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Keynote: Startups on Rails in 2024
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Keynote: Startups on Rails in 2024
by Irina NazarovaIn her keynote at RailsConf 2024, Irina Nazarova discusses the resurgence of interest in the Ruby on Rails (Rails) framework among startups in recent years. Despite previous skepticism surrounding Rails, she emphasizes its continued relevance and value for new companies.
Key Points Discussed:
- Importance of Startup Stories: Irina highlights the absence of current startup success stories in the Rails community, focusing on companies that have adopted Rails today.
- Case Studies:
- CraftWork: Founded to solve the challenges in house painting, they opted for Rails due to its simplicity and productivity. They experienced rapid success, gaining acceptance into Y Combinator and raising $6 million shortly after.
- JZ Marketplace: This company, formed by young founders passionate about sneakers, transitioned to Rails after recognizing its potential. They achieved significant sales and secured $18 million in funding.
- Flexcar: Initially using Java microservices, they revealed the complexity of managing multiple services. They began migrating to Rails, finding it enhanced their productivity and development speed.
- Feedback from Founders: Nazarova shares insights from CTOs about their experiences and needs within the Rails ecosystem.
- Key requests include improved community support, documentation for new features (like Hotwire), and better integration possibilities with modern technologies, such as React.
- Community Call to Action: She encourages attendees to contribute to the Rails ecosystem, participate in community discussions, and share feedback with maintainers.
Conclusions:
- Rails remains a viable and productive framework for startups, allowing quick feature shipping and streamlined development.
- Active involvement in the community is essential for the framework's growth and for nurturing the next generation of developers.
- There is an urgent need to address the gaps in documentation and integrations within the community as startups continue to rely on Rails for their technological needs.
- The ecosystem is maturing, and now is the time to build both creatively and commercially using Rails while supporting the broader community.
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The last thing I want to talk about is office hours. You can bring any project or any problems, and the consulting Rails experts at Evil Martians can help you out.
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They don't look very busy. One second—there we go, fixed.
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This is convenient, and almost like I planned this segue, because our next speaker is from Evil Martians.
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I've done this before. We promoted this talk from the CFP, which is one of my favorite things to do, and I am sure that this talk will raise questions, provide answers, and energize us for all the work on day two tomorrow.
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Ladies and gentlemen, I am excited to introduce Irina Nazarova!
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What an absolutely mind-blowing and incredible honor it is to be here, giving a keynote at Rails.
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I'm pumped, and it's a pleasure to be part of this keynote sandwich with Nadia. You're on the other side of the sandwich right now, and it's a joy for me to have this chance to take you all—my friends, my future friends—on a little journey.
00:01:20
Just last year, RailsConf in Atlanta was my very first RailsConf. I met some amazing people, participated in some cool events, and made many new Ruby friends, just like I'm sure you're doing today.
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I received so much support and encouragement, and I wanted to be useful to this community as well. So, hi! My name is Irina, but you can call me AA.
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I'm the CEO of Evil Martians, a consulting company, and a co-founder of Cable, a WebSocket infrastructure company. Oh, and I really like AI-generated images, as you will see.
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I was thinking about something that seems to be missing: we often hear lots of stories about companies from the first wave of Rails popularity—Shopify, GitHub, Intercom, and many others.
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We know about their success, but when we discuss the topic of whether Rails is dead, what we actually want to know is: Are there companies choosing Rails today? Are there new companies choosing Rails or switching to Rails?
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This topic is missing in our conversations, and stories like Nadia’s are super important.
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I believe that startup stories are generally missing from the conversation, and coincidentally, these are precisely the stories that Evil Martians are exposed to.
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We work for startups. We collaborate with startup teams, building features and helping them grow their productivity and businesses.
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We contribute to and witness their success and wanted to share something we already knew about startups on Rails.
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Of course, I wanted to collect more stories, so I picked up the phone. I called some of our clients from Evil Martians.
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Then, I added a few Cable clients, and soon, I reached out to companies and startups I had known about before.
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I continued reaching out to more companies and startups. A few of those are existing products, but the majority are new businesses.
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Finally, I spoke to a few companies that are so early-stage they don't have a logo or name yet.
