This week we’re talking with Alex MacCaw — he’s well known for his work as founder and CEO of Clearbit. In May of 2021, Alex shared a personal update with the world on his blog. After much reflection, he decided to step down as CEO of Clearbit to go back to his roots. In his words, “I love the early stages of company building. Hacking together code, setting up the Stripe account, getting the first customer. That’s my jam.”

We talk with Alex about this portion of his journey at Clearbit, the Catamaran he bought in South Africa and then sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, and the new thing he’s building called Reflect that let’s you keep track of your notes, books, and meetings.

Leave us a comment

Changelog++ members get a bonus 4 minutes at the end of this episode and zero ads. Join today!

Sponsors:

• Fly.io – Deploy your apps and databases close to your users. In minutes you can run your Ruby, Go, Node, Deno, Python, or Elixir app (and databases!) all over the world. No ops required. Learn more at fly.io/changelog and check out the speedrun in their docs.
• FireHydrant – The reliability platform for every developer. Incidents impact everyone, not just SREs. FireHydrant gives teams the tools to maintain service catalogs, respond to incidents, communicate through status pages, and learn with retrospectives. Small teams up to 10 people can get started for free with all FireHydrant features included. No credit card required to sign up. Learn more at firehydrant.com/
• Sourcegraph – Transform your code into a queryable database to create customizable visual dashboards in seconds. Sourcegraph recently launched Code Insights — now you can track what really matters to you and your team in your codebase. See how other teams are using this awesome feature at about.sourcegraph.com/code-insights
• Honeycomb – Guess less, know more. When production is running slow, it’s hard to know where problems originate: is it your application code, users, or the underlying systems? With Honeycomb you get a fast, unified, and clear understanding of the one thing driving your business: production. Join the swarm and try Honeycomb free today at honeycomb.io/changelog

Featuring:

• Alex MacCaw – Twitter, GitHub, Website
• Adam Stacoviak – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn, Website
• Jerod Santo – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn

Show Notes:

• A personal update
• Alex’s first appearance on The Changelog
• reflect.app
• Clearbit
• Earl Grey Capital
• Google - “Catamaran”
• The Manager’s Handbook
• Ross Moser
• Beginning of Infinity
• Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies
• remirror/remirror
• Replicache
• Mimestream
• The Changelog #455: Building software for yourself with Linus Lee

Something missing or broken? interviews-503.md">PRs welcome!

Timestamps:

(00:01) - Welcome(01:23) - Sponsor: Fly.io(03:44) - Hey Alex!(05:19) - Living and working on a sail boat(10:49) - Jerod lives nowhere near the water(13:30) - This is like being stranded on Mars!(17:18) - Hiring a captain was a wise move(19:37) - Running on a lithium-ion battery at sea(30:02) - Sponsor: FireHydrant(31:50) - Collaborating at sea(33:33) - The difference between Clearbit and Reflect(36:55) - Did you consider ways to stay at Clearbit(37:54) - What does it take to find and hire a CEO?(42:01) - Building the team at Reflect(45:59) - Who is Reflect for?(48:42) - Alex's view of the notes world(54:38) - Taking notes with Notion(1:00:09) - Sponsor: Sourcegraph(1:03:06) - Sponsor: Honeycomb(1:04:38) - A refreshing place to be in life(1:06:35) - Journaling and mental health(1:10:29) - Kindle and searching your notes(1:14:08) - Jerod likes Blinkist(1:15:35) - Is Reflect open source?(1:17:42) - Could Reflect be local first?(1:21:14) - Getting back on the water(1:21:47) - Let's not wait another 10 years(1:22:53) - Outro