> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://apisyouwonthate.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Funding Open Source with Dudley Carr from Stack Aid - URL: https://apisyouwonthate.com/podcast/funding-open-source-with-dudley-carr-from-stack-aid/ - Published: 2023-01-23T00:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2023-04-15T12:54:37.000Z - Description: Mike chats with Co-Founder of Stack Aid, Dudley Carr, about the importance of funding Open Source projects, and Stack Aid's approach to helping Open Source organizations get paid. - Author: Mike Bifulco - Tags: 🎙️ APIs You Won't Hate (The Podcast) ## Show notes - Stack Aid - [https://www.stackaid.us/](https://www.stackaid.us/?ref=apisyouwonthate.com) - Dudley Carr - [@dudley@mastodon.social](https://hachyderm.io/@dudley@mastodon.social?ref=apisyouwonthate.com) #### Transcript 00:00:00.181 --> 00:00:02.611 Mike Bifulco: Hello, hello, and welcome back to APIs you won't Hate. 00:00:02.911 --> 00:00:04.531 My name is Mike Balco. 00:00:04.531 --> 00:00:08.689 I am one of your api co-hosts and guide through the world of designing 00:00:08.694 --> 00:00:13.130 APIs and building APIs, and doing all sorts of good stuff with API tech. 00:00:13.197 --> 00:00:16.959 I am joined today for an interview with a new friend of mine, someone who I met 00:00:16.959 --> 00:00:18.969 at a conference here in North Carolina. 00:00:19.454 --> 00:00:22.409 We're gonna be talking a little bit today about his project and some of the sort 00:00:22.409 --> 00:00:25.079 of mission of open source and supporting open source and things like that. 00:00:25.079 --> 00:00:28.101 So today I'm chatting with Dudley Carr from Stack A Dudley. 00:00:28.101 --> 00:00:28.731 How are you doing today? 00:00:29.696 --> 00:00:30.416 Dudley Carr: I'm doing great. 00:00:30.416 --> 00:00:31.386 Thanks for having me on. 00:00:32.141 --> 00:00:32.711 Mike Bifulco: Yeah, of course. 00:00:32.711 --> 00:00:33.801 Super happy to have you here. 00:00:33.856 --> 00:00:37.156 I have lots of questions for you and I'm, I'm super glad you were able to make it 00:00:37.161 --> 00:00:40.432 because from our initial conversations when we sort of bumped into each other 00:00:40.612 --> 00:00:44.182 all over the place at all Things Open your work seemed very interesting to me. 00:00:44.182 --> 00:00:47.269 And I think a lot of the squad here that is part of the APIs you 00:00:47.269 --> 00:00:48.469 won't hate community will really. 00:00:49.009 --> 00:00:49.639 What you're doing. 00:00:49.668 --> 00:00:51.108 So I wanna talk all about that. 00:00:51.108 --> 00:00:53.658 I wanna talk about how you got to where you are and what you're doing at 00:00:53.658 --> 00:00:57.746 Stack and just kinda get some of the history on, on the project in yourself. 00:00:57.795 --> 00:01:00.285 So tell me a bit about yourself and tell me about Stack. 00:01:01.785 --> 00:01:02.615 Dudley Carr: Absolutely. 00:01:02.615 --> 00:01:06.632 So I've been a, in the software engineering space for the. 00:01:07.437 --> 00:01:08.487 22 years. 00:01:08.577 --> 00:01:13.371 I did my undergraduate in computer science at Stanford and graduated at 00:01:13.371 --> 00:01:16.661 the peak of the dot com bubble burst. 00:01:16.931 --> 00:01:21.452 And briefly did a stint in finance, actually worked at Lehman Brothers on 00:01:21.457 --> 00:01:26.472 their exotic derivatives until I realized that stuff is insane and I got out. 00:01:28.122 --> 00:01:33.132 In the last 20 years, I've spent all of it working with my brother, who 00:01:33.132 --> 00:01:36.972 also did computer science, and so we've gone from one venture to the next. 00:01:36.977 --> 00:01:41.115 So he is not here, but is probably the. 00:01:42.000 --> 00:01:43.830 More important of the duo. 00:01:44.010 --> 00:01:48.547 And anyway, we did our first startup in Rhode Island in my parents' basement. 00:01:48.580 --> 00:01:53.760 I think there was radon in that basement, but we we managed we 00:01:53.760 --> 00:01:59.160 actually built in the, you know, 2002, 2003, we built a product that. 00:01:59.535 --> 00:02:00.705 Became g talker. 00:02:00.705 --> 00:02:03.694 It was flash-based, you know, pre action. 00:02:03.694 --> 00:02:07.522 It was action script, but before it was even before they released all of 00:02:07.522 --> 00:02:09.232 their UI toolkits and stuff like that. 00:02:09.232 --> 00:02:11.032 And back backend was Python. 00:02:11.037 --> 00:02:13.252 It was initially a desktop application, then became a. 00:02:13.672 --> 00:02:14.812 Web-based product. 00:02:15.052 --> 00:02:20.112 And we developed that out and ended up selling that to Google and moving 00:02:20.112 --> 00:02:24.472 to Seattle in 2006 to join the Google Talk team and work on that. 00:02:24.532 --> 00:02:29.418 And we spent about five years at Google going from one project to the next. 00:02:29.435 --> 00:02:32.793 First we were in apps and and then eventually I worked on Google 00:02:32.793 --> 00:02:34.754 Voice and then before leaving. 00:02:35.174 --> 00:02:37.694 So that was super formative for us. 00:02:37.694 --> 00:02:39.764 We learned a lot of things, met a lot of great people. 00:02:39.764 --> 00:02:42.044 I think that was kind of the heyday for Google 00:02:42.974 --> 00:02:47.828 And and then after that we, we did some more startups food, food related things. 00:02:47.828 --> 00:02:52.345 And then we joined a company called Moz that does SEO here in Seattle. 00:02:53.260 --> 00:02:58.330 And we spent another four or five years there, I helped run a large 00:02:58.330 --> 00:03:01.450 portion of their engineering team and then grew some of their product areas. 00:03:01.517 --> 00:03:06.202 That was also really formative for us in terms of, you know, understanding 00:03:06.202 --> 00:03:10.672 that space, growing teams and you know, just going through various product 00:03:10.672 --> 00:03:12.202 life cycles and things like that. 00:03:12.284 --> 00:03:18.862 At the end of our MOS experience, we actually did another startup with a friend 00:03:19.132 --> 00:03:21.229 here in Seattle around crowdfunding. 