Julian Danjou

CEO and Co-founder, Mergify · 1 appearance on the record.

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Julien Danjou is the co-founder and CEO of Mergify, a developer platform specializing in pull request workflow and merge queue automation. A veteran open-source contributor to Debian and OpenStack, he created the awesome window manager and authored technical books including Serious Python and Scaling Python.

10statements → 4claims → 1claims resolved → 3.9/5average certainty → 1.3/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated →

1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 3 not checkable as stated how the 4 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

4 assertions · 2 insights · 4 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 4 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, and 3 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Julian argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported

Danjou: Mergify ranks on Google's first page for 'merge queue for GitHub'

“If you know what you're looking for, like a merge queue for GitHub I mean, we are in the first, Results on Google, so it's pretty easy to find us. We are one of the only company providing search services”

Julian Danjou Mar 27, 2023 ▶ 10:41 Developer SaaS Hits $112k MRR Bootstrapped using community growth strategy

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Julian Danjou on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

What they said10 Episodes1

Everything Julian Danjou said on Top Founders that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight

Danjou: Extreme time and capital constraints prevent product over-engineering

“You know that both money and time are very constrained. So you have to focus on the right thing, which as an engineer, you see a lot of stories of people trying to build products and, you know, never launching and adding more and more features because you're l…”

Julian Danjou Mar 27, 2023 ▶ 8:09 Developer SaaS Hits $112k MRR Bootstrapped using community growth strategy

Disclosure

GitHub Marketplace generates almost no new signups for Mergify

“Very few, actually. We used to be in the front page from time to time in the first few years. And no, I think we don't bring enough revenue for GitHub. So it basically put us never in the front page. So if you look from Regify or Mercury, you will find us on t…”

Julian Danjou Mar 27, 2023 ▶ 11:24 Developer SaaS Hits $112k MRR Bootstrapped using community growth strategy

Insight

Selling to engineers requires a bottom-up approach, says Julian Danjou

“It's very hard to do marketing with software engineers, so we have this kind of bottom-up approach where we try to sell to the engineers the solution, the tooling that we build.”

Julian Danjou Mar 27, 2023 ▶ 13:03 Developer SaaS Hits $112k MRR Bootstrapped using community growth strategy

Disclosure

Danjou: Mergify's average customer pays $500 to $1,000 per month

“I guess our average team size would be around 100 engineers. So I think for most customers, that's around between 501,000 dollars per month on a subscription basis.”

Julian Danjou Mar 27, 2023 ▶ 2:16 Developer SaaS Hits $112k MRR Bootstrapped using community growth strategy

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Danjou: Mergify has over 150 paying customers

“We have more than 150 customers right now.”

Julian Danjou Mar 27, 2023 ▶ 5:04 Developer SaaS Hits $112k MRR Bootstrapped using community growth strategy

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Mergify tripled monthly revenue to $110,000 over the past year

“I think a year ago we were at a third of that, so we basically multiplied by three over the last year.”

Julian Danjou Mar 27, 2023 ▶ 5:33 Developer SaaS Hits $112k MRR Bootstrapped using community growth strategy

Disclosure

Danjou: Mergify has been fully bootstrapped from the start

“We all bootstrapped since the beginning, so it took a while, I think, for us to grow, basically because we started with”

Julian Danjou Mar 27, 2023 ▶ 5:45 Developer SaaS Hits $112k MRR Bootstrapped using community growth strategy

Disclosure

Danjou: Mergify co-founders took no salary initially and worked two jobs

“Yeah, we did not actually. I mean, we worked for the first a few years. We had two jobs for a while both media and I, and when we were able to switch to that full time, but it took care.”

Julian Danjou Mar 27, 2023 ▶ 7:56 Developer SaaS Hits $112k MRR Bootstrapped using community growth strategy

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Danjou: Mergify has 10 full-time employees

“We have 10 people full time on the team.”

Julian Danjou Mar 27, 2023 ▶ 9:32 Developer SaaS Hits $112k MRR Bootstrapped using community growth strategy

Assertion Supported

Danjou: Mergify ranks on Google's first page for 'merge queue for GitHub'

Julian Danjou Mar 27, 2023 ▶ 10:41 Developer SaaS Hits $112k MRR Bootstrapped using community growth strategy

Appearances (1)

Episode	Date	Speaking time
Developer SaaS Hits $112k MRR Bootstrapped using community growth strategy	Mar 27, 2023	9m

Julian Danjou

The record, in short

Their most notable supported claim

How they sound: not measured why? →

Appearances (1)

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