Celebrating 4 Years of the DevNTell Podcast
What a wild four years it has been for the
@devntellxyz podcast. Even just thinking about this passion project of mine sticking around for four years sounds crazy to me. If you came to me five years ago and told me that I’d be running a weekly podcast hosting some of the most brilliant and forward thinking builders & founders in the game I would’ve told you you’re crazy. But here we are four years later approaching almost 200 episodes.
The Origin Story Behind DevNTell
The fact that the podcast has stuck around this long means I must have done something right when I came up with the idea all those years ago. If you don’t know the story of how DevNTell started, I’m keen to share it with you because I genuinely believe it might inspire you to take that leap of faith on a project you’ve been sitting on. DevNTell began back in 2022, fuelled by nothing more than a hunch and a desire to step outside my comfort zone.
In early 2022, right after the NFT craze peaked, I joined this incredible community called
@developer_dao. I had seen the buzz online, minted a D_D NFT to join, and instantly found myself surrounded by likeminded people collaborating on the very first version of the Developer DAO website (the only initiative going on at the time). As the months went by, the community continued to grow, with more and more people wanting to get involved. Soon enough, sub-communities (i.e guilds) were created, helping members explore different verticals like development, business development, UX, product, and more.
As more people joined, I started to notice something important and not immediately obvious: everyone was building something yet no one really had a good way of sharing their work beyond distributing a link. Most people didn’t have a large enough network or social media audience to to really gain any traction with their project, classic go-to-market problems right? In fact, I had the same issue myself. I was just about to release my first open-source project, Glosseta, which is a decentralized glossary meant to help educate people on web3 related concepts and terms powered by Arweave (still around today, FYI); however, I had no idea how to get the word out about what I had spent months building.
I remember sitting in my room, staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out how to promote Glosseta as a first time founder. ChatGPT didn’t exist yet (ironically, it literally came out a month or so later), so I didn’t have an LLM to bounce quick ideas off of like we do today. For whatever reason, my mind wandered back to the early days of elementary school where we’d have these weekly show-and-tell days to share something we made in class and we’re excited about. And then it hit me: why not bring back that same concept but tuned to a more developer-centric flavour?
And that was it.
Show-and-tell… for developers.
Dev ‘n’ Tell.
DevNTell.
The first official episode featured myself showcasing Glosseta on December 3rd at around 8:30 AM PST just before starting my day job at Expedia. As 8:30 rolled around, a bunch of Developer DAO members gathered in a voice chat to watch me present Glosseta. It was nerve-wracking, exciting, and surreal all at once. I was presenting, recording the session, and answering questions live in front of my peers. When I wrapped up, a flood of people DM’d me asking how they could get on one of these sessions themselves.
So, I created a self-serve Notion page where anyone could jot down their name and what they wanted to share, then we’d schedule their session afterward. I still remember the first five slots filling up within a few weeks after I had done mine and then it spread like wildfire. People started booking months in advance and even hosted Max Howell (founder of Homebrew) in the early days. The show continued to grow in popularity to the point where even one year had an entire calendar fill up through December by the time May arrived. My initial hunch had indeed been validated. In solving my own problem I helped solve the same problem for countless other builders like me (the usual recipe for startup success).
Since that leap of faith back in December 2022, DevNTell has grown and evolved into a full-fledged podcast providing a safe, encouraging space where builders can share their stories, product demos and alpha to world.
Moral of the story? You can just do things. But the real lesson is to keep showing up. If you do, people will eventually take notice.
The Dev Factor
DevNTell was created for the builders and developers who tinker with the bleeding edge of innovation and the people building the tech giants of tomorrow. I have seen many podcasts that target the web3/blockchain niche but many of these play on market movements or concentrate on a specific chain, which is totally fine; however, DevNTell has always been chain agnostic and void of token price talk, focusing on the builders and the amazing products they are building. In fact, we welcome many different types of forward thinkers as we’ve hosted teams working on the cutting edge of AI, rare disease researchers, quantum biology researchers and more. As long as people keep pushing the needle of innovation forward, I’ll be here to provide a platform to help share their creations with the world.
One thing that sets DevNTell apart is the livestream-first approach. Before episodes hit Spotify or Apple Podcasts, we host live sessions where founders join us in real time so that the audience can ask questions, challenge ideas, and interact directly with them. This “in the trenches” environment creates an intimacy and authenticity you don’t often see elsewhere. And for the founders out there: yes, VC scouts watch the show. More often than you’d think.
What’s Next?
We’re already booked well into early Q2 of 2026, and can’t wait to share what’s coming. If you enjoy the podcast, you can help out tremendously by clicking the follow button on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or anywhere else you catch your podcasts. If digital collectibles are your thing, we have episode available to mint for free as well on the pods platform. We also encourage you to follow DevNTell on X, TikTok, LinkedIn and Instagram to keep up to date with all the latest clips, episodes, contests, special promo codes and giveaways (who knows, maybe we might have something cooking for you on that front already).
Whether you’ve been here since the early Discord days or you only just discovered the show, thank you. Your support means everything and I’m excited to keep running this wonderful podcast for you all. I’m aiming to host many more founders, many more projects, and maybe even you someday. Be sure to subscribe to our Luma Events channel to get the alpha on upcoming livestreams, workshops and IRL events.
Cheers and here’s to to the next 4 years!
- Narb