Connect your Claude, Codex or OpenClaw for full transcripts on millions of podcasts. Two week free trial, cancel anytime.

IL Ian Landsman Ian Landsman Founder of HelpSpot, a bootstrapped help desk software company he has run since 2005 with no outside funding.

“You person listening should not be trying to sell developers. And they're only getting worse. They used to be terrible. … Because they would always, even in the day, be like, well, I could build this help desk. I only need like four months. … Now they're like, I could do this in an afternoon. And they really can. So you don't want them.”

Mostly Technical · Laravel Ecosystem · September 2026

“You person listening should not be trying to sell developers. And they're only getting worse. They used to be terrible. … Because they would always, even in the day, be like, well, I could build this help desk. I only need like four months. … Now they're like, I could do this in an afternoon. And they really can. So you don't want them.” — Ian Landsman, Mostly Technical

Landsman, who has sold help desk software for years, says he loves developers but they're terrible customers. Aaron Francis's reply: don't sell software to developers, sell them infrastructure.

Transcript

Mostly Technical Around 03:49 into the episode
Ian Landsman

Why would you even,

Aaron Francis

you don't, the problem is you don't want to sell. You don't want to sell to developers.

Ian Landsman

Oh, you hate developers. You hate developers. I love developers. They're my people. Don't get me wrong. I love developers, but you're terrible customers. Yes, I know. You could all point to Taylor Otwell and the three other people who made money selling developers. That's fine. You person listening should not be trying to sell developers. And they're only getting worse. They used to be terrible. They are getting worse. They're way worse than they were before. Way worse. Way worse. Because they would always, even in the day, be like, well, I could build this help desk. I only need like four months. I could do this. Right. Now they're like, I could do this in an afternoon. And they really can. So you don't want them.

Aaron Francis

They really can. Get them the hell out

Ian Landsman

of here. You don't want them in your plans being like, oh, I'm going to sell all these developers. Look at the chart. Go up to the right. No, no developers.

Aaron Francis

I will say this. Don't sell software to developers. Sell infrastructure to developers. Yeah,

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

More from Mostly Technical