Episode 96
· 45:27
That was literally the strategy. It's like, we need them to at least know about us. We came up with this idea of, like, well, let's just buy a van and wrap it with a big old clerk logo and just park it in front of the office. This is a a way to brute force it a little bit.
Jack Bridger:Hi, everyone. You're listening to scaling DevTools. I'm joined today by Colin, who is the founder, cofounder, and CEO of Clerk.
Colin Sidoti:That's right. Yeah. Thanks for having me on.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. And I should say thanks for coming back.
Colin Sidoti:Yeah. Of course. The the first one was a lot of fun. When do you remember when it was?
Jack Bridger:I think it was, it was November 2020 2 or something. That
Colin Sidoti:sounds right. Yeah. Yeah. It's, like, right before it started to go. Yes.
Colin Sidoti:It's just how I think of that time.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. So I think it was like you're talking about all the stuff you were doing. And I think, actually, at the time, I hadn't actually actually come across Clark before we connected. And then I think 2 months later, Clark was completely dominating my Twitter feed.
Colin Sidoti:He was everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. I I suppose you're asking how that might have happened.
Jack Bridger:I think so. And, actually, probably before we say that, we should probably say what Cluck is as well.
Colin Sidoti:Oh, yeah.
Jack Bridger:Is that interesting?
Colin Sidoti:So so Cleric builds developer tools for authentication. Easiest way to think about it is we give you React components for, like, sign up, sign in, user profile. You just drop it in and and everything just works.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. That's, it's and it's kind of like I think at the time, you were talking about, like, kind of like the next generation of Wolf 0, focused on, like, Jamstack.
Colin Sidoti:That's right. Yeah. I think we don't say Jamstack as much anymore. I think that something's happened. It's
Jack Bridger:It's not too many words. It's the front
Colin Sidoti:end cloud now, but I I think for this JavaScript React ecosystem is is broadly how we think about it. And then, you know, I think that this kind of architecture is just different than the historical full stack Rails app or Django app that Auth0 is kind of built for. And so we've just taken a whole new approach and it started from first principles and realized, like, oh, developers would love just a drop in component. And so started there and and, you know, a lot had to change to make a drop in component work. But that's what we see as, like, the new preferred DX.
Colin Sidoti:Like, the component is the new API is what we like to say, because it's just a lot easier to get started with.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. I know you do so much great stuff out of the box. Like, you have, like, organizations management and stuff like that. It's very very handy.
Colin Sidoti:Yeah. So, you know, I think even before that, just in the user management product, you know, like 2FA comes baked into the user profile and, like, your user, after they sign up, can self serve into 2FA. They can choose between TOTP or SMS and, you know, turn off SMS if they're principled about security like they shouldn't be. You know, there's user profile uploads and, like, a lot of that stuff just doesn't normally come out of the box in all solutions, whether it's, you know, an Auth0 or even an open source tool. It's things that you're often building after the initial setup yourself.
Colin Sidoti:And so we really tried to build in a complete experience from the start. And then I guess what you were alluding to with organization management, like, that's to us, it's it's kind of the other half of the coin where, like, some businesses sell to individuals and they kinda just need user management, others sell to businesses. Right? B to c versus b to b. And for those b2b companies, they have, you know, this mirrored process of onboarding where you tell them what your company is and then you invite your team and you set everyone's roles and permissions.
Colin Sidoti:And if you look at, you know, any big b two b SaaS, like, that process is is pretty standardized. And so we said, well, why don't we draw a box around that too and offer components for that? So we have another kind of set of components that do that aspect of things for b to b companies.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. And that's, that that feels like if I was describing Clerk to people, I feel like it's like be full of all the, all the common practices that anyone would have to do and, you know, around
Colin Sidoti:Yeah. I mean, that's definitely how we approach it. Right? Like, these are solved problems, and so we should be able to identify what the best practice is and wrap it in a tidy little box.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Call it
Colin Sidoti:a component. Yeah.
Jack Bridger:Call it a component, which is awesome. So that's what Clerk is. And, so going back to what happened between the first episode that you did here and then the kind of, like, huge inflection point.
Colin Sidoti:Yeah. This
Jack Bridger:is the classic, like, graph that everyone wants.
