Everything between you and your user.
Should be controlled in software.
Everything.
There shouldn't be any part that's
sort of this legacy janky hardware
that you're wrestling with or whatever.
Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud.
I'm Corey Quinn and I'm joined today
by returning guest Anil Dash, now the
VP of Developer Experience at Fastly.
Anil, it's been a while.
How are you?
I'm great.
Thank you so much for having me back.
This episode has been sponsored by our
friends at Panoptica, part of Cisco.
This is one of those real rarities
where it's a security product that
you can get started with for free,
but also scale to enterprise grade.
Take a look.
In fact, if you sign up for an enterprise
account, they'll even throw you one of
the limited, heavily discounted AWS skill
builder licenses they got, because believe
it or not, unlike so many companies
out there, they do understand AWS.
To learn more, please visit panoptica.
app slash lastweekinaws.
That's panoptica.
app slash lastweekinaws.
When last we spoke, if memory
serves, because time is a weird
thing, especially post pandemic,
uh, you were the CEO and founder of
Glitch, which got acquired by Fastly.
And you were super excited about it, and
as, you know, you're generally supposed
to be, and you assured me at the time it
was absolutely not an acquihire, which
is exactly what you say when it's an
acquihire, but two years in, the glitch.
com still has its usual logo up in
the corner, doesn't have a Buy Fastly
splattered underneath, it's its own
going concern, it's disclosed down
below the fold that, yeah, you're part
of Fastly, but it's standing on its
own two corporate feet, and still is
a viable brand that does business.
Awesome stuff.
So I have to ask, what's
the interplay here?
Are you your own completely
isolated division within Fastly?
Where does one stop and the other start?
Now, we're actually well integrated.
So, I'll start with the first
principles, and for people that
aren't familiar with this or haven't
heard, Glitch is a community where
you can build a full stack web app in
your browser in, you know, a minute.
It's a great, you know, experience.
It's a great community.
People are super supportive
and helpful of each other.
Imagine AWS as party rock if
it wasn't terrified of its own
users and what they might build,
and also understood community.
You know what?
Everybody, including the PartyRock
team, who builds tools that make
it easier for people to create, I,
they are our allies and our friends,
so we're always happy about that.
Fair enough, fair enough.
We're very proud of what Glitch has
been, and, um, and, and, you know, that
it's attracted millions of developers,
earned their attention, had them build
tens of millions of apps, I think
is something we take deadly serious.
You know, it's, it's a very, although
it's a fun community and very friendly
and brightly colored, the responsibility
of that is really, really serious.
And so we came into Fastly almost
two years ago, You know, with a
really strong kind of North Star
about like that responsibility
of helping people create the open
internet together is really important.
It's something that's animated, you know,
the last 20 plus years of my career.
I don't think many people on
the team feel that way too.
And so, you know, we came into Vazley
saying, how do we, Take that, and
this is the thing everybody says
when they put out the press release.
How do we combine the strengths of these
two, you know, these two different teams?
But I think it's been really real.
So, you know, today, just to speak
about myself personally, I lead at
Fastly both our develop experience
team and our edge computing platform,
which we call Fastly Compute.
And so this is basically our portfolio
of the services and tools that
we make directly for developers.
And Glitch sits really, in a lot
of ways, at the center of that.
It's kind of in the warm, beating heart
of like, where's the place you connect?
Where's the place you
show off what you made?
And where do we also show our values
about how much we support the open web
and people being able to create together?
And that's a real anchor point,
you know, sitting alongside the
work we do on the standard things
you do for developer experience.
Here's the tools and the, The SDKs
and the APIs and all that, that
kind of nice stuff that's there.
And then even sort of the, the cultural
change, you know, almost everybody who
came with us on the glitch team is still
here at two years in doing this work.
And I think that that's a testament
to the alignment and the support we've
had and, and just sort of the buy
in, um, especially as, as Fastly's
had a lot of, uh, new leaders come
in in the time that we've been here
and they've all kind of come on board
and be like, Oh, this is really cool.
We have something sort of special here.
So I think, I think
that's been really nice.
And it's, it is the.
the ideal of how these things work.
And you know, there's
always a learning curve.
There's always an adjustment period,
but I think it's been really incredible.
And the biggest testament I can say to
it is we are in the midst now of one of
the biggest upgrades in Glitch's history.
We've got a site up at preview.
glitch.
com that we are building in
public in collaboration with the
community around modernizing Glitch
because it's seven years old.
There's technical debt and legacy
stuff, but also reflecting the, just
the resurgence in interest there's been
in like the indie web, the open web.
The Fediverse, like all these different
areas of the sort of human created web.
Glitch has, I think, been at the
heart of a lot of those communities.
I think even, um, you know, Apple put out
the Vision Pro last year, and the WebXR
community doing open source VRXR stuff.
There's hundreds of thousands of
people creating that stuff on Glitch.
And so they've been, you know,
same thing, a shot in the arm with
saying, OK, Apple's on board now too,
and they're supporting this stuff.
So us being able to say, OK, we're
going to support Those kinds of
platforms with an open platform
itself that you can create this stuff
in and get started a few minutes.
That's been very inspiring
to me, very motivating.
Even all these years later, I've
been working on Glitch for more
than seven years and it still is
as fun and it's exciting to me.
And also, I got a day job
that I get to work on that.
And, and work with that team.
