{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"State of Play","title":"Steve Ruiz: He Turned Down Adobe. Then He Shelved His Own Product.","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2323,"description":"Steve Ruiz was about to start at Adobe. Bags packed. Job accepted. Start date: Monday.\nThen he looked at what was happening with his side project — an open-source canvas tool he'd been building — and 200,000 people were using it every month. Hundreds of sponsors had put up 00,000. Two major companies wanted to build on it. He called Adobe and said he wasn't coming.\nThat project became TLDraw.\nSteve's background isn't in software — it's in fine art. He has a masters in it. He spent thousands of hours studying ink on paper — how it moves, how it bleeds, how it dries. And when he later wrote the algorithms for digital ink, he had this deep physical knowledge that most engineers just don't have.\nWe talk about why he killed his own SaaS product to focus on the SDK, why he thinks craft only matters when you're building for high-agency users, and his surprisingly simple answer to the question every open-source founder faces — how do you actually make money?\nGet the UX Tools Newsletter\nJoin 100,000+ designers for weekly insights on creative software and the people shaping it: https://uxtools.co\nCHAPTERS:\n00:00 - Cold open\n01:30 - Art school to open source\n04:32 - 10,000 hours of unmotivated work\n06:08 - Finding ideas without external validation\n08:22 - The content-first experimentation loop\n11:30 - Why software is easier than art\n14:42 - Most software experiences haven't been discovered yet\n17:10 - Prototyping obsession and the infinite canvas\n17:47 - 200,000 users before you could even log in\n19:14 - Make Real: the first vibe code tool\n21:13 - Optimize for the points of contact\n23:51 - Killing the SaaS to ship the SDK\n29:19 - The open source money problem\n30:03 - \"Just charge for it\" — beating React Flow\n32:12 - When craft actually matters (high-agency users)\n35:57 - What's most fulfilling about building TLDraw\nABOUT TOMMY GEOCO\nI spent 15+ years in tech and design. Former military. Father of five. Now building a weird little media + product studio rediscovering soul in...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/Q4goNjMCyLVJblsVd-hc65Y9xpTGIkbjq5L00Huluhg/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9kZTM4/NTdjYjhlYmI5NzU0/YjRlNDNkMjFiNDgy/NTRhNi5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}