I spent $20,000 on Devin in a month. Here’s what I learned | Ryan Carson (solo founder)
Summary
Ryan Carson joins Claire Vaux to discuss his transition to managing cloud-based AI agents like Devin for his startup, Untangle. They explore strategies for prioritizing tasks, using agents for operations beyond coding, and the importance of talking to real customers. The episode also covers their distinct tool stacks, including Codex and Claude, and Carson’s innovative video-based hiring process for AI-literate engineers.
Topics discussed
Intro: The shift to cloud agents and WorkOS sponsorship
Ryan's journey: From solo founder to hiring humans
Why local dev is dead: Going all-in on cloud agents
Managing agents: Buckets, folders, and weekly priorities
The Watchdog skill: Automating business status checks
Constraining output and the Jira Teamwork graph ad
Background agents for ops and Merge Mommy for PRs
Devin review skills and the debate on Slack vs. threads
Design systems: Claw Design vs. Codex and Figma
Hiring via agent management videos and closing thoughts
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