And, you know, so many other people
across Fastly, hundreds of other
people at the company have embraced it.
People use it in their everyday
work across the company.
They use it in teaching people
how to use the platform.
I think it's the ideal.
It's the ideal of how you get
these things to come together.
You have to have that spark in
your eye when you talk about it,
as opposed to most post acquisition
founders who have this dead look.
I'm like, oh, I'm here for the
long haul, they say, right before
they leave a suspiciously round
number of months post acquisition
when they hit a cliff or whatnot.
I'm But you're still building, you're
still doing exciting things, and
let's be clear, your entire career has
been about community, and egalitarian
access to things, and decentralization.
You remain on the board of the
EFF, you're an advisor to Medium,
you have done a lot of stuff that
demonstrates this is not just a
convenient talking point this quarter.
If so, it's been a convenient talking
point for decades for you now, and I think
it's more salient now than ever before.
Yeah, I appreciate that.
It's very kind.
I mean, it is, it is something
that's been a North Star.
I mean, I think about even You
know, one of the salient examples,
I, I was, you know, on the board of
Stack Overflow pretty much from its
inception as an independent company
until its exit a couple years ago.
And, you know, it's been, obviously,
there's been a lot of tumult, um, and
then sort of the rise of AI world.
Advancements in copying and pasting
via computer instead of by keyboard.
Exactly.
But it had a very, you know, and it
was, you know, It had flaws in terms
of like, you know, people could be
hostile and all this kind of things,
not dismissing any of that, but it
had a very egalitarian bent, which was
democratizing access to the knowledge.
of being able to create technology.
And in any other industry, that would have
been this sort of exclusive priesthood.
And instead to have this driver
be, everybody should be able to
see this stuff for free and we
should have it under open licenses.
Now that means you're
vulnerable to exploitation.
But, you know, it was a really, it was
something I still find really inspiring.
And actually Stack Overflow
shares co founders with Glitch.
And, and, you know, I think that's
something where that's an old
fashioned idea that's, I think, come
back around the idea of building
community together that way.
And.
Sharing, publishing in the open that
way, like there's a lot of collaboration
that I think is, it goes in cycles now,
I see, having been in this industry
long enough, things come in and out
of fashion, centralization versus
decentralization, open versus proprietary,
like these things are these waves
that come in and out from the shore.
And it feels like we're, we're
riding the wave towards the good
place again, in a lot of ways where
people are seeing that you can give
people agency, control, authority
over, Both their individual creative
processes as coders, as developers, as
product designers, as, as architects,
whatever their role is, and then also.
The platforms will respond in kind
where they're sort of saying, okay,
let's give you more, more power because
we see that's going to be table stakes
to, to being relevant in the next wave.
You've been there two years now.
So I'm curious, is it, no, if you figured
out what exactly is it Fastly does?
Exactly.
Because they've done very, a very
good job at flying beneath the radar.
And then a few years ago, and I
promise I'm not being crappy when I
say this, uh, before your time, there
was a, They took a roughly 40 minute
outage one morning, Pacific time.
And what was amazing was how
many sites broke, including,
and this surprised me, Amazon.
com for a few minutes.
That's when I did some digging, which
it turns out you can do, because who
someone's CDN is, is real easy to figure
out if you know how to read a DNS result.
They use CloudFront, which presumably
because they own it, and Fastly,
presumably because they want something
that might understand what a user
experience looks like when it's good.
Not to dismerge CloudFront, but anyone
who's used it more than 10 seconds in
knows exactly what I'm talking about.
So I'm curious to know, have you
figured out what Fastly does?
And if so, could you please
share with the rest of the class?
I will say it took me about
two years to figure it out.
And this is having known most
of the founders before the
company was even started.
And my impression, I think like a lot
of folks was, oh, that's that CDN.
They're nice people.
I heard it's really good.
And in 2024, no one wants to be a CDN.
They really want to be something
that perceives, that's perceived
to have higher up the stack value.
Yeah.
And, and, and also I think it was
also, and it's that one you use if
you've made one of the biggest sites
in the history of the internet, right?
Like that's who uses it, not,
not the everyday developer.
And, you know, I've come to realize
it is much broader than that.
And I think the first thing I didn't
get until I was talking really to, um,
Tyler McMullen, who's our co founder and
like deeply technical, he's been CTO.
He's had a bunch of roles.
I mean, like founders always do, but,
but, you know, he's kind of like one
of those brilliant architect types.
And the thing he kind of revealed
to me along with Arthur Bergman, we
always wanted to build this sort of
instant global brain, this instant
global computer that you could program
and you could do whatever you wanted
to all around the world instantly.
And the approach they took was to build
a killer app for that kind of platform
so that they would get to do it.
And, and the analogy I came up with
sort of talking to them was a little
bit like, you have to build the
iPod before you can do the iPhone,
you know, and then someday the iPod
becomes the music app on the iPhone.
It's still a great music
app, but it's just an app.
And I think that's what CDN had
been for Fastly in its first many
years, was like the first killer
app of this instant global thing.
But what I, I didn't get was, so
Instant, Global, Programmable,
like these three things.
Instant, first of all, and this
is, I genuinely didn't understand
until being inside the company.
Instant here is like real.
It's literally the blink of
a, literally 150 milliseconds.
Like that is the expectation.
When you say something,
it's instant and fast.
