Introduction to Alphalist Podcast -- Tobias Schlottke: Hello friends, this is the Alphalist Podcast. I am your host Tobi. The goal of the Alphalist Podcast is to empower CTOs with the info and insight they need to make the best decisions for their company. We do this by hosting top thought leaders and picking their brains for insights into technical leadership and tech trends.
Tobias Schlottke: If you believe in the power of accumulated knowledge to accelerate growth, Make sure to subscribe to this podcast. Plus, if you're an experienced CTO, you will love the discussion happening in our Slack space where over 600 CTOs are sharing insights or visit one of our events. Just go to alphalist. com to apply. Tobias Schlottke: Welcome to the Alphalist podcast. Meet Hannes Lenke: CEO and Tech Enthusiast --
Tobias Schlottke: I am your host, Tobi, and my guest today is from good old Germany, from Berlin. And it's a bit unusual because he runs. Um, more or less PLG SaaS company that has a CSB funding, um, of over like in total 32 million, I think, funded by companies like Excel, Bellerton, like very, very good. Tobias Schlottke: and well known VCs. Um, and it's Hannes Lenke. And Hannes is building a code first synthetic monitoring for modern DevOps. Hannes, did I introduce you properly?
Hannes Lenke: Yes, you did. Tobias, thanks for having me. Tobias Schlottke: Uh, thanks for being my guest. Balancing Technical and Managerial Roles -- Tobias Schlottke: Um, and yeah, as for many, let's say SaaS companies, um, you're, you're technical, but you're still the CEO. Tobias Schlottke: Um, uh, was that always the case or were you also sometimes like deep in the trenches or are you still deep in the trenches?
Hannes Lenke: I wouldn't say I'm, I'm deep in the trenches, um, still, right. So I'm, I'm deeply involved in product decisions, of course. Right. And, uh, probably also all kinds of decisions, um, in the company, right. Hannes Lenke: So it comes to marketing, sales, et cetera, but you know, I'm not writing code anymore besides, you know, maybe Easter and Christmas, you know, writing some scripts, et cetera. But, you know, I'm, uh, I'm not committing code to our production repository.
Tobias Schlottke: Okay, that sounds just about healthy. Um, and, uh, what did you code, um, let's say on Easter? Hannes Lenke: Um, I improved our CLI, right? So we have a command line interface, which is enabling what we will talk about, right? So monitoring this code. And, you know, I, I saw the need, uh, to improve it a bit, you know, by adding some features around environment variables, et cetera. So, um, you know, I thought I'd give it a go and, uh, was quite successful there.
Hannes Lenke: And Tobias Schlottke: your team didn't hate you for that. Hannes Lenke: They, you know, they, uh, for a time, uh, thought about it, uh, for, for some minutes and then, you know, did the code review and, you know, found lots of things to improve, right? Uh, so I'm, I'm, uh, not a professional coder anymore, I would say, right? Tobias Schlottke: I would say I'm kind of a GPT coder these days, so I even don't use Copilot, I just use GPT.
Hannes Lenke: I use Copilot a lot. Copilot helps a lot, right? Yeah. I'm writing scripts, um, on the side, right? So for accounting, then, you know, I'm using Copilot and I'm a huge fan of Copilot. Right. Just like bootstrapping, right? Bootstrapping. Um, and then yeah, also Tobias Schlottke: improving Hannes Lenke: for, you know, for people like us where we're not really coding 24 seven anymore. Hannes Lenke: Right. So it really helps to get started.
Tobias Schlottke: Absolutely. Um, so you have a team of around 40 people, so that's not really big. Um, and you collected like a huge amount of funding. What do you do with all that money with such a small team? How they hire these days -- Hannes Lenke: That's a great question, right? So, um, obviously we want to grow, right? And, uh, we want to grow, uh, faster, right?
Hannes Lenke: So that's why we took some money. And growing faster, um, we have pretty much two initiatives that we're pushing currently. One is, um, expanding into the US. So we see 80 percent of our, um, revenue is coming from the US. Um, currently also almost 80 percent of the customers. So, um, as a team with roots in Europe, so we are 100 percent remote team.
Hannes Lenke: And, um, you know, actually my, uh, team members are sitting in 14 countries worldwide, um, already, and I already have some, or had some, uh, people in the U. S., but now we have a larger team, uh, Helpful in the US, helping customers and serving to customers. And the other initiative is, you know, we're just getting started on the product.
Hannes Lenke: Um, so, um, we want to accomplish more there and, uh, uh, hiring engineers there at the moment. And, um, hiring a lot of people or just great people? Great people, right? So the focus is really on great people. That's a really good question, right? So right now, um, you know, it's not about scale. Um, in terms of team size, I think it's really important to find the right people and get the right people on board for, for the size, um, of Chakti, also where we are.
Hannes Lenke: Frankly, in the market currently, right? So we're a series B company. Now, we are working with, you know, very, uh, innovative teams in smaller startups, but also in larger enterprises. And, uh, you need people on board who understand the needs of, you know, frankly, both, um, sides and, um, who are, who are experienced enough to, um, Get their hands dirty, execute fast. Tobias Schlottke: Okay, Hannes Lenke: so Tobias Schlottke: sounds good. Like a good pitch. Apply now.
Tobias Schlottke: Um, so then a great team and a, and a nice skyscraper office in New York, I guess then, um, that, that's, that's the answer, right? Hannes Lenke: Yeah, I don't know if it's skyscraper yet, but in New York, we, we opened an office in August. It's at Union Square. So I think it's, you know, very central. Everyone knows Union Square and are there with currently, I think, five people. Hannes Lenke: Um, and. You know, looking to expand there.
Tobias Schlottke: Great. Hannes' Journey into Computing -- Tobias Schlottke: Um, maybe before we talk more about your product and what you, what you're actually doing, um, let's talk a bit about your experience, um, as a geek or nerd. Like, what is your, like, how did you get into computing and why do you do that? Like, why do you do what you Hannes Lenke: do?
Hannes Lenke: All right. That's a, that's a great question. Uh, sometimes I don't know why I'm doing what I'm doing, but I can tell you, you know, how I'm, you know, Got here pretty much, right? So I started as a, as a child, I'm actually, I was born in Eastern Germany, right? So, and when the wall came down, um, my parents decided, okay, we need a, we need a computer for, for the kids so that they can play some games.
