Episode 67
· 36:36
My first day was chat gbt hitting a 1000000 users and all of a sudden like we didn't really have this problem with top of funnel awareness with developers anymore. Everyone was really excited to build up the stuff so
Jack Bridger:Hi everyone. You're listening to scanning DevTools. I'm joined today by Logan Kilpatrick who is a member of the developer advocacy team at OpenAI which is extremely exciting. Thank you so much for joining Logan.
Logan Kilpatrick:Jack, thanks for thanks for having me. This is gonna be a ton of fun and, we were talking before this about all the questions that you source from the developer committee. So I'm I'm, I'm super excited.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. If there's one thing I've got is questions for you. So so my first question is for most most of the, like, founders that I speak to, their their goal is to try to how do I get my first users? How do I, like, get people to actually care about what I'm doing? And you kind of have the opposite problem where the it seems like the entire world is looking at OpenAI, and everyone cares a lot about what you're doing.
Jack Bridger:So I wondered what challenges you have, when you already have a lot of attention.
Logan Kilpatrick:Yeah. This is this is a great question, and I think it's it's oftentimes, you know, it's a great problem to have. It's not a problem that you often run into. Like, it's not a skill set that I was like thinking about. Like, I think my experience had been much more like, you know, trying to scream into the void of like telling developers why the thing that I was excited about should also be exciting for them.
Logan Kilpatrick:And I think at OpenAI, when I was originally being hired, like, that was actually the part of what we were trying to do was we had GPT 3.5. We had the API, but developers really didn't understand, like, what they could build. There was, like, a few early customers like the Jasper AIs of the world and and others who were building really interesting things, but, nowhere near widespread market adoption. And, it just so happened that after, the very long hiring process, my first day was Chat gbt hitting a 1000000 users. And all of a sudden, like, we didn't really have this problem with top of funnel awareness with developers anymore.
Logan Kilpatrick:Everyone was really excited to build up the stuff. So then it really turned to, we had, I think at the time, like a 7 person team that did like all of the API stuff. Like the entire developer platform was like 7 people and it became like, how do we make the best developer product ever? And we had like 1 PM at the time. We had like a few engineers and me and like, it was a lot of scrambling and a lot of work.
Logan Kilpatrick:Because even even after, you know, we had the the success of Chat GPT, like, it takes a while to, like, fire up the hiring engine to the scale that we're at today. And, so even for, like, the GPT 4 release, the Chat GPT API release, like, we didn't have a huge team for those. So it was a lot of a lot of the initial work that I did was focused on like DevX. Like, how do we make things better for developers? And, and to, to actually answer your question about what is the really hard part for, for people today?
Logan Kilpatrick:It's really how do we help people scale reliably on our platform? And there's just so many, there there's so many challenges with that because of how compute intensive these these tools are that, and how much demand there is. We have to make a lot of like trade offs that I don't think, like and no one wants to be making these trade offs, but it's just, the the position we're in today. So it's a lot of those decisions and, like, trying to optimize the crappy trade offs we have to make to be, like, the most developer friendly thing that we could do, even though there's like so much more that we have to do.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. That and would one of those trade offs, I think I heard you talk about on another podcast where, someone was asking about having, like, billing and usage by, like, API key and you you were talking about, like, yeah, like, in theory, this is relatively easy to implement, but we also need to think about the scaling and
Logan Kilpatrick:A 100%. Yeah. I I do remember them saying that. And the good news is we did release API key key based usage. So we we do have it now.
Logan Kilpatrick:It, I think, like, the engineering work finished on, like, December 20th or something, and then we rolled it out, to everybody, like, a a couple of weeks ago. So I I was super excited to see. But it is like, that is a great example of, like, there's all of these, like, core platform, things that we need to do to make it, like, easier for enterprises and companies and just individual developers to use our platform. And, like, we trade those off against, like, well, peep we have new models that we need to release and like new APIs that we need to build, like the assistance API, for example. And like, how do you make the trade off between those like core features that people want and new modalities and new APIs?
