Episodes
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This week on Building Jam, we get an inside look at what makes Warpâs product development unique. Founder and CEO Zach Lloyd shares how engineers are directly responsible for project outcomes (rather than PMs), the teamâs thesis around building consumer-grade developer tools, and how Warp approaches the speed vs. quality tradeoff.
We discuss:
(00:52) Building consumer-grade developer tools
(03:14) What does a feature launch look like at Warp?
(07:21) Zackâs advice for deciding what to build
(10:55) Warpâs team structure: core, AI, collaboration & revenue
(14:11) Why engineers at Warp do PM-style interviews
(19:00) âFounder Modeâ and trusting the team to build a product that makes people happy
(22:18) Trading notes on how Jam and Warp balance quality with velocity
(26:00) Zack tells us about what it was like when Warp (40 people) was Jamâs size (18!)
(30:46) Growth at Warp is building community and showing the productSubscribe to Building Jam on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
New episodes drop every Friday at 10AM ET. See you there!
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Building our startup, we get to meet and learn from the experts behind incredible products. Now weâre sharing these behind-the scenes conversations on our podcast, so you can learn from our journey too. Today, Colin Sidoti, CEO at Clerk, joins us to talk about how they build product.
We discuss:
(00:29) The first thing we want to know: how is Clerk design so crisp and good?
(04:24) Comparing product cycles - Clerkâs demo day & Jamâs 25% guideline
(08:45) Clerkâs 1st step in product development is writing the docs and it makes so much sense!
(13:59) Team structure & hiring empathetic engineers who double as PMs
(19:00) What dev profile is the best at writing docs?
(20:55) Trading notes from when Clerk was Jamâs size (18 people!)
(24:47) Behind the scenes of Clerkâs 200X growth in January 2023
(27:59) Colin gives us advice for navigating this exciting and challenging stage of growth at JamSubscribe to Building Jam on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
New episodes drop every Friday at 10AM ET. See you there!
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Episodes manquant?
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We got to learn from behavioral science expert, Matt Wallaert! Over the past two decades, Matt has led behavioral science at Microsoft and Frog Design, and currently advises Fortune 500s on how to create products that help people make good changes. He joined us on Zoom for a lunch & learn - an incredible opportunity weâre excited to share with you all as this weekâs episode.
We discuss:
(00:24) Understanding behavioral science & how it applies to building product
(09:05) Mattâs favorite behavioral statement from Uber + steps to create one
(20:53) The sufficiency test: Is submitting bugs the behavior we want to change?
(31:10) Matt recommends partnerships based on Jamâs behavioral statement
(33:23) The #1 mistake Matt sees when companies implement behavioral science
(35:13) The 5 behavioral archetypes for Jam bug reporting + why people buy M&Ms
Subscribe to Building Jam on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
New episodes drop every Friday at 10AM ET. See you there!
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Season 2 of Building Jam is all about learning from builders we admire. When we used WorkOS to build Single Sign-On for the Jam Enterprise plan, we loved our developer experience so much that we wanted to learn more. This week, CEO Michael Grinich joins us to give an inside look into what it has taken to build their product.
In this episode, we discuss:
(01:06) How does WorkOS determine what meets their quality bar?
(03:45) The importance of "the second 80%" of any project
(06:55) Internal Operating Principle: âEarn the wowâ
(10:53) How to put a great product experience into words
(15:02) The quality vs. speed dilemma for startups
(19:49) How does WorkOS write docsSubscribe to Building Jam on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. New episodes drop every Friday at 10AM ET. See you there!
Join 125k+ happy users at jam.dev for 1-click bug reports that engineers love.
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This week weâre joined by Rui and Oskar, two Jam engineers leading our internal development of AI features. Oskar shares our latest demo with Chrome's built-in AI and what it means for anyone building in the browser.
In this episode:
(00:25) What is Chromeâs Built-in AI?