Hannes Lenke: So they bought us a 486, I think was my first machine. So we started to play games. Um, and after some years, I recognized that there, you know, the possibility to write or to spin up your own website. So I started to, to do that. I think I hosted it on. And there was a service to host that, but this is a while ago, right?
Hannes Lenke: So, and so I, you know, got into HTML and, uh, JavaScript and, you know, um, started to develop my, my first website, still playing lots of, lots of games on the side, you know, um, Age of Empires and browser games. Um, you know, browser games like Planetarion, that was a game that was, uh, I think, uh, the first season was, was 2000 or so.
Hannes Lenke: So I got in there quite early and then they had scaling problems and, you know, needed to, to add more Apache servers to their, to their stack, et cetera. Um, I did that excessively. And, um, what I did there is, I'm also thinking about automation, frankly, right? So, I mean, especially in these browser games, there were tedious tasks, um, that you had to do every day.
Hannes Lenke: So, I thought about, hey, how could I apply the knowledge that I gained before at school and tinkering around, um, to, to the browser game. And, uh, this was the first time I really, uh, started, started to automate a browser. Back then, the style fee, right? So the programming language back then, and, you know, um, the knowledge I had, uh, learning Pascal and Toro Pascal at school, um, and, you know, was, was quite a, quite a, uh, yeah.
Hannes Lenke: Quite an experience, I would say. So I think we literally Tobias Schlottke: ended up in QA, uh, or coming up with QA testing tools because you wanted to automate a browser. Hannes Lenke: I don't know. I don't know. I mean, so it's an interesting piece here is, you know, looking back and back at your life. You know, now being, uh, you know, almost 40, um, you know, uh, what is it?
Hannes Lenke: What, what sticks? And, you know, uh, back then I did, uh, automation, right? So browser automation, right. And, um, yeah, it was a, was a good time. Early Business Ventures and Lessons Learned -- Hannes Lenke: And, uh, but what, what I also, uh, was interested in is, uh, in business, right? So actually I had a neighbor telling me about, you know, the possibility to trade And he teached me as a, as a 14 or 15 years old, uh, how to, how to trade stocks, right?
Hannes Lenke: Uh, uh, before the, uh, dot com bubble bursted, right? And so I started to trade stocks in the name of my, uh, mom and, um, you know, um, made some money on the side as a, uh, as a, uh, kid, right? That was quite fun. So, um, I was always interested in, you know, in, in business and then also programming. And, uh, you know, when I ended up doing my high school exam, um, question was, what's next here?
Hannes Lenke: Right. So am I going to study business computing or is it, uh, or, or am I going to study computing or business administration? And in the end I decided to go into business computing. Right. And, and, and really, um, Combine the both sides, right? And that's what I did, uh, in 2006 and seven, et cetera. And, um, then ended up as a, as a developer, uh, for, for larger enterprise in Hamburg, actually, uh, worked on, you know, quite some enterprise, the systems there.
Hannes Lenke: So, um, product management system systems, um, connected to SAP and, uh, did that for a while. It was quite fun because. The product lifecycle management system was, uh, was made to, uh, actually help us manufacturing VIP jets. So really, really large jets. So 747s for chikes, et cetera. And, you know, they needed to, uh, to have a system which is telling them how to manufacture the interior pretty much.
Hannes Lenke: And, you know, that's what I've worked on for a while and then recognize that I'm The least patient German on the planet, and that I need to change something. TestObject: AI for mobile testing in early 2010s -- Hannes Lenke: And, you know, this is, uh, this was 2010, where I founded my first business, which was called TestObject.
Hannes Lenke: And that was, that was also about, um, you know, automation. Um, actually we started TestObject thinking about, okay, how could we apply, um, AI to mobile testing back then, right? So, um, And, uh, we started to work on that for, for two years and had, uh, uh, read scientific papers, tried to understand, okay, you know, how, what is this AI capable of doing and applied it to, uh, to, uh, mobile testing in a way that we try to recognize, um, buttons on your, uh, apps, et cetera.
Hannes Lenke: There wasn't, you know, there wasn't a real good automation, uh, back then. Um, you know, and then. So, all the tools which are there nowadays weren't really there, so we pretty much looked at the screen, grabbed the screen and tried to recognize buttons and transform what we've recognized from manual tests to automated tests with JavaScript.
Hannes Lenke: And this is, you know, what we did for two years and then nearly ran out of money. Um, in the end, because, you know, uh, it was quite, quite a hard problem to solve. And, um, the truth is it's still not solved, right? So there's no AI really doing, um, test automation at scale, you know, even, you know, more than 10 years later. Making mobiledevices available onlne for debugging --
Hannes Lenke: So, um, we ran out of money, but recognized our customers asked us for, for these mobile devices that we, that we had, uh, you know, uh, in a, in a closet, right, connected to the internet. And, and they pretty much said, hey, okay, I mean, we need to have access to this, So, what we did is we, um, went ahead and said, okay, maybe we can solve that and, um, wrote some software, which is, uh, which enabled us to give these devices remotely to customers and, and help them to, to have access to these devices.
Hannes Lenke: And, um, Yeah, then it took off. Then we saw more customers, more revenue, etc. Tobias Schlottke: Yeah, very simple, very simple case. Um, so, um, yeah, thanks, thanks for this, this overview. Um, and, uh, as soon as I come up with a shirt, uh, I am part of the Markitech generation. Send one to you, as you might know that as well from your past.
Tobias Schlottke: Um, so really, really interesting because you were kind of from, from. Business more or always had that business exposure, right? Which for many techies, let's call it without, uh, um, bad, uh, bad feelings is, is, is not the case, right? Like you at a certain point have to teach yourself, like, Hey, Um, this is how business works.
Tobias Schlottke: And you kind of come from tech through this, um, through, through your, your intrinsic motivation. Um, and, uh, and not so much to business, but yeah, fascinating. And, um, you then sold the company to Source Labs, right? Right. Hannes Lenke: That happened in 2016. So we sold the company to Source Labs, which was a cloud testing, uh, browser testing provider back then.
