ALTERNATE UNIVERSE DEV

Scaling DevTools

Great Developer Experience with ngrok founder Alan Shreve

Alan Shreve is the founder & CEO of ngrok. 

ngrok is a simplified API-first ingress-as-a-service that adds connectivity, security, and observability to your apps in one line


What we cover:

  • Creating a simple experience for users.
  • Designing for the 90% use case vs. the 10%.
  • How did the idea for ngrok emerge?
  • How the first iterations of the product came about.
  • The internal struggle to create simple interfaces.
  • How do you test your library design?
  • One of the best ways to test library design.
  • Amazon's one-click checkout.
  • Chasing simplicity vs complexity in a complex system.
  • Product processes to help chase simplicity.
  • How does NGrok measure and track user growth?
  • Time to value, kpi, time to value.
  • Empowering developers to do their jobs.
  • How does a hobbyist use case expand into a commercial use case?
  • How do you think about the problems that ngrok solves?
  • How do you get an application online with minimal configuration?
  • What’s the takeaway for other developers or founders?

Links:
- ngrok: https://ngrok.com/
- Alan's Twitter: https://twitter.com/inconshreveable
- Thanks to Danger Casey https://twitter.com/CaseySoftware for organising this
- swyx article https://www.swyx.io/self-provisioning-runtime
- Joel Spolsky talk https://mixtape.swyx.io/episodes/elegant-software-joel-spolsky 

Episode source