Episode 90
· 39:37
When something works and you've had the experience of knowing the many things I didn't Yeah. It's night and day. Yeah. There's, like, no mistaking it. Mhmm.
Han Wang:Right?
Jack Bridger:Yeah.
Han Wang:Basically, so we we met Paul Graham, and then, you know, we start when we walked in the room, we introduced ourselves. We're like, hey. You know, I'm Han. This is Hanby. We're from Middlify.
Han Wang:Like, immediately, the first thing he said was like, woah. Middlify? Like, what what a what a terrible, terrible name. You gotta change that.
Jack Bridger:Hi, everyone. You're listening to Scanning Dev Tools. I'm joined today in person by Han from Mindlify. Han, thanks for joining.
Han Wang:Thanks so much for inviting me. I am a huge fan of the the podcast. It's truly an honor to be here.
Jack Bridger:Thank you. And so Mindlify is docs as a service, would you say? Docs?
Han Wang:Service. Yeah. The modern we like to think it's, like, the modern, standard for documentation.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Okay. Amazing. So we're gonna talk about your story, and we're gonna talk about how to actually make good docs.
Han Wang:Yeah. Sounds sounds like a plan. Should I start off a little bit more about the story of Millify and how we got here?
Jack Bridger:Yeah. That'll be amazing.
Han Wang:Absolutely. So Minlify as a company was originally founded, not even called Minlify. Fun fact. Nice. This was oh, man.
Han Wang:It was a it was a hot second ago, very late of 2021. Me and my cofounder, Hanby, we've, you know, built products for most of our lives just independent of each other. So I started coding when I was 11. Hanby also was, like, a really early like, you know, like, just like everyone else in the Bay Area, basically. So Okay.
Han Wang:We we just, like, started building products super early on. And I think over the course of my, like, kind of, like, you know, like, high school, college, it was always, like, you know, building products that other people would love to use. And I think it was, like, to me, the really special thing is about building for people that we could have related to and we could have, like, you know, understood people like us, basically. And, like, even for instance, like, my first ever product that I ever built was, like, this, like, mobile app for, like, my middle school, basically. Oh, really?
Han Wang:Yeah. Yeah. It was Wow. It was like like, oh, like, here's how you plan your classes. Yeah.
Han Wang:Here's, like, how you, you know, like, what's what's the lunch schedule today?
Jack Bridger:Wow.
Han Wang:The the
Jack Bridger:Is it people you use them?
Han Wang:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, no. That that product had PMF for sure.
Han Wang:No doubt about it. Yeah. The the problem was there was, like, a market size of, like, 200 people. That was the one issue. And middle school students, I don't know if you tried selling to them, they their, their their budget constraints not not not fantastic.
Han Wang:So much. Yeah. Not not wish it could have been better. It's a market sizing. Temp temp problem for sure.
Han Wang:Better. And then for high school, it was like, you know, building for, you know, like, other other students, you know. And then come college, Hanby and I, again, my cofounder, we met, you know, wanting to kinda build this kinda, like, product that could have helped students at our college plan out their graduation requirements.
Jack Bridger:Mhmm.
Han Wang:So the idea was very simple. Our college had it, like, a very decentralized like, no one really knew what they were doing.
Jack Bridger:Like kind of complex ceramic Yeah. To take.
Han Wang:Exactly. And then at the end of the, like, the 3 years, you're like, oh, like, am I actually on track to get my diploma?
Jack Bridger:Yeah.
Han Wang:And the school didn't really have any great services and it wasn't super robust and so we're like, I bet we can I bet we can solve that? And I met Hanby just being, like, hey. Like, this is a problem I think we wanna tackle and built it, launched it, and, you know, I think even to this day, I I think about, like, half of the, like, the the the entire college uses it. Like, I remember every semester. Yeah.
Han Wang:It was something I'm like, Hanby and I are both very particularly proud of. Yeah. It's amazing. And yeah. Thank you.
Jack Bridger:Which college is it?
Han Wang:Just in
Jack Bridger:case people are not using that.
Han Wang:Yeah. It's Cornell if, if you went there. I'd love to again, if and if you use it, definitely let me know. Yeah. And so it's always been around building for people that, you know, we could have understood.
Han Wang:And, during COVID, Hamdi and I also had like, we did a start up together. So we got more of this exposure to, you know, just building an actual company together. Yeah. After that, we, like, literally then took our slightly different paths for a little bit. Humpty worked to work at I went to work at Big Tech.
Han Wang:I went to work at Facebook for a little bit. Humpty went to work at Duolingo.
Jack Bridger:Cool.
Han Wang:And then afterwards, we just, like, tried those and we're like, I don't know, man. Like, I don't think Big Tech is is is is is for is for us. I love building products that Yeah. People loved and, like, that we could've, like, you know, just genuinely helped especially people who are like us. Yeah.
