✨ Product Design & AI Innovation

Ryan Perry

From investment banking to coding bootcamp to Y Combinator, I've made a career out of learning fast and making complex things simple. I sold my first startup Pyroscope to Grafana and now focus on growth at Grafana Labs—specifically growing the newest additions to our product suite and our new AI products.

Y Combinator W21Acquired FounderProduct Leader
Ryan Perry
Philosophy

Learning in Public, Shipping Fast

I've made a career out of learning fast and making complex things simple. Whether it's building a profiling database from scratch, reverse engineering AI prompts to understand how to make them more efficient, or navigating YC fundraising as a first-time founder, I believe in getting something working and improving it from there.

1

Ship the Terrible First Version

Accepting that the first version will be the worst removes failure anxiety and gets you started

2

Network Effects Compound

Sometimes the best investment isn't in what you learn, but in who you learn with

3

Momentum Beats Perfection

Some upfront thinking saves hours later, but always bias toward action and iterating quickly

Latest Writing

Ideas in Motion

Exploring the intersection of product thinking, AI innovation, and design philosophy

Bad Prompting Is the New Bad Engineering
8 min read

Bad Prompting Is the New Bad Engineering

Built the same crossword app twice. Bad prompt took 6+ hours, good prompt took 40 minutes. Prompt engineering is actually a real skill.

Two attempts: 6h 27m vs 40m
aiprompt-engineeringdevelopmentcost-analysis
How We Got Acquired by Grafana Labs
8 min read

How We Got Acquired by Grafana Labs

The whole story of getting acquired. Careful early planning, negotiations in fancy vegas hotels, leverage dynamics, and why it was actually the smart choice (not giving up).

Strategic positioning over size
acquisitionstartupstrategynegotiation
YC Is All About Understanding Ulterior Motives
8 min read

YC Is All About Understanding Ulterior Motives

Game theory thinking saved us at every step. Valuation psychology, investor motivations, acquisition dynamics. Understanding what people actually want.

First-time founder journey
ycstartupfundraisingacquisition
O(log n) makes continuous profiling possible
8 min read

O(log n) makes continuous profiling possible

Building Pyroscope meant solving a hard computer science problem. How do you profile code continuously without killing performance?

Production-scale requirements
pyroscopeperformancedata-structuresalgorithms
My Start with Side Projects
7 min read

My Start with Side Projects

Side projects became my secret weapon for learning and getting unstuck. The constraint of one weekend forces you to ship something.

One weekend per project
side-projectslearningcareergrowth
How To Make a "Joker" Snapchat Lens in 5 Steps
5 min read

How To Make a "Joker" Snapchat Lens in 5 Steps

Built an AR lens in 10 minutes just to see if I could. Turns out Snapchat Lens Studio is way more powerful than I expected.

10-minute build time
snapchatarmarketinglens-studio
Two Years Later... Was My Coding Bootcamp Worth It?
5 min read

Two Years Later... Was My Coding Bootcamp Worth It?

Honest take on Hack Reactor after working in tech for two years. The real value wasn't what I expected.

12-week intensive program
bootcampcareerlearningreflection