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How Does Zeno Rocha Hire for Email? · The Changelog: Software Dev & Open Source

The Changelog: Software Dev & Open Source

Building what's next (Interview)

This week I'm talking with Zeno Rocha, CEO of Resend, about scaling "boring" email to 3 million users, the secret Go rewrite behind it, and building for agents. We cover pricing.md, MCP, spam gangs, and why Resend keeps what's next for email.

Notes

  1. How Did Resend Take Its First Payments? at 11:49

    Zeno Rocha took Resend's first payments with a Stripe payment link in January 2023. Full answer

  2. Why Not Let OpenClaw Write the Email Tool? at 32:47

    Zeno Rocha refused to let OpenClaw write the email command line because giving it an open API spec would generate a badly written command line, and he hated… Full answer

  3. How Can a Mail Record Silently Stop Company Email? at 36:22

    Zeno Rocha says receiving email is tricky because an MX record can compete with Google Workspace on priority. Setup starts by adding an MX record. Full answer

  4. What Email Feature Was Requested Most for a Year? at 38:25

    Zeno Rocha built the first version of inbound email by feeling the pain himself, after it stayed the number one most requested feature for over a year. Full answer

  5. How Does TripSee Capture a Booking Email? at 42:15

    Zeno Rocha says one company they help, TripSee, lets a user forward a flight or hotel booking email to a special address. Full answer

  6. What Kind of Company Is Resend? at 53:41

    Zeno Rocha says Resend is a utility company. The team started out thinking they were building a developer tools company. Full answer

  7. Why Do Agents Auto-retry Standard Rate Limits? at 1:33:23

    Zeno Rocha says agents know how to auto-retry when a service follows the rate-limiting RFC. Full answer

  8. Why Won't Resend Outsource Its Keys? at 1:39:43

    Zeno Rocha considered WorkOS and skipped it because the team has to own that part. Full answer

  9. How Does Zeno Rocha Hire for Email? at 1:55:21

    Zeno Rocha is hiring through heavy noise from fake resumes and other weird things, trying to assemble the Avengers of the email industry. Full answer

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