(02:26) The tradeoffs between local and remote LLMs
(04:54) Oskar demos our early experiments with Gemini Nano
(09:32) Implications for what developers will build
(11:58) Why progress with AI is like a stepwise function
(14:09) How LLMs will lead to more personalization & accessibility
(20:54) Why AI raises the bar for all software developmentSubscribe to Building Jam on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. New episodes drop every Friday at 10AM ET. See you there!
Join 125k+ happy users at jam.dev for 1-click bug reports that engineers love.
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Meet two of Jamâs newest engineers Max & Aidan! In this episode they discuss what engineering onboarding is like at Jam, plus all the âboringâ parts of software development. Internal docs, codebase organization, local environments⊠As a company totally focused on bug capture; at Jam, these topics are our Jam!
We discuss:
(00:13) Why we love talking about the âboringâ parts of eng (theyâre not boring to us!)
(02:32) Finding alignment as the codebase and team get bigger
(05:06) A sneak peek at a new feature Aidan just built
(10:42) Max and Aidan debate how much DRY (Donât Repeat Yourself) is too much
(12:53) Dani shares the 7 different versions of Jamâs UI before we found PMF! -
The joy of building a startup is that you get to learn from a lot of different people, but usually these meetings are not recorded. In this season of Building Jam we're sharing these raw conversations where we ask the experts about our startup. This week weâre learning from Product Huntâs Head of Growth, Jason Levin.
(00:49) Jasonâs top lesson for community growth: doing things that donât scale to connect with people.
(03:07) Our top community challenge is trying to scale as our userbase grows - so what do we do?
(07:10) The reason Jam doesnât have a community Slack & Jasonâs experience on why maybe we should
(11:33) Jason wrote a book about memes, so we asked him for advice on how to make Jam a meme (philosophically)
(16:23) Brand marketing vs. performance marketing w/ a Nike cameo
(18:49) Jason, the Head of Growth at Product Hunt, says we should embrace the cringe
(22:41) Our 3rd Product Hunt launch: Jam Genies
(29:46) Jasonâs feedback on Jamâs approach to community-led growthSubscribe to Building Jam on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
New episodes drop every Friday at 10AM ET. See you there!
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This is the first episode of Season 2: Learning in Public. This season weâre getting advice and sharing the raw conversations as we learn and get feedback from experts. Today, weâre bringing our own dev community questions & challenges to Lizzie Siegle, an incredible dev advocate & community leader at Cloudflare (prev. Twilio).
We discuss:
(00:00) Introducing Lizzie & season 2 of the pod
(00:25) How do we scale dev community as our userbase grows?
(04:43) Lizzieâs Twitter, making real friends & sharing about more than work
(08:18) The different sub developer communities & the DevRel vibes
(13:15) Jam Airlines: supporting more open source devs
(17:17) Brainstorming ideas for conferences, swag & more fun ways to connect w/ devs
(31:08) Lizzieâs hot take on DevRel & how to get good at it
(36:50) Lizzie breaks down whatâs working for Jam & areas we can improveSubscribe to Building Jam on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
New episodes drop every Friday at 10AM ET. See you there!
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This is not a normal episode. This week weâre sharing an honest internal conversation about how things are going with the podcast. The truth is, after 12 weeks, we didnât get the results we hoped for, but we still feel excited about it. So in the spirit of sharing behind the scenes of building Jam, hereâs our retro. We discuss sticking true to our vision, podcast distribution, and our new direction going forward.
Subscribe to Building Jam on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
New episodes drop every Friday at 10AM ET. See you there!
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This week at Jam weâre defining the goals & priorities of our new growth team and feeling inspired by the future of AI. Since itâs week 12 of the pod, itâs time to evaluate & make a decision.