Like that's what it means.
And that's unique.
And the reason it's unique is because they
built the whole stack down to the middle.
And I was like, who does that?
Why would you do that?
And they're like, this is
why we built a company.
That sounds like the before picture,
but under some sort of cloud migration
narrative that of course bears little,
if any, resemblance to reality.
It sounds like this, like, this
is, this is, don't do this.
It's like, this is,
it's a cautionary tale.
Except it works and it works well.
Exactly, and that was it.
And I think they were like, look,
if you try to get funded to build a
platform now, you're going to like build
everything all the way down to the middle.
People are like, you are crazy.
We're not going to let you do that.
And but I think they were in the
right period of time and the right
technical skills and all, you know,
all the sort of like the, the.
The stars aligned that
they got to do this.
And so they built the stack all
the way down to the metal and were
religiously uncompromising, like
relentlessly strict about, we never
compromise on it being instant and we
never compromise on it being global.
And by global, it's this, like, how
do you make it regionless, right?
How do you make it like, you can, if you
need, if you want to know where you're
at, you can know that, but you don't
have to know, because I think about.
And again, nothing but respect
for the, you know, the teams that
run these platforms, but like
any day that I have to hear about
US East 1, I'm having a bad day.
Exactly.
Things always live there, but
you don't have to think about
the fact that they're there.
Right.
And so, and so this idea that
you could give people tools
that were Instead of global.
And then the sort of philosophical
bent of everything between you and your
user should be controlled in software.
Everything.
There shouldn't be any part that's
sort of this legacy janky hardware
that you're wrestling with or whatever.
And they held the line on this sort
of three principles for like through
thick and thin, like 13 years in,
and they're sort of doing this thing.
And, and, and I came to understand
this because I started late last year.
Running the compute platform.
And I was like, okay, there's a
lot of compute platforms out there.
And there's a lot of nice tools.
Like it is what it is.
And I looked at it more closely.
I'm like, no, you guys actually
made something completely different.
It's completely different.
Like architecturally,
technically all these things.
And the thing that got it to me,
that made it really clear, I'm
going to, I'm going to nerd out.
I feel like this is an
audience where I can do that.
I read a white paper on bimodal multicast,
and I'm going to forget the guy's name
who did it, but it came out in 1999.
And we're 25 years later, and
what Bimodi Multicast lets you do
is fast, reliable, predictable.
So, like, it basically was one of those
classic, like, choose two kind of things.
And it was, can you deliver
messages reliably around the
world at that 150 milliseconds?
Instant speed.
And this was a white paper
on how you could do it.
And nobody ever built it before.
And so you go back and I'm like, you,
you, you, you like, you, you madman,
you made this thing, you made it happen.
You did the thing.
And they're like, yeah.
And you didn't tell anybody.
They're like, well, You know,
do they, we don't want to brag.
You know, it really, and I was like,
and I went and I found this blog post
from an intern at Fastly in 2014.
This is a true story.
10 years ago, an intern wrote a blog post,
like we implemented bimodal multicast.
It's pretty cool.
It lets you instantly send
configuration or updates or data
around the global network of
points of presence that we have.
And as a result, we're able to reliably
do anything in software at that speed.
The first killer app for that is.
Updating the CDN.
So if you want to purge content
or you want to change your config,
it happens at the blink of an eye.
But there's no reason it's
tied to that application.
It can be used for anything.
And you have this like, and that's
like the last mention, like we let one
intern write a blog post 10 years ago,
and they're like, I hope they got it.
And then just never revisit it.
And so I come in, you know, like look
at the compute platform and I'm like,
I think this is the killer app for the
whole damn thing, because, you know,
we have a firewall, everybody, okay,
everybody has got a WAF too, right?
But only this WAF is getting those signals
at the speed of blink of an eye and can
preemptively Address a security concern,
instead of you having to work after the
fact and add some regular expressions.
Foundational things you build in
early on architecturally shape
what can happen down the road.
You can look like wizards from the
future if you get it right, but
often it's just a weird confluence
of things that lead to that outcome.
Like, few people can see two
decades ahead in this industry.
You know, and I would say this with
them sitting in the room, they're just
brilliant engineers, the founders,
and Like pathologically humble, right?
And there's this kind of like geek thing
where you want it to be like, well,
if it's sufficiently technologically
advanced, everybody will be drawn to it.
And I was like, no, they'll
be like, I don't get it.
I don't know.
Like you need to have somebody like
me, who's like moderately a dumb ass
to be able to be like, let me translate
this into like what civilians can
understand or somebody who hasn't
like read the white paper or whatever.
And, and, and the one that
jumped out to me is like, okay,
everybody's got a data store.
We have a key value store.
Like, oh, KV store.
Yeah, I got one.
Everybody's got one.
But could you populate it in the blink
of an eye globally, automatically?
It is that different.
And all of a sudden, like everybody
who's tried that out, it's been
like, Oh my God, like, I got
something I want to use this for.
Like, you just immediately think
of like, what's the thing I'd make?
I
mean, you could always change it, have
the API return success, and then count
on eventual consistency on the back end.
But it turns out that
doesn't get you very far.
Why did we build the whole stack?
We could have just been
lying on the returns.
That's
what Gen AI does, to my understanding.
He just makes it up.
But it sounds so
confident when it does it.
It's glorious.
We
call it a data hallucination.
