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How a Solo Dev Went From $0 to $57M Raised | Laravel, Taylor Otwell

EO18:12Added Aug 31, 2026

Taylor Otwell's journey from solo developer to building Laravel, the world's most beloved PHP framework. When he created Laravel in 2011, it wasn't meant to become a massive open-source community - he simply needed better tools for his own projects.

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Contributed by 刘嘉琪

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Transcript format

  1. Intro

  2. 00:00try to solve a problem that you yourself
  3. 00:02have. When you have an opportunity to
  4. 00:04build tools that people use pretty much
  5. 00:068 hours a day, you're making a huge
  6. 00:08impact. For the first 3 years, I made no
  7. 00:10money on Laravel at all. It was totally
  8. 00:12open source. I see myself as a very
  9. 00:14average developer. Everything I've built
  10. 00:16at Laravel was essentially solving a
  11. 00:19problem that I had encountered in
  12. 00:21reality. When you're building open
  13. 00:23source software, there's a lot of
  14. 00:24voices. Some of them are coming from a
  15. 00:26place of like genuine uh constructive
  16. 00:28criticism and some of them are more like
  17. 00:30haters of your project. Say you're
  18. 00:32Metallica or you're Taylor Swift. If
  19. 00:34Metallica starts trying to cater to like
  20. 00:36Taylor Swift fans, then they lose all of
  21. 00:39their core fans. In the same way, like
  22. 00:41if Taylor Swift changes her core sound,
  23. 00:44she upsets that core fan base. And so
  24. 00:47play the hits for your fans. They're the
  25. 00:49core piece of your community. I think it
  26. 00:50can be very tempting, especially when
  27. 00:52other like smart people try to tell you,
  28. 00:54"Oh, I think it should work this way or
  29. 00:56I think you should do this." The people
  30. 00:58that like sit on the sidelines and sort
  31. 01:00of just like shout criticisms at open
  32. 01:03source projects. If you were to follow
  33. 01:05their feedback, there's always like
  34. 01:06another like carrot on a stick they're
  35. 01:08dangling out there. They're like, "Oh,
  36. 01:10thanks for doing that, but I don't like
  37. 01:11this either." And like if you change
  38. 01:13this, oh, that would be great. You know,
  39. 01:15you keep jumping through the hoops, but
  40. 01:16they never actually like become a user
  41. 01:18of the product. do the hardest parts
  42. 01:20first. This is something that I think a
  43. 01:22lot of web developers that are trying to
  44. 01:24start new products get wrong. While
  45. 01:26they're the most motivated at the
  46. 01:28beginning, they build a lot of like of
  47. 01:30the easy parts and then once you've
  48. 01:32wasted all of your like initial
  49. 01:34enthusiasm kind of dancing around, you
  50. 01:36sort of lost your momentum. Especially
  51. 01:38as a solo founder, I would much rather
  52. 01:40fail after 2 weeks than wasting 3
  53. 01:42months. It's changing from a solo
  54. 01:45developer to running a bootstrapped
  55. 01:47company to now VCbacked company and they
  56. 01:50all work really differently honestly.
  57. 01:52But I think what hasn't changed is
  58. 01:58Hi, I'm Taylor Rotwell. I am the creator
  59. 02:00of Laravel, an open-source PHP framework
  60. 02:03for building web applications. So I
  61. 02:05started creating Laravel as a way for me
  62. 02:07to build web applications faster. And it
  63. 02:10was actually not my original intention
  64. 02:12to make it a big popular open-source
  65. 02:15framework or community. And so the
  66. 02:17community's grown tremendously. We've
  67. 02:19gone from relatively a few downloads per
  68. 02:21day when I first released Laravel to now
  69. 02:23a quarter million downloads per day. Our
  70. 02:26first Laracon conference was in 2013 and
  71. 02:28we only had 90 attendees. At last year's
  72. 02:31Laracon in Dallas, Texas, we had over
  73. 02:33900 attendees. Tons of developers around
  74. 02:35the world and almost every country in
  75. 02:37the world use Laravel to build
  76. 02:39incredible applications.