Hannes Lenke: Um, they're, uh, from San Francisco and, um, they saw the need for, um, to add mobile testing to their stack. And there was a, was a good fit between the companies. In the end, in between the teams, we used, you know, the same technologies and we had, you know, similar or sometimes the same customers, right? So, uh, with my, with my business, I, you know, I helped Walmart to do their mobile testing and several others.
Hannes Lenke: And so. Sourcelabs recognized us as a Berlin based team back then. It wasn't, you know, it was not a remote team. It was 100 percent Berlin based team. They recognized us and thought like, Hey, this is a cool technology. Maybe we need to add that. Um, so we started the conversations actually, um, in 2015 and then it took them a year to, you know, to, uh, acquire us. Tobias Schlottke: Okay. Okay, cool. Um, so you started. Globalising a Berlin Business Starting with Payments --
Tobias Schlottke: off already back then with something quite international, just from the like roots of Berlin, right? Um, uh, was it, was it harder back then? Like, I mean, now looking at like all the tools, accessibility of, of payment solutions, et cetera, like how was it back then for like a German Berlin based company to scale globally?
Hannes Lenke: Yeah, it's quite interesting, right? So in the end, um, TestObject was a mobile testing tool, and mobile testing, um, we served, uh, mostly, um, QA, so quality assurance, um, people, uh, but this is international, right? So the market is an international market, so, um, kind of the market pulled us always, you know, to think globally, and obviously, when you When we started in 2010, we thought we could, you know, build in euros and on the website and, you know, uh, and, you know, the customers kept asking us if we could, you know, um, uh, not send them invoices, but, you know, accept credit cards and, you know, build them in US dollars.
Hannes Lenke: So we, you know, thought about that problem and thought about how to solve that problem. And back then Stripe wasn't huge. So we decided to go with Braintree payments, uh, back then. Um, and I think several other solutions. So it was a hassle really to, you know, to get accepted by, by the payment providers, the US payment providers as a, as a startup, but we did so.
Hannes Lenke: And then, you know, we were able to accept, uh, pretty much the payments and, uh, Over time, more customers came from, uh, from the US and more customers asked us about, uh, you know, larger scale solutions. So we started also to, to sell to the US, uh, with the sales team back then. Tobias Schlottke: I even remember that time when, I don't know, a rocket internet had, had a PSP, right?
Tobias Schlottke: Like they also build a competitor to Stripe, like just to be acquired by Stripe, which didn't work out back then. It was like really crazy, right? Like if you, if you look, look back, like it all seems so obvious, right? Uh, that, that, Like it will all lead to Stripe and, uh, and, and maybe a few others. Um, Hannes Lenke: yeah, well, but, but I think it wasn't obvious, right?
Hannes Lenke: So, I mean, Stripe success is, uh, you know, it's, uh, hard work in the end, right? Um, so there were lots of solutions on the market, right? And it wasn't, you know, the easiest answer wasn't to use Stripe because everyone is using that nowadays. It is. Right. So everyone, every, or most of the, uh, softwares and service tools are using Stripe, but, uh, back then, you know, there were plenty of solutions on the market and, uh, some had a good API, others did not.
Hannes Lenke: And, you know, um, in the end we, we went for parentry payments. Yes. Tobias Schlottke: And, um, Now, like a few years later, you obviously went straight away to Stripe and you did all the things that you did wrong back then. Now, absolutely correctly. 100%.
Tobias Schlottke: So what, what, how did you, how did you start your second business? Like, was it like straight away obvious that what you do want to do and that this is like a niche? Um, maybe also tell us a bit more about the niche. Niche. And then, um, Uh, let's, let's deep dive a bit, like what your learnings were and which, which, which you straight away applied. Hannes Lenke: Yes. Yes. The Birth of Checkly and Monitoring as Code --
Hannes Lenke: I mean, what we do at Shackley is, um, pretty much help you to get a very clear signal when your APIs or your website is down. Right? So, so we're executing, um, your own code at scale to enable you to understand, okay, um, you know, something is wrong with my website. Right? So it's pretty much test automation at scale.
Hannes Lenke: Um, just testing your production system. Right? Um, yeah. With the motivation of really helping you to understand, okay, I need to act now, right, versus, you know, tons of other alerts and signals you're getting from, you know, all the observability tools that you might have in place already, or maybe not have in place already, but you know, the The number one problem that I'm trying to solve is, you know, um, are your customers successful?
Hannes Lenke: Right? And I want to tell you that, right? Um, that's what we do, uh, with Shetly. Now, how did we came to the conclusion that, You know, that this is something, um, we have to do. Um, actually, you know, I became general manager at Saucelabs when they acquired us in 2016. Um, general manager in Europe, and, you know, if you want to be successful, um, there, you, you know, have to find customers and, you know, have to generate revenue, right?
Hannes Lenke: And I recognize that, you know, quite fast, uh, being in the journey. So what I focused on is, um, in the end working with customers, um, helping with my, my, my sales team, um, and, you know, um, product team and marketing team in Europe are really, uh, getting customers, um, onboarded, helping them to be, to become successful. How DevOps changed QA --
Hannes Lenke: And I recognize pretty much two things. Um, you know, first of all, DevOps came and what that shift meant is that all of a sudden there wasn't only QA involved in, in automation, frankly, right? And, uh, test automation were also developers deeply thinking about, um, automation, sometimes operation, uh, people and talking to, talking to lots of customers, um, I saw more and more, um, developers, uh, being on the table and asking for tools which are optimized for their workflow.
Hannes Lenke: So, I thought like, okay, what we have here is, you know, is decent, but maybe not good enough, um, long time. What I also recognized is, that lots of these customers were concerned about, uh, finding problems early, finding bugs. Um, ideally on staging, it's really hard to have a staging system, um, which is, you know, production like, which helps you to, to find end to end problems that you might face on production.
Hannes Lenke: So lots of our customers back then already thought, hey, let's apply this test automation suite to, to production and do actually, you know, test production. Monitoring, synthetic monitoring, right? So, um, the tool wasn't optimized for that, but the customers used it this way. So, so I started to think about, okay, I mean, uh, obviously, um, there needs to be a tool which is, which is made for, for developers.
Hannes Lenke: optimized for their workflow, uh, integrated in their, you know, IDE and really helped them to, you know, to understand how their applications are doing on production, right? So, and, uh, kept thinking about it, uh, while being, while being at Sauce Labs. And, you know, um, I told you, You know, I'm not very patient.
