Welcome to In Depth, a new podcast from First Round Review that’s dedicated to surfacing the tactical advice founders and startup leaders need to grow their teams, their companies and themselves. Hosted by Brett Berson, a partner at First Round, In Depth will cover a lot of ground and a wide range of topics, from hiring executives and becoming a better manager, to the importance of storytelling inside of your organization. But every interview will hit the level of tactical depth where the very best advice is found. We hope you’ll join us. Subscribe to “In Depth” now and learn more at firstround.com
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Welcome to In Depth, a new podcast from First Round Review that’s dedicated to surfacing the tactical advice founders and startup leaders need to grow their teams, their companies and themselves. Hosted by Brett Berson, a partner at First Round, In Depth will cover a lot of ground and a wide range of topics, from hiring executives and becoming a better manager, to the importance of storytelling inside of your organization. But every interview will hit the level of tactical depth where the very best advice is found. We hope you’ll join us. Subscribe to “In Depth” now and learn more at firstround.com
How rejecting conventional wisdom grew Sentry to a $3 billion company | David Cramer (Co-founder and CPO)
In Depth
1 hour 41 minutes
4 months ago
How rejecting conventional wisdom grew Sentry to a $3 billion company | David Cramer (Co-founder and CPO)
David Cramer is the co-founder of Sentry, the leading open-source error monitoring tool used by over 90,000 companies. A self-taught engineer, he went from 9th grade high school dropout and Burger King manager to building one of the most widely adopted developer tools in the world — by working hard and rejecting conventional wisdom. As of 2022, Sentry is valued at over $3 billion. David now serves as Chief Product Officer, after previously holding roles as CEO and CTO.
In this episode, we discuss:
How David went from managing a Burger King to landing his first job as a software engineer
How an code snippet grew into a ubiquitous monitoring platform
Why open source is an underrated distribution hack
How a ruthless competitive streak and obsession with excellence fueled Sentry’s rise
And so much more…
Referenced:
Aaron Levie
Beats by Dre
Cursor
Dan Levine
Datadog
Disqus
Dropbox
Heroku
Max Levchin
Okta
Omar Johnson
Oracle
Sentry
Satya Nadella
Stripe
Uber
VS Code
WindSurf
Y Combinator
Yandex
Where to find David:
LinkedIn
Twitter/X
Where to find Brett:
LinkedIn
Twitter/X
Where to find First Round Capital:
Website
First Round Review
Twitter/X
YouTube
Timestamps:
(4:01) Learning to code through gaming
(6:31) Dropping out of high school
(9:47) Building infrastructure at Disqus
(10:20) “Software is not that hard”
(12:45) Early interest in open source
(15:45) The birth of Sentry
(23:37) Two common founder mistakes
(27:13) David’s unwavering focus
(28:17) Sentry’s journey to venture backing
(36:43) Finding conviction in decisions
(41:11) How Sentry found PMF
(46:34) More confidence, less ego
(48:08) Is sales valuable?
(51:31) David’s personal philosophy
(1:01:17) Money is not the hardest problem
(1:06:27) Marketing won’t fix a bad product
(1:10:34) What makes Sentry’s market unique
(1:16:24) “You’re gonna mess up”
(1:22:08) Why brand will always matter
(1:30:51) Eliminating all competition
In Depth
Welcome to In Depth, a new podcast from First Round Review that’s dedicated to surfacing the tactical advice founders and startup leaders need to grow their teams, their companies and themselves. Hosted by Brett Berson, a partner at First Round, In Depth will cover a lot of ground and a wide range of topics, from hiring executives and becoming a better manager, to the importance of storytelling inside of your organization. But every interview will hit the level of tactical depth where the very best advice is found. We hope you’ll join us. Subscribe to “In Depth” now and learn more at firstround.com