Logan Kilpatrick:And like, historically, we've skewed towards, like, hey, let's just keep shipping new models and new APIs. And, like, you know, it's the the actual, like, platform has fallen to the wayside. And, it I think that was the right trade off historically. Now we have more resources. We actually have, like, an enterprise platform team that's really focused on, like, shipping a bunch of, like, core platform improvements.
Logan Kilpatrick:So you'll see a lot more stuff coming from that team, making our products better. But, yeah, historically, bad trade offs. Like, we wanna make those we wanna make the platform better, but we also wanna ship new API modalities. And, like, it's just we can't do both, in in the past. And I'm I'm excited for the future where we'll be able to do all of the things at once and and hopefully do them all really well.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. And and speaking of doing all the things at once and trying to do them pretty well as well, how how if you had to kind of talk about, like, how you spend your week, how you divide your time, like, how are you, how are you doing that? And, also, how are you deciding how you do that?
Logan Kilpatrick:There is is there's an interesting tension point between, like, where I think I'm going to spend my time and because of how quickly the pace of OpenAI is moving, like, where I end up spending my time. So 2 weeks ago, if you had asked me how will I be spending this week, I would have given you a different answer than what I'll actually spend this this week doing. And, it's, I think that's actually like the most challenging part is it's, it's really difficult to like plan ahead and be like, I wanna do these 5 things because so much is going to change between now and what I hope to accomplish the end of those 5 things because of how quickly we're moving. And, I don't have a great, a great answer. Like, in general, like, the big buckets of things that I spend my time doing is, like, the document our core documentation product.
Logan Kilpatrick:I spend a ton of time, like, I'm the end up being, like, DRI for, like, a lot of the improvements, on a granular level or on a on a very macro level as well. So spend probably like 20% of my time doing that. Probably spend like 20% of my time, like, talking directly to developers, hearing feedback from them, like, seeing problems. I probably spend like 20% of my time on just like random internal coordination stuff. Like, everybody has questions about everything and somebody needs to answer them.
Logan Kilpatrick:So I've spent a lot of time doing that. And then we launched so much stuff that I feel like we're always in a launch mode. So I'm like, I feel like at least a quarter of my time is spent on like new launches. Like, for the last couple of weeks, it's been the GPT store, like, supporting that launch around, developer comms for, like, how we do appeals for takedowns around GPTs and helping people make better custom actions in their GPTs and all that stuff. So it's it's all over the place and there's this there's an infinite amount of work that I have to do list that's that's never stopping growing and I think that's that's the really fun part to me.
Logan Kilpatrick:Like, I think if if there was less work to do and there was less stuff happening, it just wouldn't be as exciting to me. So I'm I'm happy, in a lot of ways that there's so much craziness going on.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. It sounds like very much like I mean, obviously, I guess it is a startup. It's like but it's like you're a founder in a sense that you it sounds like you're just like everyday, like, work. Hey. What should I do?
Logan Kilpatrick:Yeah. A 100%. I I think it's like, again, the the company's changed in in in many ways for the better, given now that we have so many more people. Like, we used to just really be so resource constrained that, like, you would just have to say no to everything. And, now I feel like we can say yes to a lot.
Logan Kilpatrick:And like, I get to say yes to a lot more because like, I know that we have, you know, 5 other people who are doing some really important work behind the scenes. So that, that part is refreshing, because we've scaled so much. So it's been it's been nice to not have everything beyond such a small team of folks.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. One of the kind of related questions I had is that when everyone is kind of looking at you, does it make it harder to be like that kind of like experimental scrappy startup?
Logan Kilpatrick:Yeah. It certainly is. I I don't I'm just trying to think of what the silver lining, the silver lining of it is. And like in reality, like it is really difficult to have that spotlight on you. Like I think in some sense, like it's fun sometimes to have that spotlight, but there's a lot of times where I'm like, I would love to just be able to like ship stuff and like get things out to the world.
