Steve Ruiz, creator of tldraw, explains how he built a business selling SDK access to a high-performance web canvas on top of a free, open whiteboard tool. The conversation covers why SDK and infrastructure companies face a structurally different disruption from agentic AI than SaaS companies do: agents need surfaces to work on, not just APIs to call.
The most technically interesting thread is what happens when you give an LLM an infinite canvas. Ruiz has shipped an agent starter kit at tldraw.dev and a demo called tldraw fairies that makes this concrete. The discussion gets specific about internal tooling strategy and how Ruiz is positioning the SDK business for a near-term where agent workloads, not human clicks, drive canvas usage.
Read the full transcript or listen for the 15-minute breakdown of how keeping agents busy changes the calculus for developer-tool founders. The tension between excitement and fear about agentic software is not abstract here. Ruiz is shipping into it now.
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