Can we, can we charge for that?
But I mean, you know, like, jokes aside,
I think that was the thing for me.
And I can go down the list, and it's
like, every category, we're like,
take the good thing, make it instant.
Take the good thing, make it instant.
And, um, and what a, what a
joy that is to go and be like,
okay, we have a superpower.
And it's like, you know,
sort of the classic thing.
I think that, that people who
have been customers or using the
platform have been like this.
If you want to make, if something
is slow and inefficient,
sprinkle some Fastly on it.
Right?
That's what you do.
And so thinking of it the same way
for us, where we're like, are there
categories where I've been frustrated?
Like I've been that person sitting
at the whiteboard in a product
meeting or sitting on a Zoom call.
Like this part of circled on our
architecture is slow as hell and it's
killing us and it's making users unhappy
and it's causing all these other problems.
And if you're like, I can
just make that part fast.
Like that's a real superpower.
And so like, that's, that's the
like, not very secret mission, right?
It's like get people to think.
And the great thing about it for me
too, is it matches this ethos about
that open web piece that we're talking
about, which I'm like, I'm not trying
to get anybody to lift and shift
and go through some mass migration,
misery, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Like, this is why we work
with all the big platforms.
Even the, the trillion dollar
companies, when they want something,
it's instant, they use Fastly.
And, and, and the reason why
is it works with Julie, right?
Like that's a, you know, like it's a,
it's a valuable thing and they don't
have to leave their platform or migrate
off or do whatever they can integrate
it into their workflow, into their
stack and the things they're doing.
That to me is like a really, it's a fun
place to be because I don't have to go.
I don't have to go like pointing
out their stuff sucks to anybody.
I'm like, we have a thing that is
unique in the world and because nobody
else was crazy enough to build it.
And then I get to sprinkle that unique.
You know, hot sauce or, or, or, or, you
know, special seasoning or whatever you
want to call it onto all these things.
And then tell everybody else, if you
want to integrate that into what you're
doing, go for it and I'll help you do it.
That's my job.
Allow me to do a bit of a fact check
on this because what you've done
recently is fascinating to me as well.
You've, you've hired Leslie Carr as
a director of engineering and she
has a systems and network background,
uh, better like me if I were actually
good at those things historically.
And one thing I will say about systems
and network people is we're generally
fairly cynical because we've We've fallen
for the promises one time too many,
and she's excited about what Fastly is
doing, and getting someone with that
background excited about something is
a heavier lift than, frankly, getting
rando VCs hyped up about something.
This takes, you have to do the work,
and she's excited, and frankly, terrific
hire, I look forward to her getting
spun up and seeing what, uh, wonderful
things she's able to build over there.
But
yeah, I mean, as we record
this, she's just joined.
So I'm just so excited to
get the chance to collaborate
with somebody of that caliber.
There's so many people like that here.
You're lucky to have her.
Let's be very clear on that.
And the only way to
get that is to earn it.
Yeah.
And I think that's the thing I would
say is like, I definitely like, I'm
not at that technical caliber, but
I definitely am one of those people
that has a little bit of cynicism
or skepticism about the industry.
Everybody says they could do the thing
and everybody says they're a pioneer.
But I look at, one of the things is
like the proof is in the pudding.
Why would, like I said, the trillion
dollar tech companies that have infinite
resources and engineering, incredible
engineering talent, incredible technical
skills, all that stuff, infrastructure,
why would they choose to work with
This smaller player that we are.
And it's like, it has to be something
there that is sort of special and unique.
And, you know, it's not just our
charm, but I think it's nice that
they like to do business with us too.
Like, I think that's, that is a not
small part of it, but it really is
like, you have to have something that
is sort of special and unique out there.
And, and then somebody like Leslie, you
know, she's working on the technical
work around this compute platform.
And I think the exemplar of that is
the pioneering work on WebAssembly
that so many people at Fastly have led.
That community and really been, you
know, helping define and shape it.
And, you know, WebAssembly is one of
those things where like the geeks who
geek out about it are like kind of
all in and everybody else is like,
okay, let me know what is real.
Or, you know, I've heard you say
this is exciting for a long time.
And, you know, I bring
that same skepticism to it.
And what I see is sort of two things.
I think the first is, There's a class
of bugs endemic to software over
the last 50 years, 75 years, around
memory safety and similar concerns
that we have known mathematically are
addressable, but practically have not
felt we could actually use them in
the real world, like, like address
them in the real world, and I think
a lot of the people around the world.
The entire Open Web Assembly community.
We're like, we're once and for all,
we're going to kind of go in and
we're going to sort of solve this.
I don't want to come back here
and solve this a second time.
Let's get it right this time.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, I would come back here
and solve this an eighth time.
Cause there've been attempts at this
sort of thing all throughout history.
But it's like the energy of like
parents being like, kids don't
make me turn this car around.
You know, like they're very like, I'm
going to finally solve this thing.
And that's been amazing to watch.
And then I think there's
this other part, which is.
I never want to push tech
for tech's sake, right?
Like, is the format good?
I'm sure it is.
But for me, I'm like, one of the
greatest things that I can do with
working with this team is give.
The WebAssembly world a killer app,
which is what I think this set of
instant services is, which is like,
we can't give you unfettered access
to the raw power of an instant global
network without putting boundaries
around it, because you'd knock half
the internet offline, as it turns out.
