Episode 73
· 41:42
Winning a developer's trust is so freaking hard and losing their their trust is so freaking easy.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Hi, everyone. You're listening to Scanning Dev Tools. I'm joined today by Zeno Rocha who is the founder of reset and also the creator of react email and Dracula theme in Versus code, which has its own Wikipedia page and you've probably used. Zeno, thank you so much for joining.
Zeno Rocha:Thank you, Jack, for having me. I'm really excited to talk about dev tools and everything between, and I think it's gonna be fun.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. So resend has been kind of, like, taking over Twitter a little bit recently. Could you tell us a bit about resend?
Zeno Rocha:Yep. So resend is an email API for developers. And the whole idea behind resend was, how can we create the Stripe of email or the Vercel of email? That's that was the thought process as we were getting started. And, yeah, we we started only a year ago, but we're seeing a lot of traction.
Zeno Rocha:And, the whole point is computing a product that has exceptional developer experience. Right? So that was the premise since day 1. So that's what we've been focusing on. And it's been, yeah, really nice so far.
Zeno Rocha:We're a small team of 6 people. We're all distributed. We have some folks here in the US. We have some folks, down in Brazil. And, yeah, it's been pretty cool.
Jack Bridger:This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. At some point, you're gonna land a big customer and they're gonna ask you for enterprise features. That's where WorkOS comes in because they give you these features out 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.
Jack Bridger:So if you're looking to cross the enterprise chasm and make yourself enterprise ready, check out WorkOS. We've also done an episode with Michael, the founder of WorkOS, 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, WorkOS, for sponsoring the podcast and back to the show. And it's interesting, you know, when you say, like, that developer experience, it feels like all these, you know, these things that you've built are kind of related and, like, maybe, like, one leads to the other. React email is, like, a really popular way to create emails in React.
Jack Bridger:And although maybe it's not, like, exactly the same as resend, it's like the credibility you got from building. So so could you tell talk to us a little bit about how these kind of, like, play together?
Zeno Rocha:Yeah. No. That that's a fascinating story because when we started, it was just boo and I. Right? So we were, like, struggling with different email vendors.
Zeno Rocha:We're like, we were using postmark at work. We're both working at WorkOS before, and we're like, oh, man. This is so this is so hard to use, and we're having trouble with emails going to spam. And then we saw that Postmark was acquired. We're like, oh, no.
Zeno Rocha:Like, most of the times when services get acquired, like, you can see the quality going downhill after that. So and that was the the last one that we liked. We saw that happening with SendGrid, with MayoJag, and Mayo Gun. Like, all these services started around 2,008, 2009, and they all have been acquired by now. So we're like, you know what, let's let's try to do that exercise of, like, creating the stripe of email, how that look like.
Zeno Rocha:So Gu and I just started playing around with this. And this was just like for fun, no big idea company behind it. Right? So just playing around. And then we got, like, pretty far in the MVP.
Zeno Rocha:And then we're like, oh, this is interesting. Okay. Now it's working. Then we started sending to a couple of friends. And then they started integrating production, and we're like, no, no, no, don't do that.
Zeno Rocha:Like, we don't have tasks. We don't have, like, a API status page. We we don't have anything. Right? But they were like, no, but this is way better than what I have now.
Zeno Rocha:I wanna use it. And the day we got the 1st, paying user that, like, I saw that this friend was using and then I sent him, like, a Stripe payment link and then he paid, I'm like, oh, there's something here. This is actually useful. But what was interesting about that was even though we're building resend, we're like, what's the story that we're telling to the world? And are we just gonna come out of nowhere and say, hey, here's a new email API.
Zeno Rocha:Like, what's the angle? What's the connection? What's there? And we by that point, we're talking to a lot of friends and then a lot of, like, people that we knew, and we're just trying to understand, like, how like, what's the process of sending an email? And it typically started with a designer maybe doing this super complex email template on Figma, or maybe not that complex, but just like an email template on Figma, they hand off to the developer, and then that developer now needs to convert that from Figma to code.
Zeno Rocha:And they quickly realize that, oh, doing this with HTML and CSS is not the same as I'm used to with the web. Right?