Colin Sidoti:Yeah. I think this is, it's become an increasingly common question I receive, And I think, you know, the the short answer is we don't know what happened, which is unfortunate, because we would love to know just as much as everyone else. But, you know, I think in in practice what was going on, you know, first of all, we started Clerk 2019. I think I talked about this on the last episode, where it was just like, office is too hard. We need to find an easier way.
Colin Sidoti:And at the time, we thought it was gonna be a Ruby Gem. And so we started as this Ruby gem and, you know, we kind of just threw it in front of people out of South Park Commons, which was our first investor. And they had this, like, revolving wheel of of people coming in. Like, each month they got a new batch of people and we would just, like, pounce and be like, hey, look at this. Like, what do you think?
Colin Sidoti:And it was just this process of, like, heat seeking of, like, what parts did they like? What parts did they not like. And and while we were there, we figured out, okay, we should be doing React components. Right? And that was kind of the big learning.
Colin Sidoti:And then we, you know, we we ran out of all of that money, but we had figured out, like, this thing about React, and so that was our, like, seed fundraise. It's like, you know, we spent this pre seed money and we know what we want to build now. There's a proof of concept of it, but it's, like, written with, like, really janky code. It's absolutely not production ready and, like, we're starting an infrastructure company. We need to raise more, so we can actually get this on robust infrastructure and launch it.
Colin Sidoti:So we did that and then really from the time launch, which is like February 21 all the way through kind of January 23, it didn't feel like it was growing. And, you know, like, there's there's subtle things that I know changed in that time. Like, when we launched, it was really positioned as an agnostic product and and the technology was very agnostic, but, you know, if you look at our early launch homepage, you'll see it showed the component, like sign in, but then it also showed how to use vanilla JavaScript. So like window.clerk.mount sign in. Is, like, an under the hood way to also mount something for vanilla JavaScript developers.
Colin Sidoti:And we thought, like, people would resonate more with the agnostic approach. And I think one big thing we found is that people would prefer instead of using a Clerk React library, they would want, like, a Clerk Next JS library. And it was, you know, very hyper focused on Next JS and making sure there's great d x with that's how most the pages are added, like, not just mounting the components, but also kind of determining the back end or the user is from the back end or who the user is from the back end. And so we we started this process of, like, tidying it up on a per framework thing and per framework level and that definitely improved things, but do I think that was, like, the one thing? No.
Colin Sidoti:I think it was a process of, like, just constantly it's really the same thing we did in South Park Commons. Put it in front of people, try to get their feedback, try to understand what they like and what they don't like, and make a change. You know, another big one that we changed in that time was, like, how we set cookies and manage sessions. Like, we did a hot swap, internally. It was auth v 1 versus auth v 2, but there was something that was just a lot of people were messing up with, session management and we we totally changed the architecture.
Colin Sidoti:We have these short lived JWTs now and, like, it's set on a different domain than it was originally set. Like, there's little subtle changes that we made that would happen to be, like, a multi month project, which is terrifying in the context of, like, a business that's not growing. But that was one I think we definitely got right in hindsight. But, yeah, I think there's there were just so many things, and it was the accumulation that that led to, okay, now someone can walk in and and pretty reliably, maybe 80 20, have a good experience setting up clerk. And whatever it was that changed is, like, come January 2023, that was our first glimpse at that.
Colin Sidoti:You know, I think of, like, Paul Graham's start of People's Growth. It's like this essay that's just drilled into my head just from me reading it. We never did YC. But, like, 7% growth, there's like that one quantitative thing I could latch on to to know if I'm doing good. Right?
Colin Sidoti:That's 7% growth per week. 7% growth per week is what they say is good during YC. And so that January, February was, you know, the first time we saw it and it really felt like, okay, this is like going on its own. Yeah. And then the YouTubers picked it up and it just went like gangbusters and it was wild.
Colin Sidoti:We had a couple months of just, you know, 50 or a couple weeks of, like, 50% growth. Just like nuts, absolutely insane growth and, you know, even through 2024, like, we've had some, you know, like 30% revenue growth months. It's just like insane. It's it's been wild. Right?
Colin Sidoti:Like, this, I guess, is is what they say product market fit is. I still don't believe I had it, but I think, like, I did I've done startups for a long time, and I'll never believe I have it. I don't know.
Jack Bridger:It's like the you've gotta have the cynicism just to keep you
Colin Sidoti:Yeah. No. This this can't be it yet. Right? It it can still go faster.
