tl;dr I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve joined Tessl, a new company that’s pioneering AI Native Software Development. Founded by Guypo and fresh off securing Series A funding, we’re on an exciting mission to revolutionize how software is built.
I’m especially excited to be reuniting with Ben as we focus on the opportunity to create a platform that makes software development not just more efficient, but genuinely fun and enjoyable for developers at a time where everything has changed with the new AI tools in the toolbox!
It has been amazing to watch the progress that AI software developer tools have been making, and being part of the rise of augmentation for developers. I have seen first hand the impact on the lives of software developers as they are able to get so much more done with small teams, having much more fun to boot.
As I watch myself, and developers in general, use natural language to generate code… something has been bothering me a lil. It feels like the “source” of what you want to build gets lost as our tooling converts it expertly into our codebase.
What if we could keep this original intent, expand on it to specify what we want built… work hand in hand with our team and AI systems, and then regenerate assets as the LLMs get better at generating code? (which happens on a weekly basis rn!) What if we could separate concerns and have passes that make sure that the code is optimized for performance? Is accessible? Covers edge cases? Has rich debugging? Let me focus on clearly articulating what I want, and have systems that can do a lot of the toilsome yet important actions to make it work, make it right, and make it fast.
If we extrapolate on the improvements we have seen in the state of the art of coding models, and marry this work with systems that bring all of the guardrails and workflows that are needed to partner with the intuition that LLMs have, how far can we go?
I love coding, and when I think about why… It’s because I love thinking through building useful software. Back in the earliest days, after you think things through you start punching cards. Then we had machine code, and assemblers, and compilers, and linters, and IDEs, and all of the layers of tooling that we get to sit on top of today. We have always been changing the level of abstraction to allow developers to best specify, or take specifications from others perhaps, and generate working software.
Ben and Guypo
This is a huge challenge, and I got really excited about it after talking to Guypo and hearing his vision in this space. Ben and I were fortunate enough to invest in Snyk and see the sea-change in developer focused security that Snyk brought to the software world, so having the opportunity to jump on a rocket ship with something as large as the AI software revolution was a no-brainer.
The most fun I have ever had in my career has always been linked to partnering with Ben, and now we get to join forces with Guypo, and the incredible team he has assembled, to go change the world through leading AI Native Software Development.
It’s daunting and exciting, and the mission is larger than the products that Tessl will build itself. This is actually one reason why I was so compelled to work on this. I’m more drawn towards companies that are on a mission, where the company makes money in order to accomplish the mission rather than the other way around.
I hope that you join us in pushing the bar on what the future holds for software development. We have just begun, but with a great team and a war chest, we are ready to move mountains and do so fast. Time to build… with AI!
/fin