Jack Bridger:Like It's hard. It's like it's like hieroglyphics when you look at it. Yeah.
Zeno Rocha:It's insane, insanely hard because it feels like you're coding for the web in 1995. Right? Like, you need tables, you don't have border radius on on Outlook still. Like, so it's very much like an archaic effort. And and then but they they have to do it somehow, right?
Zeno Rocha:Like, now you have this code that is super hacky, and then you now need to start testing. So then you need to send real emails to real inboxes, and that's also a pain. And then you think about, like, okay, now I need to send this to real users. I need somehow a mechanism, maybe a SMTP service or an API that I can trigger. And then after that, there's all the observability on top of it.
Zeno Rocha:Oh, was the email really sent or not? Was it delivered? Maybe it bounced, maybe someone marked as spam. So we understood that journey of like, from the designer to the moment that the email lands on the inbox. And we're like, we need something better because there's so much pain here in the beginning.
Zeno Rocha:And the stack for building emails is not the stack that we use for the web. Like, what's the stack that I love using? Right? And this is, like, just me as an individual developer. I love React.
Zeno Rocha:I love Next. I love Tailwind. So I wish you could have those things when I'm building my email. And that's what we started developing. So we were like, no.
Zeno Rocha:Let's pause, resend. And we kind of, like, we did both things together. We didn't really pause, but we're, like, let's start building React email, which is gonna be this library of unstyled components built for email, and we are heavily inspired by Redux. We are, we were both working at WorkOS. We loved using Redux as individual developers too, and we're like, yeah, this is gonna be a compatibility layer where if you want a button, this button will render the same on Yahoo mail, on Outlook, on Apple mail, and Gmail, and you don't need to worry about all those hacks.
Zeno Rocha:And then we released that in December, and then only in January, we even mentioned that resend existed. So the storyline was, hey, here's a tool to help you build the email and we were giving you that for free. It's open source. Here it is. And then you build the email using that.
Zeno Rocha:Awesome. What's the next step after you built? Now you need to send. Here's an API for you to send. And React email, you can use with AWS, you can use with all of our competitors, But it works really well with recent.
Zeno Rocha:So it's a strategy that's no different than what Vercel did with Next. Js and the actual Vercel platform, is this duo of here's a framework for you that's open source and free and available for everybody, works everywhere. And here's the SaaS that complements, and that's how we're actually gonna make money and pay our salaries in our team. Right? Like, we need those two forcing functions working together.
Jack Bridger:When you lay it out like that, it's like it's so it's it seems amazing, and it's like just such a incredible strategy. And what what I think is interesting is like that it sounds so obvious now when you look back, like, the it's it's just wild that people were, like, couldn't write emails, you know, in the way that they write, like, their web page. It's like, it doesn't make any sense now, but, like, I think that was a reality for, like, a really long time, and no one really came along and actually addressed that. I I feel like this was it this kind of this feels, like, so, like, straightforward how it kind of came about. Was it like, I'm sure there was some, like, challenges along the way in that journey there.
Zeno Rocha:So many challenges in I I feel like there's something about, that mental model of, like, what's the story that I wanna tell to the world? And then you manifest that story throughout your strategy. Right? So I feel like people just go straight to coding straight to like, oh, let me just solve the problem without really thinking, like, yeah, but what's the like, who's the hero? Like, who what's the challenge?
Zeno Rocha:Like, what is the status quo? And how you put those things together in a way when people see it is coherent and it makes sense, and the dots are connected. And there there's a lot of challenges to put that together and make that a reality because in the beginning, that was a bet. So the bet was maybe people will like to use React for their email templates. Maybe they will.
Zeno Rocha:And maybe they some some won't. Like, maybe there are teams that prefer to use a drag and drop thing in the UI, and they don't wanna have the engineers involved. But maybe there are some teams that, you know, they have, like, all the email templates inside their source code. They love having the history. And so we put that batch out in the world.
Zeno Rocha:And then we are like, let's see how it plays out. And for us, it it's very much. I I I really believe this, and I learned this through another open source project that I have called clipboard JS. So clipboard JS, I think it has 30,000 stars on GitHub right now. Super big.