Logan Kilpatrick:And I think we do have an internal company culture of like, just do stuff, like get it out there, have agency, like go and solve the problem. And like, it doesn't need to be the perfect solution. But I think like that that mindset and that culture is like definitely deeply conflicting with the reality that there's like so many people who are watching and like every little small mistake that we make. And it's not even like I think developers in some sense are forgiving because they they understand the process of like building these things versus like, I actually think in a lot of ways, like consumer products are a little bit less forgiving because people don't have as much like develop the audience of consumers don't have as much intuition as to, like, how products are built and things like that. And I think, like, developers understand how APIs are built and how other developers work.
Logan Kilpatrick:So they're they're a little bit more forgiving than I think, like, Chachidity end users might be. So I think that is nice. But in, in the other sense, like, you know, if our API goes down, like all of a sudden now, like 100 or 1000 of businesses are now, no longer able to operate with the services that they said that they were gonna provide to their customers. So it's also a much, like, different bar in in that sense as well. So it's this it's this tricky trade off.
Logan Kilpatrick:And and I, like, very personally, like, for me, really enjoy, like, the scrappiness of of doing things. Like, I just it's it's fun to be able to, like, do things very quickly and move super fast and, like, I've I've, you know, had to make adjustments myself as we've continued to scale and there's more eyeballs of just, like, being more myself as we've continued to scale and there's more eyeballs of just like being more cautious about things that we say and, you know, what the quality level is for products that we release and docs and stuff like that. So it's, it could definitely be challenging.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. That's it sounds fun and exciting and also, yeah, challenging. What what do you think is, like, the most impactful, thing that your team does, on the kind of, like, dev role side of things?
Logan Kilpatrick:It's it's definitely the documentation. Like, I think at the end of the day, if I had to say no to everything else and focus on a single thing, it would be our docs. Like, our API is is brought to developers through our documentation. And if there's something wrong with our documentation or it doesn't make sense or people can't find what they're looking for, like, then we've we failed. It doesn't matter that GPD four is incredible or that our other models are incredible.
Logan Kilpatrick:If people can't find it and learn how to use it and be effective building with it, then nothing else matters. So I think that's like the in my mind, always priority number 1. Like, I can say no to everything else knowing that, like, the docs are are really what matters. And I think we're just now as, Roman, who's my my manager, has joined and and so many other folks, hopefully in the future will be joining us. Like, we're just now getting to the point where we'll be able to like scale and build a team.
Logan Kilpatrick:Because like historically it's been me doing the docs in collaboration, like, with random other teams, like engineering teams or product teams or whomever who's like our our go to market team has done a bunch of things, related to docs. But, like, you know, at the end of the day, those are all, like, one off contributions and, like, no one else is really thinking super deeply about it. So I'm yeah. Having other folks to help that will be super nice. And, like, hopefully, developers will be able to see the the change and uplevel in quality once we have more people who are waking up every day living and breathing, developer docs.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. And you've been you your docs get pretty heavily scrutinized, I guess, used. Yeah. What kind of things have you learned, in in the process of, like, working on OpenAI's docs?
Logan Kilpatrick:I think something that, you know, mostly because it's been me writing the docs, like, we we've not done and I think Stripe is maybe a great example of where people have done a better job of this, and I'm sure there's other good examples, but, like, I really am a sucker for like, a beautiful design that like invokes this like deep emotion as you're using developer documentation. I think like that manifests itself for a lot of other developer tooling companies like around, like landing pages. Like, I think we like, I'm not a designer by trade. So, like, I have a really hard time in my mind, like, picturing how to build what it is that I want. But, like, we just kind of throw you into, like, the technical details.
Logan Kilpatrick:And, like, I think what actually makes a lot of sense is for us to, like, have some, like, well designed signposted landing pages that, like, take you for different personas or along different journeys. And, like, we don't do any of that today. We really like, pretty minimally, like, give you the information you would need and kind of assume that everybody's a developer who's reading it. And, like, that's not the reality. Like, there's a lot of other personas who are showing up today.
