WEBVTT NOTE This file was generated by Descript 00:00:02.760 --> 00:00:05.360 mike: Hello and welcome to APIs you won't hate. 00:00:05.360 --> 00:00:08.390 My name is Mike Fulco, your host . I'm here today chatting 00:00:08.390 --> 00:00:09.430 with a new friend of mine. 00:00:09.496 --> 00:00:12.096 And we're gonna dive into something that I think is an interesting topic 00:00:12.096 --> 00:00:14.173 for lots of devs of various flavors. 00:00:14.273 --> 00:00:17.013 And it's something that comes up for me I think fairly often when I'm 00:00:17.013 --> 00:00:20.148 talking to developers who are sort of like thrust out into the wild for 00:00:20.148 --> 00:00:21.348 the first time and have gone past. 00:00:22.328 --> 00:00:26.518 I don't know the 100 or 200 level tutorial experience of building things. 00:00:26.518 --> 00:00:29.614 It's a topic that it comes in handy if you're building anything that uses dynamic 00:00:29.614 --> 00:00:33.753 information that I'm sure you'll run into from time to time, especially if you're 00:00:33.793 --> 00:00:37.086 building APIs with information that has any sort of real time component to it. 00:00:37.086 --> 00:00:39.900 And of course that means the elephant in the room today is webhooks. 00:00:39.900 --> 00:00:41.660 And so we're here to chat about webhooks. 00:00:41.660 --> 00:00:44.093 I'm talking today to Tom McConn from S spx. 00:00:44.093 --> 00:00:45.013 Tom, how are you doing today? 00:00:45.063 --> 00:00:45.993 tom: Yeah, I'm great. 00:00:45.993 --> 00:00:46.313 Thank you. 00:00:46.313 --> 00:00:46.993 How about yourself? 00:00:47.533 --> 00:00:48.503 Track 1: I am doing really well. 00:00:48.503 --> 00:00:48.783 Thanks. 00:00:48.783 --> 00:00:48.983 Yeah. 00:00:48.983 --> 00:00:50.383 Thanks for taking the time to talk to me. 00:00:50.464 --> 00:00:53.957 I am gosh, I would say I'm, I'm the dangerous kind of web hook user in 00:00:53.957 --> 00:00:57.065 that I've consumed them many, many, many times with reckless disregard 00:00:57.065 --> 00:00:58.425 for my own health and wellbeing. 00:00:58.520 --> 00:01:01.363 And I have lots and lots of feelings on using web hooks. 00:01:01.363 --> 00:01:03.683 But to be honest with you, I've never built the. 00:01:04.673 --> 00:01:07.193 Event side of web hooks, the side that emits web hooks. 00:01:07.228 --> 00:01:10.628 So I've got lots of questions for you there, but maybe let's take a step 00:01:10.628 --> 00:01:12.228 back first, and let's start with this. 00:01:12.323 --> 00:01:13.803 Can you tell me what Web hooks are? 00:01:13.803 --> 00:01:17.358 Give me like the, the 100 level description of what a web hook is and 00:01:17.358 --> 00:01:18.758 why someone might be interested in them. 00:01:18.993 --> 00:01:19.483 tom: Yeah. 00:01:19.483 --> 00:01:22.443 You know, th this is a question I'm always iterating on, so if someone 00:01:22.443 --> 00:01:24.823 from the audience has a better description, I'm willing to listen. 00:01:24.823 --> 00:01:27.402 I, the way I describe it is kinda like a reverse api. 00:01:27.572 --> 00:01:31.880 So if an API is you making a request to a server, you know this a web hook is 00:01:31.880 --> 00:01:33.440 the server making a notification to you. 00:01:33.440 --> 00:01:38.680 So kinda like a server to server po push notification or like any event emitting. 00:01:39.030 --> 00:01:40.680 Yeah, I give you few versions. 00:01:40.680 --> 00:01:41.760 I hope choose the best one. 00:01:42.570 --> 00:01:43.420 Track 1: Yeah, sure. 00:01:43.420 --> 00:01:44.577 I think, I think that's fair. 00:01:44.577 --> 00:01:47.337 So what are some examples, maybe common examples where people might 00:01:47.337 --> 00:01:49.937 have run into web hooks or use them whether they realized it or not? 00:01:50.637 --> 00:01:52.367 tom: Oh, so literally everywhere. 00:01:52.367 --> 00:01:56.326 You know, so like if you've ever used a product that uses Stripe you've used web 00:01:56.326 --> 00:01:59.886 hooks without realizing it, because that's usually how Stripe notifies people that 00:01:59.886 --> 00:02:02.986 someone has paid or like an or someone is delinquent or anything like that. 00:02:02.986 --> 00:02:06.501 You know, when you receive an email on Gmail, it submits a web hook to 00:02:06.501 --> 00:02:09.661 your c r m or anything like that to let it know that someone's pay. 00:02:09.711 --> 00:02:12.046 So that sorry that an email was received. 00:02:12.072 --> 00:02:12.792 I mean, literally 00:02:12.792 --> 00:02:15.112 everything I can give you every interaction that you, 00:02:15.112 --> 00:02:16.312 that happens in synchronously. 00:02:16.877 --> 00:02:17.727 Track 1: Yeah, it's true. 00:02:17.727 --> 00:02:18.727 They are all over the place. 00:02:18.747 --> 00:02:21.824 And I, I think Tom, actually, you just set a new record for how early in the show. 00:02:21.824 --> 00:02:24.427 I need to give my disclaimer that I used to work for Stripe 00:02:24.427 --> 00:02:25.667 and I no longer work for Stripe. 00:02:25.667 --> 00:02:27.437 So we're, we're not associated with Stripe. 00:02:27.507 --> 00:02:29.107 Although obviously no negative feelings there. 00:02:29.107 --> 00:02:31.445 I just feel like it's one of those good transparency things that 00:02:31.445 --> 00:02:33.911 us people in the world of Derell need to do a little more often. 00:02:33.942 --> 00:02:37.182 But yeah, certainly in, in my role working at Stripe and as an end user of Stripe, 00:02:37.182 --> 00:02:42.207 I've, I've used their WebBook stuff quite a bit, so, From my perspective and sort of 00:02:42.207 --> 00:02:47.333 from my observations of the way devs learn and the way devs get things done, it seems 00:02:47.333 --> 00:02:51.053 like webhooks may be a topic that's kind of intimidating for a lot of developers. 00:02:51.143 --> 00:02:54.259 Can you talk a little bit about why using webhooks maybe feels hard, 00:02:54.259 --> 00:02:55.699 or is hard, or is challenging? 00:02:56.739 --> 00:02:57.229 tom: Yeah. 00:02:57.229 --> 00:03:00.029 You know, so the people we interact with a lot are the people sending, 00:03:00.029 --> 00:03:02.229 but let's start with actually from the people consuming, which I 00:03:02.229 --> 00:03:03.229 think is where you're going with. 00:03:03.849 --> 00:03:07.469 So I think the first thing is, You know, it's kinda like it's 00:03:07.469 --> 00:03:09.187 something that's incoming, right? 00:03:09.195 --> 00:03:12.395 And that means you need to use a tool like En Grok or we have a tool as well, 00:03:12.395 --> 00:03:15.515 like six play in order to kinda like punch through the firewall and actually 00:03:15.515 --> 00:03:16.795 get it to your local development server. 00:03:16.795 --> 00:03:20.075 It's not, it's not one of those things that you can just make a call from your 00:03:20.235 --> 00:03:21.115 computer and everything just works. 00:03:21.115 --> 00:03:22.615 It kind of requires this initial setup. 00:03:22.615 --> 00:03:27.188 The second thing is, you know, we spend, you know, all of us are like 00:03:27.208 --> 00:03:31.388 day in, day out building like HDP services that kind of like follow 00:03:31.388 --> 00:03:32.628 this pattern of like getting a. 00:03:33.468 --> 00:03:34.068 doing some magic. 00:03:34.698 --> 00:03:35.458 making a response. 00:03:35.464 --> 00:03:37.786 And that is like a, you know, a paradigm that we're really used to. 00:03:37.786 --> 00:03:41.346 But like, kinda like with webhooks, we don't even know, like, when are 00:03:41.346 --> 00:03:42.546 they coming, why are they coming? 