Zeno Rocha:Right? Huge. And we got, like, the first 10,000 in the the first, like, 1 week or 2, something very like, it was very short. This was back in 2015. We launched in the same year as react as or maybe it wasn't really like I can send you the links for this, but like there's swift launch in the same year and.
Zeno Rocha:The top 10 launches of that year on github were all for, like, Microsoft, Apple, Google, and then we're there. So, like, yeah, like, just like my name in in this repo. And a lot of people were asking, like, oh, how did you get so many stars in such a short amount of time and, like, all this attention? And what what happened with that specific open source library was I spent 2 weeks building that before it launched. And only, like, 3 days were in the actual source code of the library and the rest was all in the documentation page and on the website.
Zeno Rocha:So I really wanted, like, a very nice readme and a very nice website. And when you go to the website, and you can go now if you want, you'll see that it's extremely simple. There's there's enough like, it's no big deal. Like, you go there, it's, like, super simple. But I wanted to make sure that it's like the flow was good, that the tagline was impactful, that the first intro was like, it explained the why.
Zeno Rocha:And I wanted to make sure we started with the why. And then the first demo is very, like, familiar. So we do like the GitHub input with the copy, which, you know, like, you would you do that for copying the GitHub, Git URL to clone the repo. So like, very, like, things that are are very simple, but I I I feel like most developers, they spend most of their time doing the source code and not thinking about how they're gonna distribute and market and and teach people how to do it. Whereas, like, you should maybe do like 5050, you know, like, or maybe 80 to any, even.
Zeno Rocha:That's how how insane insanely important it is if you wanna stand out nowadays, it's so hard to stand out. So if you just do the bare minimum, like, oh, I pushed to GitHub. Yeah, anyone can do that, but who can do like a read me that really flows well, that makes sense, that it's exciting, you wanna share with your friends, wanna start using at your company, at your open source at your side project on a Saturday afternoon. I feel like many people miss that.
Jack Bridger:That is yeah. This this is, like, amazing. So what does it look like, the kind of actual reality of you doing that? So is it like you push up, like, you finish the source code and you've just got, like, readme.md at the top, or are you, like, working on it as you go? Like, what is your process there?
Zeno Rocha:You need something to be able to teach it. Right? So I think it starts with the actual functionality. And we all we all have, like, the same amount of hours, you know, like in when I'm doing these side projects, you know, I'm doing like, I have a 2 year old daughter and and I have a wife and I need like a I have a life. Right?
Zeno Rocha:So I don't have too much time like everybody else. Like, we're all squeezing, like, a few minutes here and there, a few hours here and there. So it's not like you need to spend more hours on the whole thing. It's more about how do I decrease the scope of whatever I'm doing. So that it's very straightforward, only the essential.
Zeno Rocha:And then I can free up time to really dive into how can I explain this? And how can I do it in a way that it is not a block, like a wall of text? You know, it's, there's actually, like, it's compelling, like, you're like, oh, yeah, okay, this problem makes sense. And then you see step by step and that step by step also makes sense. And there are migration guides and there's a change log and like, okay, yeah, this looks maintained.
Zeno Rocha:And there are examples and there are visual examples, not only just the code, how you have to guess it. And those trends, they change all the time. Like, I can't use that same readme that I that I did in 2015 and think in think that, yeah, that's what's gonna convert today. Like, no. Like, what people are expecting is different now.
Zeno Rocha:They want a banner on top. They you need the badges, and they they need to be aligned in the center. And, like, there's just, like, you need a a mascot or, like, whatever it is. Right? But, like, noticing those patterns, I think it's important, and it's all related in that process of, like, okay.
Zeno Rocha:I have, like, the bare minimum. How do I teach the bare minimum in a way that is actually compelling?
Jack Bridger:How do you know if it's, like, doing a good job at it? Like, do you have a process to to do that?
Zeno Rocha:I wish I could say that, oh, here's the formula.
Jack Bridger:Formula. Please, Zetta, we need the magic formula.
Zeno Rocha:That's what everybody wants. Right?
Jack Bridger:Because if you got an ebook. Yeah.