It turns out that when you apply jerks
to anything, they can turn it terrible.
It's like, This is part of the problem
too with Gen AI as an easy example.
It's great for basically mediocre content
that spits out about a bunch of things,
but as soon as you encounter jerks to it,
it's, oh great, you've built a harassment
cannon and that becomes a problem.
And so, so, so we think deeply about like
the responsibility to the ecosystem and
a big part of that is putting the right
guardrails around it, putting the right
boundaries around it, putting the right,
you know, um, uh, containment around it
and, and, and WebAssembly gives us that.
So we're able to say like we will, in
exchange for Using this environment that
has these, these, you know, safeties
built in, that has these precautions
built in, WebAssembly will free you
from having to think about which
programming language you're using.
It'll free you from all
these other concerns.
And in our case, we can beg, and we can
give you access to the special sauce
that we've been doing internally of this
instant engine that before we had to
hold really close to the vest because
if we gave people unfettered access,
they could cause all kinds of problems.
And now we can say, like, it's,
it's, it feels unfettered.
But it's bound by this, the security model
of, you know, WebAssembly in that case
was born in the browser where you had
to have this like really, really smart
security model and sandboxing model.
And so they're like taking that
revelatory moment that so many of us
had in HTML, gosh, I can make this once
and it'll run in everybody's browser,
billions of people around the world.
It's incredible and bring that same
thing to the whole rest of the stack.
And so I think that's like a, just a, it's
an exciting thing to get a front row seat.
Few things are better for your career
and your company than achieving
more expertise in the cloud.
Security improves, compensation goes
up, employee retention skyrockets.
Panoptica, a cloud security platform
from Cisco, has created an academy
of free courses just for you.
Head on over to academy.
panoptica.
app to get started.
One thing that I don't fully understand,
and it's why I admit I was wrong, I
was convinced this was an acquihire
regardless of anything anyone could tell
me based upon one clear differentiation.
One of the first things I do when I
see a company's website is I ignore
most of what it says and I make
a beeline for the pricing page.
Because unlike anything else that
it says elsewhere, this is really
going to determine is it for me.
If there's not like a call us for
pricing enterprise Then it's designed
for small individual use case.
And that is glitch at the moment.
There's a free tier and there's
a pro tier for 8 a month.
There is no call here for
special pricing option.
Conversely, all of the tiers that
Fastly have have the same pricing
breakdown at the end, which is request
a pricing quote, which tells me I'm
speaking to an enterprise sales person,
and I will probably not be going to
space today as part of the challenge.
But also it's, you're not going
to charge me 40 bucks a month if
I have to go through that process
to wind up talking to someone,
it's going to be fairly expensive.
You're doing developer experience,
but that feels like a top down, not
developer approach on the Fastly side.
And I viewed these two things as
being inherently incompatible,
where one would have to shift.
Clearly, I'm wrong.
What am I missing?
You're not wrong.
We need to do a better job of
connecting those things together.
Um, and, and I think that's gonna happen,
but I think the, the fact that we've had
both winning in their lane has meant we
can take our time and get that right.
And we didn't have to sort of
rush to like paste the like, you
know, sign up here, over here and
like, and we want to have a really
designed and intentional experience.
And I think that's been, you know, what's
there, but, but I look at, like, I mean,
To be straight with you, I think the
number one thing people have asked me
saying when you do developer experience
with Fastly is like, Can I, when can
I get, when can you get free accounts?
Like when are we gonna get, you know,
when are we gonna get like a developer
account for Fastly and try this stuff out?
So like, I'm not unaware that
that's a demand and, and, and
it's a really good, healthy sign.
There's a lot of examples we can point at.
The ecosystem has a lot of players
that rush to provide a quote unquote
free account that was not sustainable
and whether that was on the licensing
around an open source product or a
overly generous limit in a paid, you
know, SaaS product or whatever it was,
it's, it's what I talked to developers
and it's towards the top of their list
of stuff that has caused unexpected
stress or churn for them is we got
jerked around by this vendor in this way.
And to me, that's like a core
trust thing is, is we have to.
You know, make sure everything
we're doing is something that is
sustainable, defensible in the long run.
You screw me over that, that's on you.
If you screw me over a second time, then
how, it's my fault for in some level
letting you be in a position to do that.
Shame on you.
Yeah, yeah.
And, and, and also just like,
I've been a developer a long
time, you know, decades now.
And, and I want to build stuff that is,
that is going to last and that is going to
help other people make stuff that lasts.
And so, you know, we look at that, but,
but I think, um, the one part is like,
we, I wouldn't open the floodgates to
everybody coming in and trying out the
entire FASTA experience until that entire
developer experience is up to snuff.
And, you know, that is something that,
obviously, that's what I do first
thing in the morning when I wake up
is I think about that and it's the
last thing before I go home, you
know, from work at the end of the day.
Um, I think when we get there,
we're gonna let everybody know.
You know, that's gonna be one
of those things where we sort of
say, like, we've got something.
Cause to me, the bar.
At least is Glitch.
Like the fact that you can come into
Glitch, no account created, build a
full stack app in your browser, not
even having logged in and share it with
your friends and make something amazing.
Um, I'm really proud of that.
Like it's that simple in a minute.
So we have millions of people who built
their first ever, or the first one they've
done in years, website or app on Glitch.
