551: System Design is a Team Sport with Tom Johnson

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If system design is a team sport, then you need to make sure that your team has the tools they need to work together. In this episode, entrepreneur, CTO, and co-founder Tom Johnson joins us to discuss Multiplayer, a collaborative tool streamlining system design and documentation for developers. Multiplayer is often likened to “Figma for developers,” as it allows teams to map, document, and debug distributed systems visually and collaboratively. Tom shares his experience building this tool, drawing on years of backend development challenges, from debugging to coordinating across teams. We also discuss the business side of startups before learning about the AI features that they have planned for Multiplayer and how it will benefit users, including eliminating time-consuming “grunt work”. Join us to learn how Multiplayer is revolutionizing system design and get a sneak peek into the exciting AI-powered features on the horizon!

Key Points From This Episode:

Introducing Tom Johnson, co-founder of Multiplayer.
An overview of Multiplayer and how it helps developers work on distributed systems.
The teams and developers that will get the most use out of Multiplayer.
Details on Multiplayer’s debugging and auto-documentation tools.
A breakdown of what distributed systems are in modern software development.
Why Tom sees contemporary systems design as a team sport.
Multiplier’s whiteboard-type space and how it allows teams to collaborate.
Tom’s back-end developer experience and how it helped him create Multiplayer.
How Tom co-founded Multiplayer with his wife, Steph Johnson, and her role as CEO.
Why solving a problem you’ve personally experienced is a good starting point for startups.
What you need to have before fundraising: a minimum viable product (MVP).
How they used the open-source software, YJS, for virtual, real-time collaboration.
Insights into Multiplayer’s upcoming AI-powered features.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Thomas Johnson on LinkedIn
Thomas Johnson on X
Thomas Johnson on Threads
Steph Johnson on LinkedIn
Multiplayer
YJS
Figma
Chad Pytel on LinkedIn
Chad Pytel on X
thoughtbot
thoughtbot on LinkedIn
thoughtbot on X
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