Zeno Rocha:It's all about repetition. That's the reality. If you do one open source project and it completely fails, no one pays attention. You spend all this time and no one cares. And then 3 months later, you do another one.
Zeno Rocha:And then maybe 10 people care. And then you're like, oh, why did 10 10 people care? Like, what's different about this one that I didn't do in the last one? And you do that many times. You know, like my first open source project I created in 2011.
Zeno Rocha:So, you know, I've been around. I've seen things. I've I've I've seen what works, what doesn't. Right? So it's not like you will get that all right on the first try.
Zeno Rocha:And there's a lot of things that we got wrong with React email, even though I've been doing open source for all for, like, 13 years now. So you need to be constantly learning, you're gonna make mistakes, and there's no formula. But if you're consistent about those improvements that you're making, consistent about thinking about distribution alongside maintainability and and brand, then I think I feel like that's that's the key. The the consistency part is is more important than like, one trick that I can give you in January 2024 that 3 months from now won't work anymore.
Jack Bridger:Sent to your badge.
Zeno Rocha:Yeah. Yeah.
Jack Bridger:I think that's, like, kind of the best and worst response in a sense that it's like it's the worst because we kind of ever we're always looking for, like, if I just do this. But then I guess it's the best that it's like, it's okay. Like, if we build things, no one cares. Like, it's just that process of, doing more of it. The thing that you mentioned as well at the beginning was about descoping.
Jack Bridger:I suspect maybe the answer is gonna be similar, but I just wondered how you think about, like, what needs to be there versus what doesn't need to be there.
Zeno Rocha:Man, I feel like the the heart of a a really good product is, like, relies on a severe prioritization process and severe, like, descoping process. Because especially for us, right? Like, we were very much similar to what linear is doing in the sense that here's an existing tool that everybody uses, in their case, Jira. It's not nice. Everybody hates it.
Zeno Rocha:There are all these memes about, like, how slow it is and how bad it is, but still there and we still use it. And then Leaner comes in. 15 years later, after Jira is like a beast, dominates the market, and they say, oh, here's a product. Right? And you can see you can taste, you can feel the attention to detail.
Zeno Rocha:It's just so good that you you can't help yourself but wanting to use like, and share and like, propose to your team and maybe don't even accept a job offer if the company doesn't use linear. And Linear is not inventing anything new. Issue tracking exists for a long time. They're just, like, looking at this problem from a different angle. We're very much doing the same where SendGrid exists, Mailgun exists, and we all don't like them.
Zeno Rocha:They feel slow. The support is bad. Deliverability is not great. And but that's the tools that we're used to, but then we come in as resend and say, hey. Here's something new.
Zeno Rocha:There's attention to detail. This is a product that's created for you. And if we just try to compete in terms of, like, features, we're gonna be so behind. Like, we'll never get there. We don't we're not we we can't scale as as they can because they've been doing this for 15 years now.
Zeno Rocha:So the only way to have a product that has a quality bar that is very high is, again, g scope because the trade offs that you're gonna do is, like, okay, this needs to feel much better than what's out there. Not just, like, 1 or 2 times better, it needs to feel like 10 times better. But, man, like, we I have a burn rate for the company. Like I I raised this money and I I can't spend it all. Like, it's not like I can hire all these engineers.
Zeno Rocha:I can't. I have like very limited resources as a small team. So how can I take the most out of it? And if I wanna meet that quality bar, I can't spend 6 months working on a project. So I got a key scope.
Zeno Rocha:So we do that a lot. We think that a lot about, like, what's what's the v zero? What's the the it's not even like an MVP, like, what's the v zero? And then from there, we're like, okay, now we got into this quality bar. And holding that bar is extremely hard because the moment you you tell a teammate that, yeah, this is good enough, you know, this is fine.
Zeno Rocha:From that point on, now you're setting the bar here. And now the whole team will know that, oh, it just need to get to this bar. Like like, it's not like it's here. Now it's here. And then next week, someone shows something and you're like, okay, we're ready to ship this feature and it's maybe a little bit lower and you say, okay.
Zeno Rocha:It's fine. It's ready to to go to production. And then once again so over the years, your product starts feeling just like all the other ones. Right? So holding that bar high is extremely difficult on the day to day requires a lot of discipline.
