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Growing a Self-Funded Company

Code[ish]

Release Date: 01/05/2021

Looking into the Future of Agentic AI with Kit Merker show art Looking into the Future of Agentic AI with Kit Merker

Code[ish]

At the bleeding edge of computer vision is Plainsight Technologies, a company that’s modernizing infrastructure to handle future agentic AI workloads. Join us as we speak with CEO Kit Merker on Plainsight’s vision for the future, technological goals, and the leading case studies for computer vision. Hear from host Julián Duque and Kit Merker in this new, insightful episode of the Code[ish] podcast.  

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Heroku in the Wild: reinteractive on AI and Rapid POCs show art Heroku in the Wild: reinteractive on AI and Rapid POCs

Code[ish]

We love hearing from developers who are building amazing things with Heroku, and this episode of Code[ish] is a perfect example! CEO of Australian firm reinteractive, Errol Schmidt, is here to speak with Julián about what his team has achieved and what they’re working on next.  Together, they discuss why Heroku is the best tool for Ruby on Rails development, how organizations can safely integrate AI, and the importance of being able to quickly stand up proof-of-concept apps. 

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Spring Boot with Guest Josh Long show art Spring Boot with Guest Josh Long

Code[ish]

This week, Julián is joined by the first Spring Developer Advocate and Java champion, Josh Long! Tune in as the pair discusses Spring Boot and tools like Spring AI, Spring Modulith, Spring Cloud, and Spring Shell that build upon it.  If you're a Java veteran like Josh, or returning to it after years away like Julián, this Tips & Tricks episode of Code[ish] will bring you up to speed.

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Getting Started with Slack Apps and Slack AI show art Getting Started with Slack Apps and Slack AI

Code[ish]

Slack can be so much more than a way to chat with your colleagues. In this episode of Code[ish], we’re joined by Maria José Hernández to find out how Slack Apps and Slack AI can elevate the app into an organization-wide, personalized Work OS.  In conversation with Julián Duque, Maria shares insights into the tools available for developers, and what’s included in the Slack Developer Program. Whether you’re pro-code or no-code, this episode is packed with valuable information to help you build, innovate, and improve your workday with Slack.  

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The Development Basics of Managed Inference and Agents show art The Development Basics of Managed Inference and Agents

Code[ish]

The Code[ish] Podcast is back! Join Heroku superfan Jon Dodson and Hillary Sanders from the Heroku AI Team for the latest entry in our “Deeply Technical” series. In this episode, the pair discuss Heroku Managed Inference and Agents—what it is, what it does, and why developers should be using it.  Hillary also shares tips for new developers entering the job market, and Jon pits 10 principal developers against one hundred fresh bootcamp graduates (hypothetically, of course).

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Code[ish] Season 2 Preview show art Code[ish] Season 2 Preview

Code[ish]

A brand-new season of The Code[ish] Podcast is on the way!  Loads of insightful episodes are on the way, featuring special guests from all corners of the Heroku community. 

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Why Writing Matters for Engineers show art Why Writing Matters for Engineers

Code[ish]

In this episode, Ian, Laura, and Wesley talk about the importance of communication skills, specifically writing, for people in technical roles. Ian calls writing the single most important meta skill you can have. And the good news is that you can get better at it, with deliberate practice!

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Open Source with Jim Jagielski show art Open Source with Jim Jagielski

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This episode is hosted by Alyssa Arvin, Senior Program Manager for Open Source at Salesforce, with guest Jim Jagielski, the newest member of Salesforce’s Open Source Program Office (OSPO). They talk about Jim’s early explorations into open source software during his time as an actual rocket scientist at NASA and his role in the formation of the Apache Software Foundation. Next, they discuss getting started in open source, specifically, how to find the right open source community for you to start cont

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Success From Anywhere show art Success From Anywhere

Code[ish]

This episode of Codeish includes Greg Nokes, distinguished technical architect with Salesforce Heroku, and Lisa Marshall, Senior Vice President of TMP Innovation & Learning at Salesforce. Lisa manages a team within technology and product that focuses on overall employee success in attracting technical talent and creating a great onboarding experience.

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Demystifying the User Experience with Performance Monitoring show art Demystifying the User Experience with Performance Monitoring

Code[ish]

In this episode of Codeish, Greg Nokes, distinguished technical architect with Salesforce Heroku, talks with Innocent Bindura, a senior developer at Raygun about performance monitoring.

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More Episodes

Host Greg Nokes is a distinguished technical architect with Heroku. His guests are Alli McGee, a product manager, and Lewis Buckley, a senior application engineer, from BiggerPockets. BiggerPockets was founded 16 years ago to educate non-professionals about real estate investing.

As a self-funded company, it’s critical for BiggerPockets to create products that customers will pay for. One way they achieve this product/market fit is by building cross-functional teams that are user-focused. All product teams have a project manager, tech lead, and designer that work closely together. This design-led approach allows teams to collaborate with representation from users, technology, and design.

As the PM on one of these teams, Alli lives at the intersection of what can we do for business, what can we do from a technology perspective, and what can we do for the user. She advocates for the customer, bringing knowledge of what customers want, what problems they are facing, and how they have interacted with prototypes in usability studies. Alli also advocates for the business to be sure products make money. Finally, Alli advocates for developers to make sure the project is technically feasible and won’t cause technical debt.

Another way BiggerPockets creates market fit is by creating Minimum Lovable Products—the smallest cheapest thing they can build that people love. With their current product, BP Insights, Alli and Lewis used this strategy to create the first iteration of a product that provides insight into local real estate markets. They then tested the product with users, iterated, and slowly built out a more fully formed offering.

For their tech stack, BiggerPockets is built on a Ruby on Rails monolith. While some in the industry say Ruby on Rails’ time is over, Lewis argues that it has been a great choice, as using a well-known stack has allowed them to worry less about the technology and focus more on building value for users. The BP Insights product was built on this monolith using a massive data set of nearly every property in the US. BiggerPockets imported the data to an Amazon S3 bucket and eventually copied the data to Amazon Redshift for querying.