We Produced A Web Series While Building A DevTool [And Got The Most Helpful User Inputs!]
Shalom! I’m Jonathan and I am the cofounder of Fine, a development environment powered by AI agents. By facilitating AI agents, we allow developers to create their squad of virtual teammates and 10x their development speed. In contrast to coding assistants like GitHub Copilot which help with the next few lines of code, Fine’s agents can handle complete tasks.
We just released our product after a long process of ideation that we conducted through producing a web series on Developer Experience. We interviewed people from all “ranks” of the R&D, from the devs in the trenches to the VPs and CTOs. These interviews turned into the biggest tech web series in Israel as well as our basis for Fine.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
Fine is my first attempt at building a startup. I met my first cofounder, Dan, three years ago: I was in Barcelona and he passed there on the way to LA, where he worked on his previous venture.
His wife is a childhood friend of mine, so she suggested we meet, and we immediately connected. Dan is an experienced tech leader, and he introduced me to Haggai, a friend of his and an entrepreneur. Dan worked with Haggai on Haggai’s previous venture, called Raycatch. We found that our skill set is complementary - Dan and I are tech people, and Haggai loves the business side of things.
We decided to work together and started the ideation process about a year ago, knowing that we wanted to build something we would enjoy using. Seeing that we are programmers, we were interested in the area of developer tools. We knew that every good startup is based on a great problem, so we set out looking for worthy problems developers face. The common way to do that is by conducting interviews with future clients, so we were looking to interview leading R&D execs and hear all about the problems their organizations face.
Now, these R&D execs are busy people. We couldn’t just reach out to them and expect them to make time for us. Add to that the fact that conducting customer interviews is not an easy job. You need to get the interviewee to open up, and you can’t expect them to say “This is EXACTLY the problem I’m facing”. So we thought “What are we good at that can give us an edge? What can we do differently?”
One day my co-founder Dan called me and said “Jonathan, we should produce a web series, go to the biggest companies, and interview every person that we want over there. I’m talking Wix, AppsFlyer, AI21 Labs, these guys”. To me, it sounded like a wild idea. I was always into content creation, but this seemed like it was out of my league. I was worried because these companies never did anything like it, and besides, I told Dan, another two guys talking about tech, that’s not exactly what this world needs.
Luckily Dan is a true go-getter, and a few days later he called me and told me that Wix, AI21 Labs, and Torii are in. We went on to create Dark{mode}, the first web series about developer experience (later, it became the largest tech web series in Israel). We spent over 60 hours interviewing R&D executives from companies like Wix, Taboola, AppsFlyer, and AI21 Labs.
We told the participants in advance that the conversations were going to deal with everything that didn’t work. “Don’t tell us the good stories”. And so, during the interviews, we got to hear about all the problems that affect developer experience. The talks uncovered 81 "blockers" that hinder progress in the tech world and range from the fields of PRs and Design to Communication and teamwork.
I’d highly recommend tapping into your strengths. We did it by producing a web series. You could do it with something that YOU are good at.
Take us through the process of building the first version of your product.
After we listed the challenges we talked about during our interviews, we started looking for solutions/products that would make a meaningful impact. Three critical factors guided our thinking throughout this process:
- Anticipating the Future: We continuously asked ourselves where the software world was headed. What solutions would be in demand not just today but tomorrow as well?
- Leveraging Our Skills: This worked well for us before, so again we wanted to tap into our team's unique skill set to understand how we could best support our idea.
- Embracing New Technologies: We kept an eye on emerging technologies that were previously unavailable.
Our first idea was different from what we are doing today. It was supposed to be a survey system for dev teams, that helps the dedicated developer experience team understand what are the issues the R&D is currently facing.
We imagined a nice dashboard with information and tips. We drafted a first design on Figma and started showing it to potential clients (image below). We didn’t want to develop a product without getting any feedback on the idea first, so we avoided coding a prototype. Let’s just say that the feedback was harsh. We ditched this idea after two months or so.
The first product we tried to create:
We went back to the drawing table and to the list of problems, and after iterating on a few more ideas we envisioned an AI-powered environment where developers get the most assistance in building software. We were not happy with only boosting their productivity, we wanted devs to be able to delegate entire software tasks to AI.
We imagined that devs would only have to deal with what they want to build, and not with how. Content with our idea, we started putting it out there and talking about it with everyone we could and trying to raise initial capital.
Describe the process of launching the business.
Our journey didn’t start smoothly. The first three months were marked by relentless pitching and many rejections. But we refused to be discouraged; we decided to lean deeper into our savings and focus on building our vision, believing that Fine's true potential would become evident with time. We also realized that if we truly stood to our promise, we would be able to use our product to continue building it — a concept called "eating your dog food."