Jack Bridger:That just
Han Wang:there was something just so truly special about that. So I literally called up Hanby right afterwards. I was like, Hanby, do you wanna, like, run it back? Do you wanna go do this again? And this time, let's do it for, like, developers because that's an audience that, like you know, we've been I mean, yeah, we were just engineers our entire lives.
Han Wang:We've just been builders. So let's let's let's go. Let's go take a crack at that. And and for some reason, she was like, yeah. Let's do it.
Han Wang:Cut forward. This is senior year of college. You know, we just started cracking cracking it away. Hanby Hanby and I initially started with, our very first entry was this was oh, man. I don't know if you remember.
Han Wang:Like, there was a OpenAI, I think this was after they relaunched, like, GPT 3, had, like, a model called codex. You remember that?
Jack Bridger:That was the that was not the code one.
Han Wang:That was the code one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So they just launched codecs and we literally got, like, access to the API because at the time it was all wait listed.
Han Wang:And I don't know how we I think I just, like, begged everyone I knew who worked at OpenAI for access Well got access to it. And I was like, man, like, this is this is so cool. Yeah. Let's go build something for developers specifically for this.
Jack Bridger:Yeah.
Han Wang:And so we literally took the model and then we, like, built around all of these cool features that were like, oh, you can translate your your code from, like, Python to TypeScript. You could explain this code in English. You could do all these cool things with it. That it was felt fundamentally about like helping developers.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. We
Han Wang:didn't really honestly know what to do with the model. That was the really reason why we made it so big. Yeah. Yeah. Like, zero clue what problems we
Jack Bridger:solved. You're you're a tinkerer.
Han Wang:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
Han Wang:It applies to the strategy of a lot of companies nowadays. But, but we we just were like, let's try this. We we we put it out there and it, like, blew up. Really? Yeah.
Han Wang:It literally we launched on product hunt. It did super well there. It got, like, number 1 product of the day. Wow. And, again, like, we we we literally just, like, we had the model and then we just sprinted it up to to market.
Han Wang:Yeah. And then got, like, I think, like, 10,000, you know, sign ups on the 1st day. 10,000 Yeah. On the
Jack Bridger:1st day.
Han Wang:It was it was really, really bonkers because
Jack Bridger:It's really wild.
Han Wang:Yeah. We we never we never expected it, to do that well. We just thought it was like it's such a cool thing that, like, you know, we just wanted to see if it solved problems.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. And this was translating code from, like
Han Wang:Yeah. Yeah. It we it was built to be in a way where it was, like, kinda multifunctional Yeah. Where you could, like, like, you know, like, translate the code, like, describe what it does in English. Yeah.
Han Wang:It could translate code. It could calculate, like, the time complexity. Yeah. A lot of those, like, kinda like more like, it's, like, individual use cases. It was, like, a lot of prompt engineering, basically.
Han Wang:And it was just like an early version of, like, anything that dealt with, like, you know, these elements and code. Yeah. And it was like and it's something about that just kinda caught fire. And, what I what happened truly was that was probably, I would say, like, on that further launch, the first, the only, and the best thing that happened to it. Because what what really happened was, like, if you looked at it on our attention graph.
Han Wang:Right? Like, if you looked at it from a graph, it looked like okay. From day 1, it got to 10 k. Yeah. And then over, like, the rest of it, it's, like, slowly decayed Yeah.
Han Wang:Into, like, oblivion Yeah. And just irrelevance, which meant it wasn't solving a real problem. Yeah. And I think we learned a lot from that. Yeah.
Han Wang:We just kinda got this cool hype factor. But Yeah. Again, not really useful at the end of the day. That was literally what got us into this. During that period of which, you know, we we still somehow decided to apply for y c.
Jack Bridger:Yeah.
Han Wang:By the time they interviewed us, our numbers were looking like just down into the right. Yeah. And we were just like, yeah, guys. This didn't work. Yeah.
Han Wang:And but here's something else that could. Yeah. You know? That's insane. And and for some reason, they decided to take a shot at us and, you know, we we did a YC for the winter 22 batch.
Han Wang:You know, and then during that batch and many time afterwards, you know, still kept it with developers, but had a difficult time figuring out exactly what we wanted to do. Yeah. Tried a bunch of different ideas. I think it took 8 pivots until eventually we got to building minimal file into what it is today. It was always in the similar space of something for developers.
Jack Bridger:Yeah.
Han Wang:It was always like, you know, how do we help them, like, understand a little bit more? How do we help them enable them to go build better stuff? But, no, didn't really get the right footing until until many tries in.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. And what what was it like the first, like, iteration of, like, Minlify in its current form? Was it Yeah. Would or was it like Yeah.
Han Wang:More or less what you do now? The the initial, I mean, the initial vision of Minlify was actually it was actually super simple. It was literally just like, Hanby and I, after basically pivoting 8 times, we were kind of like we're like really almost out of ideas at that point. We just were, like, you know, like, we've tried a bunch of different things that we thought worked. You know, some that some that we spent weeks on, some that we spent, like, you know, a month or 2 on.
