Episode 79
· 41:57
I think that's where I think more folks need to like, more founders need to understand all the baggage that comes with
Jason Bosco:raising VC capital to maybe also consider, you know, exploring other things.
Jack Bridger:Hi, everyone. You're listening to scaling DevTools. Today, we're joined by Jason Bosco, who is the founder of Typesense. Typesense is an open source alternative to Algolia, so such API. Jason, thank you so much for joining.
Jason Bosco:Of course. Thank you for having me, Jack. This is great, great to be on the show.
Jack Bridger:So, Jason, the reason we're here today is because I read your tweet, and I'm just gonna read it. So this was on a DHH post conversation from a while ago. Me, we plan to run a revenue funded company without raising VC. VC, oh, if your plan is to run a lifestyle business, good for you. There's nothing wrong with that.
Jack Bridger:The way they said it was so derogatory, I was I was quietly enraged. Years later, we are happily revenue funded, profitable, and growing, serving 3,000,000,000 searches per month just on typesense cloud. And I'm here to tell you that you absolutely can build a solid business with big impact without raising VC.
Jason Bosco:Yeah. That was, so I saw this I saw this I saw this I see we, tweeting, a video by, DHH where he was mentioned the concept of lifestyle business and how folks, like, look down on lifestyle businesses, And that his video, the way he expressed it, got me all riled up because I've seen the same thing where people think of lifestyle business as these cute little, you know, mom and pop shop type of a type of an operation. But, and, yeah, I remember the conversations I've had with VCs. It's not just one person. It was a couple of people, and I've spoken to have that view of, you know, lifestyle businesses and, you know, bootstrap businesses.
Jason Bosco:And, and at that time, you know, we were not I didn't have enough personal data points to be able to say, no, lifestyle businesses are not a bad thing, and bootstrap businesses are not just a step to a like, it's not one step in the journey. Instead, you can be in a perpetual state of being what I call these days revenue funded, and profitable. And at that point, I didn't have data points to that, but now, you know, we have data points firsthand, and I was like, okay, I gotta be more vocal about, you know, explaining that there is another way to build a business which is not going down the VC path, but the revenue funded, profitable, organic growth story, and that's what Txent is. And I thought more folks should hear about that path, because I feel like the VC funded path tends to be spoken about a lot to the extent of people glamorizing it.
Jack Bridger:Like the default option.
Jason Bosco:Yeah. As the default option. Exactly. And not many folks realizing the pros and cons that come with that path, and and I'm here to say that, no, that's not the only option, and and I and I wish there were more companies that operate this way. And and I feel like there are companies that operate this way, but not many of them are as vocal.
Jason Bosco:There needs to be a lot of, diversity in how businesses are run, and especially in, like, the dev tools, space because these are core infrastructure tools that developers are going to adopt deep into their infrastructure. They need to exist for much longer time frames, and they need to be stable. They need time to bake and mature. And my personal opinion, of course, I'm biased, is that I I think the revenue funded path for dev tools is is, helps dev tools more than the VC funded path, just in just because of the time it requires for dev 2 to, like, really mature and, you know, take shape and get adopted and and visibility. But, again, that's me.
Jason Bosco:That's my opinion.
Jack Bridger:This episode is brought to you by Work OS. At some point, you're gonna land a big customer, and they're gonna ask you for enterprise features. That's where Work OS comes in because they give you these features out of the box, features like skin provisioning, SAML authentication, and audit logs. They have an easy to use API and they're trusted by big dev tools like Vercel as well as smaller fast growing dev tools like Nock. So if you're looking to cross the enterprise chasm and make yourself enterprise ready, check out Work OS.
Jack Bridger:We've also done an episode with Michael, the founder of Work OS, where he shares a lot of tips around crossing the enterprise chasm, landing your first enterprise deals, and making sure that you're ready for them. Thanks, Workhorse, for sponsoring the podcast, and back to the show. Okay. So let me make the kind of, like, the devil's advocate on the VC of, like, when we talk about time and that they haven't got to worry about making money from day 1, they could just focus on, like, getting usage and get help stars and that sort of stuff. And you're able to, like, bring in good people, and and you can quit your job and not have to worry about, you know, burning all your savings.