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Then something unexpected happened: this was supposed to be a yes-saying, simple talk about how there are startups choosing Rails today.
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But during those conversations, I found the other side that made me highly motivated to build.
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And this is how I want you to feel after this talk: I want you to feel that same urgency to build in this community.
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So let's begin! We start in January 2023 in North Carolina.
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Founders Mike, Suzanne, and Joey gathered together. They had built, scaled, and sold their businesses to some big companies.
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They know the ropes. Now, they face a problem and want to solve it together.
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The task at hand is simple: paint a house.
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Tim and Suzanne want to paint their own houses. It sounds simple, right?
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But they want to do it the same way they do everything else: using a mobile application or laptop.
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However, they're not able to do this, and this is when they realize there's a huge market for these services.
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And so, CraftWork is created. CraftWork hires people to paint houses.
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Sounds simple, right? They paint both exterior and interior surfaces, including kitchen cabinets.
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However, CraftWork’s purpose is to make this work as efficient as possible. Consider the scheduling, planning, invoicing, and communication.
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Everything must take place on this platform, and geography also comes into play—houses need locations and people have to go to those locations.
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Now, let me tell you a bit more about the CTO, Mike.
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He had some experience with Rails back in his days at the University of Connecticut, during Rails 2.
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So you can date him, but sorry about that, Mike.
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After that, he worked at Microsoft, .NET, and had some experience with JavaScript.
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He established several startups and even ran a coding school teaching Python.
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Eventually, he went to work for Google.
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Now, there's something interesting about him—he's a fellow podcaster.
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He is one of the hosts of Software Engineering Daily.
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This team had to decide on the tech stack for their product—what do you think they chose?
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They ultimately opted for Rails.
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And what do you think? Of course, it works!
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This small team of founders could build this crazy application.
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It's reminiscent of the story we heard this morning. It’s incredible how quickly you can ship features with Rails.
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Mike shared a similar experience with Yto—a story of switching from Next.js to Rails after a few months.
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Particularly, their CTO, Garant, mentioned the principle of convention over configuration.
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This principle relieved him from the decision-making nightmare of constantly choosing tools and third-party services.
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Here are a few more quotes from different founders: John from Healthy!
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And Dorian from Bglad praised the Rails ecosystem, especially the gems.
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What happens after that? Remember, they started in January 2023.
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By April, they switched to Rails. In the summer, they got accepted into Y Combinator.
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They successfully finished their program and raised a $6 million seed round in November.
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Let's celebrate this success!
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Now this sounds simple, right? They had some experience with Rails. You might say.
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But let me tell you another story that begins a little earlier—back in 2021.
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Can you guess the city? Yes, this is New York.
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The pandemic was quite grim, but during this time three young founders started a company.
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Meet Jack, Steven, and Cameron. They met online in Facebook groups when they were just 15.
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Like many young people, they liked fancy sneakers.
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But unlike many of their peers, they turned their passion into a hustle by building software called sneaker bots.
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This software helps them resell those limited sneakers.
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Now fast forward to their early twenties—they are recent college graduates with some experience.
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Still, they are young and decided to build something bigger: a marketplace for all things digital.
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From crypto to fitness courses to games to software, anything digital, kind of an influencer style.
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This sounds similar to the story of Shopify, if you think about it.
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But nowadays, many of us feel a bit jaded after the decline of the Rails hype cycle.
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However, these three founders bring a new perspective, a fresh view of the world.
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They choose Rails against the odds, and initially, they were skeptical.
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They didn't have experience with Ruby, and neither did their friends.
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Moreover, something I didn't expect: serverless is their new norm.
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What we might call a serverful application is something they've never had experience with.
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The good news is that things that worked on us also work on them.
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Another new Ruby engineer, Kai, reported a similar 'wow' moment.
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Both Jack and Kai had a 'wow' moment watching the same 15-minute Rails blog video.
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What happened next? They got curious.
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Jack later said, 'I obviously fell in love with Rails.' Nothing else could have happened.
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So, they switched to Rails and built this JZ marketplace.
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There's a familiar face here, and I don't know why. You should ask him about this later.
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Marco, where are you? You should ask him!
