He is the co-founder and CTO of Appsmith, an open-source project built by engineers for engineers. It is now used by more than 1,000 teams, employs people in 8 countries and has raised over $10 million in capital. Arpit talks about the value of focussing upon soft skills such as communication and enhancing teams. He also discusses the value of reading, and how it can make you a better writer. KEY TAKEAWAYS: TOP CAREER TIP Software engineers focus on the tools and the code too much, we should focus more upon the soft skills that go with the job, such as the people and the teams. WORST CAREER MOMENT Arpit ran a delete query on a database, and mistyped the command, which wiped every order in the company's system for the previous six months. This taught him the value of quality checking every moment. CAREER HIGHLIGHT While running a mobile game company, the game they were working on went viral. The user database began to grow very rapidly. THE FUTURE OF CAREERS IN I.T Software and IT has endless potential to provide solutions for the world. There are numerous ways in which the physical world cannot achieve certain things, but IT and software can make these things a reality. THE REVEAL What first attracted you to a career in I.T.? – The ability to create and express himself as a builder What's the best career advice you received? – Make your manager look good What's the worst career advice you received? – To focus on the money and compensation, and to go for the jobs that pay the best. What would you do if you started your career now? – Arpit would focus upon the internals of systems What are your current career objectives? – Trying to be a better leader, and to become a more effective communicator What's your number one non-technical skill? – The ability to write long form formats, such as memos. How do you keep your own career energized? – Read, read, read! What do you do away from technology? – Running, fitness and spending time with family FINAL CAREER TIP Reading is incredibly important. The more you read, the better you write. BEST MOMENTS (3:16) – Arpit – “I've always been bedazzled by the ability to create” (6:06) – Arpit - “A lot of people end up being senior engineers, but junior humans, but it should be the other way around” (7:00) – Arpit – “What will get you ahead in life is when you build trust with your team” (16:46)– Arpit – “I'm very optimistic about careers in IT, because that's where the future is” ABOUT THE HOST – PHIL BURGESS Phil Burgess is an independent IT consultant who has spent the last 20 years helping organizations to design, develop, and implement software solutions. Phil has always had an interest in helping others to develop and advance their careers. And in 2017 Phil started the I.T. Career Energizer podcast to try to help as many people as possible to learn from the career advice and experiences of those that have been, and still are, on that same career journey. CONTACT THE HOST – PHIL BURGESS Phil can be contacted through the following Social Media platforms: Twitter: https://twitter.com/_PhilBurgess LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/philburgess Instagram: https://instagram.com/_philburgess Website: https://itcareerenergizer.com/contact Phil is also reachable by email at phil@itcareerenergizer.com and via the podcast's website, https://itcareerenergizer.com Join the I.T. Career Energizer Community on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/ITCareerEnergizer ABOUT THE GUEST – ARPIT MOHAN Arpit Mohan is the co-founder and CTO of Appsmith, an open-source project built by engineers for engineers. It is now used by more than 1,000 teams, employs people in 8 countries and has raised over $10 million in capital. CONTACT THE GUEST – ARPIT MOHAN Twitter: https://twitter.com/mohanarpit LinkedIn: https://in.linkedin.com/in/arpitmohan Website: https://www.appsmith.com/
Abhishek is the co-founder and CEO of AppSmith, which is a low-code tool that helps developers build dashboards and admin panels very quickly. AppSmith has raised over $50M from investors like Accel, Bessemer, Insight and Prasanna Sankar (previously on the pod!).In this conversation we primarily explore how Abhishek is building AppSmith with the open source community as a core part of the product, business model and long term strategy. We also talk about Abhishek's incredible journey (and lessons) as a serial entrepreneur, how the Indian startup ecosystem has evolved over the last 10+ years, and the key drivers behind the trend of Indian startups building for the world.In this episode we discuss:Lessons from serial entrepreneurship and journey to founding AppSmith How did you get into building things?What were the most impactful learnings from your early startups?What is AppSmith and what led you to founding the company?AppSmith and building an open source powered company How did you evaluate whether to build an open source company? And whether open source could be both an advantage and a viable strategy for AppSmith?What are some of AppSmith's biggest differentiators vs other no-code internal tool products in market today?How did you approach getting your first customer? How did you evaluate early product market fit for the open source product/project?What were the biggest risks you were focused on mitigating early on and how did you approach it?What have you experienced as being the biggest advantages of building an open source product/company?What is