Jack Bridger:And I guess you get people to, like, help you and that sort of thing. I've maybe I've missed some here, but those those would probably be, like, the the strongest ones from my perspective. So could you make the case for, the the opposite or or just not raising money, the the path that you went?
Jason Bosco:Yeah. So for for us, I would say the so to start a business, you're gonna need capital one way or the other. It's how you raise that capital is is is what sets, you know, VC funded business apart from revenue funded businesses. Now, what we did in typesense's case, for example, is essentially, the capital was so we started working in TypeSense as a nights and weekends project. So it's essentially our time that we're investing it, you know, time we could have worked on other things or done other things.
Jason Bosco:We decided to invest that time as a capital into, the tech sense back in 2015. So while we were still working full time jobs at different companies, both me and my cofounder, we started working on tech sense because we were running into painful issues with search at different companies, and we thought basically, it actually started out as an r and d project. We weren't really planning to build something into TechSens into what it is today. But, really, we were like, why is search this complicated is how it started. And as we realized that this is what goes into building a search algorithm and how things work under the hood, we're like, okay, maybe there is an opportunity.
Jason Bosco:And this is we were dealing with Elasticsearch at the time. So we were like, can we simplify what Elasticsearch offers and build a much lighter weight product, and take advantage of the fact that RAM is continuing to decrease in prices? So let's put the entire index in, RAM compared to Elasticsearch. So that's where we were like, okay, there is an opportunity to improve and reduce the pain of existing incumbents in the market. That's how the project started, and it we didn't we thought, okay, let's it's more like an experiment.
Jason Bosco:We were, like, you know, building prototypes, seeing what approaches would work. So from 2015 to 2018, it was a lot of, like, r and d, iterations, just figuring out which approaches or combinations of approaches work well, you know, benchmarking things and figuring out the core architecture. And then in 2018 is when we decided to open source it, and we launched on Hacker News and Product Hunt. We got some initial feedback, but with that feedback, we were able to continue to iterate on the product for the next 2 years or so. And then so again, all this while, we're still working at other companies full time.
Jason Bosco:This is a nights and weekends, project. And then in 2020 is when we had enough mass of users who were like, if you have a hosted version, we are ready to pay you for it. That's when we we built the conviction of being able to quit our full time jobs and start working on typesense, full time. Now another thing that happened for us in parallel is that so my cofounder and I, we've worked on almost, like, I think, maybe 14 or 15 15 different side projects in the last, maybe, 15 years. And typesens was one such side project, which evolved into a full time thing.
Jason Bosco:But, there are, like, 2 or 3 other projects which got reasonable levels of traction, and the revenue from that, that set of side projects kept us, helped fund typesense in the first, like, you know, bundle. Like, it took us almost, probably, like, say, we launched the monetized product in, September, October of 2020. So from, like, Jan to, like, October of 2020, that was essentially our other side projects that helped fund that period when we weren't revenue generating, you know, with with types of products. So, again, we do require capital. I mean, someone's gotta pay, you know, bills and stuff.
Jason Bosco:So for us, that capital came from our own projects, from, you know, other projects that we've done over, you know, more than a decade, and that's what ended up fueling our initial starting path. And, again, we're probably in a, you know, fortunate position where because we already had that demand. So by 2020, we had enough people, you know, expressing interest in types and also already self hosting it. So when we launched, we had, like, paying customers in, like, the first week. So we were in a very fortunate position that launching a monetized product immediately, things started taking off, you know, taking off from there.
Jason Bosco:But, again, the initial capital for us came from our own other projects that we've built. So what I would say so I've also heard other stories, like other founders, for example, doing, you know, consulting on, you know, things that they're experts and to raise capital for that for that initial period when before their main product starts generating revenue. That's another way to raise capital. So so raising capital is not the bad thing. It's what the expectations that come out of that capital you've raised, I think, is what throws people off.
Jason Bosco:And and specifically, the the the VC route of raising capital has a lot of, you know, not too well understood or visible, expectations that I think that's where
Jason Bosco:I think more folks need to like, more founders need
Jason Bosco:to understand all the baggage that comes with raising VC capital to realize that to maybe also consider, you know, exploring other things, you know, other things which and it's consulting or building other types of products to help fund your main idea, or continuing nights and weekends as you build up your product. All these are, I would say, non dilutive capital, because you're not giving up your company and control of the product and, you know, and your trajectory, to external, you know, external entities, essentially. So so, yeah, so that was that was our journey, how we, you know, bootstrap.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. I mean, this wasn't where I was planning on going, but let's let's open up the package. What what what is the package that comes with v c the v c route?