Colin Sidoti:I'm sure. Yeah.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Yeah. That's that's amazing. So but it sounds like what you're saying there is, like, there was some change, whether it was cumulative or something that the retention or, like, the the how satisfied people were with the product kind of it was like a product change, I guess.
Colin Sidoti:Yeah. Yeah. I guess one of the overarching things is just, like, speed to value. Like, how quickly does it does someone get set up with Clerk and recognize like, oh, wow. This is cool.
Colin Sidoti:Right? And we and we know internally, like, the important thing is you get them signed up, you get them into a new application on their local host right away, You get them through the sign up. The sign up form doesn't impress anyone. I don't know why the sign up form is, like, so super powered. People don't care.
Jack Bridger:And you're talking about the sign up. The sign up. The Clerk's sign up component,
Colin Sidoti:sign in component. Yeah. I think they see it, and they're just like, oh, yeah. Like, that's just a sign up component. Component.
Colin Sidoti:Like, of course, that's how it should work. It doesn't register mistakes. Like, for some people, it'll register that, like, oh, wow. Like, Google OAuth is here in development mode and I didn't go set up, OAuth client credentials yet. So some people, like, they'll notice that.
Colin Sidoti:For the most part, they just go and sign in, like don't think about it, but when they get back to the application in the sign in state and we have them drop the user button, which is like that thing that goes in the upper right, you click your avatar and then you click like manage account. When they see that and they see the depth of like, oh, people can self serve 2FA, they could change their profile picture, change their password and so on, like that's the moment we need to get people to and we've known that for like 3 years, right? Like if if we can get people to that, they'll like it. And so it was just this exercise in, like, how do we get them there faster?
Jack Bridger:Very interesting. Do you remember any of the ones where I'm sure a lot of them were too small to even describe? Is that were there any that were like?
Colin Sidoti:I mean, like, like, in Next. Js, it's it's very per framework now. Right? So Next. Js, we at some point switch from, like, signed in and signed out components, which is, like, render children if signed in, render children if signed out.
Colin Sidoti:And we switch from that to, like, a middleware based approach to the side rendering page with page. And, like, little things like that help to help speed things up. I think the the latest on Next. Js is actually we're back to signed in, signed out, but only in the header. We've been continuing to play.
Colin Sidoti:It's a lot of, like I don't know. The dashboard onboarding itself. We've we've needed to streamline a lot, like, everywhere. Like, anything we could come up with and it's crazy because some of these things are such minor changes and like you're you're trying to get rid of, you know, an extra prop. Yeah.
Colin Sidoti:Can we figure out a way to do this without that prop? Yeah. And that's like a 2 month project. One of my big gripes in Next. Js pages or no App Router and really old Pages router, but it got worse in App Router is they don't have like a like a splat for wildcard routes.
Colin Sidoti:And so when you mount our sign in component or user profile, like, there's routes to it. So it's like slash sign in, but then there's also slash sign in slash factor 2 or whatever it is. And so we have people mount our component on, like, a wildcard route so that we have access to that route effectively. But I just hate that developers need to type in Next. Js.
Colin Sidoti:It's like open square bracket, open square bracket, dot dot dot, foo. Like the name doesn't matter. It's like foo or index or what like you call it whatever because Qlik doesn't look at it, close bracket, close bracket. You have to make that folder and then you have to make a file inside page dot tsx. And so it's actually it's like 2 folders.
Colin Sidoti:Right? First, you make the folder called sign in, then you make the square bracket square bracket dot dot dot thing, And then you make page dot tsx, and it's just like, you know, other frameworks have like a dollar sign instead of the square bracket madness. And that's my number one request for the next JS team. Highlight this snippet.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Yeah.
Colin Sidoti:Maybe maybe if we get it on Twitter, they'll, they'll make the shift. But, yeah, just like little things. We hunt for just the tiniest little detail that we can make a little easier.
Jack Bridger:That makes a lot of sense, the the way that you do it, and it's, like, interesting when you sort of add, like, props and stuff, like because there's just less friction, less things they need to come in and understand, like, how does this work? Yep. And how do you kind of know if something is an improvement? I guess if it's like removing a prop, you can say, that's probably better. But if it's like this way versus another way
Colin Sidoti:Like, I I think the data at this point now can reveal something about, like, more people just succeeding Yeah. At the setup than before. Early on, it was literally just looking at people's faces as they tried it.
