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Build Your SaaS
Trailer
Bonus
Episode 54
Season 1
Taylor Otwell: "PHP (and a cheap laptop) changed my life"
Jon is away so Justin called up Taylor Otwell, the creator of Laravel. In this episode we covered:
- How Laravel become the most popular backend framework on GitHub.
- Surprise! Taylor wasn't really into computers before he created Laravel.
- What was Taylor's motivation? Why did he create this, even though there were other alternatives?
- What's Laravel's secret? Why did it succeed?
- How is Laravel a business? How does it earn revenue?
"Before Laravel, there were a lot of programmers that were burnt out on PHP. These folks hated their job. But after Laravel, they enjoyed their job more. It helped them in a personal way."
Here's the timeline we discussed:
- 2010: Taylor starts working on Laravel.
- 2011: Taylor launched version 1.0 of Laravel.
- 2013: Taylor launches an ebook
- 2013: Start working on Forge
- 2013: First Laracon conference (90 people)
- 2014: Launches Forge at Laracon (240 people)
- 2014: after a month he had 1000 customers, $90k / ARR almost right from launch. (He thought it would maybe make $2-$3k / month). Plans started at $10 / month.
- End of 2014: decided to go full-time on Laravel.
- 2015: Full-time on Laravel, developed a competitive nature, really driven to see Laravel
- 2015: Launched Envoyer.io
- 2016: Launched Spark, as a “SaaS starter kit.”
- 2016: First full-time employee, Mohamed Said.
- 2017: Launched Laravel Echo, Passport, Notifications.
- 2017: Second hire,
- 2018: Laravel Nova.
★ Thanks to our sponsors:
- Balsamiq: They make a low-fidelity wireframing tool, specifically geared for non-designers. Get in the zone, and I feel creative right away. Try out their free trial: balsamiq.com
- Clubhouse.io: Clubhouse is the first project management platform for software development that brings everyone together. It's designed for developers, but product folks, marketing, support folks love using it. Get two months free: clubhouse.io/build.
Show notes:
- Taylor Otwell on Twitter
- Taylor Otwell's podcast
- Laravel.com
- Laracon - the Laravel conference
- Justin's article: Why many products struggle, and only a few succeed
- Jeffrey Way and Laracasts
- Create your own podcast at transistor.fm
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Chapters
- What is Laravel?
- The human story of Laravel
- What was happening in 2010?
- You came to this pretty late
- Sponsor: Clubhouse.io
- Did Laravel take off right away?
- Taking a job
- In 2013, Laravel is picking up steam
- Launching an event for the first time
- Was Forge an immediate success?
- How did you handle customer support for Forge?
- How did it feel to go out on your own?
- How much do you consider yourself a business person?
- What are you noticing that others don't?