your current scale and traction about 20 mos after launch?Growth and monetization for an open source project What does the open source flywheel look like and which levers are you most focused on to drive adoption and keep improving the product?Where do you focus your marketing and growth efforts for an open source company?Why do people choose you over alternatives? How do customers and buyers evaluate the pros/cons of the open source nature of your product?In the context of your open source approach, what is your business model and how do you think about your monetization strategy?What's your long term vision for AppSmith and what's your approach to getting there?What has been the big differentiator between open source projects that have had great monetization vs ones that have struggled with monetization?Indian startup ecosystem From your vantage point, what have been some big inflection points from the last 10+ years that have led to the thriving Indian startup ecosystem?What do you think is driving the trend of Indian startups building for the rest of the world?What are some of the advantages you see to building world class products in India?Closeout questions What is the most challenging or difficult feedback you've received and how have you incorporated it going forward?What are your superpowers that you find yourself leaning on often?What's something you believe that would surprise most people?LinksLearn more about AppSmithFollow Abhishek and AppSmith on TwitterHit subscribe to keep up with new episodes!Follow Ashish and Zane on Twitter for summariesClick here to give feedback — it only takes a minute
Abhishek is the co-founder and CEO of AppSmith, which is a low-code tool that helps developers build dashboards and admin panels very quickly. AppSmith has raised over $50M from investors like Accel, Bessemer, Insight and Prasanna Sankar (previously on the pod!).In this conversation we primarily explore how Abhishek is building AppSmith with the open source community as a core part of the product, business model and long term strategy. We also talk about Abhishek's incredible journey (and lessons) as a serial entrepreneur, how the Indian startup ecosystem has evolved over the last 10+ years, and the key drivers behind the trend of Indian startups building for the world.In this episode we discuss:Lessons from serial entrepreneurship and journey to founding AppSmith How did you get into building things?What were the most impactful learnings from your early startups?What is AppSmith and what led you to founding the company?AppSmith and building an open source powered company How did you evaluate whether to build an open source company? And whether open source could be both an advantage and a viable strategy for AppSmith?What are some of AppSmith's biggest differentiators vs other no-code internal tool products in market today?How did you approach getting your first customer? How did you evaluate early product market fit for the open source product/project?What were the biggest risks you were focused on mitigating early on and how did you approach it?What have you experienced as being the biggest advantages of building an open source product/company?What is your current scale and traction about 20 mos after launch?Growth and monetization for an open source project What does the open source flywheel look like and which levers are you most focused on to drive adoption and keep improving the product?Where do you focus your marketing and growth efforts for an open source company?Why do people choose you over alternatives? How do customers and buyers evaluate the pros/cons of the open source nature of your product?In the context of your open source approach, what is your business model and how do you think about your monetization strategy?What's your long term vision for AppSmith and what's your approach to getting there?What has been the big differentiator between open source projects that have had great monetization vs ones that have struggled with monetization?Indian startup ecosystem From your vantage point, what have been some big inflection points from the last 10+ years that have led to the thriving Indian startup ecosystem?What do you think is driving the trend of Indian startups building for the rest of the world?What are some of the advantages you see to building world class products in India?Closeout questions What is the most challenging or difficult feedback you've received and how have you incorporated it going forward?What are your superpowers that you find yourself leaning on often?What's something you believe that would surprise most people?LinksLearn more about AppSmithFollow Abhishek and AppSmith on TwitterHit subscribe to keep up with new episodes!Follow Ashish and Zane on Twitter for summariesClick here to give feedback — it only takes a minute
The GPU shortage is (allegedly) over! Read about it at The Verge.Learn how low code demands more creativity from developers.On the job market? Don't be afraid to turn the tables on your interviewer.This week's tech recs: Help foster more equitable compensation conversations by taking Devocate's Developer Relations Compensation Survey.Cal.com offers scheduling infrastructure for anyone and everyone—and it's open-source.Appsmith is an open-source, low-code platform for building, shipping, and maintaining CRUD apps.Finally, if you're wondering how to get that startup idea from back-of-napkin to exit, start with Kernal.