Jack Bridger:Okay.
Colin Sidoti:Right? And, like, if they were getting hung up and snagged somewhere, are they not anymore? Yeah. Right? Like that that was kinda the heat seeking Yeah.
Colin Sidoti:That was such a big part of it early on. Like, there wasn't enough data to possibly make a data driven decision and so it was just like the same thing that helped you identify, oh, there might be something wrong here, which was never someone saying, hey. I, like, hate this problem. Right? Like, it was always just like, where are they getting a little stuck?
Jack Bridger:They might find this part confusing and then you think, how can I make this part less confusing?
Colin Sidoti:Yeah. And then you you do it, you show it to new people, and see if they're getting confused there still or not.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. And do you when you're, watching someone use it, is it literally you're just sat next to them, asked them to create a
Colin Sidoti:Yes. Yeah. I I mean, they were well, I guess a lot of this is COVID, so it was like Zooms and Google Hangouts and even just like in Discord early on we had Slack, like, just going based on the questions they were asking. In South Park Commons, that initial, like, switch from React or from Ruby to React, that was sitting next to them. Hey, I need you to try this thing.
Colin Sidoti:And that environment was just, like, perfect for Yeah. That because, like, everyone there was kind of, like, starting something new or, like, looking for their next thing to start. And so everyone kind of, like, had the space Yeah. To, like, sit down for 10 minutes and try the thing. Yeah.
Colin Sidoti:It's funny to call it, like, rapid because it took, like, a whole year, but, like, that definitely helped us get there and make that leap Yeah. In a big way.
Jack Bridger:And it does seem like, you're very you're very, very hands on with
Colin Sidoti:all this stuff still. Right? Yeah.
Jack Bridger:Do you think that that's like, I guess, that's a very conscious
Colin Sidoti:thing? Yes. The the way I think I think about it this is constantly evolving. Right? You know, so over the the many years before launch, right, we were a small team and, like, doing this heat seeking as the small team.
Colin Sidoti:And, you know, there wasn't, like, a great write down what worked after it worked kind of culture. It was just, like, okay, like, that feels better. Like, onto the next. Right? It's still not working.
Colin Sidoti:Onto the next. Onto the next. Onto the next. And, you know, now the team's growing, and we need to build new products and new features on the existing products. And it's really hard for someone new to join Clerk and have all of that context.
Colin Sidoti:It's it's just not possible. I think in so many ways, like, what Clerk is doing, components as the new API, like, that's new. Right? You can't and I think people get frustrated by this. Like, you can't even go look at Stripe who's been, like, the figurehead great DX person for the past decade.
Colin Sidoti:Like, even that, it's just like Clark's just breaking the patterns and it's working. So it's like what's going on? And so they kind of have to learn from our internal product, like look like look at our conventions and just, like, copy them. Yeah. But there's a lot of funny things even with that and, like, we're trying to write down, like, what are the conventions internally so that so that kind of the onboarding goes faster.
Colin Sidoti:But, you know, there's been some funny cases where, like, people do a new thing and I review it and, you know, they clearly copy the convention that Clerk has. Yeah. And I'm like, you know, that's great. Like, thank you for copying the convention, but that happens to be a convention that, like, we know is like sandpaper, right? Just like people don't like it that much.
Colin Sidoti:We thought it was like low enough in the, like value chain that we haven't fixed it yet. Yeah. But that's like not a good one to copy. And so, like, why don't you like take this back to the drawing board and like change that, come up with something better, and then like while we're at it we'll also fix the old thing that we hadn't gotten around to fixing yet. And it's just, like, how can I possibly, like, do all of that knowledge transfer to new team efficiently?
Colin Sidoti:And, you know, I think we're trying to figure it out, and there was a a small team there. And and so a lot of us do have the context, but figuring out how do we how do we transfer it to new people is so far an an unsolved problem. You know, it's also my personal favorite, like, part of the job. Yeah. So, like, like that yeah.
Colin Sidoti:Like, it kind of inherently like, that's the part I wanna keep keep a a hand in. Yeah. Whereas, like, you know, there are people better at operations than me that love operations in a way that I just just don't. Yeah. Yeah.