In this episode we discuss:
(00:17) The team reflects on 12 weeks of the podcast & whatâs next
(05:36) Learnings on video distribution & repurposing
(06:45) Irtefa tells us the story of Heinz Ketchup & how its similar to AI apps
(10:47) A Benedict Evans quote that makes us really excited about AI tools
(12:20) Dani shares the first draft of our new growth teamâs charterSubscribe to Building Jam on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
New episodes drop every Friday at 10AM ET. See you there!
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This week at Jam, our users hit 3 million Jams created! Itâs an important milestone, so weâre planning something special for No. 3M. And weâre thinking about the next 3 millionâas we build out Jamâs first growth team.
In this episode we discuss:
(00:14) Dani reveals how close we are to 3M Jams & the email weâre planning to send
(02:43) Learnings from PLG greats & how they apply to growing Jam
(06:39) Ianâs videos for welcome emails, onboarding & moreâit just makes sense!
(12:11) How weâre setting up Jamâs growth team
(14:00) Irtefa discusses a recent customer call & opportunities to make our usersâ lives better
(15:12) Why Dani prioritizes product sense over growth experience for growth team hires
Subscribe to Building Jam on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
New episodes drop every Friday at 10AM ET. See you there!
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This week at Jam, weâre at Config! Figma is one of our investors and gave us free tickets (thank you Figma!). Ian is live at the scene to fill us in on what we can learn about events and community from one of the worldâs best product design conferences.
In this episode we discuss:
(00:15) Admiring the scale of Configâ itâs huge!
(01:00) The best part is meeting people from companies we admire
(02:18) Figmaâs new slides product & a demo of Dot, an AI assistant thatâs more like your friend
(05:40) Ian gives us a tour of all the Config swag & everything Figma got right
(09:09) Reactions to Figma Slides and reminiscing about Prezi
(11:11) Ian got to meet famous product educators, weâre all fans!
(15:43) A very special 3D printed cookie cutterSubscribe to Building Jam on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
New episodes drop every Friday at 10AM ET. See you there!
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This week at Jam, weâre deep into building the next iteration of Jam AI. After Jam engineer Rui shared the latest demo at standup, we knew we had to bring him on the pod to discuss.
This week on Building Jam:
(01:30) Our approach to incorporating AI at Jam
(04:32) Limiting the input space to build AI that works
(07:29) Ruiâs tools & experiments for AI reliability & infrastructure
(10:16) Raza - the 2016 chatbot library that inspired Ruiâs approach to faster AI iteration
(12:02) The Facebook approach to AI bug fixing & what makes Jamâs differentSubscribe to Building Jam on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
New episodes drop every Friday at 10AM ET. See you there!
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Whatâs happening at Jam this week? Our founders Dani & Irtefa are prepping for a board meeting by analyzing a ton of data to get a birdâs eye view of Jam.
This week, we discuss:
(00:22) Why Dani loves getting the board deck ready + whoâs on Jamâs board
(04:30) What happens in a Jam board meeting
(06:19) How Dani & Irtefa show up for the board is different than every day at Jam
(07:27) How does the board influence Jam foundersâ decisions & what gets voted on
(10:57) What we talk about in Jam board meetings & taking their feedback to the rest of the team
(12:46) Ivanhaâs takes on SEO (and learning with ChatGPT)
Subscribe to Building Jam on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
New episodes drop every Friday at 10AM ET. See you there!
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Whatâs happening at Jam this week? Weâre going after new tactics, new channels, doing more live onboardingsâ and figuring out how to do it all in a way that feels like Jam.
This week, we discuss:
(00:15) Irtefa just onboarded an enterprise customer
(05:42) Ian is making a Jam tutorial video for self-serve onboarding
(08:43) How can we better help new users who donât know Jam?
(13:47) Seth Godin inspiration to make content that doesnât feel like marketing
(14:48) Connecting a feature launch to the big reason weâre building Jamâ one place w/ what you need to fix a bug
(18:58) Ignoring prioritization advice & trying to get faster
(22:21) How to Do Boring Stuff at Jam: onboarding 3 new engineers in person
(28:06) Team challenges of the week & giving constructive feedback via SlackSubscribe to Building Jam on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
New episodes drop every Friday at 10AM ET. See you there!
