Episode 232 | Matt Watson - Leveraging Domain Knowledge

Guest: Matt Watson @mattwatson81 Matt Watson talks with Dave Rael about running a business, creating valuable software, and making a culture Stackify was founded in January 2012 by Matt Watson. Before Stackify he was the CTO of a rapidly growing enterprise software service (SaaS) provider. He noticed that agile development had caused his developers to be much more involved in day-to-day IT operations, but his team lacked the tools and server access to do it efficiently. He founded Stackify to create a suite of tools to solve this problem, which virtually every dev and dev team deals with. Chapters: 1:24 - Dave introduces the show and Matt Watson2:47 - Matt's life as the head of Stackify and involvement in code4:43 - Kansas City - home of Matt and Stackify5:55 - What is Stackify?10:29 - The start of Stackify11:06 - How Matt got started in software12:03 - The things that "light Matt up"13:41 - Matt's story of failure - the omitted where clause, threatening economic condidtions17:39 - Matt's entrepreneurial nature18:49 - Matt's advice for developers who want to own something they are making22:43 - Rewards and pain of growing a business23:49 - Scaling systems and organizations25:38 - Stackify's lighthearted culture26:46 - Matt's success story - building a unique, useful, and affordable product suite27:55 - How Matt stays current with what he needs to know30:32 - Matt's book recommendations31:57 - The things that have Matt most excited35:19 - Matt's sources of pain and suffering36:19 - Matt's top 3 tips for delivering more value Resources: Stackify The Stackify Blog Kansas City Developer Conference Jon Mills on Developer On Fire Lee Brandt on Developer On Fire Heather Downing on Developer On Fire Cory House on Developer On Fire Prefix Retrace Flappy Bird Stackify Ad Stackify - "Building Our Office Space – Literally" Puppet Chef CFEngine Oh, The Places You'll Go! - Dr. Seuss Matt's book recommendation: Goodnight Moon - Margaret Wise Brown Dragons Love Tacos - Adam Rubin Matt's top 3 tips for delivering more value: Figure out how to make somebody's life easier View software from the perspective of a user Pay attention to details