Colin Sidoti:And so we could hire someone for that. Right? Yeah. Yes. That's kinda how I look at it.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. It always seems like, the things that a startup is good at kind of come from the obsessions of the founders. I
Colin Sidoti:I agree. Yeah. I I think obsession is like a good a good way to put it too. Right? Yeah.
Colin Sidoti:I I love I don't know. I I like like, I'll be the one to, like, randomly put a comment in just like, hey, I think we have this prop on this component and it actually just doesn't need to be there. I did that last week and I did that at, like, 2 AM and I woke up to a message. I was just like, hey, Con, why were you thinking about this at 2 AM? And I've kept it it was like some customer thing had come in late at night, and I was like walking through it with them.
Colin Sidoti:And it's just like
Jack Bridger:Was that I saw the one on Twitter where, like, Jacob on your team was like quote, tweeting you about, like, my boss loves off or something. And you when I looked at it, I was like, my you know, a lot of words, I have no idea what you're talking about there. It's like
Colin Sidoti:Yeah. That was I guess that's another thing that is probably surprising. To some extent, it's definitely a big part of what's driving DX, but, like, I am, in a lot of ways, still, like, the resident, like, cookie and authentication expert at Clerk. And so, yeah, I think that the particular tweet you're talking about is, yeah, responding to a thread about, you know, is someone's auth setup okay? And it was it was just like an open source thing, and so I was able to look at it and I called out that, the access token was like script accessible and it was long lived.
Colin Sidoti:And so if there's an XSS attack, an attacker will be able to use it indefinitely, basically. But yeah. I recognize that it's weird to some extent that I I have the degree of depth on Good. On that stuff. I think it's yeah.
Colin Sidoti:It's far I think it's helpful Goodwill. For Clerk. Yeah. It's really hard to find
Jack Bridger:people who
Colin Sidoti:love, like, web application security, like, down to these many Yeah. Details.
Jack Bridger:That's gonna be my question, actually. Is it, like, really hard to hire?
Colin Sidoti:I think that particular role is yeah. It is hard to hire. It's just, like though you know what I'd compare it to? You know, Malte at Vercel. He does this, like, regular post on his blog about, like, what's happening in the web, and they're, like, these crazy browser changes.
Colin Sidoti:Like, oh, this, like, RFC from 5 years ago, like, finally shipped in Chrome.
Jack Bridger:Yeah.
Colin Sidoti:But he does it every month, and you could just tell like he loves it. Yeah. Right? And for whatever reason, I've just always kind of loved the auth specs and the crazy ways that people break into auth systems. And, like, just the there's so many layers of protection in web app security where, you know, the that case we were talking about, like, it's all if there's an XSS, then someone can get this token out and that's bad.
Colin Sidoti:And it's, like, that's already a high bar. Yeah. Right? And I think I know that or but, like, it's still like, the culture in web app security is very much, you know Yeah. Assume that all of the bad things are going to happen Yeah.
Colin Sidoti:And still protect with another layer. Yeah. And, yeah, I've just always loved that. I've loved reading how people think of solving the things and, yeah, it's a little a little obsessive, I suppose.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. It's great.
Colin Sidoti:I think it's great.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Yeah. That that is one of the things that I always say to people is like, if someone like, when you drill down, like, why is this company got good developer experience, or why is this company really good at, like, shipping things fast or something, it's, like, always when you drill down, drill down, drill down, it's like, oh, the founder was obsessed with it. That's that's like Yeah. And and I guess the culture kinda follows from that.
Colin Sidoti:Yeah. I mean, hopefully, that's that's not the only way. Right? Like, hopefully, we can hire people that are obsessed with their own areas and and drive strong culture throw that back, actually, as, like, a question because I have this
Jack Bridger:hunch that it's, like, it's, like, pretty hard to actually, in reality, like, do that and whether we should, like, try to do that or whether we just kind of lean into, like, okay, we're really good at this. We'll also try to cover the bases here, but, like, realistically, do you think someone could come in who's not like a founder Mhmm. And kind of create, like, not just, like, good, but, like, outstanding?
Colin Sidoti:I I mean, I do think it's possible. I think it it definitely requires strong buy in from everyone, but, like, you see it happen. And I guess, like, as an example, if you look at, like, Cloudflare's push into workers. Right? Like, they were this WAF security company that that sold to, like, CSOs to start, or at least, like, IT teams, like, put something in front of the app so that the app doesn't need to deal with the traffic if we get DDoSed.