Han Wang:Yeah. Nothing really stuck. We just kept throwing it and just, like, it just didn't work. And during that whole period, there were all these people who were like, hey. You know, like, because we were always in the space for developer, like, some sort of, like
Jack Bridger:Yeah.
Han Wang:Communication.
Jack Bridger:Yeah.
Han Wang:Right? They were like, hey. Like, I just wanna flag this problem by you. Like, just our docs are really bad.
Jack Bridger:Yeah.
Han Wang:And, you know, like, I I maybe this is something that's worth experimenting. And Hanmi and I kinda listened to that a lot of time. And we've had interview after interview of people, like, just telling us that. And then even we thought of our own experiences building, like, the docks. And we're like, yeah, it's not great.
Han Wang:But, like, it does seem kinda like there's a lot of options. You can always build it in house. Yeah. And it wasn't until literally when we were like, basically after the the the 8 pivots, we're like, man, like, like, you know, honestly, like, we're out of ideas at this point. Let's just try this thing that, like, we actually weren't too sure about Yeah.
Han Wang:About, like, just building the docs that we've always wished we had. Yeah. And then so over the span of, like, a weekend, we just whipped up this early version of, like, these docs that look great, that had these, like, you know, great tooling, that had search out of the box, that had, like, a lot of, like, these cool, like, things that Immunify has today. Just focusing on the quality and really making it good. And I I literally went to my roommate who was another YC founder at the time, and I literally went to him.
Han Wang:I was like I I literally just, like, took his original crappy docs and I just poured it over on Mintlify. I just was like, hey, dude. Like, here you go. Oh, and by the way, I'm gonna help you change your DNS. So it just goes over to Yeah.
Han Wang:Yeah. To our setup.
Jack Bridger:Yeah.
Han Wang:And by the way, it, like, it it it had a lot of, like, the core features that Mintlify has today, but it didn't really work. It was literally just static pages. And we I just I just showed it to him. He thought it was cool, and then I was like, I bet. I'm just gonna I'm just gonna make it make it so it's on our Yeah.
Han Wang:On our site now. He did it, and then the team loved it. Their customers really loved it. And they What what do
Jack Bridger:you think they loved about it compared to us?
Han Wang:Yeah. It was just about the fact that we made, like, the the the docs experience a lot more interactive. Mhmm. We really focused on, like, the quality of the docs.
Jack Bridger:Like running code or, like, snippets or
Han Wang:Yeah.
Jack Bridger:Kind of, you know, selecting lang is it that sort of thing?
Han Wang:Literally exactly that. Yeah. And, also on, like, the engineering experience, be like, hey. Like, now you can actually edit everything in markdown and keep it within, like, your your core code base. And a lot of, like, these like, the different things that, like, kinda make MiddleFi stand out a little bit today.
Han Wang:And then he he gave a crack at it. The team loved it. And then I think just from that, I think over the like, we just kinda, like, made a announcement about it Mhmm. And then made a post about it. And then just, like, there came this, like, outpour of people who then were like, oh, man.
Han Wang:Like, I would have she'd love to use you guys for, like, our dog job, and it's really not great. I think we got, like, 10 customers in the 1st week. Wow. And then I think, like, maybe 20 by the next. And then by that point, I was like, oh, man.
Han Wang:Like, people are coming yeah. It seems like it's a business. We're, like, asking them to pay and they just, like, subscribe the day of. That didn't happen before. And Yeah.
Han Wang:I think the one thing I always think of now in terms of, like, the many things we've tried and didn't work, I, like, I always tell people, I'm like, the nice thing about this is that when you come into a thing that does, there's, like, no mistaking it. Right? Yeah. If you you you will know when something you will you will always have a hard time telling if something works when it's not working. Yeah.
Han Wang:But when something works and you've had the experience of knowing the many things that didn't
Jack Bridger:Yeah.
Han Wang:It's night and day. Yeah. And when we kind of hit that, it just really felt like this kind of really magical moment. I was like, man, people are jumping on board to to take more demo calls with me so they can get access to it before, like, more than I could realistically take. And that was so, so, so different than what it was before.
Jack Bridger:That's a really interesting journey. And so then what was like once you had this kind of, like, people are paying, did you was it just like a blur? Like, what what happened after that?
Han Wang:Yeah. I think it's always funny because, you know, you you talk to a lot of founders about, like, their stories
Jack Bridger:Yeah.
Han Wang:And they always tell you about, like, the early days. Yeah. Because I think the reason for that is because those were, like, the most memorable because they were the most painful. As the company grew, like, from, you know, the first 10 docs to now, like, you know, the 1,000, that was just more so, like, just repeating and optimizing this process. Interesting.