Logan Kilpatrick:So I think the lesson for me has been like, we need to build those things for people. And like, I don't personally have the right skill set to be the one to do that. So, like, I can think about what makes sense for developers, but there's like all these other things that we need to consider. And, it just ends up being, like, a huge endeavor to take on, which is why we haven't solved the the problem yet.
Jack Bridger:How are you figuring out where the gaps are in terms of, like, okay, we don't have this personas. Is it just from, like, you just go and chat with people? Or
Logan Kilpatrick:Yeah. I think it's chatting with people and I think it's a lot of also just, like, looking through other people's, like, great examples of, like, other developer companies that I really like and, like, you know, I think our our docs are just, like, very lacking in terms of, like, of those pieces and like they're very heavy on text and like not heavy on like diagrams and videos and it's just because like, again, we historically like have not created a lot of other types of content. Like it's really just been like text as the thing that we create. Also, because we've been moving so quickly, like, so I was gonna say Yeah. Like, essentially, our entire if you look at the docs that we had a year ago compared to where we have today, like, all of the docs from a year ago are gone.
Logan Kilpatrick:And we now have, like, completely new docs, not because, like, we just, like, rewrote everything because it's like we have different surface areas. Like, a year ago, the API was very different than it is today. So it's been it's, like, hard to make the, like, longer term investment in, like, video content and stuff like that when you know that it's not going to potentially stand the test of time. And I think things are, like, slightly different. Like, I think GPT 4 is gonna be around for a while, but, yeah, it's it's still an interesting trade off.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Yeah. No. That makes sense. But, like, I always think the observation with, like, opening eyes, like, that you just did.
Jack Bridger:You do some things, like, so well that, like, it kind of doesn't matter if there's, like, these other things there. People will still come to you.
Logan Kilpatrick:That that's been the the I think that is a 100% true. I think the trade off though is, like, for us, you know, that's only true to the point that we and I I tweeted this the other day more so just to because I was curious to see people's reaction, but, you know, that OpenAI is only as good as its next, as its next model. And like, I think if that mindset is true, and with how much competition that there is in the in the model provider space, like, we really do need to have this like holistically, incredible developer experience across our service areas. Like, we can't just rely on always being like, which I think we will be. Like, I, you know, selfishly think we will always have the best models because I see the order of magnitude of the investments that our company is making and the people we have doing research.
Logan Kilpatrick:But, I think it's the wrong thing to do is to, like, assume that that's going to be the case and not try to make the investments in, like, incredible content and experiences and all these other things.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. And how how do you feel like you can be better than, like, all the other kind of, like, model providers and, like, developer experience?
Logan Kilpatrick:Yeah. I think, like, in a lot of ways, because we are so focused on developers, like, I think, like, our our it is impossible for, you know, I know I know, like, people associate at, like, the mass market level OpenAI with ChatGbt, but really for OpenAI to be successful, our API has to be successful. And we have to make it the the best thing for developers to build with because our our mission is making artificial general intelligence that benefits everybody. And for the assumption to be that ChatTBT is what is going to go and and be the mechanism to do that, I I don't think it's going to be true. I think Chachimatif is going to be immensely successful and, you know, could be at the order of magnitude of, you know, a Google search or something like that.
Logan Kilpatrick:But, even if that's true, there's still many orders of magnitudes of more distribution that you could have, through an API product. And, like, we see that today. Like, there's there's so many people who use Chatsubishi, but there's also, like, probably 100 or, many 100 of millions of of end users who are using AI products, who don't even know that it's OpenAI, who's powering their experience. And I think that is like the required thing. So I think like a lot of other providers, you know, you could you know, I again, I like Google.
Logan Kilpatrick:I think Google's a a great company, but, like, Google's mission is not in some ways, like not reliant on them, like building the best product for developers. Like, I think they have Google search and like maybe they're, you know, I'm sure they have some other way framing their mission. This is for me externally looking at it. But, like, I think for us to be successful, we need developers as part of that. And I don't think that's necessarily true for for a lot of companies.