Colin Sidoti:And, you know, it was done in a way that was, like, almost independent of the developers working on building the thing. And they did something, I don't know, 5 years ago, 7 years ago, whatever it was when they started workers, but like somehow that organization feels like it just, you know, turned on a dime and suddenly they're just churning out products in, you know, application infrastructure. Yeah. And, you know, I guess I don't actually know, like, is is Matthew Prince, like, in the weeds with the workers team every day and, like, yeah, maybe it is him that's just obsessive about it. But I think at least that that's Yeah.
Colin Sidoti:That that's not the case. I think, like, there's maybe he made space for it, but, like, they hired a team that just got after it and they got after it aggressively and they were passionate about it and yeah. Like, so I think it's, like, possible.
Jack Bridger:Yeah.
Colin Sidoti:But, yeah, it's hard to find those examples. Right? And, yeah, I guess, like, Zuck is maybe doing it right now with, llama. Yeah. Right?
Colin Sidoti:Like, it's it's so cool.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. It seems like he's very much in the weeds.
Colin Sidoti:Yeah. Yeah. I guess that's true. Yeah. So then that's not not that's more an example of the founder being obsessive.
Colin Sidoti:I agree.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Maybe that's a good time to, talk about SPC as well, Softball Comics. Yeah. They had they had Zuck. Yes.
Jack Bridger:Were you at the Zuck?
Colin Sidoti:I was at the Zuck thing. It was great. Yeah. I mean, I think my big takeaway was, you know, I think I at least looked through or look at Facebook, like, through these, like, rose colored glasses of, like, they had it so easy. It just, like, kind of flew from the start and to where it is today.
Colin Sidoti:And I think what I enjoyed about that talk so much was just, like, it's just like another founder with the same exact problems that everyone else has. And, yeah, I think, like, maybe there were some differences in, like, the very early days where it was just getting pulled out of, like or the market was just pulling it out of their hands in such a big way, but, yeah, eventually it got to this place of like no, we need to scale up an engineering team and that's
Jack Bridger:hard and
Colin Sidoti:we need to hire executives and that's hard. I think he he said he like wiped out his whole, exec hiring at some point. I think it was on like pure Teal's advice because it was just like Teal was just like, you don't seem to like these people. I think you should find people you like and prioritize that. Yeah.
Colin Sidoti:Which is it's like, you know, that's something that's like so every founder struggles with it. Right? And the answer probably isn't hire friends for every founder, but it was just cool to hear him talk about the same things that every other founder is dealing with in a way that, you know, those those rose colored glasses don't really assume exist. Yeah. Right?
Colin Sidoti:Like, it felt like it was just like Easy Street. Somehow Sheryl Sandberg got in there and everything just kept working and the whole way and it was just this massive behemoth and, like, I don't know. Like, that was always kind of my perception. Like, it just felt like it was easy for some reason. And so just, yeah, hearing him talk super candidly about it was like and, of course, you hear it and you're like, oh, yeah.
Colin Sidoti:Of course, it's like everyone else. Like, why would it be different? But, yeah, it's still actually nice to hear it.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. I listened to, like, a teeny bit when my friend was there, but I didn't catch the whole thing. I'd love to see it.
Colin Sidoti:Oh, yeah. It's on YouTube. It's on YouTube? Yeah. No.
Colin Sidoti:The whole thing.
Jack Bridger:I did
Colin Sidoti:the whole thing. Yeah. Oh, it was it was It was fantastic. Definitely
Jack Bridger:Okay. Definitely,
Colin Sidoti:highly recommended Okay. Talk.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. I'll watch that. Put it in the show notes, hopefully.
Colin Sidoti:Yeah. I will. It helped a lot that, like, he was, I believe, like, more candid because Tsuruchi and Aditya, the founders of SBC, like, they were his air lead team. Yeah. And so, yeah, there was this element of Sort of like Yeah.