  77. How a Techie from Arkansas Built $57M Backed Startup

  78. 02:44I grew up in Hot Springs, Arkansas. It's
  79. 02:46a relatively small town in central
  80. 02:48Arkansas. I was always fairly interested
  81. 02:51in computers and the web as a kid. I
  82. 02:54think I built my first website when I
  83. 02:56was about 10 years old. I think I was
  84. 02:58one of the only kids I knew that knew
  85. 03:01how to build anything on the web, which
  86. 03:03was kind of fun cuz like when you're the
  87. 03:05only kid in school that can build a
  88. 03:06website, everyone wants you to build a
  89. 03:08website for them. So, it was a pretty
  90. 03:10interesting way to grow up not being
  91. 03:12around any other techy people or kids or
  92. 03:16startups. It's a very different world
  93. 03:18programming and being a developer in
  94. 03:20Arkansas than being, for example, in
  95. 03:22Silicon Valley. But overall, I think
  96. 03:24that being in Arkansas has helped me
  97. 03:26maintain a level of focus and clarity on
  98. 03:29what I wanted to build that I probably
  99. 03:31wouldn't otherwise had if I had been
  100. 03:33somewhere else. College was a good
  101. 03:35experience in a sense because a lot of
  102. 03:37my professors were very old school
  103. 03:39programmers. Some of them had worked at
  104. 03:41like NASA. Many of them did not even use
  105. 03:44like a guey on their computer, you know,
  106. 03:46they were like very old school nerdy
  107. 03:48programmer people teaching me like core
  108. 03:51foundational programming concepts that
  109. 03:53apply across all languages. They really
  110. 03:56understood the foundational concepts of
  111. 03:57building good software which I think was
  112. 03:59extremely helpful. So when I was working
  113. 04:01just like a day job as a software
  114. 04:03engineer, I always gravitated towards
  115. 04:06building tools for the other engineers
  116. 04:09at the company. like I would always um
  117. 04:11try to get side projects or like get
  118. 04:13assigned to build things that would make
  119. 04:15us as developers more productive. So I
  120. 04:17was always finding ways to like optimize
  121. 04:19our workflow and I always found that
  122. 04:21like actually more interesting than what
  123. 04:23the business was about. I had some
  124. 04:26businesses that I wanted to build some
  125. 04:28startup ideas and PHP is a web
  126. 04:31programming language that is very easy
  127. 04:33to deploy out onto the web. It's easy to
  128. 04:36run and maintain and to ship. I needed
  129. 04:38sort of like a toolkit to build these
  130. 04:40web applications more quickly. And there
  131. 04:42was other ways to do this in PHP. There
  132. 04:44was existing frameworks that were
  133. 04:45already out there. Many of them were
  134. 04:47kind of dated and maybe getting a little
  135. 04:49older. And I thought that I could build
  136. 04:51a little bit more modern take on how to
  137. 04:53build web applications in PHP. Once I
  138. 04:56was almost done with it, I thought like,
  139. 04:58hm, this is actually kind of cool and
  140. 05:00maybe other people would want to use
  141. 05:01Laravel to build things. So that's when
  142. 05:03I decided to open source it, put
  143. 05:05documentation around it and try to, you
  144. 05:08know, share it with the world. And for
  145. 05:09the first 3 years of Laravel's life, I
  146. 05:12made no money on Laravel at all. It was
  147. 05:14totally open source. I had sort of
  148. 05:16written my own scripts to automate this
  149. 05:18on my machine, but I decided to build
  150. 05:20user interface around it and build like
  151. 05:22a product out of shipping Laravel
  152. 05:24applications to the web. And I called
  153. 05:25that Laravel Forge. And I released that
  154. 05:27in 2014. And honestly, I had no idea how
  155. 05:31it was going to perform, like how many
  156. 05:32customers it was going to have. I still
  157. 05:34honestly expected that I would need to
  158. 05:36work a day job. Even after I released
  159. 05:38Forge, but within probably a month or
  160. 05:41two of releasing Forge, Forge was making
  161. 05:44more money than I was making at my
  162. 05:46regular job. I was having to do customer
  163. 05:48support and I was having to fix bugs.
  164. 05:50Then I was in a situation where it was
  165. 05:51like very obvious I could not do both
  166. 05:53things at the same time. About six
  167. 05:55months after launching Forge, uh January
  168. 05:571st, 2015 was actually my first
  169. 06:00full-time day working on Laravel where I
  170. 06:02sat down in my home office, which was
  171. 06:05basically a spare bedroom at the time.
  172. 06:07And I was working on Laravel all day
  173. 06:09that day and have ever since. The first
  174. 06:11couple of years, I was the only person
  175. 06:13at the company. So I wrote the front
  176. 06:16end, I wrote the backend, I did the
  177. 06:17customer support, I did the docs, I did
  178. 06:19everything. And we made our first hire.
  179. 06:21I think around 2016 2017 I hired another
  180. 06:24engineer. I think this is actually one
  181. 06:26mistake I made is I put off hiring too
  182. 06:29long. This may be common for other open
  183. 06:31source developers where when you create
  184. 06:33something open source or you create a
  185. 06:35product you're like extremely protective
  186. 06:37of it like it's your you know it's it's
  187. 06:39your thing that you've created and
  188. 06:40you're scared that anyone's going to
  189. 06:41like come in and mess it up or like mess
  190. 06:43up your vision for it. And so that made
  191. 06:44me very hesitant to hire but then once I
  192. 06:46did I was like oh wow I should have done
  193. 06:48this a long time ago. Running a company
  194. 06:50by yourself can be stressful and a bit
  195. 06:54lonely. I always felt like Laravel and
  196. 06:58PHP was a bit of an underdog and web
  197. 07:01development. Even when I created Laravel
  198. 07:04in 2010 or 2011, PHP was already seen as
  199. 07:07like not the most glamorous web
  200. 07:09language. That was nothing new. Like
  201. 07:11even back then, I think that underdog
  202. 07:13mentality of like, okay, well, I
  203. 07:14actually think there's something really
  204. 07:15great here and I think this is a
  205. 07:16fantastic way to build applications
  206. 07:18really quickly, it really motivated me
  207. 07:20to like prove it over many years. And
  208. 07:23all of them in a way were sort of born
  209. 07:26out of my own like desire to make things
  210. 07:29easier for developers.