Logan Kilpatrick:I think that's probably, like, the biggest differentiator. It's just, like, a core piece of our mission.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. So it's it just has to be. You just have to be. Yeah. That's really cool.
Jack Bridger:One thing I was interested is, like, you're in such a unique position. I guess most of my questions are gonna be like, hey, you guys are unique. How how do you think about, like, getting, like, advice from people? Like, because it's kinda hard to find people that have been through what you're
Logan Kilpatrick:going through. I think we we have a team, and we're building a team that, like, has a lot of the the right experience. So it's like even even my manager Roman, led DevRel and, and DevX and a bunch of different product surface areas at, at Stripe. And I think Stripe's a great example. Like a lot of our core team has come from Stripe and they've been through a lot of these, like, I think it's like different, it's a different like angle on the same experiences, but like Stripe, I think, is probably previously like one of the most successful developer product companies that exists.
Logan Kilpatrick:And like they've built a bunch of incredible stuff and like we've been lucky enough to get a bunch of amazing folks from their team who, have those experiences. And, I I also think like at the end of the day, like sticking very close to what developers themselves are saying, I think is like super it's not only like fun just because like I really like and empathize with what other developers say, but like it's the truth. Like it like I can get advice from a bunch of other people about what to do, but like at the end of the day, I can also go to our developer forum and like read a bunch of comments that people are giving me. And like, that is like empirically like the truth of what developers want. And, it's, it's oftentimes like the, the hard part is not knowing is like not getting suggestions on what to do.
Logan Kilpatrick:It's like more about the prioritization of like, how do we decide which of those things? And I I mentioned that before, but, like, we we used to just historically make much worse trade offs. And, like, now I think we just, like, had much more bandwidth to, like, go and do more of the things that people have been asking us for.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Okay. I think this is my last question.
Jack Bridger:But one of the questions I have is, like, how do you kind of, like, keep keep the kind of, like, the noise out sometimes? Like, I know, like, in in sort of, November, December time, there was, like, especially quite a lot of noise going on. And, like, how how are you, like, able to kind of, like, you know, carry on, you know, working on docs and stuff like that?
Logan Kilpatrick:It's a that's a tough question. I think it's it's especially challenging for me as somebody who has inadvertently, like, become much more public for OpenAI developers. Like, I don't I don't think that was like very intentional. Like I was just kind of doing the thing that needed to be done. And, now I feel like I'm always in this constant trade off between it would be really nice to not be online and like, it would be really nice to like take time away and, like, I'm always, like, close to tweeting, like, you know, I'm gonna take some time away from Twitter.
Logan Kilpatrick:But on the flip side, like, at the end of the day, like, it's part of my job. There's also, like, a a huge need and, like, I continue to get, like, extremely high valuable signal. Like, I get DMs from people all the time being like, hey, this thing is broken or, you know, this thing's not working to me. And I get to go and service that to our teams. And like, if I take time away and decide not to do that, then I'm like really doing a disservice to our our developers and our customers.
Logan Kilpatrick:So it's it's a tricky trade off. I think at the end like, I think going back to trying to stay focused on, like, doing deep work, it's like at the end of the day, bar everything else going away. Like the thing that matters is for me personally right now is like making docs improvements. So like that ends up being like the prioritization docs improvements and like helping support our launches are like the 2 things that like I will always have to focus on and, like, make really difficult trade offs. Like, historically, we have a developer plat like a developer, community forum, for example.
Logan Kilpatrick:And, like, historically, I've had to, like, step away from the developer community forum for like, a month at a time or something because I just did not have enough bandwidth to manage a community of millions of people and do all the other things that needed to happen. And, like, it's just a difficult trade off that has to be made, but I know the 2 things that are, like, top of my list as far as what needs to happen.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. That makes total sense. So just come back to like, what really are my priorities and then accepting that you have to be out there to some extent, on on Twitter.