Hannes Lenke: So, you know, and Sourcelabs became a, you know, we were quite successful back then. So we became a larger ship and, you know, being, being the general manager on the ground in Europe, um, even though I was reporting to the CEO back then, you know, I was, was the only exec in Europe. So I thought like, okay, if I want to, uh, you know, move fast here, um, then I might do that, uh, having, having my own company again.
Hannes Lenke: And coincidentally, I, I met, uh, Tim, my co founder, and I met him by Sorry, phone call. Okay. So coincidentally, I met Tim, my co founder, and I pretty much, you know, recognized that, uh, there was Tim doing Checkly as a side project by Googling, trying, you know, trying to find out, okay, is there someone who's solving that problem maybe in the early days, um, already?
Hannes Lenke: Because I mean, in the end and, you know, in technology, um, If there is a real problem, and if I'm not the only one seeing that, then, you know, someone will do something about it. So I googled, uh, found out, okay, there's this, you know, Dutch guy, uh, working on a side project called Jackie, and coincidentally living away, uh, you know, two kilometers from me in Poland.
Hannes Lenke: So I, you know, dropped him a line saying, hey, Tim, um, You know, let's have a, let's have a coffee and talk. And, you know, we talked, we kept talking and to be honest with you, even though I thought like, okay, this is a problem which needs to get solved. Um, the initial thinking was like, okay, let's, you know, let's take some time off.
Hannes Lenke: Um, I saw it like a year because I also bought an old house back then. And so, uh, uh, let's renovate it with my own hands. I like to build things, let's really just run with it. Um, So that was the initial plan. And then we kept talking for a while, uh, for a quarter and we both recognized, okay, Tim was looking for, for co founder and I thought, Hey, maybe I can take my side project, which is generating, uh, you know, uh, some, some dollars, but not a lot, um, to.
Hannes Lenke: I'm gonna go through a full time project, uh, to a real business. And I, I kept thinking about it and then we, uh, decided to do it together, uh, 2020. Right. And, um, so what Chakti is today is pretty much, um, a mix of between, you know, what, what Tim saw back then and what I saw at Source Labs. Um, you know, um, combined and it's really, Monitoring as Code --
Hannes Lenke: we call it monitoring as code because what we allow our customers to do is to, um, have their monitoring setup configured in the code repository, right?
Hannes Lenke: So imagine you're a, you're a developer and your boss tells you, Hey, you've got to monitor that crucial service that you have just developed or that API. Then, you know, um, we. So, they allow developers to use the automation scripts and frameworks they know, called Playwrights, um, and codify, pretty much, or use Playwrights scripts from within the repository and deploy them to Jacqueline.
Hannes Lenke: After deploying them to TechD, we're executing these scripts at scale, 24 7, and the frequency you want, and from this in, you know, right now, 21 different data centers worldwide. So, it's actually, you know, taking, taking that core problem of, you know, automation, automation at scale, and really, you know, making it work.
Hannes Lenke: reliable, making it, um, really reliable so that you can trust when, when that system, um, calls you in the middle of the night, you can trust that this is not a, not a false positive, but really a real problem and that you should wake up, right. And, and really call an incident and, you know, start resolving that incident.
Tobias Schlottke: And, um, this idea of having, having monitoring. As code kind of came also from your background in Q& A and like seeing that like normally you write your tests, your unit tests and kind of put them in the code instead of having them external or separate from your application, which makes it harder to maintain, right?
Hannes Lenke: Yes, yes, yes, yes, um, we started Checkly actually with a, with a code editor and we still have a code editor, you know, in the browser so you can copy and copy and paste your script, right? So, um, and the truth is lots of customers are getting started this way, right? So even developers are testing Checkly out, uh, by, um, getting a free trial in place and, you know, um, Creating their first check, uh, within the browser, but the question is really, how do you scale that, right?
Hannes Lenke: So if you want to have more than, than five checks or monitor more than five APIs and, you know, multiple websites, multiple transactions on your websites. And then, you know, you might need, uh, 50 checks, 100 checks, maybe thousands or 10 thousands of checks. And then, um, you know, the browser and copying code in the browser doesn't scale very well, right?
Hannes Lenke: So, um, and there's, you know, there's a way to, to scale software development, which is, you know, pretty much, you know, um, code versioning. A Team Sport -- Hannes Lenke: Right? And, uh, what we did is, uh, we said, Hey, okay, I mean, then let's allow customers to put the code in their code repository. And what that does is on a very high level, it makes monitoring a team sport in a way, because all of a sudden multiple people can work on this kind of Um, tool, right?
Hannes Lenke: So this automation and, um, you know, it comes with all the benefits of code reviewing and, uh, and having multiple versions of your, of your scripts and, you know, um, CI, CD. So really, um, changing your monitors when your APIs are changing, et cetera, et cetera.
Tobias Schlottke: And from your perspective, you might be a bit biased there, but, um, what is the observability stack that like, let's say a normal SaaS company needs these days? Like, is it, is it like your solution plus, I don't know, a Prometheus or would you, would you monitor Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. like looking at the cloud, like, would you monitor your individual services still?
Tobias Schlottke: Or do you think it's just a check, uh, if your website is up and then, um, like a, an SMS notification or a call at night, uh, to inform you when it's down or what, what is your, what's your perspective here? Hannes Lenke: Yeah, I'm totally not biased, but, um, right. So, um, what I'm thinking, so, um, what I'm thinking about is, uh, How to enable customers to, to get a very clear signal, right?
Hannes Lenke: Their end users are, um, able to do what they, what they should do, right? Imagine you have an e commerce shop and want to enable your end users pretty much to buy your products. And if they can't buy your products, And you should wake up in the middle of the night, um, imagine you're the same e commerce shops and you have a kubernetes, you know, with lots of pods, et cetera.
Hannes Lenke: And you know, one of these servers is in the end, you know, dying. Um, that might not mean that you need to wake up in the middle of the night. That might mean that you need to act, um, the next day or week later, et cetera. Maybe you can accept that, right? So from time to time, um, You know, that, that your, that your service, service having a problem and need to reboot, right?