00:03:42.546 --> 00:03:45.226 You know, like we, we have this kinda like lack of visibility of 00:03:45.226 --> 00:03:46.979 like the trigger that makes it start. 00:03:47.279 --> 00:03:51.309 And then the last thing, which I think is the most, the most this is another one as 00:03:51.309 --> 00:03:54.789 well, you know, like when you, you need to validate the signature of web hooks. 00:03:54.789 --> 00:03:56.989 And a lot of frameworks actually go in the way of that. 00:03:56.989 --> 00:03:58.623 They kinda like pause and re serialize. 00:03:58.623 --> 00:04:03.081 The, the payload, which can, you know, for, for encryption or for like anything 00:04:03.081 --> 00:04:04.859 with cryptography can mean havoc. 00:04:04.999 --> 00:04:07.699 And then the last part is kinda like event-driven architectures 00:04:07.760 --> 00:04:09.616 which are just more difficult. 00:04:09.616 --> 00:04:13.046 It's super hard to reason about you know, knowing when an event actually triggers. 00:04:13.716 --> 00:04:15.766 I mean, I think they're probably more, but I thought, I think 00:04:15.766 --> 00:04:16.686 those are the main ones. 00:04:17.036 --> 00:04:20.116 Track 1: Yeah, that covers it fairly well to revisit some of those. 00:04:20.116 --> 00:04:23.750 I think the validating web hook is an interesting problem and one of those 00:04:23.750 --> 00:04:27.864 things that like, certainly the first few times I was an end user of web hooks was 00:04:27.864 --> 00:04:29.104 something that I hadn't even considered. 00:04:29.104 --> 00:04:32.460 But from the developer's perspective, the way you receive an end hook is you open 00:04:32.460 --> 00:04:37.165 up an http endpoint, so some URL that some service can send a call to, and you. 00:04:37.595 --> 00:04:39.475 Accepting information through that endpoint. 00:04:39.475 --> 00:04:42.275 So they send, you know, to the specific URL that you set 00:04:42.275 --> 00:04:43.627 up a packet of information. 00:04:43.647 --> 00:04:47.107 And if you just trust that blindly, what you're not doing is making 00:04:47.107 --> 00:04:49.067 sure that the right person is sending you that information. 00:04:49.067 --> 00:04:50.467 So again, it's a public url. 00:04:50.467 --> 00:04:51.227 Anyone can hit it. 00:04:51.227 --> 00:04:52.587 Anyone can send any information there. 00:04:52.647 --> 00:04:55.798 And by coming up with some way to use encryption to validate who 00:04:55.798 --> 00:04:57.078 is sending you that information. 00:04:57.078 --> 00:05:00.484 You can reject WebBook calls that are coming from bad actors or crawlers 00:05:00.484 --> 00:05:03.484 or, you know, people who've just stumbled upon your API endpoint. 00:05:03.498 --> 00:05:06.138 The event-driven architecture one is really interesting I think as well, 00:05:06.138 --> 00:05:10.576 because especially in a world where people are Expecting their applications 00:05:10.576 --> 00:05:15.259 to feel a lot more real time and have this like native mobile app experience 00:05:15.259 --> 00:05:18.179 as the, the default expectation for just about anything on the web. 00:05:18.179 --> 00:05:21.642 We're very different from, you know, 10 years ago when you were expected to go 00:05:21.642 --> 00:05:23.322 back and refresh a page to see changes. 00:05:23.322 --> 00:05:25.202 That's just not the world we operate in anymore. 00:05:25.202 --> 00:05:28.490 And driving your UIs updates through events that come in from 00:05:28.490 --> 00:05:32.330 webhooks on whatever level, however often that may be, can create that 00:05:32.330 --> 00:05:33.730 dynamic effect quite a bit more. 00:05:34.880 --> 00:05:37.350 So with all that being said, I think that's some really good background on 00:05:37.350 --> 00:05:40.648 web hooks, and I think that sets the stage pretty well for, for you, Tom, 00:05:40.648 --> 00:05:41.848 and sort of for where you are right now. 00:05:41.848 --> 00:05:44.408 So tell me about fix and tell me about what you're working on. 00:05:45.123 --> 00:05:45.613 tom: Yeah. 00:05:45.623 --> 00:05:47.573 So we do web hook sending as a service. 00:05:47.573 --> 00:05:49.848 So essentially we help companies send webhooks. 00:05:49.861 --> 00:05:52.081 You know, they're kinda like a lot of, you know, we talked about the 00:05:52.081 --> 00:05:53.441 challenges of receiving webhooks. 00:05:53.911 --> 00:05:55.691 But there are a lot of challenges with sending them. 00:05:55.991 --> 00:05:59.211 And even in a way, this challenge of receiving them are also part of the 00:05:59.211 --> 00:06:01.051 challenges of sending them because you need to understand them well. 00:06:01.051 --> 00:06:02.451 You need to sign correctly. 00:06:02.451 --> 00:06:04.131 And all of those things that we just covered, you need to do 00:06:04.131 --> 00:06:05.331 it on the sender side as well. 00:06:05.836 --> 00:06:08.956 So we really just turn all of that into a simple API call. 00:06:09.021 --> 00:06:10.471 Yeah, I think that's that. 00:06:11.451 --> 00:06:12.341 Track 1: Yeah, sure. 00:06:12.341 --> 00:06:12.781 Yeah. 00:06:12.781 --> 00:06:15.588 So how, how long ago did you start in on this journey? 00:06:15.588 --> 00:06:16.146 When did fix. 00:06:16.177 --> 00:06:16.417 tom: Wow. 00:06:17.137 --> 00:06:17.937 Actually more than two years. 00:06:17.937 --> 00:06:20.257 I was gonna say almost two years, but more than two years at this point. 00:06:20.355 --> 00:06:20.795 Yeah. 00:06:20.795 --> 00:06:21.555 So a while back, 00:06:22.280 --> 00:06:22.770 Track 1: Sure. 00:06:22.770 --> 00:06:24.548 And so I guess tell me about that. 00:06:24.548 --> 00:06:27.628 How did you identify the need for, for the, the service to exist? 00:06:27.963 --> 00:06:32.351 tom: yeah, so I had a different you know, project side, project company, whatever 00:06:32.351 --> 00:06:35.484 you wanna call it at that point that I actually still running on the side. 00:06:36.734 --> 00:06:39.494 You know, people who kept on asking us for web hooks, like all the time. 00:06:39.914 --> 00:06:43.694 And we know that A, we don't have the upfront, like all the upfront costs, 00:06:43.694 --> 00:06:46.054 like all the effort to build it, we're like, we didn't wanna spend it. 00:06:46.154 --> 00:06:48.374 And then like, the ongoing effort of like maintaining it, 00:06:48.374 --> 00:06:49.654 that sounded like hell as well. 00:06:49.654 --> 00:06:50.694 So we kinda like skipped that. 00:06:51.084 --> 00:06:54.534 A and then kind of like the last part of it, which is, you know, we built this 00:06:54.534 --> 00:06:58.014 like beautiful, beautiful p i and we spent so much time on it, we're not gonna have 00:06:58.014 --> 00:06:59.254 a terrible web hook experience, right? 00:06:59.254 --> 00:07:01.877 So kinda like multiply the first two estimates by like 3 0 5. 00:07:01.908 --> 00:07:04.108 And kinda like all of that just meant, meant that we. 00:07:05.223 --> 00:07:06.043 actually built web hooks. 00:07:06.071 --> 00:07:08.671 And I wish I could say at this point, like, you know, I was smart enough to 00:07:08.671 --> 00:07:11.631 realize that this is a problem that n needs to be addressed, but I wasn't. 00:07:11.730 --> 00:07:15.570 It took a few months later when someone asked a silly question about 00:07:15.570 --> 00:07:17.196 web hooks in a slack I'm a member of. 00:07:17.196 --> 00:07:19.501 And I kind of like, well, this person is smart. 