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  229. Ignore the Haters, Play the Hits For Your Fans

  230. 08:15I think opensource is powering almost
  231. 08:19every business in the world at this
  232. 08:21point. It's become the norm. You can
  233. 08:24inspect it and read it and you can even
  234. 08:26contribute to it. It's almost like the
  235. 08:27first thought is to release it on
  236. 08:28GitHub. You know that that's like the
  237. 08:30most obvious thing you would do if
  238. 08:32you're running an open- source company.
  239. 08:34The most obvious risk is just other
  240. 08:36people taking your open source code, you
  241. 08:39know, and building uh alternatives or
  242. 08:41competitors built on pretty much
  243. 08:43everything you've done over the last
  244. 08:45decade or however long you've worked on
  245. 08:47your project. I think the way you avoid
  246. 08:49that in many cases is how you run the
  247. 08:52community and how you interact with the
  248. 08:54community. I've always tried to stay
  249. 08:56extremely receptive to community
  250. 08:58feedback. I'm still very involved. I
  251. 09:00actually still the first hour and a half
  252. 09:02of my day is getting on GitHub and
  253. 09:04managing pull requests to the open
  254. 09:06source Laravel framework. I'm actually
  255. 09:08still the only person that does that at
  256. 09:10the company. I think if you develop an
  257. 09:12attitude where you're not listening to
  258. 09:15the community and they feel that that's
  259. 09:18when like you start getting grumblings
  260. 09:20in the community, people get unhappy and
  261. 09:23then you like run the risk of a fork in
  262. 09:26the open source project. Forks the
  263. 09:27project, renames it. this is now a
  264. 09:30better, more community-friendly version
  265. 09:31of your product. That's the biggest
  266. 09:33risk. When you're building open source
  267. 09:35software, there's a lot of voices. They
  268. 09:37all have an opinion on where you should
  269. 09:39take um the framework. And some of them
  270. 09:41are coming from a place of like genuine
  271. 09:44uh constructive criticism, and some of
  272. 09:46them are more like just sort of like
  273. 09:48haters of your project. One really great
  274. 09:51piece of advice that another open-source
  275. 09:54founder, Adam Wavin from Tailwind, gave
  276. 09:56me was that just like when you're in a
  277. 09:58band, say you're Metallica or you're
  278. 10:01Taylor Swift, if Metallica starts trying
  279. 10:03to cater to like Taylor Swift fans, then
  280. 10:06they lose all of their core fans. In the
  281. 10:08same way, like if Taylor Swift changes
  282. 10:10her core sound that her fans love and
  283. 10:13that they come to her concerts to hear,
  284. 10:15she upsets that core fan base. And so
  285. 10:18play the hits for your fans. They love
  286. 10:21what you build. They're the core piece
  287. 10:22of your community. I think it can be
  288. 10:24very tempting, especially when other
  289. 10:26like smart people try to tell you, "Oh,
  290. 10:28I think it should work this way or I
  291. 10:30think you should do this." It can be so
  292. 10:32so tempting as an open source maintainer
  293. 10:34to like go down these rabbit holes of
  294. 10:36like, "Okay, well maybe if I add this
  295. 10:38feature then like this group of people
  296. 10:40will finally use Laravel and start
  297. 10:43building with it." In my experience, the
  298. 10:45people that like sit on the sidelines
  299. 10:47and sort of just like shout criticisms
  300. 10:49at open source projects, if you were to
  301. 10:52follow their feedback and like jump
  302. 10:54through that first hoop of what they
  303. 10:55want you to do, there's always like
  304. 10:57another another like carrot on a stick
  305. 10:59they're dangling out there, they're
  306. 11:01like, "Oh, thanks for doing that, but I
  307. 11:03don't like this either." And like if you
  308. 11:04change this, oh, that would be great.
  309. 11:06You know, you keep jumping through the
  310. 11:08hoops, but they never actually like
  311. 11:09become a user of the product, which it
  312. 11:11can be incredibly frustrating. So listen
  313. 11:14to just your core audience that's
  314. 11:15already building with Laravel and they
  315. 11:17love what you're doing and they have
  316. 11:18businesses on Laravel. It's important to
  317. 11:20hear outside feedback too, but just use
  318. 11:22caution with how far you stray from like
  319. 11:25your core beliefs and what you think
  320. 11:28your product needs to be.