Jason Bosco:Okay. Alright. Let me let me let me clarify that a bit. So, so VC let let me add a disclaimer here. So so VC as an as an investment vehicle, I'm glad it exists.
Jason Bosco:It's and it has funded massive companies, which from a consumer's perspective, it's amazing all the, you know, all the good things that VC backed companies have brought into the world. Where I think you start seeing, the baggage show up is, let's say, in year 6 or 7. So VC funds usually have, like, a 10 year life cycle. Usually, in year 6 or 7 is when there's a pressure to start showing some sort of revenue, metrics, some sort of revenue growth, because at the end of your 10 year VC life cycle, you need to start showing, you know, you need to have, like, an exit plan, either it's an acquisition or you go public. So this year 6 or 7, there's revenue pressure, and then eventually, there's profitability pressure.
Jason Bosco:And all of the things that the company has done in the 1st 6 to 7 years of maybe subsidizing some of the things, that would have cost them more than, what they actually charged customers for. All of that comes to bite them back, and that's where I mean, this is a cycle I've seen repeatedly where, you know, VC backed companies typically start, you know, doing some sort of, you know, like let me talk about open source. So classic license change, like, that has happened with, you know, Elastic and, you know, HashiCorp. Of course, all it happens even after they go public, it turns out, where once you have the growth pressure, you have to do, you know, you start thinking differently about open source, I guess. And the and then you start seeing, you know, features only being launched into the enterprise versions, and then you start seeing sales teams enter the picture, and then your public pricing slowly starts disappearing from your public pricing pages.
Jason Bosco:And then everything gets rolled into a contact us for pricing type of an operation. So it gets very sales driven. And I've also seen, like, sales teams end up raising their prices on any every renewal cycle for existing customers. So eventually, prices start going up, and this is a consistent pattern that I've seen across the board with, like, VC backed companies. And eventually, they end up yeah.
Jason Bosco:Everyone feel I feel like everyone tries to focus on, like, the fortune, you know, maybe the Fortune 5,000 as, like, the holy grail of trying to track into, and it's come when it comes to, like, you know, ACVs and and deal sizes. So meanwhile, the market that helped them get there, which is like the small, you know, SMB and the mid market, that market continuously consistently keeps getting left behind while all the VC backed companies start focusing on, like, the top of the market. Because, I mean, from their perspective, there's nothing bad in that in the sense that it's faster to scale it's easier probably not easier. It's faster to scale revenue when you're looking at a $1,000,000 deals. You know, for example, you only need so many the number of $1,000,000 deals to be able to grow, with with a much higher trajectory compared to, you know, selling, like, $30 a month, you know, type of licenses to your much smaller customer.
Jason Bosco:So it makes sense why these incentives are that way. But if you peel the layers a bit where that push is coming from is because the expectations of the source of capital, which is VC, if they meet the the valuation of the company completely depends on the growth trajectory. So if you show great growth regardless of profitability, if you show great growth, it's gonna perform well either for an acquirer or in the public markets for a brief period of time, I should say, maybe. And then, that ends up forcing it's almost like the, you know, the the tail wagging the dog, here where that the pressure to show growth ends up affecting the product and all the features and and and, you know, the even the segment that the product is now, affordable for, and the types of features that need to get built. Now suddenly all these enterprise features are are, you know, piled on, and the product suddenly looks unrecognizable to someone who's just starting out trying to use the product.
Jason Bosco:They're like, you have hundreds of different options. Like, how do I know which one to pick? That ends up happening. And that's where I think it goes back to the, you know, the baggage of the incentive for the source of the capital is growth, and that ends up driving all the other things that happen in the company, and that ends up affecting, customers. And, And for me, the biggest realization so when we made the decision, and we've had almost like 35 different VCs reach out to us over the last couple of years, wanting to invest in typesense.