00:03:21.349 --> 00:03:23.749 And this was actually crowdfunding for sports team. 00:03:23.809 --> 00:03:27.249 So, There was another platform that was really taking off. 00:03:27.370 --> 00:03:30.340 We found out about Stripe Connect and started using that. 00:03:30.850 --> 00:03:34.180 And really the, the basis for it was, you know, you have like 00:03:34.180 --> 00:03:35.440 a high school football team. 00:03:35.740 --> 00:03:38.140 They're selling candy bars and things like that. 00:03:38.200 --> 00:03:41.350 There's a lot of inefficiencies there and there's a lot of price 00:03:41.355 --> 00:03:46.010 gouging actually by merchants who sell products to schools to do that. 00:03:46.580 --> 00:03:47.330 And so there was. 00:03:48.205 --> 00:03:52.195 You know, 2017, 2018, there was a real impetus to you know, 00:03:52.195 --> 00:03:53.485 move all of that stuff online. 00:03:53.605 --> 00:03:56.875 And we have a lot of learnings that I think happy to chat about, but that was 00:03:56.875 --> 00:04:00.635 kind of formative for us in terms of thinking about, you know, how you move 00:04:00.865 --> 00:04:05.365 money from a set of people who wanna support something to, to the recipients 00:04:05.370 --> 00:04:06.925 and what all is involved in that. 00:04:07.735 --> 00:04:11.455 That was also just kind of how we, we transitioned from that into consulting. 00:04:11.455 --> 00:04:12.745 So we've been doing consulting for. 00:04:13.435 --> 00:04:16.223 Four years you know, we're kind of embedded engineers and product 00:04:16.223 --> 00:04:19.823 specialists in inside of organizations and to help them transfer in companies. 00:04:19.823 --> 00:04:24.176 And that's gives us a ton of flexibility and allows us to do cool things like what 00:04:24.176 --> 00:04:25.931 we've done over the last couple of years. 00:04:25.931 --> 00:04:28.436 At the beginning of the pandemic by the way, we launched 00:04:28.436 --> 00:04:29.786 something called Covid Trace. 00:04:30.056 --> 00:04:33.746 So we had the hot idea to do contact tracing. 00:04:33.844 --> 00:04:35.374 We tried to launch an app immediately. 00:04:35.374 --> 00:04:36.694 It was blocked by Google and Apple. 00:04:36.745 --> 00:04:37.345 Mike Bifulco: Oh wow. 00:04:37.470 --> 00:04:40.750 Dudley Carr: you're, you're not doing anything location based and we're gonna 00:04:40.750 --> 00:04:42.520 sort this out first, which is great. 00:04:42.550 --> 00:04:44.800 I think it was totally the right move on their part. 00:04:44.861 --> 00:04:48.429 We ended up adopting their the exposure notification. 00:04:48.435 --> 00:04:53.325 APIs that they have, and we ended up lo, I think we were the second 00:04:53.325 --> 00:04:55.005 app to launch in the United States. 00:04:55.005 --> 00:04:57.885 And so we launched with the state of Nevada and worked with them over the 00:04:57.885 --> 00:05:01.665 course of two years doing exposure notifications, rolling that out for 00:05:01.670 --> 00:05:06.435 iOS and Android, and then eventually moving all of Nevada off of our 00:05:06.435 --> 00:05:11.465 custom app onto IOS's, built-in exposure notification function. 00:05:12.290 --> 00:05:15.170 And at the same time building out other things in terms of getting 00:05:15.170 --> 00:05:16.670 results to people and things like that. 00:05:16.670 --> 00:05:20.872 So really interesting problems around health totally unanticipated. 00:05:20.934 --> 00:05:23.655 So that, that was actually that was all open source. 00:05:23.655 --> 00:05:26.404 We released all of that infrastructure, open source and the apps. 00:05:26.404 --> 00:05:29.584 And then, yeah, about a year ago we started on decade. 00:05:31.399 --> 00:05:31.849 Mike Bifulco: Wow. 00:05:32.119 --> 00:05:34.429 Yeah, that's some in incredible back history there. 00:05:34.457 --> 00:05:34.847 I, I. 00:05:36.002 --> 00:05:37.862 Was not prepared for that, that much. 00:05:37.927 --> 00:05:40.942 Incredible problem solving that you've gotten into in your, your career. 00:05:40.992 --> 00:05:41.532 For sure. 00:05:41.532 --> 00:05:44.442 As someone who lived through an entire pandemic of being, you know, 00:05:44.687 --> 00:05:47.177 Locked in my home and not leaving and being very concerned about 00:05:47.177 --> 00:05:48.377 public health and those things. 00:05:48.430 --> 00:05:51.070 Super, super cool to hear, hear you worked on that and, and 00:05:51.100 --> 00:05:52.660 obviously impacted so many people. 00:05:52.693 --> 00:05:55.491 And also, you know, collaborated with the, the big organizations 00:05:55.491 --> 00:05:56.311 like Apple and Google. 00:05:56.311 --> 00:05:57.630 That's massively cool to hear. 00:05:57.645 --> 00:06:00.178 I also don't think I realized that you and I had some sort of shared 00:06:00.183 --> 00:06:03.733 overlap not overlap, but, but maybe an odd Venn diagram of career stuff 00:06:03.733 --> 00:06:06.420 before working at Stripe, I worked at Google for a couple years. 00:06:06.430 --> 00:06:08.620 Not quite on Google Voice, on Google Assistant, so voice 00:06:08.620 --> 00:06:09.920 related stuff at Google. 00:06:09.920 --> 00:06:13.111 Although I'm no longer there and actually probably worth mentioning for posterity 00:06:13.203 --> 00:06:14.463 since you and I met at All Things Open. 00:06:14.463 --> 00:06:15.573 I'm also no longer at Stripe. 00:06:15.573 --> 00:06:18.922 So I'm, I've left Stripe in the past couple weeks, but I'm very curious 00:06:18.922 --> 00:06:22.204 to hear about your experiences with Stripe Connect and, and all that. 00:06:22.204 --> 00:06:22.732 And so. 00:06:23.227 --> 00:06:26.407 All of this history of all the crazy things you've done and, and like working 00:06:26.407 --> 00:06:30.282 with complex teams and big problems and across devices and problem spaces, 00:06:30.282 --> 00:06:32.802 and I'm sure languages and all the other things that have changed since 00:06:32.862 --> 00:06:36.349 what, 2003 when you first got into the the, the world of, of building things 00:06:36.424 --> 00:06:37.654 has led you to where you're at now. 00:06:37.654 --> 00:06:40.218 So tell me a little bit about Stack Aid and what you're doing. 00:06:40.285 --> 00:06:40.588 There. 00:06:41.923 --> 00:06:45.870 Dudley Carr: Yeah, so Stack stack is a service that allows you to fund 00:06:45.870 --> 00:06:50.610 your second first order and second order dependencies automatically. 00:06:50.673 --> 00:06:54.651 It, the impetus for it came about a year and a half ago when we. 00:06:54.971 --> 00:07:02.080 You know, repeatedly saw articles about people exasperated by their inability to 00:07:02.080 --> 00:07:07.060 sustain their open source project because, you know, the demands have increased on 00:07:07.570 --> 00:07:11.555 what they have to deliver and the reach, you the reach of their open sources 00:07:11.675 --> 00:07:16.445 beyond their wildest dreams, but, you know, they, they basically pay for it in 00:07:16.445 --> 00:07:20.923 their spare time or it takes away from other paying opportunities that they have. 00:07:20.928 --> 00:07:25.363 And so you see a lot of people kind of torn in those situations. 