Logan Kilpatrick:And and being apologetic. Like, I I spent a lot of my time apologizing to to people in our developer community and things like that, that, like, we can't do more. And I think like, it's like part of it is just like being humble about the reality that, like, we're not always giving people what they want and like we are miss there are gaps. And I think it's, like, easy to buy into the idea that, you know, OpenAI has this incredible developer platform and we've had all this success and therefore, like, we don't need to apologize to people, but I think it actually goes a long way. And, like, I do in many cases, like, feel apologetic about the fact that we've dropped the ball for some sliver or fraction or portion of people who are trying to build stuff with our platform.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. That's that's it's really cool. Like yeah. It it's it would be easy to imagine a world where, like, you guys were just, like, sat on your, you know, looking down, like, hey. We built see, have you tried GPT 4?
Jack Bridger:And you're correcting me on the this little, like, API docs mistake we've got. Yeah. Also, send me
Logan Kilpatrick:the API docs mistakes. If folks do stuff, please shoot me a message. Like, those are my favorite things to be like, darn it. I can't believe we made this mistake, but thank you to whoever that person is who pointed out. Like, please send out stuff.
Logan Kilpatrick:That's those are always the best things to see.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. It's an easy green square on GitHub as well. So True.
Logan Kilpatrick:Very true. Very true.
Jack Bridger:Okay. So I actually have a lot of questions from, like, friends and developer tools people. So the first one is from Lou from TL Draw, who I know that you know. But for anyone that doesn't, if they saw Twitter where, that was like this you could, like, write what you wanted and it would it would just kind of draw and create it. That was TL draw.
Jack Bridger:Check it out. So Lou asked, what do you want people to make with OpenAI that they aren't already?
Logan Kilpatrick:I've said this a few times publicly now, so I think hopefully only a couple more times and then somebody will build this. But, like, I I think the the text first chat assistant is what is going to bring AI to the next 3,000,000,000 people. I think being able like, everybody already who has technology already knows what texting is. They already know how it works and they don't need to go and learn some new interface. And I think there's a huge, massive, massive opportunity to build, like, a multiplayer, multimodal text first, AI assistant, and I'm I'm really excited for that.
Logan Kilpatrick:Like, I think it's just gonna be so wonderful. So I'm, fingers crossed somebody built something cool.
Jack Bridger:Okay. That sounds pretty awesome. Louie from Bloop asks, do you have any plans for the OpenAI community in London? But I guess we'll expand that to, like, every city.
Logan Kilpatrick:Yeah. Louis, this is a great question. I think we actually are pretty aggressively, growing our London footprint. If you go on our careers page right now, there's like a ton of different open, actual like engineering positions that are based in London. I'm hopeful that that will sort of be the the kickstarter for the London community because we'll have an off we do have an office, but we'll also have, like, a much larger footprint.
Logan Kilpatrick:I think broadly, it is it is definitely a work in progress. I think part of, like, I'm based in Chicago. I'm not based in San Francisco. And and part of my instinct around, other than that, my partner's in Chicago and that I love Chicago is, like, I I really think, like, again, our mission is to build AI that benefits everybody and, like, everyone does not live in San Francisco. And I think for me, it's super important that we show up in places that are not just the most exciting tech hubs in the world.
Logan Kilpatrick:Like, I'm talking to someone right now about doing a an event in Atlanta and, all these other places because, you know, so many more people than just those in San Francisco deserve to be excited about AI. And, yeah, if folks have events and things like that that they're excited about, please feel free to send them to me and, we can work on on trying to make them happen. But it's a difficult trade off because, like, you know, we have a small team. I'm also already traveling a ton. So there's, it's it's a bunch of really difficult trade offs.
Logan Kilpatrick:And I'm I'm hopeful just like as the team grows and as the company grows, we'll be able to do many, many more, of these types of events.
Jack Bridger:Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. Louie organizes AI Tinkers in London, and you should definitely, if you do get shots, you should come for that one.
Logan Kilpatrick:Louie, I'll come. Send me an invite.
Jack Bridger:I'll I'll get into it. So, for Shank Vias, founder of Portkey, asks, what innovations do you feel your team has made for DevRel slash developer experience, if any?