00:07:19.501 --> 00:07:20.221 That doesn't make sense. 00:07:20.221 --> 00:07:23.501 I kind like dug deeper and I realized she actually didn't wanna understand 00:07:23.741 --> 00:07:25.381 anything, anything of what I was saying. 00:07:25.381 --> 00:07:28.021 All she wanted was to send WebBook and not have to think about it. 00:07:28.021 --> 00:07:28.701 And I'm kinda like, 00:07:28.701 --> 00:07:28.901 huh. 00:07:29.546 --> 00:07:31.136 If I build it for you, will you pay me? 00:07:31.176 --> 00:07:33.176 She's just like, yeah, and then someone else chimed in. 00:07:33.176 --> 00:07:34.696 I'm like, huh, maybe there is something. 00:07:34.696 --> 00:07:37.376 I remember I had a problem as well, so like decided to give 00:07:37.376 --> 00:07:39.256 it a go and everything kind of like went on from there. 00:07:40.031 --> 00:07:40.521 Track 1: Sure. 00:07:40.521 --> 00:07:40.921 Yeah. 00:07:40.921 --> 00:07:43.921 I mean, maybe that's, that conversation is exactly the reason that I 00:07:43.921 --> 00:07:46.882 started this podcast by saying I've never bothered to create WebBook. 00:07:46.882 --> 00:07:47.999 I've only ever consumed them. 00:07:47.999 --> 00:07:51.027 The, the thought of having to do that honestly is, is a fairly intimidating 00:07:51.027 --> 00:07:53.567 thing because of all the architectural, this and that, that goes into it. 00:07:53.637 --> 00:07:56.457 One of the things that happens, I think with the event driven architecture that 00:07:56.457 --> 00:08:00.257 is really tricky is like these web hooks are asynchronous communications that you. 00:08:00.467 --> 00:08:02.727 The emitter send out when something happens. 00:08:02.727 --> 00:08:05.543 But as the consumer, you need to think about, well, what happens if I miss that? 00:08:05.543 --> 00:08:08.663 You know, if someone sends a web hook and my service is down or off, or 00:08:08.773 --> 00:08:12.183 glitches out, or whatever the case may be, has that thing gone into the ether? 00:08:12.183 --> 00:08:13.703 Like that's, that's a very intimidating. 00:08:13.834 --> 00:08:16.614 Perspective to have, you know, something like that going wrong, 00:08:16.614 --> 00:08:19.634 especially when you're dealing with like finances FinTech, things like that 00:08:19.634 --> 00:08:21.573 missing a deposit or a withdrawal can 00:08:21.923 --> 00:08:24.413 like fully wrangle the books incorrectly if you want. 00:08:24.413 --> 00:08:25.773 So there's a lot to think about there. 00:08:25.829 --> 00:08:29.379 So your first customers then were, were developers, were looking to 00:08:29.379 --> 00:08:31.469 send out an emit, emit webhooks. 00:08:31.469 --> 00:08:32.848 What does that look like from their perspective? 00:08:32.848 --> 00:08:35.608 Are they sending you something like an open API definition? 00:08:35.675 --> 00:08:36.888 Are they calling a service? 00:08:36.888 --> 00:08:37.488 Are they. 00:08:37.683 --> 00:08:39.763 Self-hosting something that's fixed stands up. 00:08:39.763 --> 00:08:41.240 What, what is the infrastructure? 00:08:41.535 --> 00:08:43.465 tom: Yeah, so it's kind of like all of the above. 00:08:43.465 --> 00:08:46.825 We really believe in meeting like customers where they want to be. 00:08:46.847 --> 00:08:48.980 You know, we have very strong opinions on how things should be 00:08:48.980 --> 00:08:51.420 done, but that doesn't mean, you know, we know we are not always right. 00:08:51.420 --> 00:08:52.820 So it's better to kind of like help people. 00:08:52.887 --> 00:08:56.989 So I mean, like what the, the main gateway to our service though is 00:08:56.989 --> 00:08:59.629 either R SDKs or H T HTTP requests. 00:08:59.707 --> 00:09:02.747 And people, you know, like every six integration is kind 00:09:02.747 --> 00:09:03.647 of like two and a half steps. 00:09:03.647 --> 00:09:04.143 So the first 00:09:04.143 --> 00:09:05.663 one is creating a destin. 00:09:06.528 --> 00:09:09.718 So kind of like, you know, whenever a user signs up to your service, you create 00:09:09.718 --> 00:09:12.678 what we call a consumer application, and then you send web hooks to that 00:09:12.918 --> 00:09:17.158 location, and then the second API call is just to send that, you know, 00:09:17.158 --> 00:09:19.918 that web hook to that location kind of saying like, Hey, an invoice was paid. 00:09:20.553 --> 00:09:23.133 The, these are the details, just go and send it on. 00:09:23.653 --> 00:09:26.547 As you may have noticed, we actually didn't, I didn't talk about adding 00:09:26.547 --> 00:09:28.107 the actual HTP endpoint yet. 00:09:28.197 --> 00:09:29.717 For that step, we offer two things. 00:09:29.717 --> 00:09:32.917 Either they use the API to do it and they can do it, you know, 00:09:32.917 --> 00:09:34.757 like from the front end, from the backend, whatever they wanna do. 00:09:35.207 --> 00:09:40.734 Or we have like an eye frame that they can embed in our ui, in their ui, sorry 00:09:40.734 --> 00:09:43.399 in order to let their customers kind, like, control all of that to kind of 00:09:43.399 --> 00:09:45.119 have like a very, a turnkey solution. 00:09:46.089 --> 00:09:46.789 Two and a half. 00:09:46.817 --> 00:09:47.242 Two and a half. 00:09:47.242 --> 00:09:47.762 API calls, 00:09:48.187 --> 00:09:48.677 Track 1: Yeah. 00:09:48.677 --> 00:09:49.077 Okay. 00:09:49.077 --> 00:09:49.717 It sounds like it. 00:09:49.717 --> 00:09:53.089 I think I've actually used that iframe service through a clerk I've 00:09:53.089 --> 00:09:55.549 been using clerk for authentication for, for my new company. 00:09:55.549 --> 00:09:58.103 And it's really interesting to consume that, right? 00:09:58.103 --> 00:10:00.293 Like I get as a user of clerk. 00:10:00.533 --> 00:10:02.613 There's an embedded interface from fix there. 00:10:02.613 --> 00:10:05.817 And I think this may be how I first came across Fix in the Wild. 00:10:06.732 --> 00:10:10.334 but essentially it's an interface that allows me to define URL endpoints that 00:10:10.334 --> 00:10:13.573 web hooks end up at whether that's sort of my local host environment 00:10:13.583 --> 00:10:16.767 or you know, pipe two and actual say production or staging U r L. 00:10:16.791 --> 00:10:19.985 And having worked formally in the past, For Stripe. 00:10:20.016 --> 00:10:22.536 I think it, it does a pretty good job of mocking some of the best parts of 00:10:22.536 --> 00:10:26.030 that too, where Stripe has all this tooling available via CLI, via ID 00:10:26.030 --> 00:10:29.030 integrations and their dashboard and all these other places where you can 00:10:29.033 --> 00:10:32.986 tell Stripe where you want them to pipe information to when events happen. 00:10:32.986 --> 00:10:35.862 And I think SPH does that really well in a way that I hadn't really 00:10:36.062 --> 00:10:39.314 considered as something that a product developer might want to use. 00:10:40.444 --> 00:10:44.126 So I guess this brings me back to then What's it like to plan for those? 00:10:44.126 --> 00:10:46.656 Like do you find yourself having to educate your customers? 00:10:46.926 --> 00:10:51.216 What they, what the ideal sort of user experience looks like for their consumers? 