Zeno Rocha:And a lot of saying no, a lot of going back to the drawing board and thinking, is this are are we proud? Does this reflect what we what we believe? And sometimes the answer is no, and then we go back. There are times with our website that we are ready to launch, and then we're like, oh, man, it's not there yet. And then we delay 1 week.
Zeno Rocha:And then we worked on all these things. And we're like, it's not there yet. We delay another week. Okay. We feel good.
Zeno Rocha:Now it's like, I'm proud. Like, I wanna show this to my mom. Like, this is so cool. I wanna tweet about it. Like, yes.
Zeno Rocha:I'm proud. Okay. Now now it's time to ship.
Jack Bridger:How does it, like, look like those kind of conversations or, like, if I if I'm on your team and I, you know, I've just, like, create a pull request. Okay. Zeno, I think, like, hopefully, this closes that ticket, and you're just like, you know, maybe it does do most of it, but how how does that kind of conversation kinda go?
Zeno Rocha:Yeah. We operate very much in a way where everybody does a little bit of that thing. So there are a lot of times that I might start a pull request with the the worst possible code, and I might just open a draft and then someone on the team that has way more time and way more context on the code base might jump in, make it way better. And then the designer will come and then jump in and do way better. And that's the same for the blog posts.
Zeno Rocha:Like, every blog post we do, I like, someone might start the first draft, and then I might jump in just to do the formatting. And then someone comes in and, like, tweaks a little bit more, And we're like, okay. Now we're ready to ship. So it's less about, oh, this is bad. Here are the 10 the 10 things why this is bad.
Zeno Rocha:It's like, oh, I recognize, like, some ten opportunities to improve. Let me add them to the commit myself. Let me let me show what greatness looks like from my point of view. And then someone on the team might critique that, and they say, no. What you did is actually not good.
Zeno Rocha:And you gotta hire people that share the same values because otherwise, they won't get it. They'll be like, man. This guy again. You know, like, asking all these changes versus yeah. Like, if we do that, that would be so much better.
Zeno Rocha:That's true. But let's do it. You know, like, be willing to delete the code you wrote or add more or or remove stuff from, like, descoping because, like yeah. If we descope, then we can highlight this better and spend more time showing the value of this other thing. I feel like there's a lot of interesting things when you do that.
Zeno Rocha:You know, a lot of things come up from that.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. So you just have to have everyone on the same page around it, and everyone's kind of looking for that bar. So it's not like you're bad. It's like everyone in the team is looking to raise it. So you Yep.
Jack Bridger:Would like it's done when no one can raise it more or less. Or is it like
Zeno Rocha:Exactly. And when when the goal of the team is like, we're not trying to raise the bar only for ourselves, but for the whole industry. Yeah. Then that's really hard. It's like, okay.
Zeno Rocha:We wrote a blog post. Is Guillermo Rauch going to read that and share on Vercel's internal Slack saying, look how awesome this blog post is. Yeah. Right? And if he and if we feel like that's not gonna be the case, okay, then we don't like, let let's think about how we can get there.
Zeno Rocha:Or, like, let's do something that is so cool that other companies will try to copy you. So we see we just saw yesterday, there's a a new YC company that is, like, copying our landing page in a way that is so crazy. And then you click on the docs and it's like the same docs. And we're like, wow, this is like, you know, they just like you get a fax or like what whatever, like, it looks the same. Right?
Zeno Rocha:And we're like, yeah. That's fine. You know, like, that that success because that means that people recognize that there's something interesting there. And now, like, they're trying to replicate that. And then that makes it our job way harder because now we're like, okay.
Zeno Rocha:Now how can we make this even better? So you're always chasing that perfection, which you'll never get there. It's impossible. Right? But you gotta keep chasing.
Zeno Rocha:Otherwise, you're just gonna ship crap. And that's gonna be if that's something that you care, that's a value that you hold, then you're not being true to yourself. And but if it if that's not a value that you hold, that's fine too. Right? If you're entering a new market, there's no existing players, there's no consolidated winner, that's maybe you don't need to do that strategy.
