Building the Business Side of Laravel with Tom Crary

The Laravel Podcast is brought to you by Tighten, your friendly neighborhood Laravel experts. Check us out at tighten.com and also by other sponsors you will hear about later in the episode. In this episode, Matt Stauffer talks with Tom Crary, President and COO at Laravel, about the path that took him from a Big Four CPA firm to running the business side of one of the most loved frameworks in PHP. Tom walks through his years at Accel-backed startups, his time as CEO of Pond5 through the Shutterstock acquisition, and the surprisingly fast turnaround that ended with him signing his Laravel offer letter on Christmas Eve.They get into the division of labor between Tom and Taylor Otwell, scaling the team from 10 to 105 people in two years, and what Tom calls the hand-to-hand combat phase after Laravel Cloud and Nightwatch launched. Tom also previews fast hibernation, the growth of Private Cloud, and how Laravel is leaning into AI-assisted workflows.Matt Stauffer on X Tom Crary on LinkedIn Laravel TwitterLaravel WebsiteTighten WebsiteSuggestion Box ----- Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten.Big thanks to the companies that support the show:Honeybadger - https://www.honeybadger.io/for/laravel/Mailtrap - https://l.rw.rw/laravel_pod_3Thunk - https://tidyup.agency/Laravel - Laracon US and Laravel Cloud