The Laravel Podcast

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 sits down with Jeremy Butler, product design lead at Laravel, to trace his path from building an app to sell advertisements to shaping the look and feel of Cloud, Nightwatch, and Forge.

Jeremy shares how a copy of Laravel: Up & Running rescued a struggling NHS project, why he leans on systems thinking and design thinking over raw pixels, and how design finally became its own pillar at Laravel alongside engineering.

They also dig into his side projects — useClassy and DSLinter — plus design system governance, tokens, and why solid design fundamentals still matter in the age of AI.

Matt Stauffer on X - https://x.com/mattstauffer
Jeremy on X - https://x.com/jrmymbtlr
Jeremy on Bluesky - https://bsky.app/profile/jrmybtlr.com
Laravel Up and Running - https://laravelupandrunning.com/
Classy - https://useclassy.com/
UseMods - https://usemods.com/
DSLinter - https://dslinter.com./
Laws of UX  - http://lawsofux.com
Untools - https://untools.co/
Laravel Twitter - https://twitter.com/laravelphp
Laravel Website - https://laravel.com/
Laracon US 2026 - https://laracon.us/
Tighten Website - https://tighten.com/
Suggestion Box - https://suggest.gg/laravelpodcast

----- Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten - https://tighten.com/

Big thanks to the companies that support the show:

Honeybadger - https://www.honeybadger.io/for/laravel/

Laravel - Laracon US and Laravel Cloud

Laracon AU - https://laracon.au

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 sits down with Wendell Adriel, senior software engineer on the Laravel team, to trace his path from a small town in Brazil to working on open source full time.

They dig into Maestro, the new orchestration system that makes Laravel's React, Vue, and Livewire starter kits buildable from a single layered source of truth, plus the new Vite font plugin that pulls Google and Bunny fonts local automatically.

Wendell also shares a candid story about persistence — six-plus applications, a direct email to Taylor, and finally landing the job nine years in the making.
 
Matt Stauffer on X - https://x.com/mattstauffer
Wendell Adriel on X - https://x.com/wendell_adriel
Wendell on GitHub - https://github.com/WendellAdriel
Wendell’s Website - https://wendelladriel.com
Prince of Persia Rotoscoping Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbbX_Mq-gdg
Laravel Twitter - https://twitter.com/laravelphp
Laravel Website - https://laravel.com/
Tighten Website - https://tighten.com/
Suggestion Box - https://suggest.gg/laravelpodcast

----- Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten - https://tighten.com/

Big thanks to the companies that support the show:

Honeybadger - https://www.honeybadger.io/for/laravel/
Laravel - Laracon US and Laravel Cloud
Laracon AU - https://laracon.au

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 Abby Gilson — Laravel's recently promoted field marketing manager, better known in the community as "Gen Z Abby" — about the winding path that took her from studying for the LSAT to running events for one of the web's most passionate developer communities.

They get into what it's like to learn marketing and event management on the fly, why Laravel events deliberately don't feel like typical tech marketing, and how being a non-developer pushed her to actually start shipping apps on Laravel Cloud.

Abby also previews Laracon US in Boston — including dodgeball, LaraProm, and the SoWa Power Station venue — before sharing how she went full-time digital nomad and landed in Milan.
 
Matt Stauffer on X 
Abby’s Email - abby@laravel.com
Abby on X 
Laravel on X
Laravel Website 
Laracon US 2026 
Community Events 
Tighten Website 
Suggestion Box 

----- Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten.

Big thanks to the companies that support the show:

Honeybadger 
Laravel - Laracon US and Laravel Cloud
Laracon AU

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 is joined by Cynthia McGillis to talk about her unlikely path from English major and nonprofit fundraiser to leading marketing at Laravel.

They discuss what it’s like to market developer tools as a non-developer, how Cynthia helped launch Laravel Cloud, and why the Laravel community feels different from other dev tool ecosystems. The conversation dives into Laravel Cloud features users still don’t realize exist — including auto-scaling, hibernation, preview environments, and the CLI with tinker — along with the challenges of pricing, onboarding, and scaling a modern hosting platform.

Matt and Cynthia also explore how AI is reshaping workflows inside Laravel, including how the marketing team is using Claude Code to generate weekly kickoff decks from Linear and Hex APIs, vibe-code landing pages without a CMS, and operationalize a fast-moving marketing org.
 
Matt Stauffer on X 
Cynthia on X 
Cynthia’s Website 
Cynthia’s Email - cynthia@laravel.com
Laravel Twitter 
Laravel Website 
Tighten Website
Suggestion Box

----- Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten.

Big thanks to the companies that support the show:

Honeybadger
Mailtrap 
Thunk 
Laravel - Laracon US and Laravel Cloud

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 Twitter
Laravel Website
Tighten Website
Suggestion 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_3

Thunk - https://tidyup.agency/

Laravel - Laracon US and Laravel Cloud