Colin Sidoti:Like, yeah, you're just my friend and my old bot and and so there's just like the guard was so far down, and it was, yeah, it was a really fun chat.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. That's that's really cool. And then talking about hiring, someone that I'm good friends with, Nick, is in your team now. Nick Watson. Shout out Nick.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. And, I know that he's been he he's someone that I look up to a lot on. Like, I think he's great. And so kind of wondered what sort of things Nick has been doing. Been trying to get him on the show, but he's he's kind of
Colin Sidoti:That looks a bit shy about it. Is Nick reluctant? We should we can push him on. Yeah. I mean, so Nick, for context, he's our head of marketing.
Colin Sidoti:I might be mistitling him by accident, but he's the leader
Jack Bridger:of the
Colin Sidoti:marketing side of Clerk. And, you know, we hired him, I think right before we did our first
Jack Bridger:chat,
Colin Sidoti:if I recall correctly.
Jack Bridger:I think it was, I think it was actually a little bit after. I think it was, I'm I'm sure it was around, like, February
Colin Sidoti:Got it.
Jack Bridger:3, I think.
Colin Sidoti:Okay.
Jack Bridger:I think it was, like, just as you were, like
Colin Sidoti:It was it was definitely, like, just as It was mid Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he's, like, broadly someone that's trying to get us in front of more developers and, you know, very hard role to hire for. I think largely because most people don't understand developers. Right?
Colin Sidoti:This the typical marketing playbook is like, buy paid ads. It's just, like, it's not very inspiring traditionally. Sorry. That sounds awful. But I I think Yeah.
Colin Sidoti:I think, yeah, like, finding people that actually, like, care about developers. Yeah. Like, empathize with developers and, you know, understand the ways that they, like, really don't
Jack Bridger:Yeah.
Colin Sidoti:Want to be sold to. And, you know, Nick is often the one pushing back say, like,
Jack Bridger:it's 2 sales deals.
Colin Sidoti:Or well, not just that, but like, hey, like the product needs to be better. Like, he he's so product led growth Yeah. Like, mindset. And so, you know, he just brings the right mentality to the to the role, and it lends itself a lot to, like, the things Clerk does. Right?
Colin Sidoti:Like, we're we're trying to, like, actually connect with developers and make sure we're solving their problems. Like, we're not just trying to get a logo or a link in in front of their face. Right? Even, like, the, you know, the NextAuth sponsorship we do, it's looking for a hosted alternative. It's not, you know, looking for something better.
Colin Sidoti:Right? Like yeah. It's it's like we understand that there are, you know, developers on on both sides of this argument and debate or whatever and like we want them to know the option exists, but we don't want it to be so salesy, I guess. I'm not sure I feel like developers probably know what I'm going after when I'm talking like this, but it's hard to describe and I think this is why it's so hard to find someone for the role. You just kind of need to empathize with developers, and I think it's it's almost I suspect it's unique to developer tools marketing.
Colin Sidoti:Yeah. Like, it's it's just like its own subset, that just works a little differently because its audience is so Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, they're
Jack Bridger:most of
Colin Sidoti:the time, they have adblock on. Right? It's just like the only audience where that's a problem, they have to deal with.
Jack Bridger:I feel it's actually kind of similar to when you describe about, like, the kind of knowledge transfer of, like, like, how your best practice is because it's like you could you could one finger and, like, look at the best practices for developer marketing, but there's probably, like, very many, like, many, many kind of, like, gotchas within it that, like, unless you've, like, actually, like, stared at code, like, why the hell isn't this working and, like, pushed it out and and gone through the whole process, worked in developer teams, it's, like, very hard to actually cover that full kind of remit. And Nick is someone that's, like, you know, shipped a lot of code in his life and, like Yep. I think has that both sides of the brain.
Colin Sidoti:Yeah. He's got the the right lens for it. Yeah. Super lucky. I shouldn't be talking about it because this is people are gonna start poaching him left and right.
Colin Sidoti:Yeah. Sorry. We'll we'll we'll we'll we'll we'll stick it. I think it's
Jack Bridger:And and then also, like, I got to see up up close one of your campaigns where you were like, I think Nick had, like, found this van that you've, like
Colin Sidoti:He cast.
Jack Bridger:Covered in A van. Covered in clerk vinyls. Yeah. Do you wanna talk a little bit about your van?
Colin Sidoti:Yeah. I I Nick gets credit for the execution. I think this one mows my Pose you right. But we'll have to we'll have to have him on so you can settle the score on that one. Okay.