00:07:25.453 --> 00:07:27.273 We, that really resonated with us. 00:07:27.361 --> 00:07:32.131 As I mentioned, you know, we had spent time in the fundraising 00:07:32.461 --> 00:07:35.281 arena and we, you know, we saw. 00:07:36.391 --> 00:07:40.981 Definitely momentum around Get Up sponsors an open collective, but we, we thought 00:07:40.981 --> 00:07:42.841 that there was an opportunity there. 00:07:43.261 --> 00:07:47.461 You know, I think what's super interesting about the software development space as 00:07:47.461 --> 00:07:52.441 opposed to any other space where people are trying to raise money is that we 00:07:52.441 --> 00:07:55.771 know we know what, what you use, right? 00:07:55.891 --> 00:08:00.151 There's sometimes it's imperative, but increasingly it's a declarative. 00:08:02.146 --> 00:08:04.366 Way of specifying all your dependencies. 00:08:04.366 --> 00:08:09.406 And so we can, we can do so many things automatically to determine 00:08:09.473 --> 00:08:13.193 what you use and, and potentially influence how we allocate money. 00:08:13.313 --> 00:08:17.483 And so the, the, the seed of an idea was there and we started exploring, 00:08:17.573 --> 00:08:21.983 you know, the feasibility of it and what that would look like, and is it 00:08:21.983 --> 00:08:24.293 an effective model, things like that. 00:08:24.331 --> 00:08:26.491 And so that's been like the last year and it's, it's. 00:08:27.196 --> 00:08:28.246 Super interesting. 00:08:28.251 --> 00:08:30.856 Kind of flushing that out and we're, we've been super happy with the 00:08:30.856 --> 00:08:34.094 results and the initial reception when we launched a couple of months ago. 00:08:34.931 --> 00:08:35.471 Mike Bifulco: So. 00:08:35.599 --> 00:08:38.269 I've seen it and I'm sort of familiar with the product, but I wanna make sure 00:08:38.269 --> 00:08:41.219 that you know, it's abundantly clear what you mean when you're talking about this. 00:08:41.219 --> 00:08:44.241 So we're talking about funding open source projects in a way that is sort of 00:08:44.241 --> 00:08:48.462 sustainable and based on your dependency graph for projects that you're using. 00:08:48.462 --> 00:08:51.132 So when you say first and second order dependencies, what do you mean? 00:08:52.602 --> 00:08:52.752 Dudley Carr: Yeah. 00:08:52.752 --> 00:08:57.472 So by first order, so let's take a Packers saw JSON in the node E. 00:08:58.527 --> 00:09:04.077 The first order of dependencies are the the dependencies and dev dependencies 00:09:04.077 --> 00:09:07.257 that you list directly in that za js o n. 00:09:08.097 --> 00:09:13.047 Now, those first order dependencies in turn have their own za js o, 00:09:13.137 --> 00:09:14.667 where they list their dependencies. 00:09:14.672 --> 00:09:17.217 That would be the second order of dependencies. 00:09:17.787 --> 00:09:21.417 Now you can walk that tree down all the way down, and there are 00:09:21.417 --> 00:09:22.947 gonna be lots and lots more. 00:09:24.192 --> 00:09:27.912 not unusual for a project to have literally thousands of. 00:09:29.217 --> 00:09:31.047 Dependencies in their dependency tree. 00:09:31.797 --> 00:09:36.027 But you know, from a funding perspective, you have to draw the line somewhere. 00:09:36.117 --> 00:09:39.207 Otherwise, you know, you take a certain amount of money and divide 00:09:39.207 --> 00:09:43.167 it into tiny little pieces and it becomes somewhat meaningless. 00:09:43.254 --> 00:09:47.664 So we wanted to, you know, the, the easy thing was would be to 00:09:47.664 --> 00:09:49.854 just fund first order dependencies. 00:09:50.394 --> 00:09:53.634 But we, we realized, you know, a lot of those open source 00:09:53.634 --> 00:09:54.744 projects also want to give. 00:09:55.599 --> 00:09:57.729 And if we, you know, defaults matter. 00:09:57.789 --> 00:10:02.499 And we realize that if we came up with a mechanism that, you know, when you 00:10:02.499 --> 00:10:06.699 find a first order dependency, it passes some of that onto its dependencies. 00:10:07.179 --> 00:10:09.909 You know, you're doing that automatically for the ecosystem. 00:10:10.089 --> 00:10:13.959 You're bene, you don't have to have everyone opt-in in order to have 00:10:13.959 --> 00:10:15.639 further reach into the ecosystem. 00:10:16.239 --> 00:10:20.242 And so yeah, that was the impetus to fund first and second order depend. 00:10:21.772 --> 00:10:22.042 Mike Bifulco: Yeah. 00:10:22.042 --> 00:10:22.432 Got it. 00:10:22.432 --> 00:10:26.512 So from the, I I, gosh, I don't even know what, what you would consider to be the 00:10:26.512 --> 00:10:30.890 end user, but from the perspective of someone who is doing the funding, doing 00:10:30.890 --> 00:10:32.235 the supporting what does that look like? 00:10:32.235 --> 00:10:33.795 Like what is, what is the process for me? 00:10:33.795 --> 00:10:36.705 Say for a project I'm running, let's say APIs, you won't hate.com, right? 00:10:36.705 --> 00:10:38.145 It's a, it's a no JS project. 00:10:38.211 --> 00:10:40.891 We've got a whole heap of dependencies that are sort of built into this thing. 00:10:40.891 --> 00:10:42.128 What would I need to do to adopt. 00:10:44.528 --> 00:10:45.218 Dudley Carr: a great question. 00:10:45.218 --> 00:10:50.468 So, you know, when you go to Staca us, there's the first step in the 00:10:50.468 --> 00:10:55.199 onboarding process is oh, often thing with GitHub and actually adding the 00:10:55.199 --> 00:11:00.209 GitHub app to either your personal organization or some other organization 00:11:00.209 --> 00:11:06.216 where repositories are we then scanned those repositories for you know, files 00:11:06.216 --> 00:11:09.966 like Bax, J S O N, or you know, others depending on whatever language you're. 00:11:11.091 --> 00:11:16.175 And we use those declarative list of dependencies, we ingest that and 00:11:16.175 --> 00:11:18.815 start looking at that dependency tree. 00:11:19.625 --> 00:11:22.655 Once we have that, we, you know, we, we put you in the dashboard. 00:11:22.655 --> 00:11:26.291 We show you what we had discovered, like which files and which 00:11:26.291 --> 00:11:27.881 repositories we're pulling from. 00:11:28.631 --> 00:11:31.991 And we presume initially that you ne you want to fund all of those. 00:11:31.991 --> 00:11:34.121 You can, you can be selective, right? 