In episode 104 of JAMstack Radio, Brian chats with Nikhil Nandagopal, Founder & CPO of Appsmith. The conversation focuses on internal tools, why they're easy to build and difficult to adopt, and the OSS options available for devs today.
In episode 104 of JAMstack Radio, Brian chats with Nikhil Nandagopal, Founder & CPO of Appsmith. The conversation focuses on internal tools, why they're easy to build and difficult to adopt, and the OSS options available for devs today.
Arpit's story took us from Tamagotchis to Robotics, and then to discovering that Software development is not just for failed hardware engineers. Arpit took us on a wild ride, made of entrepreneurship, learning on the job, hypergrowth, and finding the product-market-fit (or not). We talked about his transformation from a software engineer to a coding CTO and then to an organization builder. We spoke about his last endeavor AppSmith, and finally about algorithms to live by.Here are the links from the show:https://twitter.com/mohanarpithttps://www.appsmith.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/arpitmohan/https://arpitmohan.com/Algorithms to Live By: https://amzn.to/37S0TaKCode: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software: https://amzn.to/3OCVXavarpit@appsmith.comme@arpitmohan.comCreditsCover Heliotrope by Blue Dot Sessions is licensed CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.Your host is Timothée (Tim) Bourguignon, more about him at timbourguignon.fr.Gift the podcast a rating on one of the significant platforms https://devjourney.info/subscribeSupport the show
Abhishek Nayak is Co-Founder & CEO of Appsmith, the open source platform for building internal tools. The company's open source project, also called appsmith, has 19K stars and is a low code project to build admin panels, internal tools, and dashboards. Appsmith has raised over $50M from investors including Insight, Canaan, OSS Capital, and Accel.
With multiple successful startups under his belt, Abhishek Nayak has learned a lot about finding product/market fit, defining a niche, and, most importantly, simplicity. He is the Co-Founder and CEO of Appsmith, an open source project that helps organizations build and maintain custom internal tools. The heartbeat of this product? Ease of use.On this episode, Abhishek shares the challenges he's faced while pursuing simplicity in scaling products. We discuss the importance of understanding your customers, what B2B products can learn from B2C products, and the biggest reasons products fail.You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!
As a company grows, internal tools start to play a bigger role, and these tools become harder to maintain. This is why Appsmith was created. It's an open-source platform that lets you create these internal tools. Join Ben Rometsch as he talks to Nikhil Nandagopal about Appsmith.
Appsmith is an open-source project created to put customizable app tools directly into developers' hands. Arpit Mohan, CTO of Appsmith, joins us to talk about how he wants to help engineers accomplish more, how Appsmith is used daily by over 1,000 teams, the difficulty of managing microservices, and more. Links https://www.appsmith.com https://twitter.com/mohanarpit https://twitter.com/theappsmith https://github.com/appsmithorg/appsmith Follow us. Get free stickers. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, fill out this form here (https://podrocket.logrocket.com/get-podrocket-stickers), and we'll send you free PodRocket stickers! What does LogRocket do? LogRocket combines frontend monitoring, product analytics, and session replay to help software teams deliver the ideal product experience. Try LogRocket for free today (https://logrocket.com/signup/?pdr). Special Guest: Arpit Mohan.