Colin Sidoti:Basically, yeah, high level pieces is is actually comes back to Y Combinator. So, you know, Y Combinator huge batch. At least one of those companies is gonna become a $1,000,000,000 company.
Jack Bridger:Yep.
Colin Sidoti:And so Clerk thinks it would be good to just, like, have all of them as customers. Right? But, like, we're not NYC that puts us at a disadvantage for getting in front of them. Right? They have this, like, thing called Bookface where we can put a deal up and our deal is not allowed to have a logo on it because we're not a YC company, which is just like, and and so it becomes this fun little battle of like, alright, well, how do I get in front of them?
Colin Sidoti:How do I meet them? And we had heard that a company last batch put this billboard on a building. It's not a billboard. It's like a window covering on a building, like, a block away from the YC office, because in the area there actually are no billboards by the YC office. But I guess they knew that, like, a lot of YC founders would there's, like, an apartment over there that I guess a lot of them stay in, so they like walk this stretch and they go past the building and they see it.
Colin Sidoti:And I was like, well, that building's taken now. Yeah. So what else can we do? And came up with this idea like, well, let's just buy a van and wrap it to a big old clerk logo and and just park it in front of the office. They have metered parking in front of the office.
Colin Sidoti:And so, you know, we we knew when YC started, and Nick found the van. Nick, like, worked with the design team to get the the, like, vinyl on it. And, yeah, Nick, like, executed the whole thing after the idea, and the idea is, like, meaningless, but I'll still take credit for the idea. And then, yeah, we we wake up every morning at I think we get there like 6:30. He's still
Jack Bridger:doing it?
Colin Sidoti:Oh, yeah.
Jack Bridger:The whole okay. So it's for the whole Yeah. Wow.
Colin Sidoti:And then they're doing a fall batch, so it's not stopping.
Jack Bridger:Oh my god.
Colin Sidoti:Year round. Don't drive to yc. Take an Uber. The spot's gonna be taken now. But yeah.
Colin Sidoti:Like, so like that that's that was literally the strategy. It's like we got it. We need them to at least know about us. We need to be in the conversation. We know a lot of them haven't picked off yet, and this is a a way to brute force it a little bit.
Colin Sidoti:What's been fun is because it's on wheels, we can just bring it to a bunch of other places. And so it was like at GitHub the other day, it was at Padua the other day. It just like goes whenever someone's doing an event, we try to bring the van. And we did the DX Drink Up at Southern Pacific. We parked it in front.
Colin Sidoti:That one took some social engineering because we actually took like one of the bars, like reserved spots, and they're like, oh, you can't park there. And we were like, oh, but we're the event. And they let us do it.
Jack Bridger:Really?
Colin Sidoti:Okay. Small. Yeah. Every it's a fun little, like Yeah. Sidecar to the whole thing.
Jack Bridger:It's been funny visiting SF because it feels like but it's like you it's like a local marketing almost. There's a lot of like local
Colin Sidoti:I mean, yeah, like right now and I've been here on and off since 2019. But, like, since this AI wave started, I think it has the highest concentration of founders I've ever been I've ever felt. Yeah. And it's just, like, the number of events and the size of the events of, like, AI founders just working together and collaborating and ideating and just building cool things, like, trying to figure out how we can leverage this technology to do anything. Yeah.
Colin Sidoti:It's just been so fun. Yeah. And it's definitely gotten the city, like, booming again, I think. Yeah. Yeah.
Colin Sidoti:Yeah. This is this it just feels, you know, electric. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Colin Sidoti:And then I'm like we're just like, grateful that you're signing the form. It's alright. It's so like, I I kind it's funny. I don't know. Everyone needs it.
Colin Sidoti:Right? Everyone needs it? Yeah. Shovel. Yes.
Colin Sidoti:Exactly.
Jack Bridger:But, yeah, Colin, thank you so much. Thanks for coming back. Thank you. Yeah.
Colin Sidoti:This is a lot of fun.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. And, where can people learn more about Clark?
Colin Sidoti:Clark.com. Clark.com. Very easy. Story.
Jack Bridger:But, anyway Yeah. For for For another
Colin Sidoti:another time. Hard domain acquisition process, but we got it.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Yeah.
Colin Sidoti:Awesome. Thanks so much for having me.
Jack Bridger:Thanks very much for joining. Thanks everyone for listening. Bye.
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