Coding Your Dreams into Reality: Lessons from an Engineer turned Entrepreneur | ButterCMS Jake Lumetta

**Jake Lumetta** (0:01)
I was just so interested in building, and coding, coding, coding. I think being an engine, and it was two of us, I think having two engineers paired up was actually a detriment because we just wanted to just code all day, and we didn't want to talk to customers. We didn't want to have to figure out how to sell this thing. We didn't want to have to figure out how to market it. You know, it was much easier to just code.
Yeah, yeah, totally.

**Dan Lines** (0:21)
Okay, so it's like, overall, it's really a pro, but, you know, if engineers listen, just keep in mind, stay close to the customer early on. Don't go like six months without talking to a user.

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**Dan Lines** (1:31)
Hey, what's up, everyone? Welcome to Dev Interrupted. This is your host, Dan Lines, co-founder and COO at Linear B. And today we're joined by Jake Lumetta, founder and CEO at ButterCMS.
Jake, welcome to the show.

**Jake Lumetta** (1:47)
Thanks, Dan. Thanks for having me. This is a blast. I'm really excited to be here.

**Dan Lines** (1:51)
Yeah, it's totally awesome to have you with us today.
We have a really, I think, great, I would say, story or kind of background about you.
And we love telling these types of stories on the pod. Usually we're doing it something like, okay, individual contributor, engineer, going into an engineering leader, ship type role, you know, director or VP. But in your case, we have also a pretty cool transition from engineer to founding your own company. We're also going to touch on building B2B products versus B2C. So we got a really, really excellent show. But what I want to do is let's start from the beginning, some background about you. Could you tell us a little bit about like your career progression and then leading into, I guess I'll just call it, Bother, leading into Bother.

**Jake Lumetta** (2:51)
Sure. I'll keep it super high level, I guess. Career wise, it maybe started in middle school, high school. I was just kind of was interested in computers and building and tinkering around with my own desktop computers and hardware and stuff like that. Got into the web when that started coming around, Mac media flash back in the day.
Remember the first time I saw some websites built in Flash, I was like, oh man, that is awesome. Holy shit. How does that work? How is that even possible? Really? And that question really, I don't know, kind of set the tone, I guess, for my career. I was so curious of how do you build that really cool stuff seeing online and that curiosity led me went to school for a computer science undergrad and have been really interested in just building and startups and entrepreneurship kind of my whole life.

**Dan Lines** (3:37)
So yeah, that's great. I also did the comp sci undergrad. Where did you go to school?

**Jake Lumetta** (3:42)
I went to Michigan State. So I was born originally from Michigan, born in Michigan. So I went to Michigan State computer science.

**Dan Lines** (3:48)
Yeah, that's really cool. I think you've been a founder at other startups or like what's your entrepreneurship situation?

**Jake Lumetta** (3:58)
Yeah, I've started and failed at I'm kind of losing track how many startups at this point, honestly. But I think it's like in the four or five range. And like I said, I've always just been really passionate about entrepreneurship and trying to make a go of my own company. And I've tried that many, many times. And so like in high school, I started, I didn't know it at the time, but it was like a content business. It's called Bonafide Reviews, which is a hilariously long, hard to spell name.