Han Wang:You know, and so that's like a little bit less exciting. But, like, there were still a lot of, like, challenges even in between. It was like, you know, we had to figure out how we can actually go and, you know, for instance, make this make, like, getting a customer to come to use our product more scalable.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. We had
Han Wang:to figure out how to build onboarding. We had to actually fill that how to, like, build these settings. The the fun fact is even for our first first few customers, they actually couldn't update the docs. Like, because it was so hard coded, basically Yeah. That it was just these, like, static pages.
Han Wang:Yeah. Yeah. And and I was so grateful that the first few customers actually did it on YouTube for some reason.
Jack Bridger:Yeah.
Han Wang:Because it took us, like, another few weeks to actually go build that. And I literally remember when we eventually actually go build those functions, they were like, oh, by the way, Uh-huh. I just wanna mention, like, we gotta go update the docs now. I was like, oh, great. Great.
Han Wang:Like, you know, like, That's awesome. But if they'd asked it any time earlier, we would have we would have not been in the
Jack Bridger:That was like a lesson as well of, like, if you have something like, if you can't give them, like, a really clunky
Han Wang:Yeah.
Jack Bridger:Experience, then maybe it's not pressing enough of a problem.
Han Wang:Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Or you've launched too late or something.
Han Wang:Yeah. But if it's not, like,
Jack Bridger:that's interesting. Yeah. And before before we, like, start talking about docs, do you wanna tell us why Paul Graham told you to
Han Wang:Yeah. Graham interaction? Oh, man. Yes. Yes.
Han Wang:Unfortunately. So I think cut forward maybe this is like a, you know, like, I wanna say, like, 8 months or so afterwards, you know, things were, you know, were kinda growing the business. I think, Paul Graham, decided to invite us over, to his place to talk about, like, what next steps and kind of building the business would would, like, you know, like do you like it? To be honest, I don't really know why he did that in retrospect. I think there was definitely more That's cool.
Han Wang:Important people he could have been spending his time with. No. No no doubt about it. Let's say not. But he invited us over just to, you know, to to talk about the business.
Han Wang:Yeah. And then I literally remember, he was like he sent me this address in South Bay and we we we pulled up, drove all the way to South Bay to, like, this random house. Like, it's like this random suburban house. And we're like like, oh, I was expecting, like, the YC office or something, but it was literally just a house. Walked into the front doors, knocked on, like, the the doors, and then, like, this, like, 6 year old, like, you know, like, like, you know, boy, like, opened the door.
Han Wang:And I was like, am I am I am I in the right place? Like, I'm sorry. We're here to see Paul Graham. And then he was like, oh, yeah. Yeah.
Han Wang:He's right there in the back. Turns out I think it was his grandson. And basically, so we we met Paul Graham and then, and then, you know, we start when we walked in the room, we introduced ourselves and, like, hey, you know, I'm Han. This is Hanby. We're from Mignlify.
Han Wang:And literally in the first, like, like, immediately, the first thing he said was, like, oh, Mintlify like. What what a what a terrible, terrible name. You gotta change that. And then proceeded to roast our name for, like, the first 10 minutes.
Jack Bridger:That's so funny. Yeah. But it's become a it's become a big name in dev tools. There's so many great companies using it now. I know that people like, I know my friend, Flo, is a big fan of minnify.
Jack Bridger:I've tried it. It's great. Yeah. And so you, I guess, become well, there's no guessing. You have become an expert in docs now, which is something really hard.
Jack Bridger:So I wonder if you wanted to share a little bit about, like Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I'm sure founders ask you all the time, like
Han Wang:Yeah.
Jack Bridger:How do I make good docs?
Han Wang:Yeah. Yeah. Well, let me actually turn this around for a sec. Second, actually, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this. When you think of, like, great docs, it's like a wonderful doc experience from any company who you might just try to build something.
Han Wang:What do you think about?
Jack Bridger:You know what comes to my head more is, like, the bad docs. Yep. I feel like it comes Yeah. You know, like, you don't often think, like, wow. This is great docs.
Jack Bridger:I mean, people talk about, like, Stripe when there's something, like
Han Wang:Yeah.
Jack Bridger:Outrageous. But, like, I feel like it's more like, can I find the thing that I want? Is there lots of, like, contradictory stuff? Right. Is it, like, unclear which version of the API it is?
Jack Bridger:Yeah. This sort of stuff. Yeah. I would say that if I can find what I want Yeah. Then it's usually, like, pretty good.
Jack Bridger:And then Right. Everything else is, like Yeah. I I feel like it's, like, tied up with, like, does it work? Like, does it Yeah. Do I get it?
Jack Bridger:Am I able to do the thing fast?
Han Wang:Yeah. Right. And so it's, like, a big part of it is, like, just being able to get the get the job done. Yeah. Right?
