---
title: Building Companies that Devs & DevOps Teams Love, And Avoiding Expensive Mistakes
description: Heavybit talk on the expensive mistakes developer-tools founders make, drawn from the ones I made building Chef from open source into an enterprise infrastructure company.
doc_version: "1.0"
last_updated: 2013-06-25
slug: building-companies-devops-teams-love-jesse-robbins
outlet: Heavybit
author: Jesse Robbins
date: 2013-06-25
url: https://www.heavybit.com/library/video/building-companies-that-devs-and-devops-teams-love-and-avoiding-expensive-mistakes
type: Video
excerpt: Heavybit talk on the expensive mistakes developer-tools founders make, drawn from the ones I made building Chef from open source into an enterprise infrastructure company.
tags:
  - Developer Tools
  - DevOps
  - Engineering Culture
  - Venture Capital
  - Seed Stage Investing
duration: 20:00
thumbnail: https://cdn.sanity.io/images/50q6fr1p/production/13253cc3b5414390cc1a03d1fa8016b7c4e8e6cf-1850x712.jpg
---

This talk covers the expensive mistakes I made founding Chef and the patterns I keep seeing developer-tools founders repeat. The gap between building something technically impressive and building something teams adopt at scale is where most companies die. Great technology does not sell itself.

The lessons cover product positioning, developer experience, pricing, and the go-to-market traps that catch technical founders. I made most of these mistakes firsthand building Chef from an open-source project into an enterprise infrastructure company. Learn a dollar of lesson for every one you spend in failure.

## Also Mentioned

- Jesse Robbins (person)
- [Heavybit](https://www.heavybit.com) (company)
- [Chef Software](https://www.chef.io) (company)
- Amazon (company)

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