Logan Kilpatrick:It's a it's a good
Jack Bridger:That's a awesome question. Question.
Logan Kilpatrick:Yeah. I wonder what innovations we have made. I think, like, we've enabled some of the really cool new like DevX paradigms around like being able to like chat with, different docs and stuff like that. I think we ourselves have not done that mostly because like, if you like Stripe has done this, Shopify has done this, others have done this. It takes some work to get it right and like do it really well.
Logan Kilpatrick:And like we haven't done it, not because we don't think it could be done well, but because we haven't had the time to do it well. So I'm excited for like when we'll be able to launch our like open AI developer assistant, to to make that happen. And somebody actually in the community built a GPT to do this. And I think it actually works pretty well. So if you use our API and you go, look on the GPT store, you should be able to find the one that somebody in the community made.
Logan Kilpatrick:And we've explored building our own first party version of this as well. But, yeah, I think that's like again, we didn't sort of build that innovation ourselves, but I think that's what our technology has enabled for people who are in this space.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. That's really cool. And Louis, his company Bloop do, like, where you can, like, talk to your code base and I ask, like
Logan Kilpatrick:Oh, nice.
Jack Bridger:A couple of questions, like Yeah.
Logan Kilpatrick:Yeah. I'm like, that's that's one of the coolest things. Like, I use chat gbt and cursor and co pilot and a bunch of other, like, AI development products. And, like, I'm like, I don't know what I would do if I did not have these. Like, I would be, like, so much less effective at my job.
Logan Kilpatrick:It's so nice to be able to have it.
Jack Bridger:That's awesome. John from Joyfil asks, what is the number one DevRel tactic you've you'll be using in 2024?
Logan Kilpatrick:Make make great docs. That is the the theme of this conversation. Make great docs. Everything else, comes after that.
Jack Bridger:Okay. I wish I'd asked this one earlier actually. Is Edo, who's a software engineer in London, is a bit of a London theme. Is that something that OpenAI developers are currently unhappy with that you really want to improve in 2024?
Logan Kilpatrick:Yeah. I think one of the big things is, like, the freedom to scale with us. I saw this I saw this thread from somebody a few months ago, talking about how, how challenging and how upset they were with the experience as they've grown, as they've grown their company and their business using the OpenAI API and how hard it was to like get additional like higher rate limits and quota and stuff like that. I think that's historically been the biggest challenge and a lot of it is rooted in the capacity constraints. Like, we just don't have enough capacity for everyone to do the things that they wanna do, which is just so mind blowing me.
Logan Kilpatrick:Like, for the 1st year and year and some change of being in OpenAI, I'm like, how can we not just get more computers for people? Like, I don't understand. We it's like we have money. Well, how we we can, like, give people money and there's no there's nothing for us to buy with our money. And it just, yeah, it it's it's really challenging.
Logan Kilpatrick:And I think that that's probably the biggest thing. Like, we solve that. It's gonna be a huge unlock for people and then they're not gonna feel like they're, like, they need our permission to scale. Like, by default, they can scale to whatever it is the the level they want to. So I'm I'm really hopeful we'll solve that by the end of the year.
Jack Bridger:Okay. Amazing. Yeah. That's that's that sounds great. Yeah.
Jack Bridger:More computers. Okay. Last, like, these are just, like, kind of more silly ones, I guess. But, mundane thing that you spend a lot of your time doing at such an exciting company.
Logan Kilpatrick:I spend a lot of time looking through like Twitter DMs and emails and stuff like that. And it's not like mundane because it's usually people asking me for something interesting, but it's like very difficult to stay on time. Like, I'll take like a I'll have like a day where I don't look at my email and it's just like almost intractable to like go back and try to, figure it out. So I'm trying things like superhuman AI and I need like superhuman AI for my Twitter DMs would be really useful because there's just like so many things that have slipped through the cracks that I'm like, it's impossible to go back and find. So I hopefully superhuman will build that for me.