00:11:34.121 --> 00:11:36.971 So I wanna fund these repositories and these package digest and things 00:11:36.971 --> 00:11:41.741 like, Based on that, based on the first order and second order 00:11:41.741 --> 00:11:43.421 dependencies we've pulled from that. 00:11:43.631 --> 00:11:46.787 And you can then indicate as a level of support that you 00:11:46.787 --> 00:11:48.287 wanna do on a monthly basis. 00:11:49.097 --> 00:11:52.847 We then calculate how much would go to each of those projects. 00:11:52.852 --> 00:11:56.678 So it's hard to des describe, but there's a tree that we have in the, 00:11:56.858 --> 00:12:01.350 in the dashboard and it shows you, okay, you've got React or low dash, for 00:12:01.355 --> 00:12:04.080 example, as a first order dependency. 00:12:04.080 --> 00:12:07.320 It has these second order dependencies and it shows you 00:12:07.320 --> 00:12:11.430 the amount of your subscription that goes to each one of those. 00:12:11.430 --> 00:12:16.950 And so that breaks down when you're, the next step is to enter a credit card 00:12:16.950 --> 00:12:18.600 and then, then you're off to the races. 00:12:20.685 --> 00:12:21.075 Mike Bifulco: Yeah. 00:12:21.135 --> 00:12:21.495 Okay. 00:12:21.495 --> 00:12:24.863 So from, from my perspective, it is, you know off with GitHub, 00:12:24.863 --> 00:12:28.602 get this thing added to my stack of or to my GitHub organization. 00:12:28.602 --> 00:12:32.174 It'll go and, and I guess introspect and look at, or I guess inspect is 00:12:32.179 --> 00:12:33.224 probably even the right word there. 00:12:33.404 --> 00:12:36.217 Go look at all the projects I have and give me the the first and second order 00:12:36.217 --> 00:12:38.281 dependencies for each is the target. 00:12:38.281 --> 00:12:41.324 Then from there to say like, just using easy numbers I want to 00:12:41.324 --> 00:12:42.344 donate a hundred bucks a month. 00:12:42.964 --> 00:12:44.284 To these various organizations. 00:12:44.284 --> 00:12:47.434 I, I have one fixed cost and Stack Aid kind of does the rest from there. 00:12:48.839 --> 00:12:50.219 Dudley Carr: That's, that's exactly right. 00:12:50.279 --> 00:12:50.759 Yes. 00:12:50.794 --> 00:12:51.154 Mike Bifulco: Yeah. 00:12:51.574 --> 00:12:51.928 Wow. 00:12:51.953 --> 00:12:54.953 So how, well man, I, I feel like I have so many questions. 00:12:54.953 --> 00:12:56.183 How does the money get from A to B? 00:12:56.213 --> 00:12:58.196 Like, how do you track down the the various projects 00:12:58.201 --> 00:12:59.126 that are then being funded? 00:13:00.201 --> 00:13:03.801 Dudley Carr: Yeah, so that's the fun part about building something like 00:13:03.801 --> 00:13:07.491 this is because it's effectively kind of like a marketplace, right? 00:13:07.671 --> 00:13:09.831 I mean, we have, we're engaging with both. 00:13:10.030 --> 00:13:14.908 Individual developers and companies who are supporters and of course have a 00:13:14.908 --> 00:13:16.738 relationship with open source, maintain. 00:13:17.888 --> 00:13:22.317 So we have slowly been reaching out to open source maintainers 00:13:22.407 --> 00:13:28.677 kind of as we drive awareness or if they've receiving funding, we will 00:13:28.677 --> 00:13:30.147 reach out to them individually. 00:13:30.228 --> 00:13:35.178 , but we also have been realizing that, you know, a lot of these 00:13:35.178 --> 00:13:36.468 people don't know who we are. 00:13:36.495 --> 00:13:39.705 There's a lot of things grabbing at their attention. 00:13:40.125 --> 00:13:43.755 So if they have an existing relationship with GI UP sponsors or 00:13:43.755 --> 00:13:47.855 Open Collective, we actually just use our corporate credit card and 00:13:47.855 --> 00:13:49.715 make the donation on those platforms. 00:13:49.781 --> 00:13:53.381 So our, you know, our goal is to get the money in their hands. 00:13:53.430 --> 00:13:57.120 And if they have an existing relationship, we, we lean on that. 00:13:57.150 --> 00:13:59.130 So that, that's worked out well. 00:13:59.130 --> 00:14:03.580 But but primarily over time, I think for for the ease of developers and to 00:14:03.790 --> 00:14:07.690 give them more control in terms of, you know, how those funds are allocated. 00:14:07.690 --> 00:14:09.820 Especially if there are multiple people working on a project. 00:14:09.820 --> 00:14:10.190 Things like. 00:14:10.190 --> 00:14:13.590 You know, we we would like people to, you know, claim their project on stack. 00:14:14.355 --> 00:14:15.700 Mike Bifulco: Yeah, sure. 00:14:15.700 --> 00:14:16.464 What does that look like? 00:14:18.009 --> 00:14:21.013 Dudley Carr: So we use Stripe Connect under underneath. 00:14:21.037 --> 00:14:25.001 So you know, when you log into the dashboard and you owe off you also 00:14:25.001 --> 00:14:27.011 have to oth with GI up at the moment. 00:14:27.087 --> 00:14:27.730 We're working on other. 00:14:27.730 --> 00:14:32.933 Hosting platforms, but you o often we actually verify that you actually are 00:14:32.933 --> 00:14:35.363 a maintainer on those repositories that you're trying to claim. 00:14:35.963 --> 00:14:38.437 We list out those repositories you claim them. 00:14:38.442 --> 00:14:41.957 And then as part of that claiming process, we also need 00:14:41.957 --> 00:14:43.926 to collect the a Stripe account. 00:14:44.136 --> 00:14:46.056 So we send you over to Stripe. 00:14:46.476 --> 00:14:49.162 They get all of the, the details necessary. 00:14:49.162 --> 00:14:52.475 To basically give us a, a stripe account so that we can deposit 00:14:52.475 --> 00:14:54.711 funds into at the end of the month. 00:14:54.711 --> 00:14:55.456 And then that's it. 00:14:55.516 --> 00:14:59.070 Then you're, then you're able to collect money from stack. 00:14:59.845 --> 00:15:00.175 Mike Bifulco: Yeah. 00:15:00.265 --> 00:15:01.075 Wow, that's great. 00:15:01.140 --> 00:15:04.410 So, so I'd imagine there's some population of people who are very pleased to find 00:15:04.410 --> 00:15:07.451 out they can come to Stack Aid, click a couple of buttons and have money being 00:15:07.451 --> 00:15:09.030 funneled into their project every month. 00:15:09.030 --> 00:15:11.419 That, that's gotta feel pretty cool to be able to, I don't know, 00:15:11.419 --> 00:15:12.919 land that dream so seamlessly. 00:15:13.692 --> 00:15:17.862 Dudley Carr: Yeah, I mean, I think it speaks more distract than to us. 00:15:17.862 --> 00:15:22.542 I mean, honestly, that flow is amazing and there's so much complexity abstracted. 00:15:22.563 --> 00:15:26.119 But I think from an end developer perspective, it is surprisingly 00:15:26.119 --> 00:15:27.679 easy to get up and running. 