Taylor Otwell: the business of Laravel in 2022

April 5, 2022 / 52:22/E137

Becoming a better leader, so that your product can grow and thrive.

Taylor Otwell, is the founder of Laravel, a programming framework for PHP. But he's also one of the most successful indie SaaS operators I know. In this episode we discuss:

0:30 – Taylor is changing how he hires and manages people at Laravel
6:01 – How Taylor is finding new employees to work on Forge, Vapor, and his other products
7:34 – The Laravel ecosystem has incubated incredible talent: Miguel Piedrafita, Caleb Porzio, Adam Wathan, Aaron Francis, Jack Ellis...
10:03 – More and more indie SaaS apps are being built in Laravel
10:48 – When is the next Laracon conference?
13:11 – Taylor Otwell has the classic bootstrap success story
14:28 – Laravel has been running too lean
17:00 – What's it like to work as a developer at Laravel? (pair programming)
18:33 – How Taylor does product development
22:08 – "I haven't told anyone this yet, but I actually considered selling Laravel this past year." Here's why Taylor decided not to sell.
26:30 – How do you deal with internet fame, and being a "known person?"
28:59 – Dealing with haters on Twitter
31:50 – What is the future of web development, and the full-stack developer? What is the future of Ruby on Rails and Laravel?
35:53 – Building excitement around PHP and Laravel with young people.
42:13 – What inspires kids to get into programming? When it's fun, easy, accessible. This is why so many people started with Hypercard, Microsoft Access, PHP, Adobe Flash...