Developers as Creatives

The a16z Show

a16z

Software Eating The World, Business, Technology, Disruption, Culture, Innovation, Science, Entrepreneurship

4.2 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 13 January 2021

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

with @jeffiel @davidu @smc90 The rise of developers -- as buyers, as influencers, as a creative class -- is a direct result of "software eating the world", since every company is a tech company (whether they know it or not). Developers are therefore the key to solving business problems and to thriving not just surviving, argues Jeff Lawson, CEO of Twilio, in his new book, Ask Your Developer: How to Harness the Power of Software Developers and Win in the 21st Century. Lawson shares hard-earned lessons learned, mindsets, and tactics -- from "build vs. buy" to "build vs. die", to the art and science ("mitosis") of small teams -- for leaders and companies of all sizes and kinds.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi everyone welcome to the A6 and Z podcast I am Sonil and we're here with our first new
0:05.0	episode recorded this year and it's with Jeff Lawson the CEO and co-founder of
0:09.6	Cloud Communications Platform as a Service Company, Twillio.
0:13.4	He's the author of the new book just out today
0:16.6	called Ask Your Developer,
0:18.3	How to Harness the Power of Software Developers
0:21.2	and win in the 21st century.'s super relevant obviously since developers play an outsized role in high-performing tech companies
0:28.0	but are also actually critical in all companies given software has eaten the world and as we've seen with the
0:34.1	pandemic education and health care and pretty much every organization is now
0:38.0	reliant on tech in fact every company is a tech company whether they know it or
0:42.3	not and so the book and our discussion is every company is a tech company whether they know it or not.
0:42.8	And so the book and our discussion is really more broadly
0:46.4	about what it means for companies of all sizes and types to innovate.
0:51.1	Also joining us is A6 and C general partner David
0:53.7	Yulevich, former CEO who's seen both sides of small startups and big
0:57.0	companies and who has talked about quote the developer way as a future of work
1:01.8	for everyone not just developers and so I asked him to jump in and
1:05.2	join me before he had to leave a bit early. We cover the rise of developers as a creative
1:10.0	class and what it means to organize that plus influence within a company.
1:14.4	Briefly touch on techniques like hackathons for doing so and then wrap up on
1:18.6	organizational best practices around team size, scaling, and more.
1:22.0	Throughout we of course thread the trend of
	...

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