00:15:28.259 --> 00:15:30.885 And yeah, and I think it's, it's pretty great, you know, when you 00:15:30.885 --> 00:15:35.385 show up that a lot of the times there's, you know, a couple of bucks 00:15:35.385 --> 00:15:38.775 at the very least waiting for you there, and you immediately get that. 00:15:38.775 --> 00:15:43.605 I think that has been an important part of stack it, which is, you know, 00:15:43.610 --> 00:15:45.945 you, you don't have to be a developer. 00:15:45.975 --> 00:15:48.615 Like the developer doesn't have to have an account in order 00:15:48.975 --> 00:15:50.475 for money to accrue for them. 00:15:50.578 --> 00:15:55.408 So you know, you have this kind of problem I think on GitHub sponsors 00:15:55.408 --> 00:16:00.028 an open collective initially where people didn't have a relationship 00:16:00.208 --> 00:16:02.578 with those platforms, so there wasn't a way to get money to them. 00:16:03.058 --> 00:16:06.208 A lot of people have set it up, but there's also a large 00:16:06.208 --> 00:16:08.548 portion of the ecosystem that has no relationship with them. 00:16:09.148 --> 00:16:13.138 And so it was important for us to be able to accrue money and, you know, 00:16:13.678 --> 00:16:15.298 show people that you can actually. 00:16:16.238 --> 00:16:19.800 there's money in the open source that they've contributed and have 00:16:19.800 --> 00:16:22.000 that as a carrot for them to sign up. 00:16:23.130 --> 00:16:23.670 Mike Bifulco: Sure. 00:16:23.970 --> 00:16:27.486 Yeah, that's, that's a really interesting model and having been exposed to GitHub 00:16:27.486 --> 00:16:30.456 sponsors a little bit, I know that like one of the nice things that comes along 00:16:30.461 --> 00:16:34.596 with this actually may, might be a Stripe Connect requirement, but to access 00:16:34.596 --> 00:16:38.406 Stripe Connect, you have to essentially have viable tax information, right? 00:16:38.406 --> 00:16:40.836 Like the, the right information to be able to be paid out. 00:16:40.948 --> 00:16:43.318 So that you're not just, you know, sending off money to some 00:16:43.318 --> 00:16:45.088 anonymous bucket somewhere. 00:16:45.155 --> 00:16:48.818 But instead, theoretically it's tied to like an L L C or an individual proprietor 00:16:48.818 --> 00:16:52.031 or, you know, a more complex corporation in the case of vicar businesses. 00:16:52.082 --> 00:16:55.158 But a lot of that is, I would imagine abstracted away from you. 00:16:55.158 --> 00:16:57.651 You just need them to, to, you know, click the button and connect 00:16:57.677 --> 00:16:59.570 to stack with Stripe Connect. 00:17:00.230 --> 00:17:03.964 Dudley Carr: One of the biggest concerns that we had out of the gate was you. 00:17:04.699 --> 00:17:06.679 All open source doesn't happen in the United States. 00:17:06.679 --> 00:17:10.879 There are people across the world, and the United States in particular has a 00:17:10.879 --> 00:17:12.559 requirement called know your customer. 00:17:13.129 --> 00:17:17.989 And so you need a lot of details in order to verify their identity and make, you 00:17:17.989 --> 00:17:23.609 know, make sure that this isn't for money laundering or some other scheme like that. 00:17:23.630 --> 00:17:26.780 And so that is actually all abstracted away for us. 00:17:26.848 --> 00:17:29.638 And that is pretty phenomenal if we. 00:17:31.453 --> 00:17:33.043 A, a two person operation. 00:17:33.043 --> 00:17:34.383 There's just no way you're gonna 00:17:35.953 --> 00:17:36.463 Mike Bifulco: Yeah, 00:17:36.583 --> 00:17:36.863 Dudley Carr: that. 00:17:37.183 --> 00:17:39.733 Mike Bifulco: the, the scope and scale of those money laundering operations 00:17:39.733 --> 00:17:43.941 is far more complex and sophisticated than, you know, I think we might realize 00:17:43.941 --> 00:17:45.441 as, as sort of an average consumer. 00:17:45.493 --> 00:17:48.297 You know, again, I'm, I'm not at Stripe any longer, but during my tenure there, 00:17:48.297 --> 00:17:51.758 like you, you do Financial crimes training and it's pretty astonishing 00:17:51.758 --> 00:17:54.518 in the creative ways people, you know, will, will go to lengths to 00:17:54.518 --> 00:17:57.602 make money disappear or just harder to trace whatever the case may be. 00:17:57.602 --> 00:17:59.402 And nice that you don't have to worry about that. 00:17:59.402 --> 00:18:03.042 There's a lot of mechanisms in place to detect and prevent that fraud as well. 00:18:03.112 --> 00:18:03.147 . Okay. 00:18:03.147 --> 00:18:05.926 So I, I want to know a little bit about when did you what, what 00:18:05.926 --> 00:18:08.496 signals were you given that this was something that was going to work? 00:18:08.496 --> 00:18:11.110 In other words that when you're starting to build stack, because it's only a year 00:18:11.110 --> 00:18:14.557 and change old at this point was there a moment or a series of events that sort of 00:18:14.562 --> 00:18:17.287 made you feel like, oh, this is something that actually has some momentum behind it? 00:18:19.772 --> 00:18:22.712 Dudley Carr: Yeah, I think well, I think we had to prove to ourselves that 00:18:22.712 --> 00:18:28.712 it's viable and, you know, we, we have, there's some nuance to the model in 00:18:28.712 --> 00:18:30.752 terms of how we distribute that money. 00:18:30.752 --> 00:18:33.962 And, and more importantly, what's interesting about this problem is 00:18:34.172 --> 00:18:35.792 that it's not a one-time thing. 00:18:35.852 --> 00:18:38.822 So if no one shows up to collect the money, what do you do with that money? 00:18:38.912 --> 00:18:40.892 So there's a time component to it as well. 00:18:41.377 --> 00:18:41.867 Mike Bifulco: Yeah. 00:18:42.662 --> 00:18:44.342 Dudley Carr: we wanted, so we. 00:18:44.897 --> 00:18:49.217 There's complexity around the model to some degree in terms of implementing 00:18:49.217 --> 00:18:55.912 and doing it right, and we, we knew that the model itself needed to be validated 00:18:55.917 --> 00:19:01.792 and be comparable to things like get up sponsors and, and Open Collective. 00:19:02.512 --> 00:19:05.692 So we actually spent a large portion of the development. 00:19:07.057 --> 00:19:08.407 Building out a simulation. 00:19:09.127 --> 00:19:13.744 And so there's a, like simulation Dots US has. 00:19:13.758 --> 00:19:19.668 It's, it's effectively like the, it's our entire site, but it has 5,000 00:19:19.878 --> 00:19:25.218 made up subscribers at various price points using Pax JSONs that we had 00:19:25.218 --> 00:19:28.348 discovered on GitHub using source graph. 