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Whatâs happening this week at Jam? Weâre shipping design updates, making decisions about a new product launching soon & discovering that intuition is a form of data.
This week, Jamâs Lead Designer joins the podcast to discuss:
(00:18) Sharing some design iterations to Jam's Slack app
(05:06) Dogfooding at Jam
(09:10) Irtefaâs very niche idea for new Jam swag: âOnly 1 Network Errorâ
(09:58) Future changes weâre making to Jam notifications
(12:17) Using intuition as a form of data
(17:34) Getting a new product in beta ready for GA: from Irtefa-led onboarding to self-serve
(21:56) Thinking about the âwhyâ in Jamâs onboarding
(26:49) Team challenges of the week
Subscribe to Building Jam on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
New episodes drop every Friday at 10AM ET. See you there!
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Whatâs it like building Jam this week? Weâre hiring a second designer and realizing itâs one of the hardest positions to fill.
This week we discuss:
(00:15) Why hiring a designer is harder than an engineer
(6:57) How we look for designers at Jam
(09:15) How our designersâ personalities have shaped the product
(16:15) Working with sr. designers (tip: they donât need your Canva file)
(21:41) Talking to new audiences about your product
(28:44) Google docs is Totinoâs Pizza rolls & Notion is a calzone
(30:30) Answering âWhatâs your favorite product?â in a PM interview
(33:30) Reacting to a mind-blowing website (https://amie.so/)
(34:48) What bell-bottom jeans say about your startup
Subscribe to Building Jam on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.New episodes drop every Friday at 10AM ET. See you there!
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What are the best marketing tactics for growing startups? We donât really know yet, but weâre having a lot of fun figuring it out. This week, Ian and Ivanha talk about taking Jam marketing from 0 to 1.
(00:36) The owl video experiment & "Content-Market Fit"
(05:34) Getting comfortable with a blank canvas
(08:49) Deciding the tone and messaging of feature launches
(11:47) Sizzle reels & Building Thingsâą
(16:16) Challenges of the weekSubscribe to Building Jam on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
New episodes drop every Friday at 10AM ET. See you there!
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Getting builders together has become a core part of what we do at Jam- with events for our community now happening 3-4 times a month. The truth is it hasnât always been clear we should do this, especially as a remote team with users all over the world (150+ countries đ€Ż). This week, we share the story behind our approach to events and building community as a startup.
(1:14) Why did we start hosting events at Jam?
(4:45) Our first in-person user meetup
(7:42) The nerves behind hosting our first event
(10:07) How to predict your eventâs attendance rate
(12:55) Our biggest challenge with hosting events today
(15:10) The story behind our first AI demo night
(16:45) How we find demos for Jam events
(18:24) How to host your first event
(22:00) Doing community marketing without a community forum
(23:00) Why building Slack/Discord communities is difficult for saas products
(24:45) Hot take- Donât oversell your product to your community
(27:55) What is the Jam community right now?
(29:10) Spicy topic- Measuring event ROI
(35:46) Our challenges this week
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What happens when you spend months looking for the perfect candidate⊠And then the engineering team grows by 50% all at once?
This week, the Head of Engineering at Jam talks about the challenges of scaling and hiring in our startup:
(00:26) Why hiring takes so longâ 5 months iterating the process!
(09:30) Whatâs going to break: the stuff we know, and what we donât
(11:01) Changing the format of decision-making now that thereâs more people (and opinions)
(18:30) The different factors that go into choosing the right candidate
(20:36) What happens when the team goes from 15 people to 20
(22:40) Does anyone know the perfect designer:engineer ratio?
(26:57) More team challenges: unexpected hires and financial planning, balancing strategy with execution, and showing up for the team with a meeting-packed calendar.
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