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Not only Jack but many others are pleased with ActiveRecord, which they consider Rails’ number one superpower.
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The small team was able to deliver every feature their customers requested during the first two years of the product's life.
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Can you imagine anyone else being able to say this outside of Rails? Quite frankly, I cannot.
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So, they powered a sales volume of $322 million on the platform.
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Furthermore, they raised $18 million in funding.
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Now the only question remains: why are more startups not choosing Rails?
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My final story for today also begins in 2021, right here in Boston.
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There are two tech executives, Freedom and Ran, who start a project within their company called Flexcar.
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Freedom is the CTO of Zipcar and starts this long-term car subscription company called Flexcar.
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Flexcar soon splits from Zipcar.
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Regarding car subscription companies, it's complex: it’s a two-sided marketplace.
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It must be incredibly fast, scalable, and support a growing network of users.
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What do you think they chose for their tech stack in 2021?
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Their choice: Java microservices.
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But not just a few; this quickly escalated to over 70 Java microservices.
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The team followed every best practice for building software businesses.
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However, the team soon realized they needed faster delivery and better productivity.
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They were entangled in 70 microservices and over 30 databases.
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Freedom, the CTO, stated, "We need a change."
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Interestingly, Freedom is here with us today.
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In January 2024, Flexcar begins its migration to Rails.
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Just think about it: dozens of engineers, all experienced with Java.
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Switching from 70 microservices to one monolith—and changing from Java to Ruby! That's not simple.
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Yet skeptics quickly fall in love with Rails and the productivity of a monolithic Rails application.
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It’s like a breath of fresh air.
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Flexcar isn’t the only team that shared a similar story.
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Sarah, the founder and CTO of Flow, switched from Java to Rails and felt she was working three times faster.
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The success of Flexcar is happening as we speak, and they’re scheduled for their release to production later tonight!
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I don’t know how you feel, but conducting those 25 conversations was incredibly emotional for me.
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I felt inspired and empowered by everything I learned.
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But I also felt a little anxiety and a sense of responsibility.
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Why? Because all those startups—this is just a subset of hundreds and thousands of startups choosing Rails as we speak.
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They’re not just relying on Rails; they’re relying on the entire Rails ecosystem.
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They need solutions to all the problems they are facing.
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And I realized that CTOs are exceptionally skilled at identifying community solutions.
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It’s a rare skill to find solutions that might be less obvious.
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Our conversations didn’t only touch on the good things but also what’s missing.
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I already knew that startups exist, that they are choosing Rails in recent years.
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But now I want to share with you what I discovered.
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I'm not sharing all the feedback I've received, as it can be situational, personal, or random.
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Instead, I will share the top five most requested things from the CTOs of growing companies.
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Number five is a bit hard to guess, as it’s not technical.
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But it relates to something we had back in 2012-2014 when Rails was the most popular web framework.
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We had overwhelming support, with people discussing Rails and suggesting it.
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However, people choosing Rails today don’t have that, and it's noticeable.
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Daniel, a founder building in the San Francisco Bay area, expressed feelings of loneliness despite knowing dozens of companies working with Rails.
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Now, Ruby conferences are a great resource and there are numerous conferences happening this year.
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I feel there’s a turnaround happening in our community.
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We should take this energy and not take it for granted.
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In our current landscape, at least one conference may end up missing.
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Let’s not only keep local meetups and conferences alive but expand them.
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Even those who don’t attend still appreciate them.
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Number four is technical, and you’re likely expecting me to mention something about AI.
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Several people remarked we don’t need Python any longer; AI is being productized through APIs.
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Ruby is perfect for leveraging those APIs to develop products using those APIs.
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Yet, we are not doing enough in the community regarding AI.
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There are many incredible developments and several SDKs to utilize.
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Now, number three is about integrations.
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Many integrations aren’t being updated properly, which is concerning.
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We need to stay on top of integration updates.
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Furthermore, they need integrations with new technologies.
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We should continuously work on improving and upgrading integrations.
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Getting closer to number two.
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This is something that every person I spoke to was excited about.
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And that’s Rails full-stack with the fantastic advancements with Hotwire.
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But we still have some challenges, especially with the documentation.