  321. Why I Decided to End 10 Years of Bootstrapping

  322. 11:34I had never really considered taking
  323. 11:37outside investment before Excel. I used
  324. 11:39to get emails about that pretty
  325. 11:41frequently and I would always just
  326. 11:43delete them which Excel found hilarious.
  327. 11:45The reason for that honestly is just
  328. 11:47like we were happy at the company as
  329. 11:49just a small team working on whatever we
  330. 11:51wanted to work on, not wanting someone
  331. 11:54to mess up what I had built. So that
  332. 11:56fear of messing up everything we had put
  333. 11:58so much work into made me hesitant in
  334. 12:00both regards for hiring and raising
  335. 12:02money, especially as developer
  336. 12:05expectations have risen quite a bit
  337. 12:08since 2011. like the user experience and
  338. 12:11the tooling that developers expect. They
  339. 12:14expect it to be really really good. The
  340. 12:16bar just like keeps getting higher for
  341. 12:18how polished and how productive and how
  342. 12:20great your products have to be. And I
  343. 12:23knew that if we wanted to like take
  344. 12:24Laravel to the next level, it was going
  345. 12:26to take a lot of work and it was going
  346. 12:28to have to be some pretty ambitious
  347. 12:30projects that were far beyond anything
  348. 12:32we had built before and it was going to
  349. 12:34take a much bigger team to build these
  350. 12:36things. And so that's what sort of led
  351. 12:37me down the path of raising money with
  352. 12:39Excel. It's been a gradual process
  353. 12:42changing from a solo developer to
  354. 12:45running a bootstrapped company to now
  355. 12:47trying to lead a VCbacked company. And
  356. 12:50they all work really differently.
  357. 12:53Honestly, when I was bootstrapping the
  358. 12:55company, it was extremely flat. But at
  359. 12:56the same time, when you go from 10 to
  360. 12:5850, there are just new new layers of
  361. 13:00organizational hierarchy and management
  362. 13:02that comes with that. But I think what
  363. 13:04hasn't changed is our core mission to
  364. 13:08build awesome developer tools. Like
  365. 13:10that's still the mission we're on. And
  366. 13:12so like our underlying mission of
  367. 13:14building great products, nurturing a
  368. 13:16really great community with community
  369. 13:18events like Laracon and Laravel lives
  370. 13:20and meetups, all of that is the same.
  371. 13:23But I feel like I should have grown this
  372. 13:25kind of team much earlier, but I was
  373. 13:28scared to and I didn't know how to
  374. 13:29really. and bringing on people that can
  375. 13:32help us build these products and help us
  376. 13:35grow this community beyond what I'm
  377. 13:37capable of myself. And I'm super excited
  378. 13:39to see where we can go in the next few
  379. 13:41years.

