Evan Doyle

🤖 Helping you make something agents want

⚙ Co-Founder/CTO @ Gauge (YC S24)

[Evan Doyle @evandoyleDEV]

This is my favorite thing we've shipped this year!

We use the CLI every day internally, feels like a superpower.

[Caelean @the1024th]

Today we're open-sourcing the Gauge CLI.
@gauge_sh helps you make something agents want, for free.

Why are we doing this?

Just a year ago, the capabilities in this CLI could have justified a SaaS fee, and might have even been the core business.

But coding agents have completely changed the game.

More than 85% of the coding sessions that users run on our platform are initiated through the CLI, triggered by their coding agent.

Users just want their agent to solve problems, whether that means building from scratch or picking the best vendor for their problem. We know that the tools they pick are the ones with zero-friction onboarding, and legitimate value up-front.

The bar to sell software has risen, and agents need to try it before users do.

Make something agents want with the Gauge CLI. Get started now for free.

[Evan Doyle @evandoyleDEV]

@patrickrfos definitely agree. for an agent, docs are part of the product

[Evan Doyle @evandoyleDEV]

@connortbot @ycombinator @flexcapital @founderscoop @paulg @zenorocha Congrats on the launch @connortbot !

[Evan Doyle @evandoyleDEV]

The kids are getting bolder.

This is a real application for the Founding Eng role. Is this the new meta?

[Evan Doyle @evandoyleDEV]

@FarbodMemarian_ @UCSD No you still have to come in

[Evan Doyle @evandoyleDEV]

unbeatable

[Farbod Memarian @FarbodMemarian_]

We could get 3x the square feet downtown, but how can you beat this?

🌲> 🧱

[Evan Doyle @evandoyleDEV]

Make sure your site is something agents want to read

[Mintlify @mintlify]

In August, Mintlify-powered sites recorded 257M agent web requests and 131M human page loads.

Agents are becoming the primary audience for company knowledge. Most companies aren’t ready.

See what our 2026 State of Knowledge research found.

[Evan Doyle @evandoyleDEV]

This is the way

[Chris Frantz @frantzfries]

In January, we decided to make our entire platform drivable by agent.

A bit scary!

We prided ourselves on having an excellent UI and making it easier to *not* use our product felt counterintuitive.

Hard to argue with the results though, requests to our content api are now booming.

This represents any time a user (99% of the time an agent) made a successful request to update email content or a workflow.

I do think there lives a blueprint in this chart.

If you are a platform that prided yourself on an excellent visual experience, you can actually complement that by repurposing your endpoints and making them accessible to users.

You will also need to accommodate the agent as a user by allowing realtime updates, shared canvas and more but it's possible!

[Evan Doyle @evandoyleDEV]

I'm so proud of this milestone.

[Caelean @the1024th]

Gauge now has more recurring revenue than dollars raised.

@evandoyleDEV and I raised $2.4M coming out of @ycombinator.
Three weeks ago, we passed $2M in annualized revenue.
Two weeks ago, we launched agent-led growth.
Yesterday, we passed $2.4M.

The team is still 5 people (and one excited dog), and we are absolutely hiring 🚀

Might be time for a bigger gong 👀

[Evan Doyle @evandoyleDEV]

can't wait to trade the volatility during the game

[Caelean @the1024th]

The cost to build software is approaching zero.

"why do you say that?"

Today my fantasy league built a prediction market for how successful I'll be at my punishment for losing. (999, don't look it up).

[Evan Doyle @evandoyleDEV]

@jmelaskyriazi @metrics_co @8vc Congrats!! Killer team @metrics_co

[Evan Doyle @evandoyleDEV]

Let's go SM!! Always ahead of the curve

[John Melas-Kyriazi @jmelaskyriazi]

Standard Metrics (@metrics_co) has raised a $20M Series B led by 8VC (@8vc) to accelerate innovation in the private markets!

Trillions of dollars of economic activity in the private markets still run on spreadsheets, email threads, and PDFs. This critical ecosystem remains surprisingly analog and inefficient despite financing many of the world’s most innovative companies.

This problem matters. A better-functioning innovation economy would lead to new big technological breakthroughs, life-saving medicines, jobs, and game-changing new products.

AI expands both the urgency and the scope of this opportunity. New AI models have fundamentally changed how data can be organized, analyzed, and acted upon, and they are beginning to drive rapid software adoption in an industry that has historically lagged behind. We believe AI-native infrastructure will reshape the private markets over the coming decade.

Two years ago, we bet our company on the idea of building the AI-native portfolio management platform for venture capital and private equity. That was the single most consequential decision in our history: it led us to create the first MCP server in our space, launch an AI-driven document processing service, and build cutting-edge agentic reporting and analytics tools.

Today, we’re proud to support more than 150 investment firms who collectively manage over $400B, along with more than 10,000 of their portfolio companies. 30% of the Forbes Midas List are customers of Standard Metrics. But we’ve still only scratched the surface: we work with roughly 1% of active global VC/PE firms.

We’ve raised roughly $50M to date. Most of that capital has come from our customers. Investors in this round alongside 8VC include Salesforce Ventures, Spark Capital, January Capital, First Trust Capital Partners, Socii Capital, Kindergarten Ventures, Calm Ventures, Gaingels, and more. It’s been an honor to partner with some of the world’s most forward-thinking investors on this journey.

Thank you so much to our team, customers, investors, and supporters. We’re just getting started!

[Evan Doyle @evandoyleDEV]

more on this here: https://t.co/gTehEHrkwq

[Evan Doyle @evandoyleDEV]

Frontier AI is too smart for prompt injection in your docs.

Claude Code, Codex and others will just skip sections labeled 'for agents'.

If you want good AX, you actually need:
- end-to-end examples
- markdown or clean, server-rendered HTML
- error messages with built-in recs
- clear troubleshooting guides
- 'when to use this' + FAQs
- clear page hierarchy and internal linking

And you need to prove success rates with evals (we can help with that)

[Evan Doyle @evandoyleDEV]

@the1024th just being honest

[Farbod Memarian @FarbodMemarian_]

When i started at @gauge_sh 6 months ago, I quickly noticed that the biggest area of improvement the company needed was marketing & GTM.

As Founding Operations, I quickly pivoted my role into those focus areas.

Here are 5 lessons i've learned leading Growth & GTM.

[Evan Doyle @evandoyleDEV]

@clerk is a first mover on agent led growth. always fun to work with a very sharp team!

[Alex Rapp @_Dapp]

Final day of @clerk Growth Shop: measurement and testing.

As onboarding moves into the CLI, traditional web attribution only tells part of the story.

We’ve begun to map a new funnel & started evals with @gauge_sh & @2027dev to understand performance & find where agents get stuck.

This frames the attribution challenge clearly without feeling uncertain & gives us forward momentum for measurement framework.

[Evan Doyle @evandoyleDEV]

Stripe knows you're going to give your agent a credit card (or a crypto wallet).

Their leaked shareholder letter shows they expect agents to buy services autonomously, ultimately building a 'quadrillion dollar global economy'.

This is where Agent Led Growth is headed!

[Tony Kam @tonykamshek]

Excited to share what @sheldenshi , @potatoparser, and I have been building: @GiniAgent, a model agnostic proactive AI coworker that lives inside of Slack AI coworker that lives in Slack.
Backed by @ycombinator

[Evan Doyle @evandoyleDEV]

@FarbodMemarian_ Now is definitely the time to optimize your docs for agents. Every set of AX tests we've done ends up finding clear issues to fix. Having a quick feedback loop is key!