And
I built a small thing on Glitch
years ago and it's awesome.
I, I love the experience.
Like, so much of what I do starts off as
those weird small projects, like right now
my screenshot domain where I automatically
hit a key combination, drag, and it winds
up there and copied into my clipboard.
Great.
The domain I use for that is shitposting.
pictures.
I feel like if I had submitted a
contact us for access thing with that
domain, it would have so immediately
been spam binned that I never would
have heard from anyone at that point.
But that experience building
that has led me to use similar
technologies on that same platform.
to in in more serious commercial
endeavors that are actually revenue
bearing and not just I need the thing.
Exactly.
I think we all have a site where
we kick the tires on the weekend
project or we tinker with something
or like, you know, I want to try
out this new API or whatever it is.
And so I think we need to get
to that level of simplicity.
And also I want the whole
ecosystem to be there.
You know, I mean, I think that's really
it is like, how do we get everything
that people want to do in not just
the Fastly world, but like this whole
cohort of developers now that are
building, you know, all these new
exciting areas to have what they need.
And, and, and, you know, and we'll
get there I think sooner than later.
That's, that's obviously the sort
of top priority for me, but I
think, um, I, I just think about
it a lot of like, I wish more.
I wish more vendors, more platforms
talked about their responsibility
for predictability and continuity
and trust for the developers and
the companies that rely on them.
You know, I've been through that pain
where, Oh, we don't have that tier
anymore and you got to switch to this
thing and now it's going to cost a
hundred times what it used to cost or
ten times what it used to cost or your
limits are going to be way lower and,
Um, it's not just like a frustration,
like it's a, it's a, it's this like
mandate that comes out of nowhere.
We're like, Oh, our roadmap has blown up
because now we got to go chase this other
thing that was foisted on us by a vendor.
It's clearly worked for Fastly this
long, so I'm not suggesting you're wrong.
I'm, I'm saying that it doesn't, it
doesn't put itself on the line of the way
I adopt technologies, but that's okay.
I've accepted a long time ago that
I am atypical in a number of ways.
No, I think you are typical.
I feel the same way, right?
Like I, I, you know, I think we
can be honestly self critical.
I don't think, you know, as you and
I record this, the pricing page of
Fastly is a thing that an ordinary
developer is going to go to and say,
like, I got something I can build here.
Um, but I think Glitch is the proof
point that we do know how to do that.
And so I look at, like, how do we
put those two bits of knowledge
together and, um, and sort of
catalyze the, the evolution there.
Um, you know, I think we'll
have more to say about it soon.
I, I'm, you know, I'm mindful too of,
like, I don't want to overpromise.
Like, I want it to be the kind of
thing where, um, I want the developer
world to tell you when we got it right.
Yeah, I think that's, that's fair.
You don't get a second bite at the apple.
And right now what you're doing is
saying no to a certain subset of
people coming by and looking at it.
And I think that's the right answer
because when you suddenly start
saying yes, people will forgive the
no answer, but they're not going
to be nearly as sympathetic with,
well, we, I tried it two years ago
and it was just absolutely terrible.
So let me try again and see if
it hurts as much the second time.
Like people don't
do that.
And that's it.
I think we respect people's time.
We respect their energy and attention and
it's easy to just sort of slap the thing.
Oh, try this.
You know, like that, like changing
the webpage is not the hard part.
Like having the thing be up to
our standards is the hard part.
And, um, And up to the standards of
the developer community, um, but you
know, I, I think we're headed that way.
I'm excited about it.
I think, um, I don't think it'd be too
long before we'll have more specifics to
sort of share there, but I'm, I'm mindful
of like not getting ahead of, like I said,
I like to, under promise, over deliver.
And to be fair, you do have us, on the
Contact Us Request Pricing page, there's
a question, is this a business trial
account or is it a developer account?
Like, okay, there's at
least that progress.
But people are still scared of, uh,
basically every terrible experience
they've had by filling out a form.
And suddenly they're getting email from
half a creation, uh, trying to sell them
something that they don't understand.
Yeah.
No.
And I mean, that, that's one of the
things too, where like, it's been a joy
for me to come into, I'd never worked
with like a publicly traded company
or a company of this scale before.
They come in and I'm our, um, our
lead for our New York city office.
And we have, you know, a couple dozen
people here, great, great energy.
But a lot of them are literally
the people who follow up when
someone fills out that form.
So I get to hear the phone calls.
I get to talk to them over lunch about
like, Oh, what's the emails that you sent?
I get to see this sort of follow up.
And they're generally like fairly
young, like early career people.
Sometimes this is their, one of their
earlier jobs in the tech industry.
And they're so thoughtful
about it and earnest about it.
Like the culture of like, Well, we
want to help these people, you know,
like we want to be really helpful.
And we would like that part.
Honestly, it's been kind of a surprise.
Like one of the joys for me is like,
that's not something that I'd had
that kind of visibility into before.
And to see the, the earnestness
and sincerity and motivation.
And, and you ask, like, for me, I
asked them, like, why'd you come here?
And they're like the, the values.
They're like the tech, they're
like, tech is amazing, but
the people are really good.
And that's, I guess, the
reputation that precedes them.
Cause a lot of them, like I said, this
is their first job in tech or earlier in
their career, and they'll be like, yeah,
I heard the people over here are good.
That's like a, um,
that's a profound thing.
