In this special episode of Below the Fold, recorded live at the Dubai AI Festival, Farhan Ali—developer advocate and rising star at Vercel—joins us to talk about how the next generation is reshaping the internet through speed, accessibility, and powerful developer tools like V0 and Next.js. From making front-end development accessible to non-coders, to building open developer communities and shipping fast, Farhan represents the heart of what modern tech should be: inclusive, collaborative, and fast AF. 🎙️ Hosted by: Andreas Frangeskides
🎧 Topics include:
In collaboration with @BelowTheFoldPodcast, @DATEwithTECH, @launchfoundryai, and @DubaiAIFestival
[00:00:00]
Hi everybody. We're here with Date with Tech,~ um,~ at the Dubai AI Festival. ~Um. ~In association with Below the Fold, Launch Foundry,~ uh,~ and our partners Trescon, the events organizers. ~Um, ~I'm sat here today with Farhan Ali from the UK part of Vercel AI. ~Um, ~those of you who don't know, it is the most, in my opinion, impressive,~ um,~ prompt to code,~ um,~ and prompt a ui.
Technology that exists,~ um,~ at the moment, something that I've been using in my spare time VO has been something that I've been really, really, really excited about and seeing the evolution of it over the last two years. ~Um, ~for those of you that are here watching today that are new to Vercel, and also thank you for being here.
Sorry, I forgot to mention of thanks for the invite. No worries. Anytime. How would you explain the platform's role in shaping modern web to people that dunno who Vercel are and what VO is, for instance? Right. So with Vercel, [00:01:00] essentially what we're doing is allowing you to deploy hosts the most powerful, fastest websites on the internet.
This is ranging from open AI all the way to say, FRAs group, all the way to say, you know, small, local or small, small e-commerce shops,~ uh,~ to hobby projects or solo founders who are looking to mm-hmm. Make that mark on the internet. ~Um, ~so it's very ho horizontal in that sense.~ Um, ~what we do is, first, the first part is take away the complexity when it comes to hosting a front end and full stack application.
We are home to the. Next share's core team that is completely open source. Our roots are deeply community based. So, ~uh, ~although we do have the founding team and we do also have the core maintainers, a lot of this has come from just the help of the internet in general,~ uh,~ and with say, next Js with Svel kit, with Turbo repo, turbo Pack, Shazi.
And the list is endless. ~Um, ~we've managed to make an internet a [00:02:00] place where someone can just ship a product, someone can ship a website, whether it is a. A wedding website for your family, whether it is an e-commerce tool, whether it's an AI tool, or whether it's a SaaS application. ~Um, ~all of that, all that complexity of getting it out into the internet and scale and scaling it,~ um,~ has been removed by us.
It's totally fascinating 'cause I think effectively what you are doing is, is you are empowering people that have, um.~ Uh, ~a lack of development knowledge, for instance, or a lack of software development,~ uh,~ now and want to be able to go to market quickly. And you're effectively supporting that journey for them as their right hand.
You are, you are their, you are their in-house development team as effectively as what you behave. Yeah. But how do you, how do you feel about, how would, how would a, a computer dev or a soft software engineer or a website developer feel about vercel replacing them? Do you think that there's, do you think their jobs are at risk or do you think that they're compromised?
Definitely not. I mean, take CEL for example. ~Uh, ~when we approach develop operations engineers,~ uh,~ with the [00:03:00] Vercel product, the, their first thought process, as long as they're good at their job, isn't, oh my God, I'm gonna be made redundant because now I can't work on front end infrastructure. I can't work on full stack infrastructure.
Their first thought is now I can focus on tasks that are really important, such as maintaining a clean backend environment. Mm-hmm. ~Um, ~or looking after my AWS setup for, say, my EC2 instances or whatever you've got on there that isn't applicable to the front end. It's a relief from them. ~Um, ~when it comes to V zero for example, that's probably where you have more of that conversation of a front end engineer will look at it and think, okay, I am toast.
Like seeing this do my work is,~ uh,~ is a problem. But that's not the case. Again, it's a simple matter of. Let's take you away from your, the tasks that are a bit more,~ um,~ sort of repetitive. Yes, of course. ~Um, ~and allow you to focus on building the next innovative feature for your application. I think that's a really good,~ uh,~ response to be honest with you.