00:19:28.353 --> 00:19:31.473 Source graph was pretty instrumental in terms of d doing that. 00:19:31.938 --> 00:19:35.808 And we, we needed package js os that weren't on n p, right? 00:19:35.868 --> 00:19:39.558 We didn't want to grab load Dash's, patch json accidentally. 00:19:39.558 --> 00:19:43.188 And because that, that's not representative of potential end users. 00:19:44.088 --> 00:19:49.891 So we took those 5,000 subscribers, plugged them in, you know, gave them 00:19:49.891 --> 00:19:54.391 some subscription amount between $25 per month to a hundred dollars per month. 00:19:55.201 --> 00:19:55.681 And we. 00:19:56.371 --> 00:19:58.501 Look to see what happens. 00:19:58.501 --> 00:19:58.891 Right? 00:19:59.161 --> 00:20:01.741 What's the outcome of, of this? 00:20:01.741 --> 00:20:05.791 Like, is it just a couple of projects that get all the money or, you know, 00:20:05.791 --> 00:20:10.231 what does that distribution look like and the, the, the end result is that, 00:20:10.231 --> 00:20:14.558 yeah, you, you still have a power power law curve just like you do on 00:20:14.558 --> 00:20:19.019 Get up sponsors in Open Collective, but it was it was more stretched. 00:20:19.754 --> 00:20:25.484 So we ended up, we ended up funding a larger percentage of the, let's 00:20:25.484 --> 00:20:31.304 say the top 25% of funds included a significantly larger set of projects. 00:20:31.364 --> 00:20:35.954 So even though they're at the tip of this parallel curve, they, you 00:20:35.954 --> 00:20:37.214 know, there's more of them included. 00:20:37.214 --> 00:20:37.784 That's great. 00:20:38.174 --> 00:20:41.054 But the middle, the middle was much broader. 00:20:41.264 --> 00:20:41.534 Right. 00:20:41.564 --> 00:20:46.274 A lot more of the money was going into that, and so that, that was the validation 00:20:46.334 --> 00:20:50.624 that we needed, right, internally to know that, yeah, we can reach more of this. 00:20:51.314 --> 00:20:56.924 I think in terms of the broader like readiness for this type of product, 00:20:57.014 --> 00:21:01.514 I, I think, you know, there's just a drumbeat of vulnerabilities 00:21:01.934 --> 00:21:03.584 and also just individuals. 00:21:04.664 --> 00:21:09.194 Really talking about the lack of funding, the lack of maintenance 00:21:09.194 --> 00:21:10.364 around this, around this. 00:21:10.364 --> 00:21:15.018 And so that is the validation that we continue to look for you know, 00:21:15.018 --> 00:21:18.138 as an opportunity to do something about, I think we're, we're very 00:21:18.138 --> 00:21:21.830 nascent in terms of evangelizing this and, and driving awareness. 00:21:21.893 --> 00:21:27.258 But I think, you know, those two things kind of has given us the confidence that 00:21:27.283 --> 00:21:31.132 you know, the timing is hopefully right and it's the right product for the time. 00:21:31.912 --> 00:21:32.362 Mike Bifulco: Yeah. 00:21:32.422 --> 00:21:32.932 Yeah. 00:21:32.963 --> 00:21:36.743 I, it's an interesting, almost, it's not that you have a chicken and an egg problem 00:21:36.764 --> 00:21:40.214 to, to work with, but I feel like the whole funding nut to crack is that like 00:21:40.219 --> 00:21:44.024 we, we all on some level, developers, engineering teams or organizations 00:21:44.084 --> 00:21:47.886 understand that it's important to Keep these projects funded so that they stay up 00:21:47.886 --> 00:21:51.246 to date so that vulnerabilities get shut down, bugs get addressed, functionality 00:21:51.246 --> 00:21:52.856 gets added, whatever the case may be. 00:21:54.311 --> 00:21:58.200 it seems like a lot of the social pressure lands on individuals to do the 00:21:58.200 --> 00:22:01.683 funding in a lot of ways, and I think that maybe is a law of numbers thing. 00:22:01.683 --> 00:22:04.293 Like people you know, you get a lot more call to action as an 00:22:04.293 --> 00:22:05.703 individual to go fund things. 00:22:05.703 --> 00:22:09.067 But my guess is that the bulk of the volume of money is coming 00:22:09.067 --> 00:22:12.067 from organizations who are willing to fund open source things. 00:22:12.217 --> 00:22:12.997 Is that roughly. 00:22:14.167 --> 00:22:18.296 Dudley Carr: Yeah, so we actually were able to analyze all of the 00:22:18.296 --> 00:22:20.186 Open Collective transactions. 00:22:20.366 --> 00:22:25.826 They do this amazing job of every transaction on Open, the Open Source 00:22:25.826 --> 00:22:27.746 collective, on Open Collective. 00:22:27.814 --> 00:22:30.034 You can literally download all of the transactions and 00:22:30.034 --> 00:22:32.414 so, I did that and I went 00:22:32.434 --> 00:22:33.094 Mike Bifulco: Oh wow. 00:22:33.544 --> 00:22:38.734 Dudley Carr: And yes, you know, organizations like Google and, and 00:22:38.734 --> 00:22:41.584 others, they do put in a ton of money. 00:22:41.944 --> 00:22:47.281 But if I remember correctly, I would say, Over 60% of it are from individuals 00:22:47.281 --> 00:22:49.381 donating at at much smaller amounts. 00:22:49.381 --> 00:22:53.371 So they're, they have a long tail and it is a significant 00:22:53.376 --> 00:22:55.831 portion of the contributions. 00:22:55.831 --> 00:22:59.592 And so it, it's, it wasn't as skewed as you would think 00:22:59.630 --> 00:23:01.022 towards large organizations. 00:23:01.307 --> 00:23:04.011 Mike Bifulco: That that is a, a bigger percentage than I would've guess. 00:23:04.011 --> 00:23:04.881 That's really interesting. 00:23:05.016 --> 00:23:08.801 So what, what is your call to action or maybe your pitch for those who 00:23:08.801 --> 00:23:10.631 might have the capacity to donate? 00:23:10.631 --> 00:23:14.307 Like how, how is the I guess the, is there a sales process for this? 00:23:14.312 --> 00:23:16.647 Is it something that you're going to organizations and people and trying to get 00:23:16.677 --> 00:23:19.047 them to discover and use Stack as donors? 00:23:20.277 --> 00:23:23.847 Dudley Carr: You know, I think, I think there are certain organizations 00:23:23.847 --> 00:23:28.684 that are very attuned to open source and, you know, they have open source 00:23:28.924 --> 00:23:33.904 program offices and they are actively engaging those communities and they are. 00:23:35.239 --> 00:23:38.089 they're looking, you know, they're either doing this themselves. 00:23:38.092 --> 00:23:43.572 So century is a customer of Stack and they did a ton of this by themselves. 