Yeah.
That's a rare.
It is.
And you have the right people.
You do interesting stuff.
I find you in client environments all
the time and people rave about you.
So it's, what I don't see you is in
the hobbyist projects that I tend to
start with for an awful lot of things.
You're not, you're not going
to be a dependency hooked in
by some rando GitHub project.
That's right.
And those folks are close to my heart.
So yeah, you can imagine that's obviously
something we're paying attention to.
And you are the VP of
Developer Experience.
I don't get the sense you were
looking for a sinecure where, well,
we don't have to worry about that
because we're enterprise only.
And that's the end of it.
Like, I've been looking for
someplace to rest and vest.
You don't strike me as someone
who holds still very well.
No, no.
I mean, I think that was it.
It's like there's, there's always a
trepidation, you know, when a company
gets acquired, like, do they mean it?
Is it real?
In our particular case, they went
through, um, a CEO transition on
the day when our deal was announced.
Um, Yeah.
Yeah.
That we were going to
become part of Fastly.
So like, uh, welcome aboard, by
the way, we're going to have a
new boss in about five minutes.
You know, it was a really like
a, uh, kind of a little bit
of a white knuckle experience.
Um, but we've had incredible leadership
coming in, you know, the founders are
all still here, which is unbelievable.
And then to have like a, you know, a
new CEO come in with like a shot of the
energy that you get from that and, um,
new product leadership, new marketing
leadership, all those kinds of things.
Like those are things that, you know,
like I knew that I, like I said, I've
been on the board of Big companies
before, but like seeing it from the
inside, I thought was a really, um,
interesting perspective to see how
much culture can change and accelerate
with, um, just a handful of people
sort of pushing, uh, on those things.
And so, you know, that was, it started
from, I mean, I, I can't even count
the number of people I know who made
something great, got acquired and watched
their thing get slowly, you know, death
by a thousand paper cuts into being
something that they hated or resented.
And most of them take their little
nest egg that they got from that and
go and try to build the product again.
You know, like that is, that
is the most common scenario.
And I'm like, you know,
one, I'm too old for that.
I'm not trying to build this
again, but also like Glitch is
special to me and meaningful to me.
The community is meaningful to me.
There's people like I've made friends
and acquaintances and people that we've
hired have come out in the community,
like all those kinds of things.
Um, So I wasn't going to just be like,
eh, we'll see how it goes and we'll
cash out and like if it clashes and
burns to somebody else's problem.
Like that was not ever, um, the
goal and you know, you don't
have ultimate control over that.
It's a publicly traded company.
It's like all these different
things, but I think everybody's
realized the value of it.
And so we've gotten to do the ideal.
Um, I think it's also a
testament to the community.
There's no two ways about it.
People see the power and the force of
like, people who are actually engaged.
And like, the cool thing is like, Glitch
is well past the like, buzzy stage.
Like, we're not the like, hot new thing.
You know, it's seven years old and then
people, oh, that's still around, huh?
Like, you know, people, you know, I go to
industry events, are you still doing that?
Like, yeah.
Yeah.
It's, it's, you know, it's,
it's, it's, it's real.
You do have a chance to be able to
break, to buck the tide of when a
company gets acquired by a larger one.
Usually the response from its
users and customers is aw, crap.
Because how many times has it ended
well for those people versus how
many times has it been disastrous?
And like I said, the proof is in,
you can go to, you know, preview.
glitch.
com.
You can see the new site, Bugs
and All, that's being built.
You can, you know, we're, we're
sharing, we're literally like,
here's what we just did this week.
Like it feels like startup mode again.
And, and we have support to do that.
And I think that's a
really, um, special thing.
The other thing I'd say that was
a real early validator that we got
things right was, um, Fastly had always
been a big supporter of open source.
And then right when we came in with
the Glitch team, we were able to
revitalize and relaunch, um, a program
we now call Fast Forward, which is, you
know, supporting all the open source.
Ecosystem, the open web, the
good internet kind of ecosystem.
And, you know, Fastly has long been that
platform that delivers, you know, the
content for the open source ecosystem.
So whether that is, you know,
Python packages or Ruby gems or
Rust crates or, you know, like
Perl, like everything, right.
That's all there.
Or like Kubernetes, when you download.
You know, from Kubernetes,
you were, you know, fastly is
helping deliver that download.
There's a lot that we're doing sort
of enabling, but then also being
able to go out and seek out places to
invest in providing services, support
community to, and the Fediverse was
really the manifestation of this.
I think that we really nailed was like,
as Macedon took off, you know, when you
have a third, you know, decentralized open
source social network that, that, that had
its huge growth moments as, as a lot of
the big platforms have been sputtering.
And, um, In a decentralized federated
network, success is technically fairly
hard to distinguish from Adidas, right?
Like, they're like, you squint at it,
and they're pretty similar looking,
and so Like I said, you know, if
something is slow or inefficient or
you're being DDoS, what do you do?
You sprinkle some Fastly on it.
So they kind of felt the same way.
They're like, what are we going to do?
Um, how do we one, solve the problem
for our users and two, feel good
about who we're doing business with.
Um, and we were able to help them out.
And, you know, as we record this, I'm
sitting in our boardroom at the New York
office of Fastly and we had, um, you
know, Eugene and the team that builds
Mastodon sitting here a couple of weeks
ago, uh, talking with Hannah Aubrey on our
team who leads the Fast Forward program.