Hannes Lenke: So, because there are other services, uh, servers that might take over. So, I think what you need first is, is an idea of how your website performs, uh, for your end users. And this is why we do check team. And then, um, do we also need all the other insights? Yes. Right. To resolve incidents at the end, right. To really understand, okay, there's something weird happening here, um, with our API, um, what's actually happening in the backend, right?
Hannes Lenke: Is there, is there a backend problem, et cetera? So, um, you might need, you know, the observability stack to really figure out what the problem is there and, um, to resolve that. problem over time, right? And, um, so I'm not saying you don't need, um, observability tools, uh, but the truth is, you know, at 99 percent of the observability data, you will never have a look at, right?
Hannes Lenke: So, um, you know, you're just saving it somewhere in the data lake and, you know, you hope that it becomes valuable or that you, you know, can find the issue. And, you know, if you don't have lots of money, you might sample that data, you know, and if you sample that data, um, Imagine you have a, you have a customer that struggled, um, and you don't have that data available.
Hannes Lenke: So that's a true problem, right? So that's what I'm thinking about, right? So it's, it's not only, so the next evolution of Checkly is not only helping you to understand, you know, that there's a problem, but really understand where the problem is coming from. So we. Um, connect to, you know, Datadog, New Relic, and other services to, to help you correlate what we are seeing, right? Hannes Lenke: Um, we also, um, enable our customers to send us their traces, right?
The Importance of Relevant Traces -- Hannes Lenke: Um, so, but not all traces, the relevant traces, the traces which are relevant to, to resolve your incident, right? So imagine I'm, I'm calling you in the middle of the night, or my system is calling you in the middle of the night, 3 a. m.,
Hannes Lenke: telling you, hey, there was a, What I want to do is also being able to tell you, Hey, this problem is coming from that database query, which was slow, right? So with OpenTelemetry, we have the possibility to, to add traces easily. Um, so no, we are helping our customers to, to do so. And, um, um, now. I'm calling you and pointing you to the, to the phrase where, where the problem is actually, you know, where the root cause of the problem might be. Hannes Lenke: So,
Tobias Schlottke: um, the answer is you, you don't need Datadog. You don't need, uh, Prometheus necessarily. You only need Shackley then at the end, at least in the next iteration. At the end, maybe. Okay. Okay. Competing with Big Players -- Tobias Schlottke: So you're competing with quite big fishes, right? Like Datalog, et cetera. Um, I mean, I guess they're like many companies attacking their positioning.
Tobias Schlottke: I also think it's a, it's a, it's an interesting tool to have in the stack. Like if you mostly needed, if really something goes wrong, like let's, let's take an APM, like the use case of an APM, you just need it really, if there's If things go really south and you just need it for a very short time to optimize like short things, typically as small things, typically, and, and you pay.
Tobias Schlottke: it as if you would hire a developer looking at the price tag. Um, so that's, that's an interesting, uh, more value based pricing approach, right? Um, but, uh, let's, let's not talk about pricing. Let's, let's rather talk about, um, the, the problems that you're solving and also how you got there. Um, so if I get it correctly, then it's also very good. Solving Centralized and Dedicated Team Issues --
Tobias Schlottke: And your, your case solves Um, the issue of, of, uh, let's say the struggles you have between central people like working in a company centrally. Um, and, and dedicated teams. Um, is that what you, what you also had in mind, or?
Hannes Lenke: I don't know if that was, what was the vision from the beginning on, right? So, but what we're seeing is, you know, Checkly is, is used. The, the actual end user, um, might be, might be a developer, right? Might be an engineer. Um, you know, really, Usually, uh, spending most of their time, uh, writing code. Interested in, uh, applying Checkly to, to a company might be, you know, the central monitoring SRE team or platform engineering team, right?
Hannes Lenke: They might be interested in, um, you know, really, uh, making sure that. that you detect problems fast, right? Um, and, you know, an MTDD, as you would say. So, uh, mean time to detect, uh, problems, right? And, um, so they might look for a tool that enables, uh, multiple teams to, to really provision monitoring and really understand what, what's going on, right?
Hannes Lenke: If there's an incident called, right? And, um, so they're often looking at, Jackly or looking at Jackly and trying to find out, okay, how can I, can I bring in a tool that my developers understand and that fit my modern DevOps process in a way. And, um, we have. In the end, you know, multiple, multiple personas working with Shackley, um, and also sometimes, you know, even, even board members looking at the data that we're, that we're producing in the end, you know, so, so for e commerce businesses or for frankly, you know, almost every company nowadays, which is a digital company.
Hannes Lenke: Um, it's important to understand, okay, how, you know, what's my reliability, what's my customer experience, etc. So sometimes even, you know, board members are looking at the data, um, you know, on a quarterly basis or something like that. Tobias Schlottke: Yeah, I think the concept of service level indicators and, and objectives kind of, kind of slowly becomes mainstream, right?
Tobias Schlottke: That is about. Solving a customer problem together. Um, and, uh, that it is meaningful to define how you want to make sure that your customer is successful, right? Hannes Lenke: Yeah, yeah, that's what we see across the board, right?
Monitoring as Code -- Hannes Lenke: So that's, um, that's where we also see companies coming, you know, with solutions, with homegrown solutions, maybe, um, and, and telling us, hey, we, we need a day to detect problems here, uh, because, you know, our solution is not very scalable and no one is looking at, Edit because, you know, we have lots of false positives and the developers don't like to work with it because they need to go into, into UI and click some, click some tests together.
Hannes Lenke: Um, so, you know, that's why, you know, why we want to want to look at monitoring as code and, um, that's. That's typical how a conversation with Shackley is starting, right? And, um, usually you're right, right? Usually there's, there's some, uh, management, uh, mandate to, to look at this data, right? So to really understand, hey, how's my customer experiencing, um, the products that I'm developing? Challenges in Frontend Testing --
Tobias Schlottke: And why did you take the monitoring approach instead of the testing approach? I mean, from my perspective, I have a hard time with front end testing tools because they are mostly I don't know, decoupled from engineering and not working. Hannes Lenke: Yeah, we actually do both, right? So you could also execute check the checks, um, against the staging environment as a test, right?
