devtools.fm: Developer Tools, Open Source, Software Development Ben Curtis - Honeybadger, Breakwater
Mar 9, 2026
Ben Curtis, founder and CEO of Honeybadger and creator of Breakwater, a long-time Ruby contributor. He shares stories from early computing to building Honeybadger and launching Breakwater. Topics include designing developer tooling, bootstrapping a SaaS, product prioritization for dev workflows, AI’s impact on observability, and new models for distributing Dockerized software.
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Honeybadger Founded After Bad Customer Support
- Ben Curtis started Honeybadger after poor support from an existing error tracker left an exception report incomplete.
- He and co-founder Star built a better product and support because they felt developers deserved reliable tooling and responsive service.
Plan For Slow Traction When Bootstrapping
- Be patient when bootstrapping a software business because traction usually takes longer than expected.
- Honeybadger needed 18–24 months to make significant revenue, so plan finances and accept slower growth versus VC acceleration.
Custom Query Language Enables Flexibility
- Honeybadger chose a custom query language (BadgerQL) for Insights to maintain an AST and extensibility instead of being locked into SQL.
- Kevin advocated the language for flexibility and pipe-style filters, which later proved valuable for transforming and extending queries.