Jason Bosco:And for us, the decision point was at one point I realized that we're selling 2 types of products. 1 is you're selling your core product that your customers pay for, and then you're selling your company stock, which is also another type of product, but the customers you're selling your stock to is investors. So now you have 2 product lines, your core product and then your, your company stock. And you have 2 groups of customers, your your core customers paying for your core product, and you have your investors paying for your stock. And more often than not, your your investor customers have a lot of influence on the company's trajectory, and that ends up affecting your core product.
Jason Bosco:And now the the irony of this is that the core product will not exist if it, you know, if it not were for the customers. So you end up sacrificing your core product and your core customers because of the expectations of this other group of, customers. And finding that balance, I think, is what ends up, you know, is is the challenge for VC backed, companies. Now some companies stand now, and then the definition of success also changes, you know, at that point where now it's even for all the employees and the founders, the definition is now your stock price appreciating and not your product improving, because that's where everyone makes their money. And, anyway, long story short,
Jason Bosco:that's the baggage Yeah. That
Jason Bosco:I think ends up, affecting VC backed companies unless, you know, a founder is, like, very diligent about, you know, about balancing these 2. But even then, I've seen founders, you know, being asked to step aside and other CEOs brought in if that happens. They're too strong on how, you know, balancing this product versus investors, which is kind of like the sad, sad thing to watch happen, but that's the cycle I've seen happen over and over again. So I'm trying to say that that need not be the case. Like, that's not the only trajectory.
Jason Bosco:Like, the other trajectory of where so, you know, when I wake up, the only thing that I worry about is, okay, what are our customers telling us, and what do we need to build to support the next set of use cases that our customers are, you know, reporting to us? Like, that that brings so much contentment for me and satisfaction, that I wish more founders experience that and and and think of this as a, you know, a sustainable way to bring to build tools over you know, for for tools that last more than a decade, in in, like, the mass market.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. They're super, super interesting points, and I think that, as you said at the beginning, like, the VC is, like, the default route, and I think, like, I'm sure there's, like, some things that some people would debate you on some of those of being, like, kind of like, okay. You know, maybe they should have just set up their license better or, like, you know, from the start or, like, thought about their sales process from the start and that sort of thing. But I think that I I feel like, you know, bootstrapping and gets, like, sort of, you know, just not raising money probably doesn't get enough time in the sun, and I think, like, for me, that would be the dream way to build a business. And there are, like, these big examples, like, Atlassian.
Jack Bridger:I don't believe they raised any money. So, I remember when I first discovered Algolia, and I used Algolia, and that was through, I was using Firebase, and I went to the Firebase docs. And Firebase, there was no, like, default way to search at the time, probably still isn't. And there was, like, okay. Here's our goal here is, like, the search option.
Jack Bridger:And then I checked back today, and, like, typesense is there as well. And I feel like these kind of things is, like, developers discover tools in this kind of approach, and no matter how much money you raise and try and, like, force that growth, you're probably not gonna be able to just, like, get Firebase to add you to the docs without a kind of a track record and, like, length of time. Could you share a little bit about about that?
Jason Bosco:Yeah. Yeah. So for us, it kind of specifically, like, the Firebase mentioned in the docs kind of happened organically. There was, So Firebase users discovered typesense, and we're building integrations themselves. And, and, I tend to have a lot of conversations with, with our customers, and I kept hearing that people were using Firebase, and then they were using this.
Jason Bosco:And and one of those users, you know, thanks to them, they were very vocal about about Firebase supporting us in some capacity. And they were like, hey. Why are you haven't you guys added, you know, typesense into the into the docs? And so we essentially had, like, a user who was a champion for us. Really?
Jason Bosco:And they've they had used Algolia, and they had used typesense, and they were like and Elasticsearch as well. And they were like like, I don't understand why typesense is not meant for that. Strong push from the Firebase user ecosystem, like, things like that, to your point, that takes time. Like, you need it can't be just one user Yeah. Just discovering something new and then saying, hey, this would be nice if you if you guys added this.
Jason Bosco:I think it takes an ecosystem of, like, a critical mass of users in that ecosystem, you know, using the product and then also help improving the product. And then that that that also happened a lot where we would get feedback from, from users from the Firebase ecosystem. We were improving types as well. So that takes time to, you know, build that relationship, that, you know, to mature things. And then it happens.
Jason Bosco:Like, it wasn't like a thing that we reached out and happened. It happened kind of, where if the push came from the user, like the Firebase user side. So, you know, to your point, that takes a while to build up, you know, and and mature. So, I'm I'm glad that happened. Like, same thing with, like, we recently contributed integration to Laravel, and for the longest time, Laravel users were asking us for a Laravel integration.
