Sagar Batchu

This only works if you have engineers at the customer who are in Slack with you, going back and forth, really diving deep into things like, How do you want an SDK to represent union types? That's like a tough type safety problem. Or how should file streaming be handled for different encodings in an SDK?

So these are the kind of things that we really dug deep on and helped us get, I think, some true insight and edge in the developer experience. The other thing we did was we also recognized this was a product that had a significant community angle or ecosystem angle. So we invested time sponsoring a lot of open source contributors in and around the open API space.

So these are the kind of things that we really dug deep on and helped us get, I think, some true insight and edge in the developer experience. The other thing we did was we also recognized this was a product that had a significant community angle or ecosystem angle. So we invested time sponsoring a lot of open source contributors in and around the open API space.

So these are the kind of things that we really dug deep on and helped us get, I think, some true insight and edge in the developer experience. The other thing we did was we also recognized this was a product that had a significant community angle or ecosystem angle. So we invested time sponsoring a lot of open source contributors in and around the open API space.

And through that, got time with them to get their learnings of what they were seeing from users of their open source libraries. And so that was also super useful for us in terms of making sure we weren't over-indexing on the service that our customers were working with.

And through that, got time with them to get their learnings of what they were seeing from users of their open source libraries. And so that was also super useful for us in terms of making sure we weren't over-indexing on the service that our customers were working with.

And through that, got time with them to get their learnings of what they were seeing from users of their open source libraries. And so that was also super useful for us in terms of making sure we weren't over-indexing on the service that our customers were working with.

The early days of a startup, I think team is everything. I think without a great team, you're basically dead in the water. So hiring was something invested in very early on. Hiring was challenging when we started. It was 2022, coming out of COVID. There was a lot of remote work going on. People weren't back in the office yet. People were also staying in their jobs.

The early days of a startup, I think team is everything. I think without a great team, you're basically dead in the water. So hiring was something invested in very early on. Hiring was challenging when we started. It was 2022, coming out of COVID. There was a lot of remote work going on. People weren't back in the office yet. People were also staying in their jobs.

The early days of a startup, I think team is everything. I think without a great team, you're basically dead in the water. So hiring was something invested in very early on. Hiring was challenging when we started. It was 2022, coming out of COVID. There was a lot of remote work going on. People weren't back in the office yet. People were also staying in their jobs.

The industry wasn't where it is now, and people weren't switching jobs as often. And so we definitely struggled to actually hire in-network. A lot of the folks, engineers I had worked at LightRamp had gone to work at other startups that had come out of LightRamp. So I was also facing that problem of my own network had been somewhat exhausted by other startups.

The industry wasn't where it is now, and people weren't switching jobs as often. And so we definitely struggled to actually hire in-network. A lot of the folks, engineers I had worked at LightRamp had gone to work at other startups that had come out of LightRamp. So I was also facing that problem of my own network had been somewhat exhausted by other startups.

The industry wasn't where it is now, and people weren't switching jobs as often. And so we definitely struggled to actually hire in-network. A lot of the folks, engineers I had worked at LightRamp had gone to work at other startups that had come out of LightRamp. So I was also facing that problem of my own network had been somewhat exhausted by other startups.

What we did was we ended up working with a fair number of contractors early on, but implemented this policy of like contract to hire. So every contractor we work with, we had them work with us for four to six weeks. And then depending on how it went, we use that contract work as an interview to come on full time. I think the first five or six engineers on the team all went through that process.

What we did was we ended up working with a fair number of contractors early on, but implemented this policy of like contract to hire. So every contractor we work with, we had them work with us for four to six weeks. And then depending on how it went, we use that contract work as an interview to come on full time. I think the first five or six engineers on the team all went through that process.

What we did was we ended up working with a fair number of contractors early on, but implemented this policy of like contract to hire. So every contractor we work with, we had them work with us for four to six weeks. And then depending on how it went, we use that contract work as an interview to come on full time. I think the first five or six engineers on the team all went through that process.

And that was honestly, I think, such an amazing experience.

And that was honestly, I think, such an amazing experience.

And that was honestly, I think, such an amazing experience.

leverage point for us because everyone we hired early on was a great fit on the team they had already spent many weeks building and training with us so that was i think one of the things that worked really well for us on hiring the other thing that has worked really well we really think about our engineering as marketing so all the stuff all the design decisions and a lot of the early tug of wars we had internally around how to build we externalize into blog posts