Wrapping my journey at Devfolio

Preface

I was always enthusiast for tech, but I got into the industry because of hackathons. I owe my career to hackathons & I had the time of my life building a platform for a million developers and running hackathons in ways we could not fathom.

Jumping on a running train

I joined Devfolio during the flagship ETHIndia 2024 and had very little time to get onboarded for knowledge transfer & getting work assigned. It took a few weeks for my muscles to unlearn assignments and start grabbing work on what I can and help the team.

Best I could do is ask for more work on slack.

Boy that spun up very fast and my first experience in a lean, high-bar startup was wearing hats I never did before. Partnerships.

I did end up being responsible for over a million dollars in bounties for ETHDenver 2025 by managing partnerships.

Jumping on a running train (literally)

We have always tried to do things creatively. From how we hire to how we ran first-party hackathons.

• We hired our latest team members by running a hiring hackathon itself!
• We did hackathon on a moving train!
  • We booked a PVR (movie) Theatre entirely for it's opening ceremony
• We hosted a parody hacker wedding at Network School

I experience how it must have felt in the early facebook days

I have seen The Social Network & when I was at GitHub I used to hear stories of a startup's freedom, creativity & ownership to do...anything.

• Lots of gamer in the house, let's hardware 20 computers and throw a LAN party (just like in the movies!)
• Like MKBHD? We did out own version of Everyday Essentials
• Like Mangoes? Let's do a public tasting
• Hardware is cool, let's throw a hardware meetup

Some/All of these may be unrelated to business, and business moved fast. Yet, the team makes time for things we personally care about

Coffee

Coffee deserves a special section. I was into french press but Devfolio was where my expertise & taste grew ten fold. (Shoutout Anish, Sabesh & Denver for getting me in!)

I say to many that "good quality specialty coffee" was one of the underrated benefits here.

Every time someone travels, they ring the team (mostly me) and ask if they should get new beans to office.

Lead by example

We host hackathons. The best way to show ourselves as both experts and users of our product is by participating in hackathons. I had good time spent in hackathons as hacker and decent reminders when I won most of the times I participated

• Won 2nd place in the OpenAI Codex hackathon
• Won Locahost's Short story hackathon
• Won DevDay hackathon by HackThisFall x Apify

It's good to be a hacker sometimes.

High standard of excellence, and humor

It's not often you get to hangout with people of your age at office.

It's an unasked privilege that resolves a part of the paradox of belonging. The advantage of having a skilled team (of same age group) comes with the perk of understanding the lines of work and play. Bonding becomes second nature.

You're on your own, kid.

It's a blessing and a curse to be in extreme control of your career. If startup is your first step into the world of tech there's a lot to learn but also a lot to lose if you don't know the game.

• No one will teach you about negotiation and measuring your worth time-over-time.
• You HAVE TO define your dream job, or risk being put to the last seat with whatever the company needs to keep you in the team.
• You may not have access to mentorship (bandwidth and talent) and you need to rely on external mentorship networks.

if startup is your first gig into tech (or even if it's your first startup but not first job). You're expected to know the asks or risk never gaining them. You need to keep in mind

• Are you offered company shares? Even if they value 0 to begin with.
• If salaried, are you protected with basic coverage like EPF (India) & healthcare.

My attitude is: I am not just an employee, I am also providing my services and expertise, and I expect something in return

These may or may not be offered to you upfront (They reduce margin of founder/founding-team and in capitalistic world who would want to reduce that?) so it's your duty to ask them and observe how you are responded with. (Yes, observe! Even if you're rejected, how a founder responds to ownership asks speaks a lot about their intentions with the company and it's employees). After all you are contributing to the company and deserve a piece of the cake.

What made me move? Life cycle of a startup

I personally believe 2 years is a sweet spot to learn everything from a startup. This number may change for you based on priorities and macroeconomic headwinds (Fancy word for layoff+hiring cycle).

I checked the overall goals, if they matched it means time to move on.

• Am I still learning everyday/week or just passing the knowledge to teams?
• How is the product doing in the ecosystem?
• Am I asking (and getting answers) to the hard questions?
  • How much runway is left in this company? Is there a constructive plan to raise, sell, profit with the given runway?
  • Is the product/company innovating as compared to the competitors?
  • is the product/company appreciative or ignorant of the changing landscape (in present, agentic ecosystem)
• Am I, my team and the work we doing ambitious?

If there's an opportunity at the door that checks all of the above, I would want to look into it.

Exiting gracefully

One of the hardest challenge is also moving on. In a small team you shouldn't to just ghost or rage-quit if you didn't like working or the next gig wanted you to onboard fast. You must do so gracefully.

• Have a conversation with your boss / CEO as soon as you get the offer letter you plan to accept (or have accepted)
• Plan an exit, including how your team and company knows about exit.
  • But also keep in mind the personal connect, take a call where things should come from you.
• Schedule 1:1s with each member

One of my favorite activities during this time was automating my KT (Knowledge Transfer). No more docs, I ended up creating skills.md that my team could install and have knowledge of how work, references, motivations, learnings.

You're not breaking up

You are allowed to keep in touch with your team. I spent a weekend looking back at each member's abilities and their impact in my own career at Devfolio. It's a small gesture but pays off both emotionally and with a future prospect of business partnership.

I believe this is what I'd want to lead by example of good community manager.

What's next?

As I wrap my time at Devfolio and I am grateful for everything it has offered. I couldn't be more excited to share my work I am doing building and leading community at Gradium.