Han Wang:It's like, you know, there's, of course, these gold standards in the industry like Stripe. But a lot of the times, a a truly well done docs is just the thing that just does the job done Yeah. In an effective way. Right? And I think you you I think you've said it you've really narrated it, like, perfectly, which is that I think, like, in terms of technical documentation, it's truly just about figuring out how to, like, really, like, like, make it good by having the right information in place Mhmm.
Han Wang:And making sure that it's, like, also you just updated Mhmm. Is really just the most important part of it, I would say, more than anything else. And so, like, because, again, like, you think of, you know, you just you just don't wanna be you just don't want docs necessarily be a subtractive experience to to the users. Right? That's when things start to be a little bit wonky.
Han Wang:Right? Of course, you can always go the extra mile and, like, you know, build a lot of things to make it really great. But the first thing you wanna do is just to think about, like, how do I even just make sure that the content covers everything? Yeah. It actually explains, you know, how to use the product really well.
Han Wang:It covers the different faucets, all the common questions that people would ask. Mhmm. And at least it's there. Yeah. Right?
Han Wang:Because one thing to really notice that developers as an audience really, like, love fidgeting around and doing self exploration. Right? And so oftentimes, as long as it's just properly covered in the content Mhmm. That's, like, just the most important thing.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Yeah.
Han Wang:Yeah. And then I would say in terms of, like, that kind of, like, you know, any kind of advice or strategy, I think people do ask me all the time. It's like, how do I really maintain great docs? And I always say there's, like, 2 parts to this. The first the first part is that, like, there's not it's not like a playbook as much as it is just really having a good process and culture around it Mhmm.
Han Wang:Than anything else. Yep. Like I could sit here and tell you like, oh, great docs equals boom boom boom boom boom.
Jack Bridger:Yep.
Han Wang:Right? Like a quick start guide, you know, these right links, you know, and all that stuff. But I actually don't think that's really the the meat of it. I think building great docs is very similar to, you know, just like building a good product too. You know?
Han Wang:And and then I could talk a little bit about how I do think docs should be thought of as a product. Yeah. But it's really just like, you know, like, how do you how do you just, like, you know, just think first and foremost who your audience is. Right? How do you, you know, just make sure that content is on pay like, that it's there.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Yeah.
Han Wang:Right? And then how do you just iterate on over time with feedback? Right? Yeah. And just getting a team to even think of it that way and to make sure it happens Yeah.
Han Wang:You're there, like like, you're, like, 90% of way there or even even if a 100 in my opinion because most people don't do that. Don't do it like that.
Jack Bridger:Why do why do most people not do that? Because this feels like it's like something that I guess we all know we should do
Han Wang:it Yeah.
Jack Bridger:That way.
Han Wang:Yeah. Yeah. Developers don't like to write. You know? Like, I I think that's the that's the that's the that's the really the meat of it.
Han Wang:Right? Like, you know, it's just not in the training, I I would suppose. Like, the the, you know, like, developers got into this industry perhaps choosing to have, like, you know, it's when you're when you're, like, you know, in in school, you could have chosen the humanities route or you chose the STEM route. Yeah. Yeah.
Han Wang:Engineers definitely did not choose the humanities route for the most part. Yeah. And so there's this, like, there's this kind of, like, oh, I just don't like to the idea of writing as much. And so what I think this kind of, like, thing to note is, like, I think there's there's really and and to that, there's really 2 points and and to it, you know, 2 things to it is number 1, like, it's truly not, like, about writing the best, in my opinion, as long as it's just something's out there.
Jack Bridger:Yeah.
Han Wang:Right? And so I think to that, like, you know, I always think about how do we make it, you know, really easy for the people who perhaps might not enjoy writing to actually just contribute very easily. Yeah. So this is one of the reasons why we at Middleify have always took, like, this docs as code approach
Jack Bridger:Mhmm.
Han Wang:Of keeping it within the workflow that they're familiar with. Yeah. Keeping it at markdown.
Jack Bridger:Yes. Yeah. It's a pretty interesting flow that you've got there. Yeah.
Han Wang:It's it's the one that we just kind of like we're like, this is how we would have wanted to contribute. Yeah. You know? We wanted to, you know, push out PRs with markdown file changes the same you know, alongside the features. And keep it within, you know, the the whole technical workflow.
Han Wang:Keep it within you can you can, like, for instance, preview things by pull requests. You could Cool. Merge it directly into main and then just go straight to prod. Like, that's the one that, you know, you and I are, you know, like, have always been been accustomed to. Make that the experience for the people who should be writing but don't enjoy writing the docs.
Han Wang:Yeah. Makes sense. And and also build the support system to to make sure it happens. And, honestly, like, that's I really think it's it's as simple as that.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. And does it seem it seems like there's kind of sometimes, like, is it important within the company? Yeah. You know, like Yeah. Having Stripe, they're they're kind of obsessed with documentation and books in general, I think.
