David Cramer
Co-founder & CPO, Sentry. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveengineerinvestor@zeeg ↗LinkedIn ↗cra.mr ↗
David Cramer created Sentry as an open-source error monitoring side project that expanded into a developer observability platform valued at over $3 billion. He previously worked as an early infrastructure engineer at Disqus and served as Sentry's CEO and CTO before becoming Chief Product Officer.
1shows
1appearances
42statements
1resolved
0supported
0contradicted
0%fully supported
13said about them ↓ Everything David Cramer said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Cramer: Founders can turn almost any software into a $100M business today
“You can basically turn anything into a hundred million dollar business these days. Like the technology is really big. The world's really big, you know, as long as we don't figure out tariffs on technology. And so I think you actually don't even have to think t…”
Cramer: Sentry's tracing product drives 20% of revenue despite lacking PMF
“We have this tracing product. It is, you know, something, it's at least 20% of our business. At our scale, you would call that, like, at least a good entry level success. And I would tell you, I don't think the product is very good. I don't think it remotely h…”
Cramer: Dropbox looks like an innovation failure despite its strong revenue
“Even though I would largely say Dropbox looks like a failure from the outside, like, or to me, from my point of view of like, they haven't really done much. They make a lot of money. And so it's a successful business, you know, just like IBM somehow is still a…”
Cramer: Sentry targets every customer of rival startups reaching $10M ARR
“If you get, I don't know, say your ten million in revenue, we will come after every logo you have. We haven't done it that much, but we have gone after two companies, and they basically don't exist anymore.”
Cramer: Sentry refused Uber's lucrative enterprise contract to avoid on-premise software
“Uber actually did pay for a year for a support contract. And it was a lot of money. It was a big, big contract for us. And we did, we chose to not renew it. And I'm like, I don't want to be in that business. I don't want to sell on-prem software. I don't want …”
Cramer: Open source commoditizes markets by gutting competitor monetization
“If we don't make money, nobody will make money in this industry because we will gut the whole thing. And that was the entire strategy of like, you know what? It's okay that Uber doesn't pass because Uber's not gonna pay anybody. And we've just removed that. An…”
Cramer: Corporate sales teams are generally wildly dysfunctional and wasteful
“Sales teams, generally speaking, at companies are wildly dysfunctional and waste lots of money and lots of time on stuff that doesn't amount to anything.”
Cramer: Tracking startup adoption matters more than daily revenue or sales forecasts
“I actually, I could not tell you any of the day of the week, how much money we make. I can give you rough ballpark numbers of how many customers we have, and if we are growing net customers or not, and I can probably tell you we're probably missing sales forec…”
Cramer: Enterprise incumbents cannot compete with bottoms-up tools that win developers
“Enterprise companies cannot compete with us when we undercut them on price, when we undercut them on market share, when we are the developer's first choice.”
Cramer: Founders cannot replicate other startups' paths to product-market fit
“You can't apply their successes. It just doesn't work. Like, great. Century has product market fit. There's nothing you can learn from how we achieved it that you can apply to your business. Cause it was like, Just fortunate. Coincidence, right?”
Cramer: Founders who do not publicly represent their companies are failing
“And if you are a founder and you're not out there just like representing yourself and your company every day, you're, or as much as possible, you're doing it wrong. And so you still need to charge money. But I think the best founders I know, even if they're no…”
Cramer: Ignoring AI, most internet and software problems are already solved
“Like that era for me is like when the internet was like very creative, like most problems were not solved. Right. Whereas today ignoring the AI kind of shift. A lot of problems are already kind of solved and there's like, I don't know, it's different.”
Cramer: Most software development is low-complexity code solving decades-old problems
“Software is not that hard most days. Most of what we build is, and this is why the code gen thing is fascinating because most of what we build is like really low complexity code. Like it's a registration form or something like that. It's not a hard problem. It…”
Cramer: Lifestyle businesses do not work for infrastructure software
“Do not start a lifestyle infrastructure business. It doesn't work.”
Cramer: Most founders fail because they focus on technology over business
“Here's a mistake I think of all founders. Not all. Majority of founders make. And, you know, we know the SaaS majority of founders fail. Maybe this is related. And I, and I'm just purely anecdotes from the companies I've invested in, and some of them are like …”
Cramer: There are no truly new industries, just modern versions
“There are no new industries, generally speaking. You can debate on the AI space, but generally speaking, there's not new industries. There's just new versions of the same industry, and Century was in that.”
Cramer: Sentry deprioritizes Java and .NET because new projects avoid them
“Even today, I will tell you at the company, we deprioritize things like Java or .NET as a technology stack, because most companies are not starting a new project with Java or .NET or a bunch of these old languages, right? Doesn't mean they're not valuable and …”
Cramer: Most bootstrapped startups fail because venture-backed competitors crush them
“There's a few outliers that are famously bootstrapped and get pretty successful. And then there's everybody else that never gets that far because they get crushed by venture companies.”
Cramer: Modern developer tools have worse error reporting than original Django
“And I actually argue today, most technology is still worse than that.”
Cramer: Founder-led sales is simply identifying objections and removing blockers
“I'm like, I know you want the thing now, And this is your like objection to it. And I'm like, I think I agree with that objection. So I'm going to go remove that objection. And that, that to me is like, definitionally how you get a product market fit. And I ac…”
Cramer: Founders must actively intervene and steer all key company decisions
“The companies are driven by the founders and sort of key executives, but generally it's driven by one or two people. And so if you don't sort of intervene in all these decisions, whether people like it or not, like the micromanagement kind of thing, you actual…”
Cramer: Traditional sales playbooks fail in product-led developer companies like Sentry
“I am now fully convinced that sales definitely increases our ACV, but is not the most efficient thing in a business like ours, or cannot be run, at least in a traditional way.”
Cramer: Startups lack customers because their product is bad, not marketing
“They'll be like, ah, well, the reason we don't have more customers is because of marketing. I'm like, no, you just don't have more customers because it's not good. It's not useful. Not, and it could never be useful or it's just not useful yet.”
Cramer: Never ignore your gut skepticism when interviewing candidates
“At the very least, when it comes to hiring, it is the absolute right advice. Trust your gut on if the person knows Or is aligned or whatever. Cause every single time it seems skeptical. Like to me, it's like, it's been wrong. It's been a bad hire and you have …”
The other half of the tape: David Cramer's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 13 times in 1 episode across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Milin Desai 11
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
In Depth 13
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens David's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN DEPTHLEDGER | Co-founder & CPO, Sentry | 1 | 42 | 0% 0/1 | full record on In Depth → |