00:10:51.531 --> 00:10:52.921 tom: Oh, a hundred percent all the time. 00:10:52.921 --> 00:10:56.338 But I think the nice thing is that they come to us already as experts 00:10:56.338 --> 00:10:57.698 and they realize that we've seen. 00:10:58.583 --> 00:11:00.193 a ton of integrations, both 00:11:00.503 --> 00:11:04.793 ones that follow our best practices, ones that existed before us, and then they 00:11:04.793 --> 00:11:08.193 migrated to VX and just, you know, like market research that we do all the time. 00:11:08.675 --> 00:11:12.985 So education is, is less painful than it has to be because they really are 00:11:12.985 --> 00:11:15.665 coming, like willing and like, you know, willing to learn and willing to listen. 00:11:15.724 --> 00:11:19.434 But we do get every now and then we good get into like let's say healthy 00:11:19.754 --> 00:11:21.114 arguments about the right thing to do it. 00:11:21.114 --> 00:11:21.299 Yeah, 00:11:21.299 --> 00:11:22.259 every now and then, 00:11:22.844 --> 00:11:23.334 Track 1: Yeah. 00:11:23.334 --> 00:11:25.214 Developers love a good scholarly debate. 00:11:25.214 --> 00:11:25.814 I don't doubt that 00:11:25.939 --> 00:11:26.909 tom: Yeah, exactly. 00:11:27.014 --> 00:11:30.174 Track 1: that most of your customers tend to have already had web hooks and 00:11:30.174 --> 00:11:33.614 they're looking to move to a less painful implementation, or they're creating a 00:11:33.614 --> 00:11:34.934 web hook experience for the first time? 00:11:35.229 --> 00:11:38.609 tom: You know how to say, we see the whole gradient, so we see both. 00:11:38.609 --> 00:11:41.489 They had a mature implementation for a few years now, and they're 00:11:41.489 --> 00:11:43.409 like, they've had enough maintaining it and they wanna switch. 00:11:43.409 --> 00:11:46.289 They've had a terrible implementation that they kind of hacked together, 00:11:46.289 --> 00:11:49.289 cobbled together for like a few months and now they're looking to switch. 00:11:49.289 --> 00:11:50.329 And also they just wanna. 00:11:50.984 --> 00:11:51.754 With something. 00:11:51.754 --> 00:11:53.514 So really we see the whole gradient, hard to say, 00:11:53.514 --> 00:11:54.472 which is Yeah, 00:11:54.822 --> 00:11:55.312 Track 1: sure. 00:11:55.312 --> 00:11:55.512 Yeah. 00:11:55.512 --> 00:11:56.752 I guess I can see the need for both. 00:11:57.282 --> 00:11:57.612 So, 00:11:57.683 --> 00:12:00.613 tell me a little bit about, I guess then the experience of someone who's 00:12:00.613 --> 00:12:01.973 trying to onboard, onboard to space. 00:12:01.973 --> 00:12:04.573 What's the I guess the developer story look like? 00:12:05.013 --> 00:12:05.503 tom: yeah. 00:12:05.503 --> 00:12:06.503 So like six customers. 00:12:07.173 --> 00:12:07.593 Track 1: Yes. 00:12:07.593 --> 00:12:07.873 Yeah. 00:12:08.413 --> 00:12:12.643 tom: You know, so, the way I look at APIs or like in products in general, 00:12:12.643 --> 00:12:15.683 you know, like think I'm not an apple fanboy by any means, but like think 00:12:15.683 --> 00:12:18.603 of like when you buy a new Apple device, like a new iPhone, for example. 00:12:18.603 --> 00:12:22.723 You get a box, you open it and you get a phone, and then you pick it up, you 00:12:22.723 --> 00:12:23.763 turn it on, you start using it, right? 00:12:23.793 --> 00:12:26.163 That is kind of like, that is the experience. 00:12:26.163 --> 00:12:27.243 You don't read a book before. 00:12:27.243 --> 00:12:31.763 You don't need any of those kind of things, and we really try to mimic that as 00:12:31.763 --> 00:12:33.781 much as we can in order to make sure that. 00:12:34.276 --> 00:12:36.716 You know, our customers don't get frustrated before 00:12:36.716 --> 00:12:37.716 they need to understand it. 00:12:37.716 --> 00:12:39.316 And, you know, they can read the docs afterwards. 00:12:39.369 --> 00:12:42.749 So the first thing when you sign up, you kind of see essentially like 00:12:42.749 --> 00:12:45.909 a one paragraph that explains what consumer application are, which I 00:12:45.909 --> 00:12:46.909 explained a moment ago actually. 00:12:46.909 --> 00:12:49.245 I mean, we, I think we went through the onboarding mentally a moment ago. 00:12:49.295 --> 00:12:53.125 So like the, you know, Yeah, they, we explained what consumer applications 00:12:53.125 --> 00:12:56.645 are and then we have a Kell command that they can just copy paste to the. 00:12:57.335 --> 00:12:58.915 And that's their first API call. 00:12:58.915 --> 00:12:59.618 It actually works. 00:12:59.626 --> 00:13:02.419 And then they pro automatically progress to the second page where 00:13:02.419 --> 00:13:04.139 again, we explain what messages are. 00:13:04.139 --> 00:13:06.739 They copy paste that telco command and there you go. 00:13:06.739 --> 00:13:10.579 They send the first message and then kind of like we, we let give them a button to 00:13:10.579 --> 00:13:13.899 move to that embedded ui, or we have a button to move to the docs and kind of 00:13:13.899 --> 00:13:15.742 like read more about how to create that. 00:13:16.552 --> 00:13:17.042 Track 1: Sure. 00:13:17.042 --> 00:13:18.162 And then they can grow from there. 00:13:18.222 --> 00:13:22.597 And so is your functionality through six, it's not just done via, 00:13:22.597 --> 00:13:24.317 via like plain CTP calls, right? 00:13:24.317 --> 00:13:26.197 I think you have quite a few client libraries. 00:13:26.281 --> 00:13:28.141 Can you talk a little bit about the languages that you. 00:13:29.016 --> 00:13:31.006 tom: Oh, you now I need to remember all of them. 00:13:31.056 --> 00:13:31.406 So 00:13:31.500 --> 00:13:31.790 I 00:13:31.880 --> 00:13:32.440 Track 1: there's a lot. 00:13:32.580 --> 00:13:33.070 tom: Yeah. 00:13:33.070 --> 00:13:33.550 there's a lot. 00:13:33.550 --> 00:13:36.790 So like Python, we have a version for both Async Python and Sync, 00:13:36.790 --> 00:13:39.130 Python, JavaScript type script. 00:13:39.145 --> 00:13:41.335 We have one in Java, one for Colin. 00:13:41.335 --> 00:13:44.612 That is actually different because it uses like you know, async Colin rust. 00:13:44.612 --> 00:13:45.572 I think I mentioned that. 00:13:45.602 --> 00:13:45.892 C. 00:13:47.667 --> 00:13:48.357 I think that's it. 00:13:48.357 --> 00:13:48.797 Oh, Ruby. 00:13:49.717 --> 00:13:50.191 Yeah. 00:13:50.191 --> 00:13:50.711 a few of them. 00:13:50.711 --> 00:13:51.071 Yeah. 00:13:51.211 --> 00:13:54.858 Track 1: There's a lot which to me to, to my ear, that sounds like it must be quite 00:13:54.858 --> 00:13:56.792 a bit of maintenance challenge as well. 00:13:56.792 --> 00:13:57.072 Right. 00:13:57.072 --> 00:14:00.064 Do you have a pretty large engineering team working on keeping these libraries 00:14:00.744 --> 00:14:01.844 functioning and well cared for? 00:14:01.844 --> 00:14:02.687 tom: Yes and no. 00:14:02.687 --> 00:14:04.327 So no mostly, no. 00:14:04.327 --> 00:14:07.527 We had like one, two, I think two of the libraries were contributed 00:14:07.527 --> 00:14:09.567 by the community and we employ a lot 00:14:09.567 --> 00:14:12.266 of tricks in order to like auto generate. 00:14:13.031 --> 00:14:13.959 A big chunk of them. 00:14:13.959 --> 00:14:14.772 But it's still a pain. 00:14:14.824 --> 00:14:16.784 It's still definitely a pain to like update things, even 00:14:16.784 --> 00:14:18.344 though a lot of it is altered. 00:14:18.344 --> 00:14:18.784 Yeah. 00:14:19.669 --> 00:14:20.159 Track 1: Yeah. 00:14:20.159 --> 00:14:20.639 Yeah. 00:14:20.639 --> 00:14:23.385 I think this is something that API providers are thinking about more 00:14:23.385 --> 00:14:27.517 and more is you have quite a few, you know, flavors of consumer these days. 00:14:27.517 --> 00:14:30.397 And especially like, I'm the first to tell you I'm not a Python expert. 