Han Wang:Yeah. Stripe is very well known for their writing culture, is which in one part why they've done such a great job at it. Yeah. I think they've just, like, they have this crazy obsession about, you know, like, just being able to really put this proper tutorials and explanations out there
Jack Bridger:Yeah.
Han Wang:And, and that's that. But I I think in the question of in terms of, like, how important it is, I always like to think of it from this other perspective which is, like, imagine if you are a Stripe for a second. What would happen if your docs disappeared for a day?
Jack Bridger:Yeah. People are not gonna make many changes.
Han Wang:I don't know. Yeah.
Jack Bridger:Not too many people are gonna get started.
Han Wang:Yeah.
Jack Bridger:Only the really dedicated people that might
Han Wang:Right.
Jack Bridger:Dive in and actually go look at the code.
Han Wang:Yeah. Right. Or yeah. It's it's yeah. If if if you even could.
Han Wang:Yeah.
Jack Bridger:If you even could. Yeah.
Han Wang:Right. And so, like, if because I would dare press. It's like if, you know, if the docs just disappeared for some of these, you know, big dev tool companies, like, it's almost to me as if the product has just disappeared, kind of. Yeah. People would stop being able to properly use it.
Han Wang:People wouldn't figure out how to actually go work with some of the things. And under that light, it's so, so important to think of it like it's
Jack Bridger:the product.
Han Wang:Right? And that's always the like, I'm the biggest advocate of, like, you should just think of docs as a product. It's not like this little side thing that Yeah. You know, could, like, you know, that you'd want to, you'd want to just like have on the side to kind of like help some people.
Jack Bridger:Yeah.
Han Wang:But because if that's the case, then sure. Like if docs are spirited, you're fine. Yeah. But if you're like for a lot of these dental companies, it's not. Yeah.
Han Wang:And if that's the case, then you definitely shouldn't treat it like that. Yeah. Right? And so, so I think that's just like one big, big kind of thing to I think that I've always been advocating for founders to think about. Yeah.
Han Wang:And I think the companies like Stripe, like Segment, like Twilio, Posthog Yeah. Vercel, these best companies with, like, incredible, incredible technical tutorials, they they they do that with that belief. I think that's a key part of key part of it.
Jack Bridger:And so online tutorials, do tutorials sit within your docs ideally? Or, like I feel like sometimes there's kind of a bit of a blur between, like Yeah. Blog Yeah. Articles on their own or, like, full guides plus, like
Han Wang:Yeah.
Jack Bridger:You know, quick starts and you know, how do you do do you see people doing
Han Wang:Yeah. Like, the difference between the different content
Jack Bridger:and things?
Han Wang:Do you
Jack Bridger:think it's something yeah. I don't know. It just feels like sometimes it could be Yeah.
Han Wang:It's like it could be all over the place. Yeah. Yeah. I think my my opinion is, that it again, I think that, like, you can worry all about how to, you know, like, make it intuitive into, you know, structuring things together and making sure that a user goes to the right places at times for the things that, like, you know, making sure they're discovering the right content.
Jack Bridger:Yeah.
Han Wang:But I really again think that it it's the the companies that have issues with this stuff and don't do it at all, it's often that it's rarely the case that they have information, like, at too many places Yeah. And to spur places, but that they don't have it at all. Right? Like, that's, like, to your to your point, you know, when you when you ask about what makes good docs. Right?
Han Wang:Like, it's bad when it's not there.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. True.
Jack Bridger:That makes sense.
Han Wang:It is I've rarely seen a case where it's like too many Yeah. Too many docs.
Jack Bridger:I guess because we use Google anyway. Right? Like, it's probably, like, if you're trying to solve a specific thing, you can
Han Wang:say,
Jack Bridger:how do I do this in JavaScript?
Han Wang:Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's why, like, search is such a I mean, like, functionality is a huge part of docs, good SEO. Right?
Han Wang:Yeah. It's just crucial.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. With, like, you know I mean, obviously, you got your start with the AI stuff, with OpenAI. Do you think there's any are there any things which are making, like, seriously significant differences to, like, docs.
Han Wang:100%. Yeah. A 100%. I think there's going to be different waves of changes into the way people think and interact with docs.
Jack Bridger:Mhmm.
Han Wang:And I think, I'll I'll I'll narrate, like, kind of the ones that I I think first of all has already happened and I think I'll talk about the ones that I think are still yet to come Yeah. Based on the quality of the models, which is the first one that's already happened is that people are getting to an answer more directly. Mhmm. Therefore, actually structuring the docs in the way that they they they the car currently is starting to change a little bit.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. And
Han Wang:I'll describe what that means. Basically, the idea is whenever you're thinking about building a docs or the goal of it in in my view at least is that you should think of, like, you know, like, your docs structured in a way that's kind of like a tree. Right? You start from a home page Yeah. And then you branch out into your whether it's, like, you know, like, if you're looking for SDKs, your SDK references, your API references, or just some some sort of quick start tutorial.