Jason Bosco:At one point, we're like, okay, let's just build it. And then we maintain it as a third party library separately. And over time, as we started getting feedback, we kept improving things, both again in the typesense product and also in the in the Laravel, integration. And then we were eventually able to get to a state where we were able to go to the core Laravel team and say, hey, we have enough users using this, and we're being used at scale with Laravel users. What do you think about, you know, can we contribute this upstream, back into, like, the Laravel core, to make that happen?
Jason Bosco:But to be able to get to that stage so this happened in, what, 2022 last sorry, 2023 last year. So it took 2015 to 2023 of all of the things that we had done to that point where it was sufficiently in a good place for us to
Jack Bridger:be able
Jason Bosco:to, build that trust and for us confidence to be able to go, you know, us for us and ask and also be able to be in a position to consistently support any issues that are reported, and any feature requests that come up, etcetera. So I think things just take time, especially in dev tools. I feel like the more you force something on a large group of developers, via any form of marketing, I feel like, you only get more pushback because it's like, you know, things being overhyped is is I think people are starting to see through it, these days. So anything that comes up out with too much hype, there's all always gonna be that, you know, set of users who are, like, you know, very, distrusting of why suddenly something is this popular. And I think going down the path of slow organic, when it's word-of-mouth type of growth, which takes a lot of time to happen, then I think you overcome that distrust that comes with hype based, hyper growth type of ecosystem.
Jason Bosco:So and it also frankly, I feel like this gives you more room to breathe and to also mature your product instead of always, you know, trying to fix bugs and put out fires and whatnot, being able to do it in your own timeline, on your infinite runway, is much more productive, I feel like, and required almost in in, like, any deep infrastructure, infrastructure tools. The question is, how do you build up that runway to be as long as possible for you to be able to build a deep product, deep, mature, product that can be adopted by the market? And how can you stay in that adopted state and not fall out of favor when you suddenly start going upmarket and then, you know, the next wave of startups, you know, come along and take your pie and the cycle repeats, that's, you know, that's the that's the challenge, I think.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Kind of, like, touching on that, like, I I definitely spend too much time on Twitter, and sometimes, like, in dev tools and tech, you kind of always feel like, you know, you're running out of time or, like, things are just constantly changing and stuff like that. And, like so, obviously, we've had the advantages of, like, you know, having time and, and not having the pressure with VC funding, but, like, how does the do you yeah. I guess this is my own insecurities question. Like, how does it how do you think about the the opposite, challenge where, like, you have to move fast?
Jason Bosco:Yeah. I mean, so for us, and this is maybe unique about the search space, is that the market is pretty large, and also search as a problem has always existed, Just like how databases you know, when database as long as databases are around and you need a way to store the data, you're gonna need a way to retrieve that data in, you know, in a full text, way or using embeddings or whatnot. Data retrieval is never gonna go away as a as a domain. And in fact, like, you know, before Elasticsearch, there was Solr, and there were a couple of search products even before Solr. So search has been around for decades now, and the fact so moving fast is relative when you look at those long timescales.
Jason Bosco:As long as you keep up with what your customers are telling you as their, you know, most pressing needs are, then the problem space is not going to go away. And now the mechanics of how you approach such might change as more hardware improvements show up, more ML improvements show up. The mechanics of how you implement search and data retrieval is gonna change, and, you know, the challenge is to keep up with that, which also means keeping up with what customers expect, you know, from their own consumer search experiences. But it's not something where if you don't launch this particular feature by q4 of this year, it's going to be a make or break. That's just not a thing in information retrieval.
Jason Bosco:I feel like it's an evergreen thing. So maybe I should qualify that in deep R and D type of space, evergreen R and D type of spaces, I think you have the flexibility and the luxury of taking more time, than if you were, for example, let's say, if your idea is something that requires a particular time, high stakes. If you don't capture the opportunity by this time, there's going to be tons of other folks, or you're going to miss the window of opportunity, then you need to scale up really fast. That is a great application for, like, VC Capital. So but I like to think that dev tools in general have more breathing room.
Jack Bridger:Yeah.