00:14:30.397 --> 00:14:32.997 I can look at some Python code and, and wrestle my mind 00:14:32.997 --> 00:14:33.896 through what's going on there. 00:14:33.928 --> 00:14:37.288 But it was only fairly recently that I, I came to understand that like 00:14:37.288 --> 00:14:40.582 Async Python was a challenge and was something that was sort of a different, 00:14:40.582 --> 00:14:41.742 you know, developer experience. 00:14:41.745 --> 00:14:42.758 So I, I think. 00:14:44.648 --> 00:14:48.178 , having devs on staff write engineers who, who work for you with you, 00:14:48.178 --> 00:14:50.658 who are able to produce libraries and all these different flavors is, 00:14:50.658 --> 00:14:51.658 is going to be an important thing. 00:14:51.658 --> 00:14:54.384 And definitely like having community support is always a good sign too 00:14:54.384 --> 00:14:57.064 when you're getting open source contributions because people want to 00:14:57.064 --> 00:15:00.224 be able to embed themselves in your, your product and your ecosphere. 00:15:00.224 --> 00:15:01.224 I think that's really good sign. 00:15:01.864 --> 00:15:02.434 tom: Yeah I 00:15:02.462 --> 00:15:02.935 Track 1: yeah. 00:15:02.935 --> 00:15:03.295 Yeah. 00:15:03.295 --> 00:15:04.215 That's, that's really interesting. 00:15:04.215 --> 00:15:07.043 Are there, so what's the world look like for fix right now? 00:15:07.043 --> 00:15:08.883 Like what, what's the breadth of products that you offer? 00:15:08.967 --> 00:15:10.807 tom: You know, so as I said, it's kind of like an onion. 00:15:10.977 --> 00:15:13.807 So the first thing that we do, we kinda like, we just make it possible 00:15:13.807 --> 00:15:15.647 or make it easy to send web hooks. 00:15:15.672 --> 00:15:18.810 And then we also have a tool that's called Slicks play which is both 00:15:18.810 --> 00:15:21.730 like a c l I, kind of like enro, like, but just very specific. 00:15:21.730 --> 00:15:23.890 I mean, if you want anything more robust, use Enro. 00:15:23.890 --> 00:15:25.930 But for, it's kind of like agro, but you know, like a 00:15:25.930 --> 00:15:27.210 quick testing thing with a ui. 00:15:27.308 --> 00:15:29.468 In order to make it easier for consumers, we. 00:15:30.473 --> 00:15:33.635 A wide range of open source libraries for verifying web hooks. 00:15:33.635 --> 00:15:36.349 So our customers, and by the way, not our customers as well, like anyone 00:15:36.349 --> 00:15:38.149 can just use them to sign and verify. 00:15:38.740 --> 00:15:41.680 And it's kinda like just much better than like trying to reinvent the wheel there. 00:15:42.470 --> 00:15:42.960 Track 1: Sure. 00:15:43.030 --> 00:15:45.170 tom: And then kinda like the Fixx product, you know, does like 00:15:45.170 --> 00:15:46.326 everything you would want and more. 00:15:46.345 --> 00:15:48.705 It's kinda like all the reach wise and like manual and 00:15:48.705 --> 00:15:50.265 automatic and like observability. 00:15:50.325 --> 00:15:53.345 And we, we also have something really cool that we call like 00:15:53.345 --> 00:15:54.265 a payload transformation. 00:15:54.279 --> 00:15:57.419 So we realize like a lot of our customers, what they do, they receive 00:15:57.419 --> 00:16:00.659 a WebBook, they do something to it, and then they send it somewhere else. 00:16:01.119 --> 00:16:03.619 And we realize we might as well let them embed a bit of JavaScript, 00:16:03.619 --> 00:16:06.219 kinda like run it there and, and, you know, move it forward. 00:16:07.694 --> 00:16:08.764 Track 1: Oh, that's really interesting. 00:16:08.764 --> 00:16:09.004 Yeah. 00:16:09.004 --> 00:16:10.064 So where does that run? 00:16:10.095 --> 00:16:11.175 tom: On our, our environment. 00:16:11.175 --> 00:16:12.175 We use Dino for that. 00:16:12.710 --> 00:16:13.200 Yeah. 00:16:13.200 --> 00:16:16.487 it's kind of isolated like it's, it is on mini microservice. 00:16:17.717 --> 00:16:18.187 Track 1: Sure. 00:16:18.187 --> 00:16:19.120 That's a really interesting idea. 00:16:19.120 --> 00:16:22.200 Then, then you get a little bit of that transformation that's sort of offloaded. 00:16:22.222 --> 00:16:22.572 Ha. 00:16:22.572 --> 00:16:26.518 Are you finding yourself wrestling with implementation of Edge services at all? 00:16:26.518 --> 00:16:28.904 Is that something that you need to think about as a, a provider? 00:16:28.935 --> 00:16:32.385 tom: Not for us but a lot of customers, you know, and, and this is kinda like 00:16:32.505 --> 00:16:35.665 adjacent to what you asked, but like a lot of our customers use those services, which 00:16:35.665 --> 00:16:39.105 again, like going back to what we talked about with the transforming the payload 00:16:39.105 --> 00:16:41.325 and making it very e hard to verify. 00:16:41.325 --> 00:16:44.512 So we do actually end up, you know, we have actually, I mean we have 00:16:44.512 --> 00:16:47.392 integrations with Netlify and we're a cell, but we also have like tutorials 00:16:47.392 --> 00:16:50.032 on how to use how to verify WebBook for all of these environments. 00:16:50.106 --> 00:16:50.666 Track 1: Right. 00:16:50.666 --> 00:16:51.546 Yeah, actually I saw that. 00:16:51.546 --> 00:16:52.066 I meant to ask. 00:16:52.066 --> 00:16:55.678 So I'm, I'm both a Netlify and Versace user for, for various purposes and 00:16:55.678 --> 00:16:56.758 various little projects I have. 00:16:56.787 --> 00:16:59.203 I know that they both provide, I forget the language. 00:16:59.203 --> 00:17:01.643 They use add-ons or plug-ins or extensions, 00:17:01.963 --> 00:17:03.443 whatever their terminology is. 00:17:03.530 --> 00:17:05.250 But they, they make it pretty easy to add. 00:17:05.259 --> 00:17:06.884 Auxiliary services, right? 00:17:06.884 --> 00:17:09.504 Things that are sort of feature add-ons for your application. 00:17:09.504 --> 00:17:11.624 And I saw this fix comes up in both cases there. 00:17:11.691 --> 00:17:14.545 What does that do when, when I click the ads fix to net? 00:17:15.175 --> 00:17:15.665 tom: Yeah. 00:17:15.665 --> 00:17:19.185 So Netlify is actually not as mature as our reell integration is fairly new. 00:17:19.715 --> 00:17:22.011 But Inify, it just helps you. 00:17:22.761 --> 00:17:23.651 I think, actually, you know what? 00:17:23.651 --> 00:17:24.171 I don't remember. 00:17:24.201 --> 00:17:27.331 I think it just, at this moment, it just like helps you with like the verification. 00:17:27.961 --> 00:17:28.251 I 00:17:28.251 --> 00:17:31.211 don't remember what is the extent is there, but with versa, it also 00:17:31.301 --> 00:17:35.291 creates an environment, fetches and authentication token puts it in the, you 00:17:35.291 --> 00:17:36.791 know, in the secrets and all of that. 00:17:36.791 --> 00:17:37.004 But just 00:17:37.004 --> 00:17:40.002 Netlify don't, don't have all of that, all of those APIs yet. 00:17:40.002 --> 00:17:41.175 So we haven't built it fully. 00:17:41.830 --> 00:17:42.320 Track 1: Yeah. 00:17:42.320 --> 00:17:44.640 There's a surprising amount of manual steps to adding a new 00:17:44.778 --> 00:17:46.018 provider to, to your application. 00:17:46.018 --> 00:17:48.818 And usually the one that catches me on my first deploy of anything is 00:17:48.818 --> 00:17:51.698 I forget the environment variable that needs to go somewhere, whether 00:17:51.698 --> 00:17:56.018 it's to my hosting provider or to CI or, you know, GitHub actions, 00:17:56.293 --> 00:17:56.783 tom: Yeah. 00:17:56.783 --> 00:17:59.623 And, and you know, it's kinda like all of those things are like, it's, you 00:17:59.623 --> 00:18:02.143 know, silly, what I just described is like a very simple integration, right. 