Minicor (@minicor_) builds self-healing desktop automations for AI companies whose customers run on legacy desktop software with no APIs. Congrats on the launch, @faizchishtie and @sahee_d! ycombinator.com/launches/Pkq…

Issue tracking is dead. We are building what comes next. linear.app/next

New: I spoke with @bentlegen about @modemdev, where he's building a product feedback platform to help software teams ship faster (and better). It raised $4.4 million USD from backers like @Accel, @inovia, @sentry co-founders, Cohere's @1vnzh and other angels.

14 and a half years ago I started on this journey of Entrepreneurship. So many memories, so many flashes of moments come to mind, so many people whose lives we touched and make ours better. Indulge me as I share what’s been running through my head this last week: It all started with very humble beginnings, Jonathan and I scribbling app ideas on the window of my apartment in Calgary. Jonathan spending a summer learning iOS development and then me quitting my job and moving across the country to try our hand at creating something we own (with the encouragement and support of Chairman Mike). Being away from my ever patient and supportive then fiancée, now wife Jesse. Moving into my parent’s basement, after decontaminating it from ripe hockey equipment. Early milestones; launching CloudPhotos, our first App Store sale, partnering with Cobi and Aaron over grilled cheese and releasing our second app, Jukeboxer. Applying to Y Combinator with a video of us driving around a parking lot, pivoting to a SaaS platform that make no-code app changes (unfortunately named LaunchPad.io), joining @MaRSDD's JOLT accelerator, getting accepted to CDL, raising an angel round by going up and down Bay Street, and after applying thrice, getting the opportunity to interview with Y Combinator. Four Toronto, Crescent & Queen’s boys experiencing Silicon Valley for the first time (which was both more impressive and less impressive than expected). Jonathan forcing a demo of live upgrading an app to iOS 7’s new look and feel during our YC demo. Getting accepted to @ycombinator one late night in a dingy hotel in San Francisco’s tenderloin. Meeting peers, advisors, mentors and lifelong friends as part of YC W14 batch. The crock pot Tuesday night dinners and real truths shared during the talks (it doesn’t get easier as you grow, you just face new challenges that may seem insurmountable, but if you look behind you, the things that you now call easy were once also insurmountable). Office Hours meetings with Kevin, Paul, Kristy and Aaron. Good peer pressure seeing what a rocket ship Ryan from Flexport and others were building, shaming us into doing more, doing better, faster. Rebirth and relaunch as Taplytics. A big empty white house on Middlefield in Palo Alto, batch parties, the Batcave, IKEA return policies. Demo Day; raising a Seed round in a few hours through handshakes, starting relationships with investors and trusted advisors that continue to this day. Moving our lives, spouses and futures from Toronto to San Francisco. The years in SoMA, building Taplytics, getting first enterprise customers like Tinder, Target, RetailMeNot. Building a company culture, learning from mistakes made and roads not taken. Walking to and from work when it’s dark outside, looking in at the black and empty windows of Optimizely’s office. Traveling the world to build real and deep relationships with customers. Hosting community events in SF, NY, LDN. Closing and building. A move back home to Toronto, the 6ix. Back to MaRS until the ceiling fell in on us, literally. TeaBOTs. Raising a Series A, scaling the team, putting in a middle layer of management, MBA of hard-knocks. Expanding from mobile to push, to web, to server-side, to customer journeys. Team names; Wolves of Wellington, Pineapple Express, Delissio, Foundation. A dream client who ended up being a nightmare. Making a seven figure mistake on physical space. Then COVID; the Tuesday the world shut down. Zoom stand-ups and relief funds. Being there for the team and our customers while adapting to a new reality. “Hold for fun”. Bearded Andrew. Hunting down COVID tests, empty desks and empty meeting rooms. Delayed and delayed re-openings. A new product line? A pivot? Being real with ourselves who’s ACTUALLY getting deep value from Taplytics. A new product taking form from a big empty whiteboard. @DevCycleHQ, a new dawn, a narrowed focus on developers. @OpenFeature, KubeCons, and quick RFPs. Growth, a new energy, hard goodbyes and welcome hellos. A doubling down on DevCycle and migrating customers off of Taplytics. The Battlesnake team joined us on the journey. DevRel, conferences, the DevCycle product improving and being loved, we learned by shipping. A new Board, new mentors and advisors. Then as is inevitable in these sorts of stories, then comes the valley of death; an SR&ED audit, a forbearance, a hail mary, then finally a path forward. The worst day of the whole journey, too many hard goodbyes. Transparency. Resetting to profitability, cookie jar approach to costs. Focusing on what matters to drive sustainable growth, seeing expansion, adoption and success follow. AI coming into the picture, launching a MCP adopting agentic coding tools. Then a year ago, a cold outreach led to a process, leading to many many meetings, leading to an offer for what we’ve built. Debating the three potential roads ahead, keep going as is, re-capitalize or find a new home…. what to do, what to do… These are memories, flashes of moments, of a life well lived, of opportunities taken and embraced, of mistakes learned and overcome. Dreams come true and aspirations left unfulfilled. Coming a long way from those window scribbles and odorous first base of operations. That brings us today, where we have a new team, a new mission. We’ve joined our friends at @Dynatrace, a trusted partner, a collaborator and a global leader that we’ve been working closely with for the last few years. A new platform and ambition to have the wide industry impact we’ve been fighting towards; create the best damn Feature Flagging platform in the world and get it in front of every developer to help them build amazing software. The battle for the Rohirrim is over, the war for Middle Earth begins now. Our investors were there for us from day one, believing not in “mobile interface editing” or “A/B testing” or “feature flagging”, but believing in us as founders and leaders. It wasn’t a straight path (is it ever?), but it wouldn’t have been possible without them, thank you one and all. In the brightest daylight and darkest of night, they were always there with a wise word, the right introduction at the right time, or a just “keep going”. To our customers, who put their trust, faith and businesses on the line with us, thank you. We woke up every morning (and sometimes very late at night) with a relentless obsession to do whatever we could to deliver the best quality and depth of service possible. As I learned long ago, every business is a customer service business and we tried to live that every day. Thank you to the over 200(!) teammates, peers, colleagues and builders who called themselves Tappers or DevCyclers over the last decade. Everyone one of you left a brick in building this Company and should be proud of what we all accomplished. I hope, as our culture aspired to provide, that we were a place you are proud to be from. Last but certainly not least, I wouldn’t be here without my partners and Co-Founders; my brother Jonathan @jonathannorris (who I couldn’t be more proud of, he’s become a hell of an engineering leader), my partner in product and customer obsession, Cobi @cdrux, and Aaron who stood shoulder to shoulder with us through almost all of this journey. We’ve come a long way guys. — “Ok, What’s Next?”