On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Abhishek Nayak, Co-founder and CEO of Appsmith. Abhisek and I talk about the rise of no-code tools and some of the misconceptions and opportunities that no-code can bring to startups and enterprises alike. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation is a podcast to help the new innovators navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.Interview Transcript with Abhishek Nayak, Co-founder and CEO of AppsmithBrian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing guest. Today we have Abhishek Nayak. He is the CEO and Co-founder of a company called Appsmith. Welcome to the show. Abhishek Nayak: Thanks Brian. Really excited to be here. Brian Ardinger: I heard about Appsmith as we talk more and more about this no-code low-code space, that's developing in the startup and in the enterprise world. And Appsmith is an open-source framework that makes it easy to build and maintain internal custom business tools. No code for the enterprise if I'm correct. Abhishek Nayak: Yeah, exactly. Think of us like WordPress, but for building internal user facing applications. Brian Ardinger: I'd love to dig into how this got started, this rise of no-code technologies and that. Making it easier for the non-traditional technical person to build and create faster and that. So maybe let's take a step back and tell us a little bit of your journey of how you became a founder and specifically around, how did you decide to build a no-code app platform? Abhishek Nayak: Been an entrepreneur for a better part of the previous decade. Appsmith is actually my third startup. My first startup was in the space of offline logistics. We were doing cash and delivery. So, we had around 150 plus people. Lots of custom software built internally to manage them. And to run the business. My second startup was in the space of AI, where we were trying to automate customer support. And we used to have 10 plus customers and use to automate support requests for them. That again, we were building a lot of custom applications to train the data. Look at how a particular board or a particular model is performing. And just run all sorts of experiments and processes. That was my second startup. And all of these startups, I had the same co-founder and CTO Arpit Mohan. And he actually got sick and tired of building all these tools. Our second startup didn't work that well. Our first one got acquired. Second one didn't work that well, and we had to shut it. But he actually started tinkering with the idea of building UI builder but for backend entrepreneurs. Because he was a backend engineer and he really disliked dealing with HTML/CSS. So, he started working on this side project. And this is why he was working at a different job.And during this period, when he was working on a different job, I was working as an EIR at Excel partners. So, I was an entrepreneur in residence where my job was to meet new startups, talk to them about how to run their business. And just understand if it makes sense for Excel to invest in it. While at the same time, I was also looking at other ideas that I could start out with.Now I couldn't find anything interesting. But I was helping my friend Arpit figure out if his idea for an open-source project had any legs. And during that process of helping him out, I started interviewing some of these startups that I was meeting on everyday basis. And I realized that almost every single startup had this problem. That they need to build a lot of custom business applications, maybe to run customer support or expose some data to the sales team. Have a way for the marketing team to maybe generate coupons. Or maybe look up some customer data.And they never had engineering bandwidth to build what they needed. And that was a problem, right? That's when I started telling Arpit, hey, maybe this can actually be a business. Maybe you just don't need to think of it as a side project. Maybe we should start a business together and do this like a startup.That's how it actually got started. It was my co-founder's idea because he hated HTML CSS. And then we started working together to build this out as a company. We also have a third co-founder Nikhil who heads product. And he again has been an engineer for a really long time. But he's a front-end engineer and he was just sick and tired of doing the same thing over and over again.So even though he has skills in HTML CSS, and he loves working on front end, he just disliked the repetitive nature that these internal apps generally have. And that's why he was excited about this idea. Brian Ardinger: I love the story. Because you often hear entrepreneurs' stories start with a pain or an itch that they have to scratch. And it sounds like that's exactly where you guys started. And it seems like the timing was perfect for this type of new tool. Because it's getting easier and cheaper to use multiple different tools and open APIs, et cetera, to make it easier to build and scale and test and try things than ever before. Talk a little bit about the early traction you got when you started the company and some of the early things you learned.Abhishek Nayak: So, the first six months of app Smith was just building the product out. And we actually started pitching it to users and convincing them to use it. But nobody actually converted. Nobody wanted to use it. And that's when we began to question is the product quality low? Do we not have enough features or what's happening here?When we started digging in deeper, we just realized that the standard style developers have for a product like this is really high. And we just had to go back and improve the quality. And add a lot more features to the product. For it to be ready. So, after our first launch which failed, you know, we had this pivotal moment where we had to decide, should we start building this