Han Wang:And any user who comes into it is just trying to either find, like, a dot on that tree Yeah. I e, like, a specific answer to a question
Jack Bridger:Yeah.
Han Wang:Or they're trying to get to a set of paths within that tree. So for instance, you wanted to learn how to figure this out and, like, you wanna learn how to, like, the thing works. Yeah. Right? And this is, like, the the critical job of any docs is you wanna make sure that things are interconnected, that it's really easy for anyone from any particular point or from the beginning to get to that individual destination.
Han Wang:Right? That's like the that's like how you can think about it. But the the first thing that a lot of the l m's have introduced is this way for you to just get the answer directly Mhmm. Without actually thinking about the past and navigation.
Jack Bridger:Mhmm.
Han Wang:This is a nice way of, like, a really, like, engineer way of saying that you can now get answers directly to any questions that you have instead of needing to worry about finding the right paragraph or the right keyword or the right answer from a page. Yeah. It's all built from content when the doc so the doc still needs to exist. Yeah. Right?
Han Wang:But if you think about, like, now what we're seeing is people can go into a docs. Yeah. You can literally type in how do I get started? Yeah. And you'll just get the answer right then and there.
Han Wang:Yeah. Think about how great that is.
Jack Bridger:That's so good. Yeah. Yeah. So you kind of don't even need to, like, have the perfect experience for everyone. It's like Yeah.
Jack Bridger:Because they'll be able to choose their own kind of adventure there
Han Wang:Exactly.
Jack Bridger:If you've got Yeah. All the information. Yeah. So you're kind of just feeding Yeah. Chat gbt or whatever.
Han Wang:Exactly. Sense. I think this is the first thing that is starting to already change the dynamic of technical content. I mean, as it already has with, like, chat gbt, you know, with Stack Overflow Yeah. You know, Copilot and all those great things, the the way it's kind of, like, infiltrated into, like, the docs world for any future company is, like, now more and more users are just getting the answers directly to what they're looking for Yeah.
Han Wang:Instead of needing to go find the pages. Right? It, to me, kind of feels like,
Jack Bridger:you know,
Han Wang:this kind of rebirth of, like, this, you know, prior to, you know, like, Google, there was just all these index in like, you know, these individual pages back when search engines were just, like, a bunch of links. True. You know? And now you have this, like, magical thing where you can get to the answer directly.
Jack Bridger:That's so true. That's a really cool way to think about it.
Han Wang:Yeah. Yeah. Like, does that replace fundamentally, like, what Wikipedia still is? Yeah. No.
Han Wang:But it enhances, like, the the way that ability for users to actually get to the answer directly. Mhmm. And I think that's just the way that, like, LMs have unlocked this kind of new, like, you know, ability that people haven't been able to do before.
Jack Bridger:Do you think it changes, like, the role of docs in a sense then in in not not just in, like, filling it out, but, like, if someone does come to you, is it gonna be less is there gonna be less there gonna be less people coming to your docs Yeah. In a sense, But then maybe the ones that come are, like, expecting Yeah. More or
Han Wang:Yeah. I I think there's still gonna be the 2 roles to it Mhmm. Where it's, like, it'll never be, like, everyone knows, like, they'll come in and they'll just simply ask chat and get an answer directly. Because I think there's another part of Docs that's super useful which is to even know what questions to ask Yeah. And to know what the product does.
Han Wang:You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, of course, you can always ask that. Yeah. But there's still going to be this kind of like, you know, like, it's like even in the world of Google Yeah.
Han Wang:There's still gonna be books.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Right?
Han Wang:There's still gonna be textbooks. Yeah. You need to know what you don't know yet. Mhmm.
Jack Bridger:And I
Han Wang:think there's still is gonna be the serving the role in that. I think what AI does is it enhances like this, like, kind of like this kind of like optionality depending on the use case. Because the use case of docs as often is is you just wanna get to an answer to fix this, like, terminal, like, you know, error message that you're getting. Right? That's one big unlock, that has never been done before.
Jack Bridger:So do you think there's any is there now, like, a point of having, like, how to do this in, you know, 15 different languages Yeah. And, like Yeah. How to do this slightly different use case and this slightly different use case?
Han Wang:Yeah.
Jack Bridger:Or, like, do we not even because we could probably just generate those now.
Han Wang:Yep. Do
Jack Bridger:we need to is it worth generating something that can be generated by ChargeGpc when they need it anyway?
Han Wang:Yes.
Jack Bridger:Yes. So
Han Wang:so on the kind of the note on, like, the tutorial stuff Yeah. I think you described it perfectly. I I think we at Middlify are kind of experimenting with this right now Yeah. Which is, like, could you fundamentally be like, okay. Like, you're in Java.
Han Wang:You're looking at these SDKs. You're looking at these API references. Could you just gen generate me the code snippet that would work based on Yeah. What you're looking for? There's very specific use cases of this that I I think we've discovered specifically with, like, when companies have their own SDKs Yeah.
