pipedream (noun)
(1) an integration platform for developers delivered as a single app
(2) a fantastic plan to make glue coding fun

We are excited to launch the beta release of Pipedream. In this post, we will share what Pipedream is, how it works, and what inspired its creation.

What is Pipedream?

Pipedream enables developers to easily build and execute workflows — often called “glue code” — that integrate apps, APIs and data, for free.

• “Easily build” = write production code in minutes with built-in state management, authentication, observability, and error handling
• “Execute” = we host and run your code on our infrastructure…

In 15 years of software development, I have rarely seen logging and reporting prioritized above new features. However, I have seen plenty of bad decisions and customer issues that were impacted by a lack of basic data.

Understanding how your application is performing is a universal need and getting performance data should be easy to implement.

Too often, teams try to address a lack of data by either (a) developing internal tools that are hard to use and don’t scale, (b) combining third-party tools that don’t really solve the problem, or worst of all (c) ignoring data and reporting priorities…

Note: I am no longer at Yahoo! and this is a follow up to my previous post:
(Part #1) 0 to $640M: Non-obvious Lessons Learned Building BrightRoll.

In 2014, Yahoo! acquired BrightRoll for $640M in cash plus a significant amount of employee retention. My agreement required me to be a Yahoo! employee for three years, so joined as VP, Ads Product.

While there is much written about growing a startup, there is far less written about being acquired, successfully integrating a startup or scaling within a large company. …

I recently gave a talk at Yahoo! about the lessons learned from founding, building and selling BrightRoll. This is a summary of my talk.

I founded BrightRoll in 2006 and sold the company to Yahoo in 2014 for $640M.

I have learned a tremendous amount over the past 10 years and much of those learnings are covered well in the writings of others (here, here & here). That said, there were seven non-obvious lessons I learned that I believe can add value to founders everywhere.