for a different audience. Because developers don't seem to like this. Or should we just continue to follow our vision and get this right?So, I'm glad that we actually decided to continue following a vision, but just improve the quality and add lot more features. Because when he lost a year later, you know, one and a half years have gone by, since we actually started, it instantly took off. Like within the first week, I remember we had about 30 plus teams using us.And the only thing that we had done was write a blog post announcing that this is live. We did not actually do any sort of sales or any sort of cold outreach to get the users. And we honestly weren't putting in that much effort because we launched, expecting completely failure. Because that's what we had experienced, you know, like a year ago when we had tried to launch. But this time we were pleasantly taken aback by the reaction the market had.And that's when we realized that a product like this just takes a lot longer to build versus a SaaS product. And the quality that developers expect is just a lot higher versus today, we have around 5,000 plus companies that use us every month. And tens of thousands of people who use us every day. That's a different story today.Brian Ardinger: When you were going through the process of determining which features to add, or which ones to improve, how did you work with customers or how did you determine what to build in that environment? Abhishek Nayak: So, most of the early features that was very much decided by my co-founders because they had been engineers for a really long time. And we really just relied on their intuition to decide what should be built. And this is where I think we broke a lot of start-up rules. When a customer asked us to build this feature, if my co-founders disagreed, we would not build it. And what that led to was the product ended up being simple enough for most users. And the base features that my co-founders were sure were important, actually turned out to be quite successful. And the product ended up not being so bloated. Today of course it's a different story because now we do listen to customers a lot more and we actually end up executing it. But in those early days, it was so important to just stay focused on what we were sure they would use. I think the most amount of waste occurs in a startup is when you build something that nobody uses, and nobody wants. So, by just being hyper focused on the vision that my co-founders had said, we actually ended up getting to a product, which a lot of people really like. And it was high quality. Brian Ardinger: Then of course, having co-founders that were in that customer segment and really understood because they were themselves customers. Or trying to scratch that itch. Probably helped immensely. So, let's talk about no code itself and sometimes it gets a bad rap. Especially in the enterprise. You see a lot of startups using it as they're testing or building out new things as a way to grow and scale and meet their own customer demand. What are some of the misconceptions about no-code that you've run in to?Abhishek Nayak: The first one is that no code is only for business users. In my experience, the fastest adopters of tools like Zapier, Bubble, Backflow, were actually developers. They love automating work that they do not like. So I don't think no code as we know, put developers out of jobs. Instead, developers love it. And they'll actually be able to focus on more custom and more complicated tasks. The second misconception about no code is the fact that you cannot build complicated things. I actually don't think that's true. What I believe is 80% of the software that the world needs is actually fairly straightforward. You need a simple, but something that works all the time. So no code is really good for that. But I also see the fact that no code products like Bubble, Zapier, or Indi Nomad. They actually have evolved so much that you can actually build really complicated things on those. It's still very early days for most no-code products. Therefore, when you look at them, you might think, okay, these can only be used for building simple tools.I cannot build something sophisticated on them. But the fact is all of these tools are going to evolve. And they're just going to get much better achieving complicated tasks. And at some point in time, you're not going to have full-time developers or professional developers working on these kind of applications, which can be completed by no code, because it's just going to be a waste of their time.Brian Ardinger: So, talk a little bit about some of the applications that you see are driving no-code today, and maybe some applications you see being on the forefront tomorrow. Abhishek Nayak: With Appsmith, we see that the most common applications are generally applications with dealing with customer date. So it could be, you're looking at customer data or you're trying to do a customer support workflow, or you're trying to do a sales and marketing workflow. Most no code and low code apps that are built today, generally tend to be very close to serving our customer. Because those are the highest priorities for any entrepreneurial, small to medium sized business. But those are the commonest use cases. In case of Appsmith, we see customer support as a huge use case for us. I am personally a big user of Zapier. And what I find is Zapier is great when you have to just do some of these quick and dirty sales and marketing workflows. Maybe I want every time there's a customer, who's signing up from a company with more than a thousand employees, I want to get personally notified on my slack. Or, you know, anytime there's a customer, who's at risk of churning out, I want to be notified on Slack. For some of those things I found it incredibly easy to use Zapier for. And it has an immediate revenue impact because