And I, it makes me feel very comfortable hearing that from a company like yours, because ultimately that's what. The end user wants to hear, [00:04:00] right? Yep. And that's what kind of, you know, ~uh, ~technicians and technical effect want hear. And you're right, it does take away the, the burden. It's hard to take away the, the, the load of having to develop the front end as well as the back.
You know, I've worked with, I've worked with a lot of backend developers who it's their bread and butter, right? And they absolutely love it. And they're actually, some of them are against the likes of cursor and prompter code environments because they feel like. There's no proper debar, there's no proper troubleshooting.
~Um, ~you build something and then 10 days later it will break, and you don't actually know how or where. So, 'cause because ultimately you need to know the ethos and methodology that, right. You have to be trained as a, as a, as an expert. Right. So I'm really, really, I love that about how, what AL'S doing, and I think you're really playing into the hands of, of everybody, which is really great.
Can you tell me something like real world use case that you've seen, like you are working in such an exciting environment and people are coming on board to you guys left, right, and center like. What's one of the best use cases you've seen at Sal from a, from end user? Like what, what's going on? Like a case study?
A case study for example, is seeing how some of our customers is, [00:05:00] are, are, are increasing their revenue. So although SAL helps a lot in managing costs, reducing your, yeah, like the overhead costs and when it comes to managing your infrastructure, specifically your full stack infrastructure, also increasing their revenue.
So for example. ~Um, ~we had page spelled P-A-I-G-E. We have a great customer success story on that. They increased their revenue by 22%. A lot of that has come down to the fact that the SEO has now improved. Yeah. Having been on,~ uh,~ vasal, of course SEO of, of course being a, a big sort of drive in terms of how many people come across your site.
~Uh, ~then of course your, the overall performance. When you, as a end user, you go on to say a website, you don't want it to be slow,~ uh,~ waiting, seeing that loading, spin out will. Keep you away from that. Yeah, of course. It'll make you go to that size competitor. We help reduce that so that, again, when you click buy, you go straight to the cart.
When you click on a product, you go straight to the product item display page. And presumably that also includes things like analytics, measurement [00:06:00] tags, of course, yes. So we, as part of our product set, we also have analytics. ~Uh, ~this is where you can track specific, you know, user clicks. ~Uh, ~you can, when recently rolling out the, we're doing AB testing beta.
So that will also be included in web analytics. Very good, as well as the speed insight side of it. And that's where you measure your core web vitals. Those are the variables that feed into SEO, such as your cumulative layout, shift your,~ um,~ time to first buy your FTE, your first content for paint. ~Um, ~and you get that through real user data.
So, and all of that, by the way, is GDPR compliant. Given that it's on our infrastructure, all of that is anonymized. So we're not looking at how a user is actually behaving on the phone, it's just we're seeing how is it performing in the us? How is it performing in India, how is it performing in Australia?
And then from there, that data will then allow our customers to optimize their site for specific countries, specific regions so that it's faster for places like India, it's faster for places like South Africa,~ um,~ and then they can just continue to iterate. I was talking to your colleagues before our chat and they were telling me about.[00:07:00]
You have a very, very interesting iterative process of support and ticketing and listening to your customers. And if you see things that haven't been developed yet or,~ um,~ could make a massive difference to the, the the overall infra. Yeah. How often do you get those requests and does it, and how often do you select some of those exciting updates,~ um,~ to bring home to your customers?
Yeah, so. We like to see ourselves as customer zero. ~Uh, ~so we build things that we will use and therefore with that assumption, others will use it as well. ~Uh, ~we're home to some of the best engineers,~ uh,~ in the world from Google to that have come from Google, unity, et cetera. ~Um, ~and with that comes that sort of thought process of, okay, what else do we need?
Or what's the next step for Versa? Or V zero or our,~ uh,~ product.~ Um, ~then there's also, you know, we have a very active,~ uh,~ online presence, whether that is on Twitter or X or LinkedIn. ~Uh, ~from there we get a lot of feedback. Our CEOG or Guillermo,~ um,~ he's actively talking to and communicating with customers, whether [00:08:00] they are on our pro tier, whether they're on hobby tier, whether they're enterprise customers, listening to their voice.
And from that, he feeds that feedback,~ uh,~ quite actively actually on Slack. Good. ~Uh, ~so for us to then look at it and then work with that as well. ~Um, ~and yeah, we also focus on what we're very good at. ~Um, ~we're good at building very fast websites. We're good at hosting them, and so we just double down on that every single time.