00:18:02.143 --> 00:18:06.143 But it's kinda like, well if you, you save people like a few annoying manual 00:18:06.143 --> 00:18:09.679 steps that are gonna like, bite them in the ass, like you said that is like a, 00:18:09.679 --> 00:18:13.159 you know, a total win for society, A total win for the development society, at least. 00:18:14.024 --> 00:18:15.034 Track 1: Yeah, absolutely. 00:18:15.034 --> 00:18:17.594 I don't, I don't really have a phrase for this yet, and I wonder if it's something 00:18:17.594 --> 00:18:20.354 you've thought about, but I feel like day-to-day in the life of, of someone 00:18:20.674 --> 00:18:23.028 building anything, any engineer at any company, I feel like there's a moment 00:18:23.028 --> 00:18:26.308 where you reach, like your level of, oh man, this is one step too far for me. 00:18:26.338 --> 00:18:29.148 Like the mental tax I've paid to get there is too far. 00:18:29.563 --> 00:18:32.443 Going to take me another day to get this done, or I need to step 00:18:32.443 --> 00:18:33.441 away from this at some point. 00:18:33.441 --> 00:18:35.983 That, that's something that I've experienced certainly in, you know, 00:18:35.983 --> 00:18:39.298 like so right now I'm building a company and, and every day is learning something 00:18:39.298 --> 00:18:42.018 new and applying some sort of new, you know, integration of things together. 00:18:42.018 --> 00:18:44.847 But I see in a lot of the folks that I work with as sort of mentors and 00:18:44.877 --> 00:18:46.186 friends who work in the industry as well. 00:18:46.186 --> 00:18:49.665 And I don't hear developer experience companies talking about a lot, but I think 00:18:49.665 --> 00:18:53.182 that's the ultimate like problem to solve is if you're able to get rid of those 00:18:53.182 --> 00:18:56.502 little bits of friction from developers experiences, they sort of love your thing 00:18:56.502 --> 00:18:58.302 more for being easier and easier to use. 00:18:58.392 --> 00:18:58.882 tom: Yeah. 00:18:58.882 --> 00:19:00.202 I mean, I, I couldn't agree more. 00:19:00.202 --> 00:19:01.562 That's, that's why, you know, we don't. 00:19:02.177 --> 00:19:05.907 that that's why like this, the, the curl command that you copy already has an OR 00:19:05.907 --> 00:19:08.787 token that's temporary for the onboarding, already has all of those things. 00:19:09.117 --> 00:19:13.627 Because even just telling people, Hey, replace the OR token here kind of thing. 00:19:13.627 --> 00:19:17.142 It's like already way too much for someone that doesn't care about your product yet. 00:19:17.602 --> 00:19:18.092 Yeah. 00:19:18.612 --> 00:19:18.972 Track 1: Yeah. 00:19:18.972 --> 00:19:21.532 If, if you really break it down, there can be quite a few steps to 00:19:21.532 --> 00:19:22.572 getting any of these things done. 00:19:22.572 --> 00:19:25.653 And you know, the ability to compound a couple of steps behind the button that 00:19:25.653 --> 00:19:28.833 says install on, you know, X provider is a really nice thing to be able to do. 00:19:28.835 --> 00:19:31.398 So we talked a little bit about what Fixx does currently. 00:19:31.398 --> 00:19:32.678 What are the things you're thinking about for the. 00:19:33.688 --> 00:19:34.108 tom: Ooh. 00:19:34.888 --> 00:19:40.928 You know, so like one, one thing that we are very excited about, and this is, it's 00:19:40.928 --> 00:19:42.088 just like web hooks in general, right? 00:19:42.088 --> 00:19:45.448 I mean, it's not even just web hooks, you know, like the way, when you think 00:19:45.448 --> 00:19:49.008 about how, you know, like, kind of like the Unix philosophy of kinda like 00:19:49.008 --> 00:19:50.648 one thing, one tool that does it well. 00:19:51.288 --> 00:19:53.088 and kinda like all the tools are separated, you kinda like 00:19:53.088 --> 00:19:53.968 concatenate them together. 00:19:54.478 --> 00:19:57.608 I think we reached a point where the internet is almost kind of like the 00:19:57.808 --> 00:19:59.168 database is the wires kind of thing. 00:19:59.508 --> 00:20:02.088 And we make an action and like we don't need to persist anything. 00:20:02.088 --> 00:20:05.528 Like a message is being sent there and they do something and a message 00:20:05.528 --> 00:20:06.648 is sent there and they do something. 00:20:06.648 --> 00:20:10.088 And kind of like all of this, like workflows and you know, like even see 00:20:10.088 --> 00:20:13.088 it when our product, we use off zero for authentication, strive for payment 00:20:13.088 --> 00:20:16.271 mail, gun for emails and people use us. 00:20:16.276 --> 00:20:20.276 God ask for web hooks and, you know, clerk for authentication again and max for video 00:20:20.276 --> 00:20:21.636 and kinda like you have all of those. 00:20:22.206 --> 00:20:26.866 Interactions and what we just wanna do is we wanna make those reliable, 00:20:27.536 --> 00:20:30.666 more widespread and exactly what you were referring to earlier. 00:20:30.666 --> 00:20:33.226 Kinda like removing, even like when the beginning of this chat, 00:20:33.256 --> 00:20:36.466 like removing those like annoying extra steps that people need to do 00:20:36.466 --> 00:20:40.166 in order to ingest those events, I think like gonna be a massive win. 00:20:40.166 --> 00:20:42.620 And we kinda like we all just marching in those directions, making 00:20:42.620 --> 00:20:45.460 it easier to send, more useful to receive, and easier to receive. 00:20:46.310 --> 00:20:47.120 Track 1: Yeah, sure. 00:20:47.120 --> 00:20:50.417 I think as people who are on, on teams that build things, I think we 00:20:50.417 --> 00:20:51.737 all benefit from that too, right? 00:20:51.737 --> 00:20:55.645 Like it's, it's always nice to see when a company's goals align with the better 00:20:55.645 --> 00:20:57.845 need of the, the developer community too. 00:20:57.923 --> 00:21:01.243 You know, you're not putting artificial tiers in place to, to make more money. 00:21:01.243 --> 00:21:03.763 You are literally making the process of making these 00:21:03.763 --> 00:21:04.963 implementations better for people. 00:21:04.963 --> 00:21:07.898 And I really like the idea of also releasing, you know, open source 00:21:07.898 --> 00:21:10.834 tools to help people do it, whether or not they're embedded in your, your. 00:21:11.549 --> 00:21:12.109 Stack. 00:21:12.112 --> 00:21:15.426 I think that's really one of the things that I like, especially about the, 00:21:15.426 --> 00:21:18.546 the world of sort of API developer community stuff too, is like a lot of 00:21:18.546 --> 00:21:21.226 the tooling we work on and a lot of the people we work with are all working 00:21:21.226 --> 00:21:24.838 with each other and sort of allied together to, to make our lives easier. 00:21:24.838 --> 00:21:28.318 Cuz ultimately, like we are all successful when our end users are successful, we're 00:21:28.318 --> 00:21:31.958 not successful because we've, you know, stomped on the competition necessarily. 00:21:31.958 --> 00:21:34.344 I think that's really one of the things I like about the world 00:21:34.344 --> 00:21:35.464 we get to live in, I suppose. 00:21:35.809 --> 00:21:36.299 tom: Yeah. 00:21:36.299 --> 00:21:37.558 I mean like the developer. 00:21:37.558 --> 00:21:39.318 It's also like the open source mentality. 