Jason Bosco:And there's there's, you know, sure, there's there's a, you know, cycle, but the the cycle I feel like the current set of cycles keep getting created by VC backed dev tools. When you look at, for example, you know, I'm a big fan of, like, Ruby on Rails as a framework, has existed for, you know, forever now. Yeah. And it continues to innovate, and it it it gets its job done and gets out of the way. And, and you can focus on, like, the, you know, the business logic, you know, versus having to build plumbing.
Jason Bosco:Like, we need more tools like that which stay around for the long term and do the thing that they say they do well versus, you know, always having to, you know, for example, new version launches have a bunch of different features. Now you have to upgrade to all of that, and then you keep like, that cycle, I feel like, is gonna get pretty tiring for developers, you know, every couple of years. Say this is the next big thing in dev tools. And unlike consumer products, dev tool products, you you require a lot of effort to integrate with and also keep upgrading. And that fatigue of having to keep up with the next set of features even within the same framework you're, you know, you're using.
Jason Bosco:For example, it's it's gonna get pretty tiring, soon. So so I would actually wager that the slower dev tool releases, you know, big bang features, the more, you know, adopted it's gonna be, because the rate of churn and the rate of amount of effort to try to keep up is is lesser, than, you know, going with something that keeps releasing, you know, every, you know, every month or so, for example. So, I feel like I went off on a tangent there. But No.
Jack Bridger:That makes sense. Have you got any examples of, like, developer tools companies that, like, in this space that, like, you know, you really look up to as well?
Jason Bosco:In this space, I would say, I mean, so okay. So let me define this space. So this space as company that have not raised VC funding. Yes. So so Flagsmith is another company that has not raised VC funding.
Jason Bosco:Yeah. So I'm fans of how they approach their initial, funding story of how they funded the initial development before they launched flagsmith as a standalone product. So that's completely different from how we've done it. They went down like they were an agency, and then they saw a a a need for among their customers, started building a product. So that like, that's a great model.
Jason Bosco:But let's see. Besides that, it's interestingly, every other company that I know is VC backed in the dev tools space.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Maybe if anyone's listening and and they know any, like, v like, kind of bootstrapped, non VC funded, dev tools, like, tweet at us or something, and we can try and, like, maybe there could be some kind of a list of your super cool I definitely wanna talk to more people doing this approach.
Jason Bosco:Oh, yeah. For sure. By the way, on a side note, so, you know, I mentioned this, briefly to you earlier, but I've also started using the word revenue funded instead of bootstrap. That's another thing I've heard in the past is people tend to think of you go from bootstrap and then that as a step to then, oh, you're gonna you've not yet raised VC funds, so you're bootstrapped. And then step 2 is raising VC funds.
Jason Bosco:So and it also conveys a little early stage than Yeah. You know, if you say you're VC funded, that's sales later stage. So what I started doing so I've started using the word revenue funded instead of bootstrapped. So revenue funded to me feels like it conveys a state of perpetual being Yeah. Where it's not like a step towards something else.
Jason Bosco:It's you're revenue funded, and you're profitable. I feel like that's describes so what I'd like to say is we were bootstrapped, meaning that we funded things ourselves, and then we are now revenue funded and profitable is how I like to describe our stuff. So I'm hoping that that's something that I frequently say you know, shout for the month, anytime I get a chance. But, hopefully, that terminology is something that, you know, we get to adopt as, you know, this style of companies start coming up.
Jack Bridger:Is is that to do with, like, enterprise customers and stuff like that, where they kind of start to do do due diligence? And then, like, if if they saw, oh, okay. There's a bootstrap company. Oh, maybe we need to just go we need to go with, like, the really stable one. This doesn't sound stable.
Jack Bridger:Like
Jason Bosco:Yeah. I mean, may there's a maybe a little bit of that, but it's more for me, it's more of new it's not just enterprises. You'd be surprised. Like, even startups who are, you know, a couple of months old have in the past told me that, oh, you're bootstrapped. So they even though, you know, we're much we are revenue generating and profitable, a start up that's 2 months old will look at us and say, oh, you're bootstrapped and Yeah.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Don't trust you.
Jason Bosco:Yeah. Think differently. So that's the perception I'm trying to trying to address is that, again, it because for better or worse, the word bootstrap has been used for to refer to, like, very early stage companies.
