The Exchanges

Q a lot to learn about how folks like Sid and others, there's many others that have leveraged an open source community. It's the closest comparable we have to web three. Where everything's on blockchain, right? Where like you actually vote with the number of tokens you own of the fig product, but this is a different structure, but it's, it's like the closest bridge, if you know what I mean?

A Yeah. Yeah. There are a lot of different styles of open source. So there is what Sid is doing at GitLab where it is sort of the, it's company led. Anyone can contribute, but at the end of the day, the company sort of has the call as to what's the direction we're going. And that, uh, it's sort of known as the Benevolent dictator for life. If you've ever heard of that term. So big open source projects, specifically languages like Python have a benevolent, benevolent dictator for life. Uh, whereas a lot of other open source projects, similar to web three, they have some sort of set of rules, which says, okay, with the community has to vote. And then based on the community votes, something is going to happen or something is not going to happen. There are lots of different methodologies. 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.

AI assessment note: “whereas a lot of other open source projects, similar to web three”

Q So let's say I was one of the, the 30 or 40 developers that, that pulled down the pull request, submitted something back, thousands of works in Q four. Let's say I write some code and then like a year from now, you're selling that code to, to, to Amazon, right? On your fig enterprise plan. Like, do I get a kickback of that? How do you manage that storyline?

A So we aren't selling that exact code. We, uh, 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 open source contributions, we have basically said, this is going to be free forever. Uh, if you are familiar with GitHub, GitHub's model is for individuals. It's free for open source. It's free. And then for private stuff for teams, it's paid. And we're going to follow the exact same model. So anyone who contributes, we are just totally going to say, this is free and open to the world forever. We're not going to get rid of this. And that's, you know, we've held that and there's no, like the way this specific repo works, you know, I know it's a short podcast, so I won't go in too long, but it's you download fig and you use it for your workflows, but maybe there's a specific workflow that you do every day that not many other people do. And so that's where you go, Hey, you know what? I want fig to be better for me. So I'm going to contribute the, you know, the, what's called auto complete spec, which is exactly what we're doing. We're going to it for me. I will contribute it. So the rest of the world can also use it. That sort of makes sense, but it's, it's basically solving your own problem, scratching your own edge, and t…

AI assessment note: “So we aren't selling that exact code. We, uh, like our model is”

Q That's a different, that's a different. You gotta, you wait, that's the exact same name. July seven, 20, 20 fig visual apps and shortcuts for your terminal. What was that?

A That was really early on in Fig's history. We were still pivoting around. So coming, setting a step back, what is Fig? As I said, we make the terminal easier. The terminal's really hard. There are a ton of different workflows that people do in the terminal every day. People also call the terminal the command line, the command prompt, the shell. I'm just going to use the terminal because that's what we tend to stick to. But, uh, we launched this like really bare bones version of Fig just to see if like This was a big pain point just to test the waters. And we got a lot of traction on that product on launch. And then since then we focused in on one specific product, which was autocomplete at the terminal. And that's what we launched.

AI assessment note: “we launched this like really bare bones version of Fig just to see”

Q And pre-revenue, or are you charging already for some parts of the, of the tool?

A As I said, most of our revenue is going to come from enterprise stuff. We know that. And luckily we have so much good user adoption that VCs are willing to, like VCs look at companies like GitHub and GitLab and go, you know what, these companies weren't making a ton of money in the early days, but their users just loved them because they were solving a massive problem. So like VCs know that this sort of bottoms up growth is a, like a very saleable product in the future. And They're willing to sort of subsidize it in the future. So yeah, pre revenue, but we have tens of thousands of users. You can see on our open source traction as well. Like people are really engaged in a product in a way that like I've built products before I had, had never seen.

AI assessment note: “So yeah, pre revenue, but we have tens of thousands of users.”

Q And if you do raise in the next couple of months, how much would you target?

A It depends who we raise from. 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, 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%. Versus if you go with Like just non-traditional capital. They'll take between 10 and 15%. And like, sometimes you can go with a real, an angel, like, you know, a Sam Altman, for instance, who I think is sort of agnostic to this. They don't have fixed capital constraints. They just want to invest and be part of the journey. So I think it really depends at the end of the day who the partner we go with is. Uh, partner is most important to me.

AI assessment note: “It depends who we raise from. If we go with a big VC”

Q givers. And when there's the big, mean business guy that comes in and tries to make money off this, it's a hard balancing act. So like, he obviously figured a way to do it. How are you balancing that? How do you reward these contributors when it's clear? Like, wait, Brendan, you're making money on this. Your equity value is going up. You just raised 2.2 million. Where's our money?

A So 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. So our focus is right now, let's just make sure individuals love our product. And so do you love a product that's paid or do you love a product that's free? Everyone loves free. So we're making it free. We're really focused on growth. We're all about getting adoption, getting people just literally use FIG every single day, make it just a core part of their daily workflow, because we know that like most SaaS tools, we're going to make all of our money in enterprise. So we're not worried about the money for individuals today. We can worry about that in the future.

AI assessment note: “we know that like most SaaS tools, we're going to make all of our money”