00:21:39.668 --> 00:21:40.628 Which is kind of 00:21:40.628 --> 00:21:41.348 like, Yeah. 00:21:41.738 --> 00:21:42.348 it's great. 00:21:42.348 --> 00:21:42.828 I agree. 00:21:43.543 --> 00:21:44.793 Track 1: Yeah, yeah, definitely. 00:21:44.793 --> 00:21:45.353 For sure. 00:21:45.408 --> 00:21:49.261 So I'm, I'm a couple more questions, I guess, about fix, and I, I want 00:21:49.261 --> 00:21:52.850 to talk a little bit about sort of your perspective on leading a company 00:21:52.850 --> 00:21:56.382 as well, and especially in, in this sort of changing atmosphere we've got 00:21:56.382 --> 00:21:57.573 with economic changes and whatnot. 00:21:57.647 --> 00:22:00.587 but I, I, before we get there, let's, let's do this. 00:22:00.587 --> 00:22:03.721 So I'm really interested in I guess who, who you think. 00:22:03.780 --> 00:22:04.940 Lemme take a step back. 00:22:04.940 --> 00:22:07.780 Our audience for APIs you won't hate are all API developers of some flavor. 00:22:08.250 --> 00:22:11.290 Probably they're all API consumers on some level, and many of them are 00:22:11.490 --> 00:22:14.883 probably writing APIs that require web hooks to be emitted at some point. 00:22:14.883 --> 00:22:17.142 What do you think is the point where someone needs to realize that, Hey, 00:22:17.142 --> 00:22:19.942 maybe I should be considering taking advantage of a service like this. 00:22:19.942 --> 00:22:22.902 Like, how does someone identify, oh, I should be looking at fix, 00:22:22.902 --> 00:22:24.822 I should be looking at, you know, whatever's out there in the. 00:22:25.317 --> 00:22:25.807 tom: Yeah. 00:22:26.017 --> 00:22:26.367 So. 00:22:26.867 --> 00:22:29.747 You know this, it's like the eternal question of like build versus buy. 00:22:29.747 --> 00:22:30.467 And when I say 00:22:30.467 --> 00:22:31.867 buy, I don't even mean like pay money. 00:22:31.867 --> 00:22:33.339 I mean like using an existing product. 00:22:33.370 --> 00:22:37.770 Could be open source, could be free, you know, develop. 00:22:37.770 --> 00:22:38.850 There's just like so many. 00:22:39.540 --> 00:22:42.381 We don't have that much time on Earth in general as individuals. 00:22:42.381 --> 00:22:44.341 I know this became a bit morbid, sorry, but 00:22:45.296 --> 00:22:46.156 Track 1: philosophical. 00:22:46.186 --> 00:22:46.476 I 00:22:46.491 --> 00:22:46.981 tom: Yeah. 00:22:46.981 --> 00:22:48.701 But we, we don't have a lot of time on earth. 00:22:48.701 --> 00:22:51.301 We don't have a lot of time to finish those goals that we want. 00:22:51.301 --> 00:22:53.701 And, you know, especially like early stage startups, all we want 00:22:53.701 --> 00:22:55.501 is to make our customers happy. 00:22:55.751 --> 00:22:56.941 So when it came like. 00:22:57.826 --> 00:23:01.666 you know, the point for us, like, do we build X or do we use off zero? 00:23:01.916 --> 00:23:03.186 We chose off zero, right? 00:23:03.186 --> 00:23:04.346 Because we, we don't care about those. 00:23:04.346 --> 00:23:06.026 We wanna just give our customers what they want. 00:23:06.276 --> 00:23:10.866 So I think like, if you are resource constrained, definitely like you 00:23:10.866 --> 00:23:11.946 need to look at a third party. 00:23:12.045 --> 00:23:14.085 And, you know, you know, you can always, like, as I said, like 00:23:14.085 --> 00:23:15.365 our libraries are open source. 00:23:15.365 --> 00:23:16.845 You can always switch us out. 00:23:16.876 --> 00:23:19.996 If we don't make you happy, it's our job to kind of like make sure that 00:23:19.996 --> 00:23:21.236 we keep constantly, make you happy. 00:23:21.327 --> 00:23:25.037 So I, I think the second part is, it's kind of like when you reach a certain. 00:23:25.737 --> 00:23:28.417 Scale where actually the maintenance is becoming annoying. 00:23:28.417 --> 00:23:29.897 Like if you look at some of our use 00:23:29.897 --> 00:23:33.597 case, like case studies on the website you see that, you know, like just 00:23:33.597 --> 00:23:36.197 bringing back, you know, you kinda like, you've spent all of this kind 00:23:36.197 --> 00:23:39.161 of time convincing these amazing employee, you know, like team members 00:23:39.161 --> 00:23:41.321 to join the company and work on. 00:23:42.716 --> 00:23:46.196 you know, payments or work on whatever it is that you're building, and then all of a 00:23:46.196 --> 00:23:49.676 sudden you are sending them off to like a small team that does infrastructure work. 00:23:49.676 --> 00:23:50.996 They're not gonna be happy about that. 00:23:51.502 --> 00:23:53.622 And they're gonna be, you know, you're gonna be like a 00:23:53.622 --> 00:23:54.622 lot of like movement there. 00:23:54.622 --> 00:23:56.782 Either they're gonna like leave the team or join a different team. 00:23:56.782 --> 00:24:00.022 So it's kinda like it becomes this like core infrastructure that no one 00:24:00.022 --> 00:24:02.022 knows very well and no one cares about. 00:24:02.022 --> 00:24:05.102 So I think the moment you start realizing it is something you care. 00:24:05.977 --> 00:24:08.187 That's the time to professionalize it. 00:24:08.187 --> 00:24:09.147 Professionalizing it 00:24:09.147 --> 00:24:16.027 either means a dedicated, strong team that has buy-in to this or outsourcing it, that 00:24:16.027 --> 00:24:17.147 that's the way I look at those things. 00:24:18.017 --> 00:24:18.487 Track 1: Sure. 00:24:18.518 --> 00:24:19.878 I appreciate that quite a bit. 00:24:19.878 --> 00:24:23.558 I both didn't expect this answer to be quite so philosophical, but also really 00:24:23.558 --> 00:24:27.544 appreciate your ability to, to turn that into a framework for recognizing 00:24:27.567 --> 00:24:30.127 you know, what the opportunity looks like and when to, to jump on top of it. 00:24:30.127 --> 00:24:32.107 I think that's actually pretty sagelike advice there. 00:24:32.183 --> 00:24:33.648 Yeah, Tom, I think that's really great. 00:24:33.709 --> 00:24:35.369 All right, so let's pivot a little bit. 00:24:35.429 --> 00:24:38.829 I'm interested in hearing what your what the process is, or, sorry, 00:24:38.829 --> 00:24:41.426 not the process, but what it's like leading in your, your company. 00:24:41.426 --> 00:24:45.138 Like what are you finding are the challenges of, of growing, of building? 00:24:45.138 --> 00:24:47.796 What are the things that, that keep you excited about working 00:24:47.796 --> 00:24:49.116 on a, a product like this? 00:24:50.271 --> 00:24:50.761 tom: Yeah. 00:24:51.021 --> 00:24:51.441 Wow. 00:24:51.441 --> 00:24:52.347 That's a big question. 00:24:52.347 --> 00:24:52.686 I really. 00:24:53.746 --> 00:24:55.796 I enjoy almost everything. 00:24:56.327 --> 00:24:59.167 You know, if you look at our slack, I do a lot of support. 00:24:59.277 --> 00:25:02.127 I enjoy talking to our customers, and I kind of like seeing what 00:25:02.127 --> 00:25:03.247 they want and what they're asking. 00:25:03.757 --> 00:25:07.367 I enjoy jumping on calls and helping customers like find out the, the best 00:25:07.647 --> 00:25:08.630 solution for them and what they need. 00:25:08.630 --> 00:25:11.251 Engineering, you know, I've been coding since I was nine. 00:25:11.321 --> 00:25:13.571 It's still like a soft place in my heart. 00:25:13.687 --> 00:25:14.897 Really just everything. 00:25:14.953 --> 00:25:16.363 What keeps me up at night. 00:25:17.328 --> 00:25:21.398 Is making sure that we build the right thing for our customers 00:25:21.452 --> 00:25:22.652 which is not very obvious, right? 