Jack Bridger:Someone in the bedroom. Yeah.
Jason Bosco:Which is why I like to say revenue funded.
Jack Bridger:Yeah.
Jason Bosco:As, you know, we're we're way past. We're not not we're not bootstrap. We're now we're now revenue funded. That's how I like to say.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Yeah. Which I guess should just be a company.
Jason Bosco:Exactly. But
Jack Bridger:yeah. Yeah. But we live in a we live in a weird world. Yeah. That's that makes total sense.
Jack Bridger:Do you see any kind of other areas that's kind of, like, right for someone to do something similar to typesense?
Jason Bosco:I mean, I guess I haven't thought about other, adjacent spaces, but I guess the biggest thing is now anything in the, like, in the ML space is because of the trend of the day. But but I think the ML space is interesting in that it requires a lot of capital investment for sure. It's gonna be really hard to bootstrap your way, to a revenue funded company because, I mean, GPUs are expensive. You need to if if you're gonna do it without, you know, having to pay one of the, you know, larger AI companies, you're gonna have to acquire GPUs, and those GPUs are gonna be expensive. So, I think something like that and also, you know, similar to, like, the hardware space, for example, there is gonna be a lot of upfront investment.
Jason Bosco:So I'm definitely not saying that like, like, what I'm saying is not universal for sure. I'm only specifically saying for dev tools, like, software companies.
Jack Bridger:Mhmm.
Jason Bosco:That's where I think the application of, like, you know, VC principles, I feel like, tends to distort the natural progression of these, of this type of software. But anything that's capital intensive, you know, by all means, I think, you know, VC, I'm glad as again, as just as an entrepreneur, I'm glad that VC exists because it has spurned and helped so much entrepreneurs, you know, help experiment with different ideas and bring different ideas to life. So I'm glad it exists, as a theme, or or as a vehicle. But for, for dev tools, not so sure about that.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Bosco:But, anyway, I guess I didn't answer your question. Nothing off the top of my head, but I feel like there's still so much undiscovered space in the ML area, that something there could be interesting. Even if it's not consumer facing applications, you know, I would think of it as selling, you know, shovels, you know, during the gold rush type of a thing. So is there any tooling as a dev tool company? Like, is there any tooling that you could build to speed things up?
Jason Bosco:Or maybe that might not require as much capital as, like, you're not sure you're not building your own models or training your own models, for example. But is there a tool that you could use to cut down costs or improve efficiency in that space. I think that that could be an interesting space, for the next generation of companies to come out of.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. I agree. This, like, feels like a mega mega trend that's just yeah. Jason, I think that's all we've got time for. Thank you so much for joining.
Jack Bridger:Before you go, I wanted to ask you one more question, which is just if you had, like, one one takeaway from this conversation that you'd want founders listening to to hear, what would it be?
Jason Bosco:I would say, think of multiple ways to fund your operations and not VC as the only path. Like, I would recommend coming up with creative ideas for this capital, whether it's through consulting or building other products. I've seen some folks build info products, for example, like publishing content or, you know, helpful material in that space, running an agency, for example. So, there are so many different ways and look and consider VC as just another way among all the other possible ways. So I really hope that that becomes a more common thing, and people don't default to looking at VC as the only way to build a company with large impact, especially in the dev tools, you know, dev tools space.
Jack Bridger:That's amazing. That's amazing. And, where can people learn more about, about you and about typesense?
Jason Bosco:Yeah. So, we I mean, I post on Twitter, so it's Jason Bosco on Twitter, about our journey. We try to keep our blog updated on typesense.org/blog. You might say you have to come up with a new article shortly. But so far, we try to keep our blog more around the company building side of typesense and not like feature launches and etcetera.
Jason Bosco:We use separate channels for that. So if you wanna sign up for our blog as we post new articles, we'll keep you updated on our Awesome.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Well, thanks so much, Jason, for coming, and hopefully, some people will reach out on Twitter and tell us about their, like, their revenue funded developer tools.
Jason Bosco:Awesome. That that'd be awesome to watch. If that's the outcome of of our time, you know, that we've recorded this, that'd be amazing. I'll be a happy camper.
Jack Bridger:Amazing. Thanks, Jason. Thanks everyone for listening. Bye.
Jason Bosco:Thanks, Jack.
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