Changelog Interviews Selling SDKs in the era of many Claudes
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Feb 19, 2026 Steve Ruiz, founder of tldraw and creator of a high-performance web canvas and SDK, discusses building an SDK business and licensing strategy. He covers pricing, negotiation, enterprise deals, and detecting buyers with license keys. The conversation also explores AI integrations, agent-driven prototyping, internal tooling, performance optimizations, and spatial AIs for collaborative canvases.
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From Idea To Prototype In Days
- Steve described asking Claude to build an image-pipeline starter kit and getting an 80% complete prototype in hours.
- That prototype was steered, finalized, and shipped within days instead of weeks.
Validate Demand Before Locking License Terms
- Validate willingness to pay before locking into licensing terms by starting with generous commercial terms.
- Use early perpetual or trial licenses to learn pricing and customer demand before tightening restrictions.
Watermark Experiment Taught Pricing Lessons
- Tealdraw moved to a watermark-then-license-key strategy to find who used the SDK and engage customers.
- The watermark experiment lowered perceived value and taught them to anchor pricing to product value, not a cosmetic removal.