Mar 1, 2022 · 20m · top-founders
DevOps Tool Fig Raised $2.2m in 2020, Now Approaching 100k MAU's, Whats Next?
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this interview with Nathan Latka, Fig co-founder and CEO Brendan Falk discusses scaling an open-source terminal autocomplete tool, maintaining high capital efficiency with a lean engineering team, and preparing for enterprise monetization and Series A fundraising.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Nathan holds 35.2% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Nathan as informed peer 4.5 Guest teaching 4.0 Guest disagreement 2.7 Nathan pushing back 4.2
speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 15:20 Falk rejects Latka's fundraising cadence dogma
Falk firmly dismisses Latka's assertion that waiting over 15 months to raise is a red flag, arguing he refuses to buy into conventional startup fundraising timelines.
Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 15:04 Latka challenges the 24-month gap between funding roundsLatka directly confronts Falk on why the company has gone over two years without raising since YC, arguing that a delayed Series A is typically seen as a negative signal.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 6:45 Falk breaks down open-source governance versus Web3After Latka frames open source as essentially token voting, Falk educates him on different open-source organizational structures, particularly the Benevolent Dictator for Life model.
Nathan holds their own ▶ 16:07 Latka leverages pattern recognition on venture funding signalsLatka leverages his SaaS dataset and pattern recognition to double down on his critique that taking over two years post-seed raises market suspicion.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Nathan as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Nathan pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Episode Preview: Open Source Growth and VC Backing | 4 | 4 | 2 | 3 | Latka immediately demands concrete data to verify Fig's bio claim of being one of the fastest-growing open-source startups. Falk explains the Ross Index and educates the host on the distinction between repository forks and active contributors. | |
| Open-Source Monetization and Community Value Alignment | 5 | 4 | 3 | 6 | Latka presses Falk on the ethics of monetizing community contributions and asks what happens if Fig sells volunteer code to large enterprises. Falk explains that core open-source specs remain free forever while enterprise features stay closed-source. | |
| Open-Source Governance Models and Decision Making | 4 | 5 | 2 | 3 | When Latka compares open source to Web3 token voting, Falk clarifies the governance dynamics, explaining the concept of a Benevolent Dictator for Life (BDFL) versus decentralized community votes. Falk then clarifies user numbers versus code contributors. | |
| Sponsor Break: Ramp Corporate Cards and Expense Management | 4 | 4 | 2 | 4 | Following the Ramp sponsor read, Latka scrutinizes Fig's Product Hunt numbers and spots an older 2020 launch with low upvotes. Falk clarifies the product evolution from the original concept to the focused autocomplete terminal tool. | |
| Seed Funding Runway, Capital Efficiency, and Series A Plans | 7 | 5 | 6 | 7 | Latka challenges Falk for waiting over 24 months to raise a Series A after YC, framing it as a market negative signal. Falk rejects the premise, arguing capital efficiency, strong runway, and citing precedents like Stripe and Vercel taking time before their Series A. | |
| Launching Team Dotfiles and First Revenue Milestones | 3 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Falk outlines Fig's plan to monetize via team dotfiles management before transitioning into the standard rapid-fire Famous Five wrap-up. |
Statements from this episode (15)
Fig ranked top three in Q3 on the Ross Index
“And in Q three last year, I think we were number two or number three. And then Q four last year, we were like In the top 10, I think maybe 10th.”
Falk: GitHub stars are a vanity metric like Facebook likes
“GitHub stars is, it's sort of like a like on Facebook. It's a bit of a vanity metric to be honest”
Fig has accumulated 160 to 170 open-source contributors
“Over the course of our company, we've had, yeah, a 160, a 170 contributors.”
Falk: Developer tool startups make most revenue from enterprise deals, not individuals
“I think a lot of developer, developer tools companies that have done really well have realized that most of their money comes from massive enterprise deals. It's not from, you know, making five dollars here or there from the individual user.”
Fig CEO pledges open-source contributions will remain free forever
“So we aren't selling that exact code. We like our model is some of our stuff is open source, meaning all of that code is public and anyone can contribute. Some of our code is closed. The stuff that we're going to sell is the closed stuff. And so any of the ope…”
Falk: Open-source projects require upfront decision rules to prevent chaos
“I think the most important thing is for you to say upfront, Here is, you know, who makes the final decision at the end of the day. Here are the rules. Cause we don't say that it just turns into chaos.”
Falk: Fig's entire team consists exclusively of engineers
“We're all engineers. We're a developer tool. So we have to be coding every day. And I think it will be like that for a while.”
Falk: Fig reaches tens of thousands of monthly active users
“We're in the tens of thousands, like our monthly active users are in the tens of thousands at this point, but it's growing super quickly. Like this time last year, we're almost at nothing.”
Falk: Fig is growing its user base 40% to 50% month-over-month
“We're just compounding the number of users by, yeah, 40 to 50% each month.”
Falk: Hacker News drove 2x to 3x more users than Product Hunt
“Fig was at the top of hack and use basically all day. Like it was a really long day for my co-founder and me, but that got us, I would say double if not triple the number of users from hack and use as opposed to product time.”
Falk: Fig retains over 60% to 70% of seed capital
“We have still have more than 60% or 70% of our money in the bank.”
Falk: Fig will raise another funding round in 3-4 months
“I think we will raise in the next like three or four months.”
Falk: Top dev tools like Stripe took 2+ years between Seed and Series A
“You also look at Stripe and a bunch like Vercel, some of these other really big developer tools companies straight after YC, they raised the seed round, but then it took them a long time to raise their series A, raising going from series A to series B. That wa…”
Falk: Top VCs like Sequoia and a16z always take 20% equity
“If we go with a big VC, like a Sequoia, an Andreessen, I say goes, if we're fortunate enough to go with one of them, they, they're always taking 20%. Like that's the way they work. So they'll increase the valuation, but they will, no matter what, take 20%.”