  380. The Secret to Building a Strong Community

  381. 13:45When I first released Laravel, we had,
  382. 13:48you know, like discussion forums about
  383. 13:49the framework where people could ask for
  384. 13:51feedback or give ideas. Every day I was
  385. 13:54in those forums myself, like answering
  386. 13:56questions, asking for feedback on new
  387. 13:58features and I always try to be really
  388. 14:01involved in the community early. We
  389. 14:03built sort of like a very friendly,
  390. 14:05welcoming vibe where everyone can pitch
  391. 14:07in and get help. And there wasn't a lot
  392. 14:10of like posturing or judgment on what
  393. 14:12stage people were at in their journey
  394. 14:14with Laravel or with development in
  395. 14:16general. We were just all trying to help
  396. 14:17each other and kind of be a part of
  397. 14:19building businesses and building
  398. 14:21products where people feel like they can
  399. 14:23come and learn and and build something
  400. 14:25cool and they have other people kind of
  401. 14:26have their back. Everyone wants to be a
  402. 14:29part of something like they want to
  403. 14:31contribute to something and it if they
  404. 14:32feel like they can actually have an
  405. 14:35impact on the software which you can I
  406. 14:37think for a lot of people that creates a
  407. 14:40very strong like sense of belonging and
  408. 14:42community. If you were to pull up a
  409. 14:44contributor list of Laravel, like their
  410. 14:46name is now on the list forever. I think
  411. 14:48of people like Jeffrey Wei that founded
  412. 14:50Laracas creating video content and
  413. 14:54educational material about how to use
  414. 14:55the framework. He was actually the first
  415. 14:57person to build a full-time career
  416. 15:00around Laravel even before I did. By
  417. 15:03embracing and encouraging those
  418. 15:04relationships, I think it helped build a
  419. 15:06really vibrant, strong community. And
  420. 15:08it's good for us as well because people
  421. 15:10are constantly making content about, you
  422. 15:13know, our framework.

  423. 2 Tips for Founders From an Average Developer

  424. 15:17I've always said I see myself as a very
  425. 15:19average developer, which that sounds
  426. 15:22bad, but I think it's actually been a
  427. 15:24really good thing because there's a lot
  428. 15:26of average developers in the world, and
  429. 15:28I feel like I build tools that helps the
  430. 15:30average developer do their job quickly.
  431. 15:32And that is just statistically a lot of
  432. 15:34people. When you have an opportunity to
  433. 15:36build tools that people use pretty much
  434. 15:38eight hours a day at their job, then
  435. 15:41you're making a huge impact like on
  436. 15:42someone's personal enjoyment of their
  437. 15:44life, I think is really interesting and
  438. 15:46amazing and like this huge privileged
  439. 15:48and it's something very few companies
  440. 15:50and software tools really get to do. The
  441. 15:52most common advice I give first is try
  442. 15:55to solve a problem that you yourself
  443. 15:58have. These are the problems that you're
  444. 16:00going to understand the most deeply.
  445. 16:03Everything I've built at Laravel was
  446. 16:05essentially solving a problem that I had
  447. 16:08encountered in reality. Many of them are
  448. 16:10things that I needed. And I think that
  449. 16:13if possible, you should try to build a
  450. 16:14business that way to where you are a
  451. 16:17customer yourself. The second piece of
  452. 16:19advice I would give would be do the
  453. 16:22hardest parts first. Um, this is
  454. 16:24something that I think a lot of web
  455. 16:26developers that are trying to start new
  456. 16:28products get wrong. while they're the
  457. 16:31most motivated at the beginning of that
  458. 16:33idea, they build a lot of like of the
  459. 16:35easy parts. Like they might build, oh,
  460. 16:37I'll build the login form first. And you
  461. 16:40spend a month or two building all of
  462. 16:43these really easy parts, and you're kind
  463. 16:44of procrastinating in this like clever
  464. 16:46way of tackling the core like hardest
  465. 16:50problems you need to solve to really
  466. 16:52make this product great. And then once
  467. 16:54you've wasted all of your like initial
  468. 16:56enthusiasm kind of dancing around, you
  469. 16:59sort of lost your momentum, especially
  470. 17:00as a solo founder. And so for me, when I
  471. 17:03have a new product idea, I absolutely
  472. 17:05try to build the most impossible part
  473. 17:07first. Like the part I'm not sure that I
  474. 17:10even have the skills to build or
  475. 17:12understand or whatever. I'll just try to
  476. 17:14get that working. Even though it's the
  477. 17:16hardest part, if you do that at the
  478. 17:18beginning, you're the most motivated.
  479. 17:20And if you crack it and you nail it, the
  480. 17:23other part is just like it's all
  481. 17:24downhill from there as far as building
  482. 17:26the product. If you fail, you would you
  483. 17:28would rather fail earlier, you know,
  484. 17:30like building the product. I would much
  485. 17:32rather fail after 2 weeks than wasting 3
  486. 17:34months. So do the hardest part first and
  487. 17:37try to solve problems you deeply
  488. 17:39understand being customer number one
  489. 17:41yourself.
  490. 17:43[Music]
  491. 18:06[Music]