00:23:43.572 --> 00:23:47.622 They, they wrote custom things to analyze their dependencies, and they had a big 00:23:47.627 --> 00:23:51.732 spreadsheet and it's super impressive, but it's incredibly time consuming. 00:23:52.452 --> 00:23:56.892 And I think Indeed and others are also analyzing their dependencies and trying 00:23:56.892 --> 00:23:58.752 to figure out where to allocate money. 00:23:59.112 --> 00:24:01.242 So this is something that is happening today. 00:24:01.282 --> 00:24:05.294 So we're looking to engage with those types of organizations and 00:24:05.294 --> 00:24:10.094 understand, you know, how STACK can potentially be a part of that. 00:24:10.137 --> 00:24:13.227 So I think step one is to really engage with organizations 00:24:13.227 --> 00:24:14.457 that are receptive to it. 00:24:14.457 --> 00:24:17.067 I think that's the kind of low hanging fruit. 00:24:17.157 --> 00:24:21.777 And I think beyond that, you know, there's, there's or organizations 00:24:21.777 --> 00:24:23.157 that are certainly consuming large. 00:24:23.982 --> 00:24:29.712 Portion of open source and you know, there's kind of a, a sales, different 00:24:29.712 --> 00:24:33.612 sales process around, you know, here are the ways that you engage with 00:24:33.612 --> 00:24:35.172 open source at those organizations. 00:24:35.592 --> 00:24:37.362 Funding is one aspect of that. 00:24:37.572 --> 00:24:40.781 And so I think over time that's where that conversation's going. 00:24:41.291 --> 00:24:44.921 But I think the organizations that are currently funding open source to some 00:24:44.921 --> 00:24:49.406 degree, You know, they're kind of making the case for that and, and we, you know, 00:24:49.646 --> 00:24:54.026 we're trying to expand that conversation and, and as well as piggyback off of that, 00:24:55.756 --> 00:24:55.991 Mike Bifulco: right? 00:24:56.081 --> 00:24:56.441 Yeah. 00:24:56.471 --> 00:24:59.771 It's nice that it's kind of the zeitgeist is that it seems that support has really 00:24:59.776 --> 00:25:03.161 changed in the past, I don't know, maybe 10 years to, like open source is 00:25:03.166 --> 00:25:06.531 something we can try or should try to, open source is something that, you know, 00:25:06.621 --> 00:25:09.941 I is the infrastructure of the internet in a lot of ways and something that you 00:25:09.941 --> 00:25:14.143 know, almost the, the ethical impetus is to support open source projects and to 00:25:14.143 --> 00:25:15.673 also be a part of that if you're able. 00:25:16.918 --> 00:25:17.728 So, okay. 00:25:17.796 --> 00:25:20.942 I, I guess one more important question then, if I'm an open source developer 00:25:20.961 --> 00:25:24.766 what, what are actions I can take to be proactive about I, I guess making 00:25:24.766 --> 00:25:28.238 sure that I'm, I'm covered by stack or that you know, that I'm doing 00:25:28.243 --> 00:25:29.408 the right things to seek funding. 00:25:30.528 --> 00:25:32.618 Dudley Carr: Yeah, I think you know, one. 00:25:33.503 --> 00:25:41.093 One theory that we have is that, you know, the, there are organizations 00:25:41.093 --> 00:25:44.363 like we were just talking about that are attuned and are willing to donate, 00:25:44.513 --> 00:25:50.243 but I, I actually think a fundamental shift will is dependent on individual 00:25:50.243 --> 00:25:56.513 developers donating and independent of the platform, but actively participating 00:25:56.513 --> 00:26:01.598 in that way of funding open source be it GI UP sponsors, open Collective Stack. 00:26:02.378 --> 00:26:05.888 Thanks, DD Dev, any of those platforms is a good way to start. 00:26:05.888 --> 00:26:11.138 But there, there has, you know, we have to have that expectation that developers 00:26:11.138 --> 00:26:14.528 are doing this just like they do other types of open source contributions. 00:26:14.528 --> 00:26:15.428 And I think that. 00:26:16.523 --> 00:26:21.923 That groundswell of developers participating and educating and kind of 00:26:21.923 --> 00:26:25.313 demanding this in their organizations is what actually turns the tide. 00:26:25.703 --> 00:26:30.803 And so our focus initially is actually to get individual developers to come 00:26:30.803 --> 00:26:34.493 on board and we're, we hope that we're. 00:26:35.168 --> 00:26:37.778 You know, one of those solutions that makes it a lot simpler. 00:26:37.778 --> 00:26:40.778 But if GitHub sponsors is the way that you do it, great. 00:26:40.898 --> 00:26:41.348 Right? 00:26:41.498 --> 00:26:42.638 Go, go on there. 00:26:42.818 --> 00:26:45.938 Fund, fund the people or the projects that you really care about. 00:26:46.478 --> 00:26:48.248 But I think that speaks volumes, right? 00:26:48.333 --> 00:26:51.813 And that I, I think is the thing that actually moves the needle. 00:26:51.813 --> 00:26:54.183 And those platforms have made it simpler. 00:26:54.363 --> 00:26:56.883 We hopefully have made it simpler based on, you know, what 00:26:56.883 --> 00:26:58.113 some set of people care about. 00:26:58.683 --> 00:27:02.523 But, you know, our, our goal is to evangelize individual developers. 00:27:03.673 --> 00:27:04.193 Contributing more. 00:27:06.168 --> 00:27:08.428 Mike Bifulco: Yeah, that's a noble conceit and definitely one of those things 00:27:08.428 --> 00:27:12.154 that I think all of the people listening to the show can probably relate to. 00:27:12.226 --> 00:27:13.636 I certainly identify with it. 00:27:13.641 --> 00:27:16.947 I, one of the things I've been mulling over a lot lately especially, especially 00:27:16.947 --> 00:27:19.527 in the past few weeks that I've been like reconsidering my personal budget and the 00:27:19.527 --> 00:27:22.917 way I allocate money for things is that I, I think I would like to be a little 00:27:22.917 --> 00:27:25.137 more public in sharing and explaining. 00:27:25.387 --> 00:27:28.357 The ways that I spend money in four good ways, right? 00:27:28.357 --> 00:27:31.117 Like charities that I donate to on one side, but open source things that 00:27:31.117 --> 00:27:32.827 I donate to projects that I support. 00:27:33.097 --> 00:27:36.847 And also, this is more on the creator economy side, but like Patreon and 00:27:36.847 --> 00:27:39.067 things like that, where there's like, you know, I love this podcast, so 00:27:39.072 --> 00:27:41.647 I give them a dollar a month, which is, you know, more than they would 00:27:41.647 --> 00:27:43.207 ever get from me clicking on ads. 00:27:43.207 --> 00:27:44.707 I could click ads every day for a week. 00:27:44.707 --> 00:27:45.816 And wouldn't give them a book. 00:27:45.874 --> 00:27:47.283 And it goes a lot further than you would think. 