Sentry's origin isn't glamorous. In 2008, someone asked on IRC how to record errors to a dashboard. I gave them example code, created a repository, and django-db-log was born.

Five Years of Open Source

Over the years, I open sourced dozens of Django projects. At Disqus (joined 2010), we relied heavily on django-db-log. When I accidentally took down the entire platform my first week, the tool couldn't handle the error volume. That real-world use drove practical improvements.

Christmas Pivot

Around Christmas 2012, Chris Jennings and I used our vacation to turn this into a business. We built multi-organization support, added Stripe billing, and launched on Heroku. Total time: about two weeks.

$7 Baby!

We launched and had our first paying customer that same day. Seven dollars. But here's the thing - we had product-market fit from day one because we'd spent half a decade building what developers actually needed.

Finding Your Customers

The best thing you can do is find customers who share the same desired outcome you're passionate about. Build something you're passionate about, with a strong thesis around it. We never listened to potential customers who wanted something we disagreed with.

• Open source since: 2008
• Cloud launch: 2012
• First customer: Day 1 ($7)
• Current valuation: $3B+
• Customers: 90,000+ companies