Anish Dhar

It was spreadsheets and information living in people's head. That made us realize that if a company as big as Uber hasn't solved this and a company as small as LendUp, which had around 100 engineers, hasn't solved it, there's probably something here in terms of actually building a product that companies can use to catalog their services and understand ownership.

And so we did a bunch of research in the market. We emailed a bunch of large companies like Atlassian to figure out how they saw this problem. And the answer we heard was that they were forced to build an internal tool.

And so we did a bunch of research in the market. We emailed a bunch of large companies like Atlassian to figure out how they saw this problem. And the answer we heard was that they were forced to build an internal tool.

And so we did a bunch of research in the market. We emailed a bunch of large companies like Atlassian to figure out how they saw this problem. And the answer we heard was that they were forced to build an internal tool.

And when we would speak to the owners of these internal tools, they would often tell us, say, this is the most popular internal tool within the company because it tracks your services. It can help with a lot of operational reviews. But we wouldn't have built it if there was actually an available service that had been created.

And when we would speak to the owners of these internal tools, they would often tell us, say, this is the most popular internal tool within the company because it tracks your services. It can help with a lot of operational reviews. But we wouldn't have built it if there was actually an available service that had been created.

And when we would speak to the owners of these internal tools, they would often tell us, say, this is the most popular internal tool within the company because it tracks your services. It can help with a lot of operational reviews. But we wouldn't have built it if there was actually an available service that had been created.

And so it just gave us the confidence we needed to quit our jobs, start the company. We applied to Y Combinator in the Winter 20 batch. We got accepted. And yeah, we were off to the races from there.

And so it just gave us the confidence we needed to quit our jobs, start the company. We applied to Y Combinator in the Winter 20 batch. We got accepted. And yeah, we were off to the races from there.

And so it just gave us the confidence we needed to quit our jobs, start the company. We applied to Y Combinator in the Winter 20 batch. We got accepted. And yeah, we were off to the races from there.

The first version of the product was really just a microservice catalog. And it was basically you could import a set of services inside of the product and tag it with ownership. And then we would have five or six different integrations. So, for example, with PagDuty, so you could see, hey, who's on call for the service? And we built the product pretty quickly.

The first version of the product was really just a microservice catalog. And it was basically you could import a set of services inside of the product and tag it with ownership. And then we would have five or six different integrations. So, for example, with PagDuty, so you could see, hey, who's on call for the service? And we built the product pretty quickly.

The first version of the product was really just a microservice catalog. And it was basically you could import a set of services inside of the product and tag it with ownership. And then we would have five or six different integrations. So, for example, with PagDuty, so you could see, hey, who's on call for the service? And we built the product pretty quickly.

It was built on React and Java on the back end.

It was built on React and Java on the back end.

It was built on React and Java on the back end.

The goal of the MVP really was to validate this thesis that we had where we thought that essentially it's very difficult to understand what services exist in the company and having a catalog of those services can help with things like incident management or looking up ownership or just having this single pane of glass to find all of the data on your services.

The goal of the MVP really was to validate this thesis that we had where we thought that essentially it's very difficult to understand what services exist in the company and having a catalog of those services can help with things like incident management or looking up ownership or just having this single pane of glass to find all of the data on your services.

The goal of the MVP really was to validate this thesis that we had where we thought that essentially it's very difficult to understand what services exist in the company and having a catalog of those services can help with things like incident management or looking up ownership or just having this single pane of glass to find all of the data on your services.

What was interesting, though, about the MVP was we built it quickly. We had it while we were in Y Combinator. We kept iterating on it. We would get a lot of demos with people who understood the problem inherently, because when you speak about it with an engineer, universally, every engineer has experienced this pain of not understanding what services are out there and what exists.