Hannes Lenke: So we have these, uh, features, and the customers are using these features, right? So usually, um, you know, so what we do is, uh, we, we help the whole engineering team. So, which might use, you know, Playwright for testing, and then, uh, also thinking about, okay, how can I apply what I'm already doing, uh, writing tests here, uh, for monitoring?
Hannes Lenke: So, not, you know. Do less, pretty much, and achieve, you know, more, right? Um, and that tender thinking, uh, feeds into, feeds into what we do, right? So in the end, you could, you know, you, you can use, and, uh, lots of customers are using, lots of our, um, yeah, more than 1, 000 customers are doing, uh, testing and, and monitoring at the same time. Do dedicated QA teams work? -- Hannes Lenke: Do you, do you believe,
Tobias Schlottke: like just a short check, like a. I recently had a podcast with Thomas Artmann, the CTO of Linear, and we spoke about QA as well. Like, what's, what's your perspective on QA? Like, does dedicated QA work at all? Hannes Lenke: That's a good question. That's a good question. So, I mean, I started my career, right?
Hannes Lenke: So, as test object, uh, you know, I'm talking to lots of dedicated QA teams and you know, what I've seen is at scale, they're slowing you down, right? So because, you know, um, a dedicated team, a siloed team always means that, you know, the developers are doing something and then, you know, the service is somehow, you know, in the GA ready state and then QA is taking over, right?
Hannes Lenke: Um, so if it, you know, is applied to, to the problems this way, then I think it's just, you know, slower. And I'm a firm believer in cross functional teams, to be honest, right? So, let's have a development team with a, with developers, with developers, with, you know, QA, uh, people or developers focus on QA, maybe designers, et cetera, and, and let them work on a, you know, on the problem, right?
Hannes Lenke: And, um, That's what I believe in, um, you might, you know, at scale, need a, people who are really tasked to write automation, um, who's in their team, fine, then do that. I really don't believe in siloed teams, Tobias. Tobias Schlottke: Um, uh, uh, Tuomas went a bit further. down the road and said he doesn't believe in that, that, um, that function at all in a team.
Tobias Schlottke: Uh, like not even in a cross functional team, but he, he only believed in, um, I think product design, uh, and engineering. Uh, and said, yeah, I could agree to it. Hannes Lenke: Right. So I really could agree. So Uh, you know, best case you convince your developers to, to write, um, automation testing, right? Or automated testing. Challenges of Executing Customer Code at Scale --
Tobias Schlottke: Looking, looking at your stack, um, as we don't only wanna talk about your product deck, what is the hard thing you're experiencing with, with your stack? Like, what is, what, what, what were the, the important decisions you, you took early, even though you're not the CTO, but the CEO, um, and, um, what, what are the. Tobias Schlottke: Hard problems you have and you're solving.
Hannes Lenke: Yeah, I think our core is executing customer code at scale. Very reliable in 21, uh, maybe in the future, 50 different locations worldwide. Right. Um, that means our infrastructure need to be, needs to be, you know, optimized for that, um, needs to, um, Make sure that, you know, these, these scripts are running, have the resources they need, um, at runtime and are not failing because of a, you know, noisy neighborhood problem or something like that, because they're, you know, maybe, maybe 10 other scripts, um, Execute it on the same machine at the same time, et cetera, et cetera.
Hannes Lenke: So that's a, that's a hard problem that we're, that we're solving, um, constantly, right? So we have an infrastructure team that is pretty much focused on, on this task. So make it very reliable at scale, faster, always faster. The faster you, you get in the signal that you, you have a problem, um, the better it is.
Hannes Lenke: And, um, in the end also, uh, make it affordable, right? So, so we're thinking a lot about, you know, how to, uh, how to make automation at scale affordable, um, because, you know, in the end we, we want to earn money, right? Um, and, you know, want to, want to accomplish a certain margin. So, so Uh, that's what we do in the core of our system, and then we are producing, uh, by executing millions of, um, these scripts per month, or hundreds of millions of these scripts per month, uh, we're generating lots of data, right?
Hannes Lenke: Um, so we have Clickhouse, uh, which we use for analytics, and then we have a, you know, PostgreSQL, uh, which is, which is pretty much doing the rest, and, you know, which we're also always looking at, um, and, um, Yeah, trying to, trying to understand how to, how to scale that. Tobias Schlottke: Okay. The Evolution of Tech Stacks -- Tobias Schlottke: But it also doesn't sound, I mean, most stacks these days are kind of standard, right?
Tobias Schlottke: Like you, you have Kubernetes, you run like large, large workloads and Docker containers, I assume. Uh, so I mean, problems are solved, but still it's the combination of like a boring tech stack, uh, and really like pushing it far. I Hannes Lenke: wouldn't say if I, um, if I agree to boring tech stack. Tobias Schlottke: Yeah. Well, you know, it's kind of standard, right?
Tobias Schlottke: Yeah, yeah. Like you don't need necessarily, I don't know, cockroach DB or whatever, like, uh, back, back in the days, like let's, let's, let's, let's say take a step back like five, 10 years ago, like everyone was into that and, uh, had to have the no NoSQL stack, et cetera. Now, um, for me it's just, I don't know, Postgres, Kubernetes. Tobias Schlottke: Um, and, and, uh, in your case, like very smart worker execution, I guess.
Hannes Lenke: Yes. Yes. And some queues in between. Right. So lots of, lots of queues in between, which are, which are, uh, distributing the work that, that's it. Right. So, um, I think actually Clickhouse is very cool and, you know, um, it helped lots of, you know, companies to, to do the, um, you know, analytics at scale, um, easier.
Hannes Lenke: I mean, you could have accomplished that with PostgreSQL kind of, you know, 10 years ago already. But, you know, um, now, you know, it just enables us to, you know, to have a 40 people team and not a 150 people team, uh, solving, solving these kind of issues. Tobias Schlottke: Yeah. It's, um, it's actually very, a lot of fun to see how stable, um, technology got, um, in that area.
Tobias Schlottke: Right. Like, I don't know, Postgres Redis. whatever, I don't know what you're using for workers, uh, Clickhouse, et cetera. It's a super solid, uh, and you don't need much more, right? Hannes Lenke: Yes. Yes. I mean, it's, uh, it's great to see that technology is there to, you know, to, um, do what we do at, at scale, um, you know, um, for, for thousands of customers.