Logan Kilpatrick:Yeah. You're gonna get a
Jack Bridger:cold DM about that, as soon as this comes up.
Logan Kilpatrick:I hope so.
Jack Bridger:Have you managed to take any vacations since you joined?
Logan Kilpatrick:I haven't. And, I was talking to my my girlfriend about this, like, the the right time at OpenAI, not that this is useful for anyone else, but the right time at OpenAI to take vacation is between, like, Christmas and and New Year's because we have a code freeze. Every other time I've taken vacation, something has come up where, like, we end up deprecating models or there's some new release or something always happens. And that that's not the case between Christmas and New Year. So I need to this coming year, I'm going to plan, a nice relax.
Logan Kilpatrick:It's like the only time to actually unplug. Like, I've gone on vacations, but it's like in the back of my mind, I'm like worried because, you know, something something else is always going on behind the scenes. So Christmas 2024 is gonna be wonderful. I'm excited to to take a break.
Jack Bridger:Okay. And a final question. Is your Chicago resident best eat dish place?
Logan Kilpatrick:I ate a lot of luma nati's growing up. So luma nati's is great, but I'm actually much more of a, if you're in Chicago, a place it's I don't think it's considered a chain, but Paradise Park has, this incredible it's like I I can go on for a while about pizza stuff, but like the problem with pizza is like it's either undercooked or overcooked or too sloppy or like has not enough sauce. Paradise Park has this really beautiful mix of all of those things. And it's just like really high quality and consistent. I feel like I can get it every time and I know it's gonna be good.
Logan Kilpatrick:They also have a really great salad that goes along with it. So Paradise Park, incredible. Amazing. So hopefully see that at,
Jack Bridger:some Chicago OpenAI developer or something.
Logan Kilpatrick:Hopefully. We'll we'll make it happen.
Jack Bridger:Amazing. Logan, thank you so much. Is there anything if you had to have, like, a big takeaway for dev tools founders, who are, you know, working on their thing that you've learned over the time that you've been at OpenAI?
Logan Kilpatrick:I think and and maybe and hopefully this, this won't be an annoying answer for people, but I think like enjoy the, enjoy the rise to like hopefully success as a dev tools founder. Like I think like if I really enjoyed so much like the first like 6, 7, 8 months of my time at OpenAI because it was like we were really fighting and scrapping to like get through all this stuff. And I think it's just like a very different problem space once you like are quote unquote like successful in what you're doing. And, I think like people often think that that's like, you know, going to be the and of course, there's a bunch of benefits to it and everything. But, in a lot of ways like that beginning period where like it's just you and a small team of people trying to get developers excited about what you're doing is, like, probably gonna be the most fun time that you have.
Logan Kilpatrick:So enjoy that time and it it will hopefully, it'll hopefully end at some point and you'll you'll be super successful and then, you'll have had this beautiful journey. Amazing. Amazing.
Jack Bridger:And, you're hiring. Is that correct?
Logan Kilpatrick:Yeah. Our our team's growing across, like, you know, every dimension. So even if you're not somebody who's, like, wants to do dev tooling stuff, we have we have an incredible amount of open positions both in the US and San Francisco. We have a bunch of open positions in London, a few open positions in Ireland. So come come work with us.
Logan Kilpatrick:We have a bunch of open developer platform positions as well. So if you're an engineer, or I think we might have some engineering manager roles open on the developer platform team as well. So we, yeah, we're we're scaling like crazy. Come work with us. If you're if you're awesome at what you do, shoot me a DM and would love to would love to chat more.
Logan Kilpatrick:Amazing. And, if people wanna follow you personally, they can on Twitter. Twitter, LinkedIn, wherever you're wherever you're excited to to talk about AI. I'm probably I'm probably there talking about AI stuff.
Jack Bridger:Amazing. Thank you, Logan. Thanks so much for joining, and thanks everyone for listening. And, yeah. See you again soon.
Logan Kilpatrick:Jack, this is a ton of fun. Thank you for having me.
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