How To Start A Dev Tools Company | Startup School

[@chapterme]

Chapters (Powered by ChapterMe) - 00:00 - Intro 00:33 - What we'll cover 01:11 - Dev Tool Examples 02:08 - The Founding Stage 02:42 - Good and bad DevTool ideas 05:02 - LLM and AI Trend 07:15 - Where do you start? 07:36 - Prototype 09:54 - Talk with users 10:43 - Outreach 11:54 - Launching 14:00 - Do things that don't scale 16:06 - Go To Market (GTM) 17:12 - Open Source Benefits 18:18 - Example: Medplum 18:31 - Monetization approaches 20:57 - Sales 21:33 - Hiring a sales team 22:41 - Example: PostHog 24:58 - Developer Marketing 27:22 - Support for developers 28:26 - Example: Algolia 30:51 - Wrap Up 32:24 - Outro: Best marketing person for the product

[@omkartripathi8539]

Another gold nugget dropped by YC, Brilliant.

[@Jeremiah_]

They always know when to drop useful stuff

[@qet-lab]

Just don't know how many times I will watch this video.Thanks YC this was such an eye opener.

[@jonathanfishner7818]

Great video Nicolas thank you! an Example Devtool is ChartDB 🙂

[@flaysh_]

Look super cool, just tried it 🔥

[@vonschnappi]

I really like the tool!

[@itayfx]

How you got to 10K stars so fast??

[@jonathanfishner7818]

@@itayfx We launched rapidly & many times as Nicolas highlighted and actively talking to our developer users :) Have you had a chance to give it a try?

[@jonathanfishner7818]

​@@itayfx We launched rapidly & many times as Nicolas highlighted and actively talking to our developer users. Have you had a chance to give it a try?

[@John_Versus]

My founding team are myself, chatGpt and claudAI

[@ABUNDANCEandBEYONDATHLETE]

Same haha, local LLM as well. Let's you iterate without rate limits if you have the hardware.

[@BigBucksGames-ji9rv]

Can u code a saas with those two only?

[@mevist77]

Most useful YC video i've seen in a while. Thanks, Nicolas and YC team! *Goes back to Cursor to launch this week.

[@Jeremiah_]

Haha 😅 what are you working on ?

[@StephaneArcher]

Merci Nicolas! I would be glad if you could talk more on how to monetize when open source but also close source company

[@Jeremiah_]

Do you have a software company?

[@StephaneArcher]

@@Jeremiah_ Yes, finding the right way to monetize is hard, even harder if you open source I feel, yet here it's quite pushing it beside Algolia being a close source company

[@TLabsLLC-AI-Development]

I basically have a parametrized platform ready to go as a technical founder. I need some co-founders now.

[@michacassola]

Wow! Thank you so much for all that wonderful insights and advice! 🤩

[@george_davituri]

Learned so much thanks a lot. Hope at some point in time after having MVP, try to knock on the door at YC.

[@Jeremiah_]

What’s your mvp about

[@george_davituri]

@@Jeremiah_First initial idea started as cad bim project but I pivoted slightly couple times, now need to dedicate more time for it but.. Anyway interested? I can add your email to waitlist ☺

[@Jeremiah_]

@@george_davituriyeah sure you can add me to the waitlist I studied computer engineering but I have some mates at civil engineering too. But I don’t think putting my email here would be nice 😅

[@Gennsity]

Hello, Y Combinator. Would your accelerator program consider startups at the idea stage?

[@ycombinator]

Yes we fund idea stage companies

[@RishiKumar]

We also developed an on-premise developer tool that helps developers to resolve their production errors in minutes.

[@yusufnzm]

Can YC provide English subtitles for hard to understand accents like this?(They provided subtitles later. Thank you YC.)

[@restlake]

CC button on YT works for this

[@yusufnzm]

@@restlake It gives wrong subtitles at many times.

[@MontyBasics]

​@@yusufnzm There you go you have a business idea go build it 😂

[@Hshjshshjsj72727]

@@restlake false, not even autogen understands this guy lol. I clicked on a random part and it thought he said “death tool” not dev tool 😂

[@wepyk6552]

I understand every word because I am a native French speaker. I guess he is too.

[@yousseftharwat9041]

I disagree with the build time vs Run Time ideas comparison. - "Runtime ideas are better because you can't run your product if it's down" - "Build time ideas are nice to have" But what if you solve the problem at build time, not runtime, doesn't that make build time ideas more valuable since they "Shift things to the Left" solving problems when they're small and cheap?

[@scalingdevtools]

This is fantastic!!

[@Elingsanto]

How do you make users talk to you back honestly?

[@pfavr]

This is gold.

[@ravigahlla]

Excellent video

[@NourLababidi]

Thank you et merci mon ami 🎉

[@m0rtifiedpenguin]

I’m doing this!

[@AzriRich88]

Great stuff

[@rm-sh6ze]

When will yc respond to w25 applications

[@noduslabs]

Oh yes sure will check them out now!

[@nang88]

Ohh I see

[@Jeremiah_]

Bro just randomly popped up in the comments like we wouldn’t notice 😭😭

[@superresistant0]

10/10

[@nsilou]

He's speaking in a french version of English

[@jonathanpolitzki9128]

Any good engineers need to know about Jean technologies

[@sdgrgherh]

Jnc

[@noahloyd9]

I wanna change the world but I’m some community college student … I will not be deterred. This is my life’s mission. I will change the world or die trying . Looking for a team - Noah (message me) let’s make the world a better place , money is nothing but change is everything

[@aminbusiness3139]

All talk