if I go act on those deals or act on those customers that are about to churn out, I can either rescue that revenue or I can generate more revenue. I think those are probably the commonest use cases.Now over time, I do think there'll be more adjusted use cases, which are not linked with revenue to come about where you might be doing something let's say for HR or for internal financial processes. Some of those things. But as of today, I believe anything that's any process that's close to customer will probably be the first one that's used by users.Brian Ardinger: Do you see a big difference between developing no-code internal tools versus no-code consumer-based tools or front facing types of technologies? Abhishek Nayak: Yes, I do. There are quite a few differences when it comes to building customer facing tools, using no code. These generally tend to be less data heavy. And there are a lot more focused on visual design and look and feel and UI. Versus when it comes to internal facing applications, they tend to be more data heavy. And they tend to be more security oriented as well. So, you're going to have rule-based access control, SSO. Some of these features which are necessary when you're building like a internal tool. Versus when you're building something that's customer facing, you're not going to focus that much on security. Because it probably doesn't deal with that much sensitivity. Brian Ardinger: The last topic I want to talk about is this role of community. I know that Appsmith's done a really good job of building an active community. You've got a Discord page, and a number of folks that follow that on a regular basis. Can you talk about how you built community as part of your startup? And how important is that to continuing to build a business. Abhishek Nayak: Community has been very essential for the success of Appsmith. But the way the community grew was, they basically first needed support for using Appsmith. So, they started joining our Discord because they needed help using the product. And over time, the number of users and our Discord grew so much that even when we were sleeping and there was a question, another community member would go on and answer it. So, the shared love that people have in our Discord community is the love for the product. And that's what binds people together. And over time we've seen people create like different language communities. As well as there are freelancers and entrepreneurs who build apps for other companies using Appsmith. They've actually started talking to each other and helping each other out. So we are still in the very early days, but I believe like for you to start with the community, there needs to be a shared common interest or a shared love for a product. I think it's really difficult if there is no common interest and all you have a product, which is actually not love. If you focus on the product first, it's possible to get a community going. Brian Ardinger: If people want to get involved in the no-code movement and that, are there particular resources or things they should turn to, to learn a little bit more about what's going on in the space? Abhishek Nayak: The biggest set of resources are really available on YouTube. Because low-code, and no-code tend to be easier to understand and use when you watch a video. So, I would just highly recommend, you know, looking up YouTube tutorials instead of reading an article about it. Some of these tools just sound very complicated when you're reading an article about it. But when you actually see somebody build something using it, it just clicks a lot quicker. That's the way I learned how to use Zapier and Indi Nomad. And that was a lot easier, than this reading of blog posts. Third, just highly recommend just looking at these YouTube tutorials. Brian Ardinger: I highly agree with you on that. And quite frankly, just learning and playing with the tools themselves. A lot of them are not necessarily self-explanatory, but if you get in and you have a use case scenario, a lot of them, you can figure out yourself, even if you're not a developer. Abhishek Nayak: Exactly. And there's always some YouTuber who's addressed that particular use case before. I'm not really found it to be the case that you can't figure it out after seeing what YouTubers were doing.Brian Ardinger: So, Abhishek, if people want to find out more about yourself or more about Appsmith, what's the best way to do that?Abhishek Nayak: So, the best way to find out about Appsmith is go to www.Appsmith.com. And we also have a YouTube channel that gets a lot of hits. So, if you want to just see the product before signing up. You should just check out our YouTube channel. And I'm on Twitter. You can just find me by searching, for Abhishek Nayak. You should be able to find me there. Brian Ardinger: Well, thank you for coming on Inside Outside Innovation. Really do appreciate your time. And love hearing about all the new things that are going on in the world of innovation. And I'm looking forward to continuing the conversation.Abhishek Nayak: Thank you so much, Brian, for having me. I loved this conversation.Brian Ardinger: That's it for another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. If you want to learn more about our team, our content, our services, check out InsideOutside.io or follow us on Twitter @theIOpodcast or @Ardinger. Until next time, go out and innovate.FREE INNOVATION NEWSLETTER & TOOLSGet the latest episodes of the Inside Outside Innovation podcast, in addition to thought leadership in the form of blogs, innovation resources, videos, and invitations to exclusive events. SUBSCRIBE HEREYou can also search every Inside Outside Innovation Podcast by Topic and Company. For more innovations resources, check out IO's Innovation Article Database, Innovation Tools Database, Innovation Book Database, and Innovation Video Database.