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Many comments came in about the lack of documentation for Hotwire.
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We need real-life examples.
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Currently, we have community documentation for Hotwire, and it needs your contributions.
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If you're using Hotwire, please share your experiences and examples.
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We also need UI component libraries.
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Ruby engineers need libraries to work with as they may not be familiar with CSS.
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So, let’s be honest, there are several initiatives.
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Yet, it’s just the beginning. None of those libraries are fully complete.
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They aren’t on par with the React ecosystem, so we need to contribute.
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Finally, there's the challenge of optimistic UI.
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This is quickly becoming the new norm, especially for applications wishing to maintain a competitive edge.
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A typical application waits for the round trip to the server for the action to complete.
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With optimistic UI, it creates an illusion of zero latency.
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If you're utilizing popular applications, you know what I'm talking about.
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But we need to integrate this into Hotwire.
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And there’s already a Hotwire optimistic UI challenge.
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What do you think is number one?
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If Hotwire is number two, then what could possibly be number one?
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Yes! The single most requested thing from CTOs of growing companies.
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Let me lay it out for you. Most of the big companies known to run on Rails are using React.
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Let’s be honest. The new startups aiming to compete with existing businesses also need a competitive edge.
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Yes, Hotwire has streamlined the front-end story, but we still need a reliable way to integrate with React.
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Many companies working on Rails today are inventing their own bicycles.
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There's no standard integration path, so let me outline three scenarios.
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One is GraphQL, but the tooling for subscriptions is far from perfect.
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The second is REST API integration.
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We’re trying to build something here at Evil Martians but it's not quite there yet.
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Finally, not every setup needs an API.
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The simplest way for a startup to use React is to drop a component into a view.
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But ensuring type safety and a consistent developer experience remains a hurdle.
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This is why we need to work together to find a seamless integration process.
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Now you may be wondering—so much work for the Rails core team?
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Indeed, we have five core team members here today; let’s give them a round of applause.
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They do a lot of unglamorous work in addition to new initiatives.
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We must appreciate this.
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However, the tasks I mentioned aren’t just meant for the core team to build.
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That's never been the plan; Rails integrates with various ecosystem solutions.
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The world of applications built on Rails is vast and complex.
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There cannot be one solution for all; we need diverse solutions from both inside and outside the core.
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If you’re not convinced, keep this in mind: many CTOs told me they prefer community-built solutions.
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Why? Because they often find solutions that cater to fast-growing enterprises.
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The future of those startups and new companies relies on all of us.
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I've noticed that my friends in the community sometimes feel the need for validation.
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They feel that without someone's blessing, they can't move forward.
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I want to tell you: recognize those thoughts and rebel against them.
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The only person stopping you is yourself.
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We are a mature community that has weathered a lot.
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People of all ages are choosing Rails today not because of hype, but because it enables them to build as fast as possible.
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There's nothing better for them out there.
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This signifies that Rails has real value. The ecosystem has genuine worth.
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It’s time for us to move confidently forward to recognize the importance of the core and ecosystem.
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This is an indicator of a mature ecosystem.
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Now is the perfect moment to build in this community.
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And yes, earn money while doing it!
00:27:50
Please do build educational courses, software, consulting, and start local meetups.
00:27:56
Use open-source as marketing.
00:28:02
There are countless ways to be commercially successful while building for this community.
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If you think I’m being theoretical, rest assured I am very practical.
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Tomorrow is the big day! When I say build, I mean tomorrow.
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We’re going to have maintainers of open source present.
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Bring them your feedback, your success stories, and share!
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If you're using open source effectively, let the maintainers know.
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They often only receive negative feedback or issues.
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Let’s also contribute, upgrade libraries, and build new integrations.
00:29:00
Let’s use tomorrow for all of this.
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And whatever you do, don’t be shy about building with Rails!
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I’m practicing what I preach here by not being shy.
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I'm sharing a page where we list all the open source dependencies and recommendations.
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This is our first version, but we will keep our source updated.
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This is different from our blog posts, which you probably know about.
00:29:44
So be sure to check this out!
00:29:52
On that note, thank you all for being here.
00:30:00
Thank you, and please support Ukraine!
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