And we're just like, what do we need
to do to help you thrive and succeed?
And, um, you know, they were like,
I'm paraphrasing, but almost exactly,
it was like we couldn't have done it
without Fastly, and that's like an
incredible feeling to be like, we can
bring to bear the resources of this
organization in a way that is both
vital to the open source world, but
also directly validates what we're doing
because we can, you know, like we can
If we're testing out new configurations
on the platform, we can be like, Hey,
Kubernetes, do you want to kick the tires
on this and see if it works for you?
Cause it works for you.
It worked for everybody else.
Cause your scale is so big.
So we're getting learnings out of that.
It's not, there's a fair exchange
and also like unapologetically.
I'm like, yeah, if you're using any of
those open source platforms and it gives
you warm fuzzies, that fastly is helping
you to come be a customer and tell your
boss that we should be using the platform.
Like, I think it's a fair trade.
Like, I think it's a really
reasonable, like I said, that
sustainability piece is there.
There's not.
like just charity work.
I love that exchange being
understandable and legible.
There's not some secret skullduggery
and it's not like, Oh, we just
have the purest of hearts.
Like our motivation is good, but
it is tied to like business value.
And so that's how we know it's
sustainable all these years in that we
can sort of support these programs and
they don't have to worry about the rug
getting pulled out from under them.
And that's the part where I see like, to
me, you know, I look at something like the
XE vulnerabilities and exploits and it's
like, That, the vulnerability there was
human fatigue, was the utter exhaustion
of being a maintainer, a thankless
maintainer of an open source project.
And like, we can't solve all of those,
and you know, we're just one company
in an industry full of titans, but
we can meaningfully change things
for a handful or a pretty large
cohort of open source projects.
for whom infrastructure that
would be unimaginable to them or
impossible for them is something that
we can put our, our energy behind
providing and lighten their load.
You know, that to me is like the, the fact
that I was, you know, the part of a team
that was able to get that going so quickly
after we came into this organization.
is like the latent
desire was already there.
You can't make a company be
something it doesn't want to be.
You can't make a culture be
something it doesn't want to be.
But if the desire was there, but they were
just lacking, like who's going to lead
or execute or contribute or collaborate
on it, um, then you can make it happen.
And so I think that's why
we've seen that success in fast
forward, the open source program.
I think we've seen why we see that
success with glitch getting a flourish.
Um, why are we going to get to do many of
the other things that we've got coming is.
We're going with the way the
stream wanted to flow, right?
We're not paddling upstream.
I really want to thank you for taking
the time to talk with me about this.
For what it's worth, you've, you've
turned me into a believer of sorts,
not that that was much in doubt.
I've been a fan of what
you do for a long time.
If people want to learn more about
what you're up to these days, where's
the best place for them to find you?
So what I would say is everybody here,
That still is motivated by that belief
in the open web and the good internet.
Swingbyglitch.
com, build something, get back that
feeling that the first time you did
view source in your browser or you
made that thing light up, it feels
good to do it and remind yourself
of what you love about the internet.
You know, with my business
hat on, absolutely.
If you've got any part of your site or
your app that is too slow, not secure
enough, not performant enough, whatever
it is, you know, come to Fastly.
com, we'll hook you
up, we'll help you out.
Um, and you know, you got some
part of your thing that's not.
You don't love, that's not working right.
Um, me personally, you know, I try to
practice what I preach, uh, ane.com.
It's my site.
I've been blogging there
next month, 25 years.
You know, you will find bugs in it
and flaws and stuff, and they're like,
I hack together the CMS and like all
that janky personal website stuff.
Still doing it.
I love it.
It's, it's a hobby and thinking of it
that way, like, you know, I cook meals
at home and they aren't all winners, but
they, they feel good when I get 'em done.
You know, I feel the same way about
like, we should have a lot more.
Locally grown, organically raised, farm
to table technology and websites made,
you know, with love, with an old family
recipe, uh, shared with people that you,
you love to sit around the table with.
Like, there's no reason we can't have,
um, a lot of home cooked internet
sitting alongside our fast food internet.
And, and so, yeah, just really encouraging
people to spend their time doing that,
reconnect to what they loved about
tech in the first place, you know.
And if you didn't have that
relationship where you're just like,
well, I came to the industry because
it's a good business opportunity.
Seek out the people for whom it is a.
you know, a motivation for them, that is a
cause for them, that has meaning to them.
And, and ask them why, because that is
a thing that is, has animated my work.
It's been able to keep me motivated
for decades and doing this stuff
because I, I get to be surrounded
by people who think, you know, the
internet is something special and it's
something that we can make together.
And, uh, yeah, I'm still
every day motivated by that.
Well, thank you.
We'll put a link to that in
the show notes to be sure.
Thank you so much for taking
the time to speak with me today.
I appreciate it.
Thanks for having me.
Anil Dash, VP of Developer
Experience at Fastly.
I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn,
and this is Screaming in the Cloud.
If you've enjoyed this podcast,
please leave a five star review on
your podcast platform of choice.
Whereas if you hated this podcast,
please leave a five star review on
your podcast platform of choice,
along with an angry comment.
In which you wind up talking about
how excited you are for that your
company's getting acquired with
the same dead flat tone that you
would expect from someone being held
at gunpoint slightly off screen.