Zeno Rocha:But if you're in a crowded market, a lot of options, and here you are trying to stand out, it's gonna be really hard if you don't do some of these things.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Because you're not competing on, like, we do this different thing. You because you're not doing something different, you're doing something better. So, yeah, if you were just trying to, like, get most of the features of SendGrid, then everyone's just gonna stay with SendGrid.
Zeno Rocha:And it's not about features. Right? Yeah. Like, you can fill all those boxes, but feel like the way developers make decisions nowadays is that they want they wanna use products that reflect what they care. And for some people, they care about design, they care about things looking good, and they care about clicking in a button and responding in 20 milliseconds versus 2 seconds.
Zeno Rocha:And they would rather use that product versus the other. So I feel like there's this exercise of, like, trying to understand who you're building that thing for and then reverse engineer what they care and put that into your product, into your brand, into what you're selling. Right?
Jack Bridger:Yeah. That's, it's it's an amazing approach. It makes so much sense. So you're basically building something that's really great and significantly better than the the kind of like existing players and people are buying into not just what your product does, but maybe like how it makes you feel. It's like like I I feel like a lot of what Apple got the success they had is because of, like, Steve Jobs and, like, the design and the way that you know that, like, they spend so much time thinking about everything and that their trusting resend is gonna also think very deeply about how this API is designed.
Jack Bridger:How is that the kind of
Zeno Rocha:Yeah. For sure. And at the end of the day, like, if our emails go to spam, right, like, it's all for nothing. Like, the core of what we do is still there. Deliverability, sending emails.
Zeno Rocha:It needs to be fast. It needs to arrive in the primary inbox. And it's almost like a hierarchy of needs. Like, you need that base, you need that foundation, good and solid. You need security and you need data integrity.
Zeno Rocha:And then and then you can start thinking about usability, ergonomics of your API, SDKs, and and that attention to detail, that, like, ability to surprise people when they're performing an action. There's a lot of things that we we put together to communicate that without saying any words. Right? Like, you go to recent.com, there's this crazy Rubik's cube on the right side, and you're like, what? What is this?
Zeno Rocha:Right? Like, why there's this floating WebGL object here. And the reason why it's there, it's because it communicates that, hey, we care about the details, we care about technical excellence, we care about, like, modern tooling and we could write all that down in a mission or values page or we can demonstrate it in the most important real estate in the web that we have for us, our website in the first loading screen. There's there's no place more important than that. Everybody's gonna look into that.
Zeno Rocha:So that communicates something. When we had our wait list, and we we we stayed in a wait list for, like, 3 or 4 months, the only way to get to the wait list is if you clicked something on your keyboard. You couldn't just if you press, you couldn't just go with with your mouse and click, you had to, like, press a key a key. And that communicates that, hey, as a developer, I know you care about navigating with your keyboard and using keyboard shortcuts. I get it.
Zeno Rocha:I'm just like you. So this is for you. This is a product for you. And, again, we could articulate that or we can just demonstrate it. And that's what we try to do over and over again.
Zeno Rocha:Show that, hey, we care about this. Just like we think you care about this. Right? And sometimes we get it right, sometimes we get it wrong. And you're you're always experimenting with those little things to see what resonates with folks.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. This is, this is amazing. Show, don't tell.
Zeno Rocha:Which for developers, right, like, show me the code. You know? Like, that's that's it. Show me the code. That's a mantra that that every single developer knows.
Zeno Rocha:So you better double down on on on the things that we we know they care, that we care if you're building something for your for that you're you belong in that audience. Right? You gotta look into yourself, the things that you you care and say, like, yeah. Like, there are things that I'm not super proud of. I'm like, oh, I wish this was better.
Zeno Rocha:Damn. As a developer, I don't like this. We gotta get better.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. And because this is the re the resend story is like, that's the story you're telling and and living. I feel like that's the that's the thing I'm taking away from this is you have this story, but you're living this story as well. And then people believe your story because you're living the story.