Abhishek Nayak is a serial entrepreneur and has started up 5 times and currently the Co-founder and CEO of Appsmith, a startup that helps companies build customized applications. In this episode he spoke about how he finds the resolve to startup each time, what tricks he uses to prevent himself from burning out, how to find a remarkable idea to startup on and more in his conversation with Roshan Cariappa. Topics: 00:00 Introduction 01:24 Being a Serial Entrepreneur 02:39 Lessons along the way 04:28 Making the decision to exit 07:08 How to prevent burn out 11:23 Building a startup crew 14:57 Why did Abhishek start Appsmith 17:38 Finding a great Idea 19:15 Going from idea to product to company 22:07 What is AppSmith and what are its use cases? 23:51 The low code/no code revolution 26:02 How does Appsmith's customer acquisition work? 27:42 Nuances of selling to developers 29:23 Building a developer community 30:53 Future of AppSmith 32:10 Breaking into the enterprise market 33:07 How is Abhishek preparing for the next leap forward? 34:59 Books and Podcast recommendations ------------------------------------- Click here to get regular WhatsApp updates: https://wa.me/message/ZUZQQGKCZTADL1 ------------------------------------- Connect with Abhishek : Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhisheknayak/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/arey_abhishek ------------------------------------- Connect with Us: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/startup-operator Twitter: https://twitter.com/OperatorStartup ------------------------------------- If you liked this episode, let us know by hitting the like button and share with your friends and family. Please also remember to subscribe to our channel and switch on the notifications to never miss an episode! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/startup-operator/message
The International Risk Podcast is a weekly podcast for senior executives, board members and risk advisors. In these podcasts, we speak with risk management specialists from around the world. Our host is Dominic Bowen, originally from Australia, is one of Europe's leading international risk specialists. Having spent the last 20 years successfully establishing large and complex operations in the world's highest risk areas and conflict zones, Dominic now joins you to speak with exciting guests from around the world to discuss risk.The International Risk Podcast – Reducing risk by increasing knowledgeFollow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn for all our great updates.Our guest this week is Nikhil Nandagopal. Nikhil's experience includes building out a logistics operation for India's largest e-commerce company, helped a travel company grow to 5 million users, and worked to scale a food service's daily deliveries from 50 to 50,000 deliveries per day within two years. Nikhil wanted to put his software development expertise to use, so he and two co-founders created Appsmith. Today, Appsmith is used by over 1,000 teams, employs people in eight countries, and has raised over $10 million in capital. Thank you for listening to another International Risk Podcast. Do you know someone who would like to listen to this episode? Share it with them now.Connect with us on LinkedIn here: The International Risk Podcast: LinkedInSubscribe to our newsletter here. Thank you for listening.