We gained momentum as we started building the platform. We started coding the MVP and the good thing about this stage was that we immediately had the first users of our product - us. Since it’s a product for developers, we could immediately test if what we built was working for us or not!
This was very helpful, but we realized that our input is not enough and we need to hear from more devs out there. This is why we launched a Discord community and sought early adopters willing to try Fine.
Discord is a fantastic platform for dev communities, especially in the AI field. Gradually, our community expanded, and Fine garnered attention online. I engaged with all new Discord members, gathering feedback to refine our product and progress beyond the Proof of Concept stage.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
We found our first customers by attending conferences and publicly speaking about our vision. We realized that we could identify who are the people that are most intrigued by our idea because they came and talked to us after our talks. And indeed, our first client arrived this way. Now, more people are contacting us through Discord, since it serves as a virtual stage on which we keep talking…
We are still trying to attract more customers, and since we are doing product-led sales, our primary effort is to create a strong online community around our product. We're trying to achieve this through a combination of social media marketing, email campaigns, and content production. Here's a breakdown of our digital marketing efforts, keep in mind that everything we do is organic, we do not do paid marketing yet!
Social Media: We've leveraged platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Discord to engage with the developer community. We regularly share educational content, including tutorials, case studies, and product updates. Our engagement on platforms like Twitter has led to organic growth and increased brand visibility. I also really recommend Discord for building a community, it proved to be an awesome place that people love to join.
We try to keep our content as a mixture of fun, interesting, educational, and eventful. We also do everything in-house: We didn’t hire an agency to do the marketing for us, and we only do organic marketing. We find that brands with “character” have better marketing (take the Duolingo Twitter account for example, it’s insane!), and we aspire to position ourselves there.
Retaining customers is as important as acquiring them. We've adopted several strategies to keep our community engaged: Our team is super responsive on Discord and available to answer questions ASAP. We prioritize addressing community inquiries promptly, ensuring their satisfaction. Members can feel that a pain point they raised on Monday has been taken care of by Thursday
We also regularly roll out new features and improvements based on customer feedback. These updates demonstrate our commitment to continuous improvement and keep users excited about what's coming next.
When you find yourself in a stressful situation, breathe, and keep going. You never know what surprise is waiting for you at the end of the day.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
We are still in the beginning stages of our journey: We started working on this idea half a year ago, launched the first version of our agents in mid August, and signed the first client in September. But through our community, we constantly get interested customers that we can push through the funnel. Since we are bootstrapped and acting very lean we don’t spend money on marketing, and focus only on building a better product.
Today we have three lines of operations: 1. Bringing more people to the community and spreading the word about Fine. 2. Find the interesting people who tried our product and push them forward in our funnel to become paying customers. And 3. Building a better version of the product.
Our short-term goal is to “rise above the noise” in the crowded GenAI space. There are so many companies and competitors, each with their unique ideas and specific angles. Talking numbers, we would like to reach 30,000 weekly active users by the end of Q2 2024. Long term we are planning to replace the traditional IDE and become the de facto entry point for software development.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
I’d say that there is one big lesson that I gained from this process, and it’s more of a personal one. Things change dramatically daily. There is so much noise and events that throw you (as a founder) from one edge to the other. This is just how it is, and It’s going to keep happening throughout the journey. So my biggest takeaway is: don’t get too nervous, things can change every second.
When you find yourself in a stressful situation, breathe, and keep going. You never know what surprise is waiting for you at the end of the day.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
My favorite tool is undoubtedly Discord. It’s amazing for managing a community, it’s feature-rich, and it’s fun to use! I am also a big fan of customer io, they make our email and people management efforts way easier. We specifically rely on many other technical tools and platforms, like AWS, Azure, and OpenAI, but that’s because we are dealing with Tech.
Being a startup ourselves we believe in leveraging cutting edge stuff, alongside well established tools. So whenever we need to find a tool for a task we will look for the big player but also consider some smaller ones as well.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
This is more on the personal level, but a movie I keep going back to is “The Pursuit of Happyness”. This film, starring Will Smith, is a powerful and inspirational story of determination, resilience, and the pursuit of one's dreams (which resonates with me as an entrepreneur).
My favorite scene is this one:
The message here is something I try to remember every day: You have a dream? Don’t let anybody tell you you can’t do it. There is a way. Go watch the movie, it’s excellent!
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
The journey is very “rich” as an entrepreneur. You are going to face so many different issues and problems in your day, most will be things you never handled before. The important thing to remember from my side is that you have to intrinsically believe that you can do it. When you face so many unknowns, it’s this knowledge that keeps you afloat.
I’d also highly recommend tapping into your strengths. We did it by producing a web series. You could do it with something that YOU are good at. And this one thing, as small as it can be, can give you an advantage down the road. So think about yourself, what are your strengths? What do you normally shine at? Make use of it!
Where can we go to learn more?
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
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