1.Hi Felix, what’s your background and what has been your career?
My passion for tech goes way back to when I was a kid and I came across my first computer. I was really fascinated by this machine that could do almost anything from playing games to watching videos and I was interested in learning more about how they worked.
Over time this passion grew and I eventually graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Informatics. It was during this time that I also learnt more about coding and Machine Learning.
Before starting Code Fundi, I worked as a Software Engineer for about 5 years in various startups and companies and it was there that I really honed my skills and became fascinated with the potential of AI and machine learning in software development.
2.You could have built literally anything else, why Code Fundi and how did the idea come up?
The idea for Code Fundi came from my own experiences as a developer and the challenges I saw my team and colleagues facing. We were spending a lot of time on repetitive coding tasks, debugging, and trying to understand legacy code and that is when I realized that with the advancements in AI, particularly large language models, there was an opportunity to create a tool that could significantly boost developer productivity.
The name “Code Fundi” embodies our mission to make every developer an expert by providing AI-powered assistance. The moment of inspiration came during a particularly frustrating debugging session. I thought, “There has to be an easier way to understand the context of my entire codebase and help me solve issues more quickly.” That’s when I knew I had to build Code Fundi.
3.How did you build it?
We leveraged open-source language models as a starting point and fine-tuned them on a large dataset of code from various programming languages. The initial prototype took about 2 to 3 months to develop. In terms of resources, we bootstrapped the company which allowed us to fast track the idea and focus on creating the infrastructure and model training for our MVP.
4.How did you get your first customers/users?
Our initial marketing strategy focused heavily on developer communities. To do this we attended and spoke at developer conferences and created content on platforms like Medium, sharing insights about AI in software development.
I also decided to share the first version of Code Fundi with some of my friends that were in the tech space and my sister who is currently learning how to code.
We started with about 10 users and grew over time, the first users would refer more and more people to our AI assistant and this helped us grow our initial user base organically. Over time we built up on our marketing strategies and have since tools such as social media into our pipeline which has helped us reach an even wider audience globally.
5.What are some challenges that you have faced and how did you overcome them?
As with any startup, challenges are part of the process and for us, one of our biggest challenges was taking the initial idea and getting Code Fundi up and running. Generative AI is a relatively new technology and another challenge we faced was gaining the trust of developers who were skeptical about AI-generated code.
The way we managed to solve this challenge was by building the service incrementally. We first started by building the coding AI which would connect with users on the cloud and then we worked on building the other components such as the notification system, among others over time. We also created a robust testing suite to ensure the reliability of the generated code.
Another challenge was scaling our infrastructure to handle increasing demand while keeping costs manageable. We invested a lot of time into optimizing our model and thanks to our partnership with Google Cloud for Startups and Microsoft for Startups, we’ve also managed to scale our services globally at an affordable cost.
6.Financially/user acquisition wise, how is the product doing?
Over the past year since we launched the service, we’ve managed to grow the service and right now Code Fundi is being used by teams and developers in over 30 countries globally.
We’re seeing a 30% month-over-month growth in new sign-ups and our users have generated over 10 novels worth of code since launch showcasing the code generation capabilities that we offer.
7.What are some of the mistakes you made while working on the product?
The biggest mistake we made early on was not focusing on data enough. In the early days, we were so focused on getting the product right and making it work perfectly that we failed to set up systems in place that would track and collect analytics.
Now, we can just look at the analytics we collect and from there, we’re able to understand our user habits a bit better and we can then make more informed decisions to help us grow.
Another significant mistake was initially focusing too much on features without enough emphasis on user experience. We had to take a step back and redesign our interface based on user feedback and this has helped us improve our user experience.
8.What are some of your future plans?
We’re excited about the future of Code Fundi. For a long time, coding has been known to be a challenging process, however, we might soon see building software become easier and cheaper to do thanks to tools like Code Fundi. We plan to expand our language support to cover more niche programming languages and explore the use of our technology in code education and mentoring.
We’re in the early days of AI and as these tools get better so will their capabilities. This is a double edged sword as many people are concerned about AI replacing them in their jobs but our aim at Code Fundi is to elevate and not to replace coding by providing teams and developers with the latest that these tools have to offer.
9.If you had the chance to do things differently, what would you do?
I would definitely start by gathering more user feedback earlier on in the development process, to help us understand our target audience and their needs better. I would also invest more in building a community around our product from day one.
10.Where can people go to know more about you and your work?
You can learn more about how we help teams and developers deliver better code in less time on our website: https://codefundi.app, or by following our socials @code_fundi.
You can also learn more about how our service works by reading our documentation:
Getting personal, what does success look like to you as an individual and at what point would you say you have achieved said success?
Success to me is multi-layered and evolves as I grow both personally and professionally. As an individual and entrepreneur, I define success through creating a lasting positive impact in the software development world through Code Fundi. I’ll feel truly successful when our AI-powered tool becomes a daily part of developers’ workflows, significantly boosting their productivity and creativity.
But it’s not just about the product – success also means building a diverse, passionate team that grows alongside the company.
I’ll also consider it a major milestone when Code Fundi is used by over a million developers globally and we’re recognized as thought leaders in AI-assisted software development.
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