Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Wagner: Building interactive browser-based backend training creates a high-engineering moat

Lane Wagner · Episode 688 | Growing Boot.dev From $6k to $110k in Monthly Reven... · Nov 21, 2023 · at 13:32

Lane Wagner, founder of interactive coding platform Boot.dev, explains the technical barriers to entry in backend coding education to Rob Walling.

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“It is hard to teach backend development interactively in a browser. It's not as hard to do with the front end because JavaScript, CSS and HTML all render in a browser natively, right? So to build this interactive experience in a browser for backend developers is there's a lot more engineering work that you have to put in upfront. But I'm a big fan of, I don't know if you've read Seth Godin's purple cow book. I think in the long run, that's actually a really good thing for us because like to replicate it, it's a moat, right? It's something that sets us apart.”

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Insight
Wagner: A product's business model is locked to customer job, not software type
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Opinion
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Disclosure
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“That was when we were about 26 K and the last three months have all been like, yeah, over 80 or 90. We've pulled a few growth levers that seem to have actually had some good returns on them. And we can get into that, but it's primarily YouTube.”
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Insight
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“Like this is not a tool that if you like it, you'll just use it for the rest of your life. Right. At the end of the day, whether someone succeeds with the product, Goes through the course, learns a ton, gets a job, or fails. They kind of get through the part t…”
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Disclosure
Wagner: Boot.dev avoided B2C support headaches because all three employees are engineers
“And then on the consumer side, actually, we have not had that second thing you mentioned, which was support issues. I think that's partially been How our entire team of three are all engineers, and we've kind of engineered our way out of some of those problems…”
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