Han Wang:That you want to be able to kind of, like, add into the docs and really customize it based on what the user is looking for. This is still kind of like early exploration on our end, but we definitely think there's going to be something that kind of changes it a little bit that way. The, the way we we also think about it is we like that the model the models are getting, like, better exponentially. Yeah. Right?
Han Wang:Like, every single few months now, you're seeing the like, be able to be more accurate, hallucinate less. And so I feel like going back into, like, my different waves analogy is, like, when we initially built chat, like, even into the product, like, a year ago, it, like, hallucinated, like, 10% of the time Yeah. And it made it not that great. But it was okay because we didn't always preface it by saying it's, you know Yeah. Like, this is Yeah.
Han Wang:It's okay. But now That's what
Jack Bridger:I used to. Yeah.
Han Wang:Right? It's gotten to a good enough threshold where it is actually trustworthy Mhmm. Like, the vast, vast, vast majority of times. And then the time that's actually wrong is not because of the model, it's purely because of, like, what content you even have within your docs. Which actually then changed the paradigm of, like, how you even think about the responses here.
Han Wang:And this is, like, another big part of how, you know, like, elements have changed the way, you know, like, docs have been written now is prior to before, basically, like, when, you know, docs is, you know, the best data you could have on, any docs instance is what pages are people viewing. Maybe they're, like, you know, like, is this helpful or not? Thumbs up, thumbs down. Or, like, maybe they could leave a comment or something and be like this is bad and, like, maybe some of that suggestions, like, all that stuff and, like, maybe search queries and common keywords. That didn't really actually help that much.
Han Wang:What actually does help now is that people, because of chat, are actually asking full on fledged questions on exactly what they're looking for. And on the right, they're look they're literally getting exactly the responses that the LMs are generating from the content of the docs. What that means is let's imagine that you're suddenly seeing a lot of people asking questions that are like, oh, like how do you work with this part of the product? Yeah. And the l m's are like, oops, sorry.
Han Wang:Like, I cannot generate response for you. I actually have no idea, like like, how how this product works.
Jack Bridger:Yeah.
Han Wang:What does that mean? It means Missing. You the docs aren't there. You know? Like, or maybe even sometimes even worse, like, the product should have it, though.
Jack Bridger:Like, you
Han Wang:know, like, this is not there in the product. And that changes the way people are actually writing docs now. And so we're starting to see that a lot of our customers are literally taking that feedback, reading it, like, every single week or every like, the technical writers
Jack Bridger:have been professional. You're capturing that information so that they can see it.
Han Wang:And then they're looking at this, and they're like, these are the questions, these are responses. These responses here, not getting answers. Yeah. These responses here It's
Jack Bridger:a killer feature.
Han Wang:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Use middle of mine. So You
Jack Bridger:got me on that one. That's great.
Han Wang:And or, like, just like these answers are just wrong.
Jack Bridger:You
Han Wang:know? Like, go go go fix them. Like, I can't think there's a better way to just highlight exactly how you can how you can do that better. And now that the models are there, you're actually able to unlock this change in behavior.
Jack Bridger:Yeah.
Han Wang:And so from, like, what we've seen, it's like those two main things from chat to changing the way people are editing the docs is just the beginning of what I believe will be a long tail of many different ways that kind of, like, you know, writing the docs to reading and interpreting as a user is gonna be different.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. That's that's so cool, actually. It's like you're getting this, like, constant, like, feedback of, like, what people are trying to do.
Han Wang:Yeah. Exactly. That's incredible. Yeah.
Jack Bridger:Okay. Han, that was extremely interesting,
Han Wang:and I
Jack Bridger:think I just got sold all the notify.
Han Wang:So,
Jack Bridger:if you have one takeaway for people listening, what would it be?
Han Wang:Oh, man. I'm not I'm not I'm not a I'm not a I'm not a wise I'm not a wise guy. I don't have the best advice to give. How about I give a cow joke instead?
Jack Bridger:Great.
Han Wang:A cow joke? That's okay. Yeah. Why do cows have hooves instead of feet?
Jack Bridger:Why? Well, why do cows have hooves instead of feet?
Han Wang:It's because they lack toes.
Jack Bridger:That is horrendous. Thank you.
Han Wang:I appreciate I appreciate the pity laugh. Thank you. Yeah.
Jack Bridger:Brilliant. Okay. Yeah. Well, Han, thank you so much for coming. Where can people learn more about Mindify and about you?
Han Wang:Honestly, just just, just, just look us on minnify.com, I guess. But yeah.
Jack Bridger:Brilliant.
Han Wang:Thank you so much for having me on, Jack.
Jack Bridger:Thanks, Tom, for coming. Yeah. And we timed that perfectly because my roommate has just arrived.
Han Wang:Oh, perfect. Awesome. That was great. Thank you. Yeah.
Han Wang:Really well done.
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