How is the world of Open Source faring in a landscape that is being overturned by Web3 and its ascendant new technologies? It's an important question and not just in the realm of entrepreneurship and products. Open Source was the first promise of some kind of a technological revolution, where everyone could build and use things they want to with help and support from a real, tangible community.Where is that promise now, what is being built out of it, and where does it stand with the advent of new technological paradigms?That's the topic of the conversation I have the pleasure of bringing you today.My colleague, Prayank Swaroop, Partner at Accel, is talking to Abhishek Nayak, founder and CEO of Appsmith. Appsmith is a startup that provides an open-source low code tool that helps businesses build any custom internal application within hours. And the company has just raised its Series A of $8 million.There's one more Accel connection here: Abhishek was also part of the Accel team for a while.In the podcast, we try to understand from Abhishek about where the open-source world is, how far it has come, and what we can look for from it, and all of it from the lens of Appsmith.This podcast has a lot of takeaways for founders thinking about building open-source projects and companies. Thanks to Prayank for the interview and thanks of course to Abhishek for taking time away from the grind of entrepreneurship to come talk to us!Summary of the conversation 16:00 - 17:57 - Why did Appsmith take the open-source route?11:44 - 13:24 - Why internal apps & not consumer facing apps?24:50 - 25:53 - How to build an engaged community on Discord?30:03 - 31:40 - Why aren't business users adopting open source tools?35:10 - 37:08 - How did Appsmith acquire users?38:52 - 40:50 - Do developers care about design?44:18 - 46:27 - Challenges raising money for an open source project48:24 - 49:32 - Advice for founders thinking of open source projectsCheck out other episodes from the Insights Podcast series at https://www.seedtoscale.comShare your feedback and suggestions at https://www.twitter.com/Accel_India
On this episode of Hashmap on Tap, host Kelly Kohlleffel is joined by Arpit Mohan. Arpit is Co-Founder and CTO at Appsmith, an open-source framework designed to quickly build internal tools and custom business software. Appsmith uses pre-built widgets that can be connected to any data source, and everything is controlled with Javascript. Prior to starting at Appsmith, Arpit led engineering teams at cure.fit and a number of other startups. Show Notes: Learn more about Appsmith: https://www.appsmith.com/ Join Appsmith on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/rBTTVJp Connect with Arpit on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arpitmohan/ On tap for today's episode: Lemongrass Tea & Cinnamon Plum Black Tea from Republic of Tea with Savannah Bee Company's Whipped Honey with Cinnamon Contact Us: https://www.hashmapinc.com/reach-out
Episode 6 of the Console DevTools Podcast, a devtools discussion with David Mytton (Co-founder, Console) and Jean Yang (CEO, Akita Software).Tools discussed:Appsmith - Open source internal tool UI builderRetool - Internal tool UI builderFind more interesting tools and beta releases for developers at https://console.devOther things mentioned:MongoDBAmazon S3GraphQLStripeReactWhy Aren't There More Programming Languages Startups?Let us know what you think on Twitter:https://twitter.com/jeanqasaurhttps://twitter.com/davidmyttonhttps://twitter.com/consoledotdevOr by email: hello@console.devWe are always on the lookout for interesting tools to feature in the newsletter, so please say hello if you're working on something new or have recently used a tool you think we'd like.We only include things that would be of interest to experienced developers and do not accept payment for product inclusion. Read our selection criteria.Recorded: 2021-08-03.
'Low code' is an approach to programming that avoids repetitive and boilerplate coding work through pre-coded templates. An increasing number of Indian tech startups are using low code. In this episode of ALTRnative Perspectives, we speak to experts Akshay Rangasai of Appsmith and Siddhant Puri of Retool to understand three main issues: One, the blurry line between low code and the general abstraction of technology. Two, the employment implications of low code - does it free up the time of engineers? Does it threaten some jobs? And three, what this means for the adage "everybody should learn to code" - with templatisation, does everyone really need to learn to code? How can innovation in digital technology arise in this scenario? ALTRnative Perspectives is a podcast by the Centre for Applied Law and Technology Research, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. This episode has been developed by Jai Vipra.
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