00:25:22.652 --> 00:25:25.372 I mean, like, there's like one end of the spectrum, which is like just 00:25:25.372 --> 00:25:26.532 saying yes to whatever they ask for. 00:25:26.532 --> 00:25:27.492 And this, this is a terrible. 00:25:28.452 --> 00:25:29.370 Terrible way of building a product. 00:25:29.370 --> 00:25:32.693 But the other end, which is like say no all the time, also 00:25:32.693 --> 00:25:33.813 comes with its challenges. 00:25:33.813 --> 00:25:36.133 And it's kinda like you need to balance both of these. 00:25:36.493 --> 00:25:40.333 Kinda like knowing when to say yes, when to say no, and while keeping your 00:25:40.533 --> 00:25:43.133 customers happy, because you know, at the end of the day they're outsourcing this 00:25:43.133 --> 00:25:45.733 huge chunk of the infrastructure to us. 00:25:46.063 --> 00:25:48.213 So like how can we make sure that we're. 00:25:49.153 --> 00:25:54.623 Trusted partner and not this annoying, you know, brat that always says no, whatever. 00:25:54.623 --> 00:25:57.481 So it's kinda like, it's really like a tough balance to to keep, 00:25:59.016 --> 00:25:59.986 Track 1: Sure, yeah. 00:25:59.986 --> 00:26:04.370 That's the eternal struggle balancing needs and, and desires and especially 00:26:04.370 --> 00:26:07.313 demands with like the moment you've started serving customers, you can 00:26:07.313 --> 00:26:09.673 find out who your louder customers are and the ones with stronger 00:26:09.673 --> 00:26:12.113 opinions, and that's not always best for them or for the business. 00:26:12.153 --> 00:26:15.544 But you need to kind of distill that information into good decisions, you 00:26:15.544 --> 00:26:16.843 know, both for your business and theirs. 00:26:16.843 --> 00:26:17.456 It's a tricky thing. 00:26:17.981 --> 00:26:18.471 tom: Yeah. 00:26:18.781 --> 00:26:21.831 I guess another part as well is kind of like going back and fixing things. 00:26:21.831 --> 00:26:24.311 So kinda like technical debt versus marching on, 00:26:24.405 --> 00:26:27.325 Which is especially relevant for company like hours because 00:26:27.325 --> 00:26:28.125 you know, the moment we. 00:26:28.870 --> 00:26:29.940 Onboard a customer. 00:26:29.940 --> 00:26:33.260 Like, I mean, Microsoft is not a customer, but when the moment we onboard Microsoft 00:26:33.260 --> 00:26:34.780 as a customer, we're Microsoft Scale. 00:26:34.880 --> 00:26:37.780 And then Amazon is a customer with Microsoft and Amazon Scale. 00:26:37.780 --> 00:26:38.380 So it's kinda 00:26:38.380 --> 00:26:41.740 like he keeps on like you know, it keeps on like jumping as like a, 00:26:41.810 --> 00:26:45.040 a, a menacing step function that we have to always be aware of. 00:26:45.101 --> 00:26:46.381 Track 1: You make it sound like a horror movie. 00:26:46.611 --> 00:26:47.101 Yeah. 00:26:47.421 --> 00:26:48.301 . Without a doubt. 00:26:48.941 --> 00:26:51.649 So I, I wanna talk about, about your company's growth then too. 00:26:51.649 --> 00:26:53.452 Are you how big is your engineering team right now? 00:26:53.463 --> 00:26:55.978 tom: So we are five at the moment, like five engineers. 00:26:56.458 --> 00:26:56.932 Yeah. 00:26:58.062 --> 00:27:01.154 . Track 1: Yeah, that's that's a, a solidly small team for the 00:27:01.154 --> 00:27:02.085 amount of output you've had. 00:27:02.085 --> 00:27:04.925 Especially like looking at this list of climate client libraries that you 00:27:04.925 --> 00:27:09.325 rattled off before, you know, to 10 or 15 different flavors of, of spic exist. 00:27:09.325 --> 00:27:10.005 That's really cool. 00:27:10.565 --> 00:27:11.987 Are you expanding, are you hiring for any 00:27:12.027 --> 00:27:12.957 tom: Yeah, we are hiring. 00:27:12.967 --> 00:27:16.336 We, so we just recently raised around with Andre Howorth and we 00:27:16.336 --> 00:27:19.216 have like, you know, a, a big chunk of it is like hiring more engineers. 00:27:19.254 --> 00:27:22.821 You know, we we're lucky to have, you know, like a high output team. 00:27:22.822 --> 00:27:24.955 But I think we can even do even more. 00:27:24.955 --> 00:27:26.695 We just like more people helping out. 00:27:26.726 --> 00:27:27.966 Yeah, very excited about 00:27:27.991 --> 00:27:29.321 Track 1: Yeah, sure. 00:27:29.321 --> 00:27:32.565 And if folks listening to the show are looking for a job, where's 00:27:32.565 --> 00:27:33.805 the place to go to see your 00:27:34.140 --> 00:27:34.603 tom: Yeah. 00:27:34.603 --> 00:27:36.215 Vx.com/careers. 00:27:36.299 --> 00:27:40.379 But also if you think we should be hiring you and we don't have an opening email us. 00:27:40.379 --> 00:27:41.669 Anyway happy to chat. 00:27:42.484 --> 00:27:43.054 Track 1: I like that. 00:27:43.054 --> 00:27:43.894 That's solid perspective. 00:27:44.124 --> 00:27:46.882 I will obviously make sure that there's a link in the show notes too 00:27:46.906 --> 00:27:49.368 to your careers page and, and just, you know, speak and some of the other 00:27:49.368 --> 00:27:50.268 things we've chatted about here. 00:27:50.299 --> 00:27:51.939 What's the best place to find you, Tom? 00:27:51.939 --> 00:27:54.809 If some of our, our listeners want to shout at you about web hooks or, 00:27:54.809 --> 00:27:57.369 you know, their thoughts on open source or whatever the case may be. 00:27:57.415 --> 00:28:01.202 tom: Yeah, I mean, you can email me directly@tomatvx.com or just we have 00:28:01.202 --> 00:28:03.562 a community slack at vx.com/slack. 00:28:03.692 --> 00:28:05.482 So just jump in, have a chat. 00:28:05.482 --> 00:28:06.122 Happy to 00:28:06.127 --> 00:28:06.797 Track 1: Perfect. 00:28:07.227 --> 00:28:08.117 Yeah, will do. 00:28:08.117 --> 00:28:09.677 I'll, I'll include links to those as well. 00:28:10.322 --> 00:28:12.962 Hopefully we don't fill your spam coffers too 00:28:12.982 --> 00:28:13.472 tom: Yeah. 00:28:13.722 --> 00:28:14.392 Already 00:28:14.392 --> 00:28:14.672 filled. 00:28:14.672 --> 00:28:15.592 Don't worry, .Yeah. 00:28:16.432 --> 00:28:17.362 Track 1: Yeah, me too. 00:28:17.362 --> 00:28:19.042 I, I can definitely relate to that. 00:28:19.077 --> 00:28:22.837 Something about having an easy name and then@yourcompanyname.com makes 00:28:22.837 --> 00:28:24.117 it real easy for people to find you. 00:28:24.117 --> 00:28:24.397 I think. 00:28:24.397 --> 00:28:24.677 Yeah. 00:28:24.744 --> 00:28:26.686 Now that I've said that, I'm sure I made it worse for both of us. 00:28:26.753 --> 00:28:28.613 Tom, thanks so much for coming to hang out with me today. 00:28:28.613 --> 00:28:30.093 It's been really interesting talking to you. 00:28:30.093 --> 00:28:33.172 I am looking forward to you obviously getting the use fix more in the future, 00:28:33.172 --> 00:28:37.005 and I, I will likely end up be being in your inbox one way or the other, asking 00:28:37.325 --> 00:28:38.895 questions about web fix as things go on. 00:28:38.895 --> 00:28:40.852 We'd love to have you come back anytime if you're interested 00:28:40.852 --> 00:28:41.715 in talking a little bit more. 00:28:41.715 --> 00:28:42.472 But thanks for joining today. 00:28:42.712 --> 00:28:42.952 I really 00:28:43.112 --> 00:28:43.602 tom: Yeah. 00:28:43.602 --> 00:28:43.922 Thank you. 00:28:43.922 --> 00:28:44.352 It was great. 00:28:44.352 --> 00:28:44.806 Great being here. 00:28:45.070 --> 00:28:45.760 Track 1: Likewise. 00:28:45.760 --> 00:28:46.320 Take care, 00:28:46.515 --> 00:28:47.075 tom: You too.