Traceloop

We’re collaborating with our competitors and it can actually help our business (and our users!). Last week I met Marc Klingen, the CEO and co-founder of Langfuse (YC W23). We recently started collaborating around OpenTelemetry and OpenLLMetry with the goal of standardizing the way customers monitor their LLM-based applications. The idea is simple - to start monitoring, you need to install an SDK. This requires a lot of engineering effort across your entire stack. If you’re using a standard like OpenTelemetry, you only need to do it once. You’re then never vendor-locked to a single platform. Mark and I are both strong believers in open source and open protocols. Both of our products are open-source based, and we win by building the best product for our users - not by locking them in our own ecosystem. By using OpenTelemetry, we will benefit from consolidating the endless effort of supporting the new advancements in the LLM world. Every day there’s a new model that needs to be supported; a new vector database; or a new breaking change to LangChain. You’ll be surprised, but a significant part of our day-to-day work is actually keeping up with changes. For me, OpenAI DevDay was more of an endless list of backlog tasks that I now need to implement rather than an exciting event (just kidding; it was also super exciting - I’ll write about it more next week). The future is open; in my opinion, open tools will always win. I always prefer them over closed tools whenever I can. And so should you. *In the photo: enjoying a cup of coffee at Four Barrel SF

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I think this is one of the most visually appealing features we've developed at Traceloop. I'm excited to announce that we now natively support all vision models (OpenAI and Anthropic included). You can now see traces of vision-based flows with no limit on the payload size (well, except for the limit imposed by the LLM itself). No matter whether you're sending images as base64, or URLs - we've got you covered! and all with <0.001ms impact on app latency thanks to our native OpenTelemetry support. Huge shout out for Gal Kleinman my co-founder and CTO for building this 🙌

🧑💻 Why Open Source? It’s about building, learning, and sharing. 🌍 At Hacktoberfest, you'll contribute to real projects like Configu, OpenLLMetry,Opal, and terminal7.dev while learning from the experts. This is your chance to grow your skills and join the open-source community. 💥 Ready to dive in? Register now>> https://lnkd.in/dXQTUvnm Traceloop Permit.io Configu terminal7.dev David Meir-Levy Osher El-Netanany Peleg Porat #TikalExperts

Help us continue building OpenLLMetry!

🚀 Hacktoberfest = Code, Collaboration, & Community 🚀 Whether you’ve contributed before or are just getting started, Hacktoberfest is the perfect chance to dive deeper into open source! 💻 Join us for hands-on hacking, inspiring talks, and the opportunity to collaborate on awesome projects. Let’s build something great together! ❤️ 👉 Register now>> https://lnkd.in/dXQTUvnm Traceloop Permit.io Configu terminal7.dev David Meir-Levy Osher El-Netanany Peleg Porat #TikalExperts

Don’t start a startup. I’m not kidding. It’s the hardest job I have ever done. But I want to focus on a small part of it - founder health. Or, more specifically - how and when to take some time off. I just got back from a vacation, and I have to say it was really important, but it was almost impossible for me to disconnect. As an early-stage startup CEO, and especially a technical one like me, I am in every bit and every detail. There’s always something happening that requires my attention. A customer needs help; a sales prospect is waiting for a follow-up; (I need to record my next Linkedin video); technical discussions, product discussions. Things are constantly buzzing. Every decision I make actually and really matters. But, I also want to enjoy my time off and founder health is really important. Being able to recharge can do miracles for my own productivity and can keep me sane. So what do I do? First, I delegate. My co-founder helps me take some of the load from me while I disconnect. It’s also easier to do that once the company begins to grow. I didn’t take time off at all when it was just the 2 of us. But now we have 4 more people on the team, so I can allow myself to do that. Second, and I know it may sound harsh, I try to keep it short. I feel I can’t be gone for a month and expect everything to just work. Lastly (and this still work in progress) I try to really disconnect. I turn off my slack notifications, and ask people to call me only if there’s something urgent. As founders we are constantly focusing on customers, or revenue, or fundraising. But I believe we need to find some quiet time in between. What are your tips for founder health?

We grew from two to six people in a couple of months - here's what I learned from finding the right people. For a long time, it was just me and Gal. We both wrote code, ran sales calls, did customer support - whatever was needed. And it worked well. The fact that we were in on all the details helped us to close loops with customers quickly, fix bugs, and develop missing features. But as our user base grew, it became harder to support everyone (yes, even with tools like Copilot and Cursor) and we started to lag behind. So we decided to hire our first engineers to help us double down. Those engineers are usually called “founding engineers”, because they truly are part of the founding of the company. In my philosophy, they need to be a jack of all trades. They need to want to write frontend, and backend; Python and Go; train models, do devops; and even customer support; or product management. Because this is the life at an early stage startup. You’re founding something that will be big, and you need to know about everything that’s happening so we can understand each other well, collaborate efficiently, and everyone can always take whatever is the most important task for the company and execute it. So how do you hire them? Ideally, is someone you already know. You worked with them in your last job, they’re good friends from the university. Or someone you trust referred them to you. But that’s not always the case, and sometimes we had to interview. Our process was simple - we started with a 30 min non-formal chat where we got to know each other and figured out whether it’s a good fit. We then had a small take-home task and we wrapped it with a 1 hour technical interview where we also discussed the take-home task. I know many people hate take-home tasks but I actually think they’re super valuable for both the candidate and the company. All these helped us understand if the person sitting really has what it takes to be a founding engineer. How do you find your first employees? Were you the first employee in some company? What was your experience like? *In the photo: 50% of Traceloop

We grew from two to six people in a couple of months - here's what I learned from finding the right people. For a long time, it was just me and Gal. We both wrote code, ran sales calls, did customer support - whatever was needed. And it worked well. The fact that we were in on all the details helped us to close loops with customers quickly, fix bugs, and develop missing features. But as our user base grew, it became harder to support everyone (yes, even with tools like Copilot and Cursor) and we started to lag behind. So we decided to hire our first engineers to help us double down. Those engineers are usually called “founding engineers”, because they truly are part of the founding of the company. In my philosophy, they need to be a jack of all trades. They need to want to write frontend, and backend; Python and Go; train models, do devops; and even customer support; or product management. Because this is the life at an early stage startup. You’re founding something that will be big, and you need to know about everything that’s happening so we can understand each other well, collaborate efficiently, and everyone can always take whatever is the most important task for the company and execute it. So how do you hire them? Ideally, is someone you already know. You worked with them in your last job, they’re good friends from the university. Or someone you trust referred them to you. But that’s not always the case, and sometimes we had to interview. Our process was simple - we started with a 30 min non-formal chat where we got to know each other and figured out whether it’s a good fit. We then had a small take-home task and we wrapped it with a 1 hour technical interview where we also discussed the take-home task. I know many people hate take-home tasks but I actually think they’re super valuable for both the candidate and the company. All these helped us understand if the person sitting really has what it takes to be a founding engineer. How do you find your first employees? Were you the first employee in some company? What was your experience like? *In the photo: 50% of Traceloop