00:27:47.332 --> 00:27:49.702 And it, it's funny, I've been kind of thinking that that's 00:27:49.702 --> 00:27:50.752 something that belongs in. 00:27:51.537 --> 00:27:54.267 Almost public profile, like I should be sharing this somewhere 00:27:54.567 --> 00:27:58.768 and making that a part of the my, my persona, my support for the world. 00:27:58.827 --> 00:28:01.181 And I think that that's something that we have a, great opportunity 00:28:01.181 --> 00:28:04.604 to do with projects like Stack A and with other things that we all 00:28:04.604 --> 00:28:07.934 participate in because it also creates that social pressure and that. 00:28:07.954 --> 00:28:12.310 Impression that expectation that part of being a, a good citizen as a developer 00:28:12.310 --> 00:28:15.251 when you can and if you can, and if you have, you know, the, honestly the 00:28:15.256 --> 00:28:18.400 mountains of privilege that I'm sitting on top of, like, you should be giving back. 00:28:18.403 --> 00:28:19.135 I really like that. 00:28:19.135 --> 00:28:23.115 And I, one of the things that I like about STACK is honestly the, the tree view of 00:28:23.115 --> 00:28:26.775 the dependencies and seeing the amount of impact that, you know, even a few 00:28:26.775 --> 00:28:28.949 bucks a month can have is like visceral. 00:28:29.009 --> 00:28:32.729 You really feel like you, you see that not only are you using this cascade 00:28:32.729 --> 00:28:35.579 of things to power whatever project you're working on, but you can also 00:28:35.579 --> 00:28:37.214 give back to them fairly directly. 00:28:37.263 --> 00:28:39.453 And, there's infrastructure in place to do that for you. 00:28:39.513 --> 00:28:42.735 I think that's really exciting and I think it's a noble cause and I'm hoping 00:28:42.740 --> 00:28:45.909 it's something that a lot of the folks who are listening to the podcast will be 00:28:45.909 --> 00:28:49.128 able to jump into and go ahead long into supporting, but also benefiting from. 00:28:50.523 --> 00:28:50.763 Dudley Carr: Yeah. 00:28:50.763 --> 00:28:51.693 No, I appreciate that. 00:28:51.693 --> 00:28:55.833 I, I think what you're saying really resonates with us in that 00:28:56.223 --> 00:28:58.473 how you spend your money matters. 00:28:58.533 --> 00:29:01.969 You know, we are in a position of privilege where, you know, we 00:29:02.029 --> 00:29:05.239 we have discretionary money that we can funnel towards things. 00:29:05.329 --> 00:29:07.789 And I think, I think you nailed it. 00:29:07.849 --> 00:29:11.704 You know, a lot of these developers are, you know, at the moment 00:29:11.737 --> 00:29:13.417 maybe a couple of bucks per month. 00:29:13.438 --> 00:29:17.668 You know, we're still small, but I think it, it really matters to those 00:29:17.668 --> 00:29:23.098 developers partly because it is a real recognition of what they're doing and 00:29:23.128 --> 00:29:27.118 they know that someone took the time and their money, you know, to do that. 00:29:27.718 --> 00:29:29.248 And I think that's super powerful. 00:29:29.248 --> 00:29:32.368 I think it's easy to dismiss it as, oh, it's, you know, it's a trivial 00:29:32.368 --> 00:29:33.658 sum of money or something of the. 00:29:34.663 --> 00:29:39.103 But you know, when you are working on something, and a lot of times, you know, 00:29:39.103 --> 00:29:42.133 you can look at your MPM install numbers, like, oh yeah, that's through the roof. 00:29:42.133 --> 00:29:45.913 But this is, you know, getting an email from someone saying 00:29:46.063 --> 00:29:47.203 like, I like your project. 00:29:47.203 --> 00:29:49.033 That's really visceral as well. 00:29:49.573 --> 00:29:50.023 Mike Bifulco: Yeah. 00:29:50.023 --> 00:29:51.493 Dudley Carr: like people actually just paying. 00:29:51.583 --> 00:29:53.443 I think that's an incredible way. 00:29:53.443 --> 00:29:57.763 And so hopefully people are not put off by, you know, initially like, oh, the, 00:29:57.763 --> 00:29:59.503 the dollar amounts are not significant. 00:30:00.103 --> 00:30:04.843 It, it, it supports that individual at so many different levels. 00:30:04.843 --> 00:30:09.725 And so yeah, how you spend your money matters and and it has a really great 00:30:09.725 --> 00:30:11.375 upside on the other other side of it. 00:30:12.035 --> 00:30:12.485 Mike Bifulco: Yeah. 00:30:12.735 --> 00:30:14.885 , it's pretty profound and an energizing thing for me. 00:30:14.984 --> 00:30:17.534 Well, Dudley, thanks so much for coming and hanging out today. 00:30:17.561 --> 00:30:20.331 I have two important questions for you before I let you go. 00:30:20.331 --> 00:30:23.731 One is I wanna know how APIs you won't hate listeners can find you and 00:30:23.731 --> 00:30:24.991 talk to you if they're interested. 00:30:25.261 --> 00:30:26.854 And where can they go to get started with? 00:30:28.954 --> 00:30:29.734 Dudley Carr: Absolutely. 00:30:29.808 --> 00:30:30.018 Yeah. 00:30:30.018 --> 00:30:39.618 So you can email me at dudley dod e y stack.us and our website is stack a.us. 00:30:39.619 --> 00:30:42.729 I think if you search for Stack Google, we're number one. 00:30:42.769 --> 00:30:46.519 And you know, as we were chatting earlier, it's, it's super simple to get started. 00:30:46.669 --> 00:30:49.510 If you run into any issues please reach out and we're, 00:30:49.580 --> 00:30:51.220 we're happy to answer questions. 00:30:51.280 --> 00:30:54.213 But yeah, it's pretty self-service at the moment. 00:30:54.393 --> 00:30:56.943 Just click on the button o off and then hopefully you're off to 00:30:56.943 --> 00:31:02.073 the races and, you know, always looking for more feedback and, Yeah. 00:31:02.073 --> 00:31:05.043 No, we, we appreciate every, every person who signs up and 00:31:06.153 --> 00:31:07.293 happy to answer questions. 00:31:07.968 --> 00:31:08.268 Mike Bifulco: Great. 00:31:08.358 --> 00:31:08.838 Wonderful. 00:31:09.168 --> 00:31:10.638 Dudley, thanks so much for hanging out today. 00:31:10.747 --> 00:31:11.827 It's been a pleasure having you. 00:31:11.832 --> 00:31:14.572 And I'd love to catch up again you know, maybe in a few months or ear down 00:31:14.572 --> 00:31:15.482 the line to see how things are going. 00:31:16.327 --> 00:31:16.867 Dudley Carr: Absolutely. 00:31:16.872 --> 00:31:18.067 Thanks so much for having me. 00:31:18.067 --> 00:31:18.607 Really appreciate it. 00:31:19.132 --> 00:31:19.792 Mike Bifulco: Yeah, of course. 00:31:19.792 --> 00:31:20.092 Take care. 00:31:20.887 --> 00:31:21.247 Dudley Carr: Bye-bye.