Zeno Rocha:Exactly. Man, that's so true because, like, yeah, like, you can just write it down or you can, I also feel like people buy from people, not from companies? So even though we spend a lot of energy working to improve the recent brand, just like what you mentioned just now about like, oh, people buy from Apple because of, you know, they think Steve Jobs, they think about this human. They Elon Musk, either you hate it or or or love him doesn't matter, but people they they bought Tesla's 3 years ago be because of him. I do feel like if you're if you're listening and you're a founder creating a dev tools, you gotta think about how does your personal brand mix with your company brand and how you can show the things that you care with those 2 brands because they they are all mixed in.
Zeno Rocha:And if your personal brand communicates something that is completely different than like, for example, we have the recent website. It's beautiful. It's amazing. It shows that we care about design. And then you go to my personal website and it's super shitty, full of, like, outdated stuff.
Zeno Rocha:And you're like, wow, this is terrible, right? Okay. Like, there's definitely a disconnect. And now I'm like, do I even trust resend in a way? Because maybe they just hired this freelance designer to do this website.
Zeno Rocha:But when I sign up, the dashboard will look terrible and the API will look terrible and everything will be will look terrible. Or no, this is actually very consistent. Like I, across the board, I can tell that they care about the details. Okay. Interesting.
Zeno Rocha:Now that's something I can trust in the long term. Like, winning a developer's trust is so freaking hard, and losing their their trust is so freaking easy. It's incredibly easy.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. That's amazing. I was gonna ask you at the end if you had takeaways, but I think that was the takeaway.
Zeno Rocha:For sure, man. For sure. Like you, the the thing that I, I'll leave folks with is like, if you, like, you gotta think about all the little things that you're for me, that's what developer experience is, the sum of all the details. So you go to the website where, like, oh, this looks cool. And then you scroll down, you see a code block.
Zeno Rocha:Oh, nice. Like, I can see SDKs for the languages I love. Nice. Then you go to the docs. You're like, okay.
Zeno Rocha:There's, like, some structure. There's some guides for beginners, but also content for advanced folks. And then you start using, and it's very quick to send that first API call. Nice. Okay.
Zeno Rocha:That's something I like. That's something I I wanna invest in. And you play around on a Sunday afternoon, and you can get something an MVP working. And you're like, okay. Now Monday morning, I can tell my coworkers.
Zeno Rocha:Like, this is cool. The opposite is also true where you go to the website. It's, like, a little bit janky. Go to the docs. You're like, wow.
Zeno Rocha:This is so like, I can't really understand what's happening. You try the 1st API call. You've got an error. You try the second one. There's an error.
Zeno Rocha:And then you go to the docs. There's a typo. You're like, I don't trust this brand. I come. And maybe 6 months later, you're gonna give another chance.
Zeno Rocha:If you keep hearing about it on Twitter, you're like, oh yeah, like everybody's still like them. Okay. Let me check it out again. But you've gotta think as, like, climbing that stair or because, like, the the worst thing you can have is a brand that not like that people hate it. That's not the worst thing that can happen for a brand is a brand that no one cares, that is just sitting there and, like, yeah, no one really no one is passionate about it.
Zeno Rocha:No one, hates it as well. It's just sitting there. So think about what you're building and how can you do something that really stands out. Otherwise, you're just gonna sit on that cemetery of all these other dev tools that someone had a great idea, but they couldn't manifest in terms of all the other things you need to do to make it successful.
Jack Bridger:That's a really great roundup, Zeno. Are there any shout outs that you wanna make?
Zeno Rocha:No, man. Just you. They can pull this together. You know? Like, I feel like it takes so much energy to to build, like, to make these things happen.
Zeno Rocha:And as as we were talking just before we started this, like, it's a Friday evening for you right now. Most of the people are, like, in a pub, and you're here. So thanks for for putting this together and also for everybody who listened until now. You know? Like, I hope you got something away from this.
Zeno Rocha:And if there's any questions you have, if you wanna chat, feel free to to reach out to me. I'm always open to, you know, helping folks. My time is very limited nowadays because of recent and Dracula and all this.
Jack Bridger:And your 2 year old.
Zeno Rocha:And my 2 year old. But I'm always willing to help.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Thank you so much for coming, Zen. I really, really appreciate it. And, thanks everyone for listening and thanks for the nice words there. Goodbye.
Jack Bridger:See you.
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