Hannes Lenke: I mean, you know, I'm coming from. For, you know, from mobile testing. So we operated, you know, thousands of mobile devices at scale in, in, in data centers. And, you know, these iPhone devices, they're just not optimized to be operated at scale. And, you know, running test automation 24 7, it was a, you know, it was a different challenge back then.
Hannes Lenke: So, way harder challenge, I think, you know, um, now with what we do, what we do, um, for, for monitoring, I think it's still a very hard challenge to, you know, to, to make sure that you're, you know, not. working up someone in the middle of the night because there's a false positive. Something is wrong in your network or in your kubernetes or, uh, et cetera.
Hannes Lenke: So it's really, really hard problem, but it's, you know, not, not as hard as, uh, as it was kind of 10 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. Like these Tobias Schlottke: days you kind of, I don't know, think in voting mechanisms and think in, in, in standards, um, which back then, We're still not yet there, right? Not really invented. Um, and, and, and besides that, I guess you, I don't know, you're fully on TypeScript or something because like obviously playwright. Tobias Schlottke: Uh, yes.
Hannes Lenke: Yes. We're, we're in Node. js, uh, uh, shop. Yes. A hundred percent. Um, that's pretty much, so it's, it's a hundred percent Node. js at the moment. Obviously we, we think about, um, optimizations there, right? So can we, can we introduce some, some goal, et cetera, to, to execute, um, faster on the worker level, et cetera, but it's not the case yet. How teams are arranged --
Tobias Schlottke: Okay. And if I imagine your team, I mean, 40 people means that most likely you kind of spun off the, like, if you look at engineering, spun off the, the worker stuff from the rest, or, or do you, I don't know, differentiate between front end and back end or something? We differentiate Hannes Lenke: between, um, features. that we have, right?
Hannes Lenke: So we have, we have a team working on, on the core synthetics that we have. Um, then we have a team working on the platform, right? Below, below all other teams and the infrastructure. Um, and, uh, a team thinking about how to give customers more insights into what actually went wrong. So, um, check the traces as a practice.
Hannes Lenke: That came out of that team. Um, and, um, then we're just spinning up our spawn up and, um, enterprise team that, you know, helps enterprise customers to, you know, with, uh, the, all the, all the things they need, right? So permission management, et cetera. Okay. Tobias Schlottke: Okay. Um, interesting. So that is an engineering team, uh, working on enterprise, uh, customers problems.
Hannes Lenke: Yes. Yes. There's some features that, that are more important when you, when you have hundreds of users, um, on a, on a platform, right? Um, and then these features, um, you know, need to be, yeah, implemented by, by, by someone, right? So, and, uh, we think that's, Yeah. So that's a, yeah, a dedicated team that should do that.
Tobias Schlottke: Understood. Lessons Learned as a Founder -- Tobias Schlottke: Like looking back, what, what were the three important things that you, let's say three that you learned since you found a Checkli and which you wouldn't do, or which you would have loved, uh, having learned Hannes Lenke: before? That's a, that's a tough one. That's a really tough one. So what did I learn at Checkli? Second Time Founders: Pace Yourself --
Hannes Lenke: First of all. You know, as a second time founder, um, you always think it's so much easier to, to fall into second business. I think it's not, right? So, um, the expectations are just larger, right? So, I mean, uh, having worked for, uh, for a company that, you know, had, you know, hundreds of, uh, paying customers before, um, and then you're starting from scratch, it's kind of, it's kind of tough, right?
Hannes Lenke: So, uh, would have loved to tell myself, Hey, pace yourself. Again, goes back to, you know, my patients levels. Um, you know, but, um, so, so that's, uh, that's something I would've loved to know. Um, and then I'm actually glad that we, that we kept the customer focus. I mean, it sounds maybe, I mean, probably everyone is saying that, right?
Hannes Lenke: So, but I'm telling even, you know, my, my operations and people operations, people from time to time, you know, to jump into, into customer calls and just listen to the conversations or listen to the recordings that we have, et cetera, so that everyone knows, you know, what, what the customers are thinking about our product, et cetera.
Hannes Lenke: And, you know, I'm glad that I do, did that. Um, I don't know that, you know, I mean, the learning is, is probably, hey, this is, this is important. Right? So, I mean, in the end, customers are paying our bills and paying our salary. And, you know, um, we have to have some kind of level of dedication. I'm not a big believer in these, you know, in these buzzwords of, you know, being Customer Dedicated or Obsessed, etc.
Hannes Lenke: In the end, it might be that, uh, in a way, but, you know, um, I'm just not calling it, uh, uh, you know, Customer Obsessed, right? As an organization, um, yeah. Things with names, right? How PLG needed to evolve with larger customer demands -- Hannes Lenke: Yes, yes, yes. And then, I mean, shirt learning is, um, is, you know, we, we started checkli as a, as a, um, you know, bottoms up PLG business and it's still bottoms up PLG business.
Hannes Lenke: So, but, but larger customers are coming to us saying, Hey, we need a, we need a, um, you know, more volume or more people on the, on the platform. And, you know, that, that's, um, That means someone needs to talk to them. And usually you as a founder and um, you know, I was my, my co founder Timo. Um, did that for a while and then, you know, it didn't scale anymore.
Hannes Lenke: So in the end you end up, you know, hiring or people which are, which are called Sales, right? And account executives and you know, um, your, your. actually doing sales, uh, even, even though having, um, a POG business. So it's gonna, um, it's interesting, right? So I was quite religious of, of never, never onboarding, uh, you know, a large sales team anymore. Hannes Lenke: And, you know, um, the truth is we're kind of stumbling into it.
Tobias Schlottke: Yeah. Uh, right. Yeah, absolutely. I think like, um, product led, um, as a buzzword as well. Right. Um, logically end somewhere, right? Like you logically want to move, move up the road and, uh, aim for bigger accounts, help, help bigger customers solve different problems instead of staying on that level normally. Tobias Schlottke: And yeah, it's, it's, it would be foolish to not. I don't know, also move there, right? So like, do what your customers want at a certain
Hannes Lenke: point. Yeah. Do you want to say no to one of the topics in the world? Um, so, I mean, this is a hard decision to make, right? So just saying no, we can't, we can't help you. Um, you know, I'm, I'm.
