VCs often say: "We back the founder." But what does that actually mean? @amirrustam of Firestreak Ventures joined us for a rare and honest conversation about early-stage investing in devtools. This is the one all devtool founders should listen to. Full breakdown: 00:17 Introduction and guest welcome 01:08 Amir's early career and background 07:20 Why Amir left aerospace and pivoted to software 08:44 Discovering Cypress and joining the team 11:21 Inventing the DX engineer role 13:06 From Cypress to early-stage VC 15:17 Joining Firestreak Ventures 16:21 Being a hands-on investor 18:20 Amir's portfolio (Lovable, Daytona, etc.) 20:12 How to spot a "force of nature" founder 23:32 Does the product matter for funding? 24:27 The best way to pitch an early idea 25:37 Devtools and infrastructure as Amir's wheelhouse 26:09 How the VC landscape changed from 2022 to 2026 28:42 Common challenges in 2025 vs. 2026 34:22 Vibe coding vs. agentic engineering 37:44 Amir's Claudemaxxing workflow 41:32 Great developer experience in 2026 43:08 Agent experience: designing for agents 44:12 Why most devtools aren't venture scale 48:16 Inflated seed valuations and the arms race for capital 53:35 Raise the least money you can 57:27 Warm fuzzies: what makes Amir feel great about his job

Finding the right positioning for your product is easy when you talk to your ICP. @MaxPrilutskiy from @lingodotdev tells us how he turned his luck around by listening to customers and shaping the product's messaging around those insights. Full interview in the thread.

Many technical founders fall in love with their tech. Max wanted to solve an actual problem. @MaxPrilutskiy, co-founder and CEO of @lingodotdev, went to a hackathon with zero ideas, interviewed strangers, and built what they were already complaining about. In this episode, he tells @vmelnikova_en what it's like being in YC, why he and his co-founder decided to rebuild from scratch, and what improving the agent experience actually means for devtools. 00:38 Introduction and guest welcome 01:10 What Lingo.dev does 03:32 Getting into YC and finding its first users 05:06 Growing up in Belarus 06:39 Solving a real problem vs. falling in love with your tech 08:18 Selling his first startup and lessons learned 11:33 What drives Max beyond just solving a business problem 13:44 Why Max and his partner built a new tool after selling a company 15:35 An honest answer on his experience in YC 17:39 Rebuilding the platform in December–January 20:41 Agent experience vs developer experience 27:55 How go-to-market is changing for dev tools 32:13 Learnings from 30 exploration calls 36:40 Where Lingo.dev is now: roadmap, team, and goals 40:27 Running a lean, high-agency team where everyone codes 45:31 The SF startup culture and why Max loves it 46:11 What Max looks for when hiring: CS fundamentals and craft obsession 48:06 What makes Max feel great about his job 48:31 How to get started with Lingo.dev

Matt (@biilmann) coined the term "agent experience" in January and changed the course of the devtool industry. The question now is not only how fast a human can get value from my product, but how easily an agent can complete the same flow. We were beyond excited to have Matt as a guest on the podcast. Here's everything we discussed: 00:35 Introduction and guest welcome 00:58 Matt's background in musicology and coding since age 10 08:28 Moving to Spain, building Sudoku games, and the path to engineering 11:12 Going from senior Rails engineer to CTO in three years 11:58 Building a cloud CMS, moving to San Francisco, and starting BitBalloon 15:08 The early days of Netlify: bootstrapping and the list of 20 people 17:38 Watch what users do, not what they say 19:39 Why developer experience beat performance and security 22:24 Dogfooding Netlify 23:05 How Matt coined the term "agent experience" 28:17 Why AX is the new North Star, and the PLG numbers behind it 30:12 The four pillars of agent experience: access, context, tools, orchestration 37:23 Walled gardens vs open platforms in the agent era 38:42 Code factories, hype cycles, and validation replacing code review 43:11 Going from 17 million JavaScript developers to a 3 billion-person TAM 46:17 Agent Runners Spec and Netlify's bet on CLI agents from Frontier Labs 48:35 Redesigning Netlify's UX 53:05 Teams in the future: we're all becoming developers 54:25 Is Matt ready to give up being the CEO of Netlify? 55:42 What makes Matt excited about his role?