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**Jori Lallo:** Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure to have the chat to open up a little bit how we're thinking about the world. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It was awesome. |
• Docker history and Scott Johnston's involvement with the company |
• Scott Johnston's background and early career in programming |
• His transition from Product Head to CEO at Docker |
• The decision to focus on developers and user experience |
• The growth of revenue and investments in developer experience since 2019 |
• Docker's large install base (20+ million) and its presence on developers' desktops |
• Investment in developer-facing features and capabilities |
• Docker Desktop transition to Mac on ARM |
• BuildKit technology for shared caching and speed |
• Pivot from enterprise sales focus to private-led growth (PLG) model |
• Reduction in employees and customers after divestiture, followed by refocusing on developers |
• Introduction of company virtues: humility, developer obsession, open collaboration, and bias for considered action |
• Shift to self-service go-to-market model with credit card-based subscriptions |
• Struggle to monetize open source product |
• Docker Desktop pivot in 2019 |
• Shedding distractions and focusing on key features |
• Concerns over Docker Desktop's revenue model change |
• Monetizing product through enterprise-facing features (e.g. single sign-on, virtual desktop) |
• Importance of Docker Desktop in delivering applications to production |
• Choice not to make Docker Desktop open source, despite competition |
• Docker's approach to balancing open-source and commercialization |
• Importance of reserving the right to change strategy in the future |
• Discussion on Docker Desktop usage statistics (13.5 million free users, 1.1 million paid seats) |
• Explanation of Docker's business model, including seat-based pricing ($5-$24 per seat/month) and consumption-based pricing for Hub content |
• Introduction of new products like Docker Scout and Kubernetes cluster sharing tool |
• Discussion on the need to make money as a sustainable open-source project |
• Revenue growth and investment in new tooling and features |
• Expansion of R&D team from 60 to over 300 people |
• Development of new developer-facing features and functionality |
• Growth of the developer community from 27 million to 45 million by end of decade |
• Docker's responsibility to lower friction for new developers |
• Introduction of Docker Init, a tool that automates Docker setup |
• Reversal of decision to discontinue free team plan on Docker Hub |
• Misunderstanding of open source project needs and community reaction |
• Potential loss of goodwill and consideration of alternatives such as GitHub Container Registry |
• Commitment to investing in open source and contributing to the community |
• Imperfections in human decisions and communication |
• Competition between Docker Hub and GitHub's container registry |
• Value proposition of Docker Hub: free egress, search results, badges, analytics, community, and curated content |
• Security and safety features on Docker Hub: verified images, trusted open source content, and regular updates |
• Acquisitions by Docker in 2022 to accelerate roadmap for developers |
• Acquisition of five companies to enhance developer experience and deliver value faster |
• Focus on trusted content programs (Docker Official Images, Docker Verified Publisher Images, Docker-Sponsored Open Source) |
• Pivot of the company in 2019 resulting in changes to how the company operates and expectations from users |
• Use of Docker by AI/ML startups and technologies |
• Aggregation of developer events to improve productivity and provide insights to developers |
• Using AI tools like ChatGPT to create Docker files and build images |
• Overcoming intimidation and complexity in using Docker files |
• The power of combining ChatGPT with Docker Init |
• Developer community focus as a company core value |
• Importance of feedback from the developer community for improvement |
**Adam Stacoviak:** So I'm here with Scott Johnston. Scott, I'm so excited to talk to you. Big fan of Docker, big fan of this new Docker, I suppose... So welcome to the show. Welcome to Founders Talk. |
**Scott Johnston:** Thanks so much, Adam. I'm a huge fan of your show as well, so right back at you, and it's an honor to be here and to get a chance to chat. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I was excited to hear that Changelog is in your podcast feed. We're like the Docker Desktop of podcasts, right? We're on as many developers' ears as possible. I feel like we're kind of a Docker Desktop in a way, which is kind of interesting. |
**Scott Johnston:** Love that. Love that. Yeah, the developer community is so, so widespread and diverse, and so many different types of developers and types of languages... But I feel Changelog kind of speaks to the core ethos, if you will, of developers. And that's why I enjoy listening to it, even though they haven'... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, that's a bummer. That's a bummer. CEOs who code are always awesome. |
**Scott Johnston:** The world is probably safer that I'm not touching code. I do, in the advent of code every year, I do kind of whip out my own editor and such, and try to stay abreast with our engineering team, but... Trust me, I'm glad that they're winning that one. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, we have lots to cover in the show, we've got limited time, but I do want to give our listeners context to you. Sometimes people will just use the tool, just use the software, and not really pay much attention to the people behind things. Now, you came to Docker by way of Puppet in 2013, so the... |
\[05:59\] And we actually had Solomon on this network - not this podcast - around that same time. So we've been in the trenches with you, and with Docker, and with Solomon, and with everybody really involved. I don't know if Solomon is not still around, but take us into your particular journey with Docker. I mean, as f... |
**Scott Johnston:** Yeah. I'll try to make it brief, not drawn out, but guide me along the way. So I actually started as a developer; that was my first gig, actually, while I was still in school. And my first paying gig was doing Fortran for one of the universities. But I was always fascinated -- so rolling it back eve... |
The second is, it was magic. Type in a couple of lines of text, and then that turns into a thing. That thing works, and runs, you compile it, it goes... I just remember "Well, I can sit as a kid in high school and just bang out some lines of code, and I can do music, and I can do science experiments, all through this m... |
At Puppet we were very much trying to help developers and ops get along, DevOps, and trying to help expedite the movement of code into production... And as you said, Docker was open source March 2013, and that summer, so literally a couple months later, while at Puppet, I saw Docker start to show up in the Puppet accou... |
And the company had ups and downs, and probably not enough time on the podcast to go through the whole history, but long story short, we had an okay business in 2019. It wasn't a great business, and importantly, it wasn't really benefiting from the love that the developers had of the product, and had of the experience.... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** You speak of that as if you led that pitch? Was that your pitch to do that? Or how did you get the attention of the board to become CEO? How did that happen? |
**Scott Johnston:** No. So again, I don't want to take any credit. We had discussed a number of things to do with the company, and I can't get into too many details about all the different things we considered... And one of them was "Hey, there's all this bottoms-up consumption going on over here that we're ignoring, a... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** You'd never been seen before, right? This was first time CEO for you? |
**Scott Johnston:** I had never been a successful CEO. I had pre-Puppet going up and down Sand Hill Road, the VC corridors, pitching three companies, none of which succeeded or got off the ground... So no, CEO and maybe name-only back then, but this was the first time I was CEO of an actual working business. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[10:15\] Gotcha. Well, it's definitely been a resurgence... I mean, simply, if you just look at revenue only, it's a resurgence, right? I mean, very little revenue in the days you mentioned, 2018 era, challenging to monetize the product... Not impossible, but challenging. And quite the turnaround b... |
**Scott Johnston:** That's right. So we did have a good growth in revenue, but really importantly, I think it's important to share with your listeners that the growth in revenue allowed us to fund additional investments in the developer experience. And so even that top-of-funnel number you cited, that almost doubled si... |
We had invested a lot in Build. BuildKit is one of the popular technologies we have, and BuildKit allows developers not only to build locally, but also build in a shared cache with their team. So you get a lot of speed; instead of taking 20 minutes for your build, you take two seconds by using the shared cache. |
So my point in this, Adam, is that we wanted to make sure we are serving the developer community top to bottom, both the upstream open source freemium devs, but also those who are in large organizations and who pay us for the license of Docker Desktop. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** The biggest change that I can understand with -- let's just call it Docker 2.0. I think that's been termed out there for you all. Do you take that term happily, or is that "Ehm, I guess it kind of makes sense..." Docker 2.0? |
**Scott Johnston:** Yeah, Docker 2.0 works. They call it the evolved Docker, perhaps, to kind of give credit where credit's due... Because we've built this latest chapter, the company, on the shoulders of those who came before. I mean, Solomon did a fantastic job, that to this day we continue to benefit from. This prev... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. I look at it like in many ways Docker today is a roughly -- this is how I look at it, at least, and you correct me if I'm wrong... But roughly a 4.5-year-old company, with a 10.5-year tech advantage. You've been out there for quite a while, but the current revenue - and if we just simply... Th... |
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