Hannes Lenke: You know, in the end, interested to, you know, help customers do business, you know, and, and this means, hey, okay, um, then, then you got to figure out who's doing that. And, um, yeah, in the end, product lead, what, what does product lead mean for me? Right. So first of all, I think the product needs to convince customers.
Hannes Lenke: So what we told today, even with the customer comes. Not having tried the product yet, right, uh, comes to us, right? So usually, I mean, 99 percent of our, um, you know, customers are coming to us inbound. Um, but then we still try to convince them to, to approve. Uh, to run a proof of concept and, and, and really try to, uh, you know, get them on board at ASAP, like, like a minute after we had the first call with them, right?
Hannes Lenke: And, uh, even, uh, even more, we try to, um, provision checks for them, uh, even before the first call, right? So that we can, you know, show them the product and, you know, because I mean, and this is in the end what we are, what we are, um, you know, selling and you gotta, you know, Show that and then the customer should test drive it, right?
Hannes Lenke: So if you would sell a Tesla, then of course, you know, you should test drive it before, right? And experience it. And if you have a great experience, you might be intrigued to, you know, uh, put your credit card in or ask for, ask for an invoice, right? And this is what we're doing on a daily basis. Tobias Schlottke: Uh, yeah.
Tobias Schlottke: Thanks a lot, Hannes, for your learnings. What is the, let's say, recent hottest shit that you discovered? Like anything, like technically fascinating, any tool that makes your day so much better? Anything you annoy all your friends with because you're telling them on and on how great that is? Like anything that, that pops to your mind? Tobias Schlottke: I was Just Chatting About Autonomous Vehicles in 2025 EU --
Hannes Lenke: recently test driving a Waymo, right? In San Francisco. So one of these fully autonomous cars. Um, and there was a, there was a great experience to be honest, right? So because then that's really next level technology, right? Apply to a real use case, right? So, um, I mean, I, I love my car. But, you know, uh, really being able to, to sit in the car and the car is doing, is going, um, through the city, driving you where you want to be fully autonomous and actually smoother than any Uber driver in San Francisco would ever do.
Hannes Lenke: Um, you know, that was, that was quite an experience and I'm, I'm telling my team about it. So it's not the latest thing. Software, etc. Right? But this is really, you know, the number one experience I had, you know, recently. Tobias Schlottke: I actually was fooled by someone, uh, when I bought or, um, leased a car four years ago and actually bought a full self driving package with the car, which never started working in Germany.
Tobias Schlottke: Um, yeah, I bought a package too. And the question is now, like, if you're leasing and would you buy it again? Because there are stories about next year finally being the year of full self driving in Europe. Right?
Hannes Lenke: Uh, yeah. I mean, I don't know. I mean, seeing, you know, all the technologies that Waymo car has on board, I don't know if, you know, if the car you're talking about and I'm talking about kind of, you know, is is able to, you know, uh, be a full self driving car?
Hannes Lenke: I just don't know. Right. So we, we will see and, you know, time will tell us, but, you know, would I believe that story as I believed it, you know, three years ago? Um, probably not. Right. So, I mean, yeah, Tobias Schlottke: you would be more skeptic. Well, um, Hannes Lenke: I probably would buy Waymo. Hannes Lenke: It's ever available for private customers, Message to Younger Self --
Tobias Schlottke: in Berlin, . Um, so I, I spoke to your co-founder and he actually, um, told me a little surprise that you, you guys have in the company. Um, it, it's a little annotation in your DSL or in, in your, in your playwright setup, um, which you can use to. basically travel back in time.
Tobias Schlottke: It's an easter egg called time machine. You just have to add a common time machine and then a year and a person and, um, now imagine that we now use this feature that your co founder built in, um, and, uh, physically travel back in time, um, into the year 2004 when you worked as consultant and software developer for a company called Pumasi Technologies.
Tobias Schlottke: Um, and, uh, we observe yourself like. Uh, building software for luxury jets, et cetera, back then. Um, and now you have the chance to whisper something into Jan Hannes ears. What would it be? Probably get started with your own
Hannes Lenke: company faster, right? And, uh, think bigger, think on a global scale earlier, uh, because, you know, uh, what we're, you know, what I did throughout the last years is developing Software and, um, selling software and, and really, you know, it took me quite a while to recognize that, you know, that this is a global market that lots, millions of developers have, you know, similar problems, et cetera.
Hannes Lenke: And, you know, that, that, uh, uh, solving a problem for, for one might mean that there are 10, 000 others that have a similar problem and, um, that, you know, you need to let them know about. Uh, having the tool, right? So it's not only, so in the end, it's not only, you know, writing, writing. And shipping software, it's, it's also about, you know, um, bringing it to the market, you know, letting customers know about it, um, or letting potential customers know about it, et cetera.
Hannes Lenke: And I think, you know, um, would have loved to have that knowledge earlier, pretty much. Right. So what, what you can do from. Living within Berlin, um, and, and really, you know, helping customers in Japan, uh, China, and, uh, USA, um, you know, by, I mean, I wouldn't say I'm, I'm sitting in the office all day long, I'm actually flying a lot, um, you know, next week to, to New York again, et cetera, but, you know, really, you know, um, there's, you know, lots of, lots of developer problems to, to be solved, and, uh, if you can solve the problem for one, then you can probably solve it for multiple people and just need to talk about it, pretty much.
Hannes Lenke: I would have loved to have that experience, maybe, earlier. Tobias Schlottke: That understanding, right? Like, this is a global market, and this scales globally straight away, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like looking at it from today's perspective, it's super simple, right? Um, and super logic, but it wasn't always like that for me, at least.
Tobias Schlottke: At least not for me, maybe for others it is, but you know, for me it wasn't. So Hannes, um, thanks a lot for your insights and time. Uh, really looking forward to publish this episode and maybe physically meet in Berlin at a certain point for, Thank you, Tobias, and yeah, um, everyone out there, just try his product.
Hannes Lenke: That's a great recommendation. We have a free, we have a free trial. Um, Tobias, thank you. Thank you. That was fun. And, uh, let's meet in, you know, either, uh, Berlin or Hamburg or, or somewhere else. Tobias Schlottke: Thank you for listening to the Alphalist podcast. If you liked this episode, share it with friends, I'm sure they love it too.
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