And now, V zero is a way that just makes it a lot more accessible for not just an engineer or a designer to build a product and bring that out, but also someone in accounting who's May, who maybe hasn't written a line of code before, who hasn't touched Figma or design system before. ~Uh, ~for them to then take their.
Take the idea, put it as natural language, and then give it to V zero O that then turns it into an actual component feature or a website that they can then pass on to their engineering and,~ uh,~ product team. Phenomenal. I love that. It reminds me of when I used to work for a business in the UK in,~ uh,~ in Shor.
It,~ um,~ he used to,~ uh,~ they set up a, a, a kind of video network, effectively one of the first,~ um, uh, ~top one hundreds basically when YouTube [00:09:00] was just a big thing and they had an XP development team and they had. Everybody in the company, no matter how big or small, could come with a post-it and put it on the Deb's wall.
Can you change that button? Can you add that? Yeah. It's such an important thing to have human beings involved in the development process because at the end of the day, you are building for the end customer. Right? And I love to, I love the customer zero approach. I think it's brilliant. I'm actually gonna use that.
Customer centricity is definitely,~ um,~ a core part of Vercel, like without the customer, a company is nothing,~ uh,~ and their voice is 10 times louder than anyone else's. So do you think then that is a pre kind of like some free advice that you're giving our listeners today? If they're building their own, their products, they're building their own companies from scratch?
Is that the primordial thing of importance you think, in terms of delivering on success? Yeah. ~Um, ~I mean at the end of the day you have to, of course, challenge ideas,~ uh,~ whether that's coming from a customer, whether that's coming from your manager, ~um. ~But at the same time, that's where you start is that is my opinion.
~Uh, ~you start with a customer and you build from there. [00:10:00] You are here at the Dubai AI Festival. You guys are exhibiting Yes. What kind of conversations are you having with people? I, so it's been very interesting because the, the crowd is very diverse. You'll come across students, new grads,~ um,~ someone who's just finished their PhD all the way to the CTO of a,~ uh,~ of a company.
~Um, ~so with that, you get. Different sort of opinions, different ideas, different questions. ~Uh, ~that's what I love about this event. ~Um, ~so in terms of the last part of your question, what was that?~ Um, ~the types of conversations that you're having with, with, with people. ~Um, ~so yeah, the types of conversations that we're having,~ um,~ it ranges from, you know, what is V zero?
What do we do, what does Vaal do? Sometimes,~ uh,~ they may have never heard of us. They may have come across us. ~Uh, ~they may have heard of just say, next js. And then where we tell them we are the core,~ uh,~ maintainers of Nexts, and they're like, oh, wow. ~Um, ~or V zero. They may have touched V zero a few months ago.
~Uh, ~and from there it was, there was, I just had one now just before I, I came in here where,~ uh,~ an individual from another company, he, he, he said like, you know, we use your stack and [00:11:00] we had no idea you were here. ~Uh, ~they ask a few questions around, say, you know, what's coming with V zero? ~Uh, ~what's coming with Sal or to get a better idea as to whether or not say their current stack, which may be hosted on a different platform could be used on Sal and whether or not we can provide that support.
Okay. ~Um, ~and then we sort of introduce them to the world of Sal. ~Uh, ~so it's a big mix of, you know, customers interesting and people have just never heard of us, but a lot of intrigue. A lot of excitement. A lot of entry. Yes. Okay, good.~ We are just coming outta, uh, to the end of our segment, but I just wanted to ask you a few direct questions about yourself.~
~Sorry guys. I'm literally, um. It's very stuffy in here. Um, ~we're just coming to the end of our segment and I just wanna ask you a few questions, if you don't mind, of course. That are a bit more focused, a bit more personal to help you build your brand,~ uh,~ and also give our, give the, give our listeners a little bit, something more about,~ uh,~ Farhan to understand who you are as a person.
Where do you, where do you think you'll, you'll be in 10 years time? What, where is Farhan Ali in 10 years time? Oh, in 10 years time, that's,~ uh,~ how old are you now? I'm 27. Okay, so you are 37. You That will be three years younger than me. Yeah. In 10 years time, where will you be? What will you be doing career wise?
I would say I would, I would love to still be at Vasal. I think Good Vasal is a, a company that will last for a very long time. ~Um, ~I'm very [00:12:00] proud to be at Vasal,~ um,~ to be a part of what we're building. We're essentially writing history for the web. ~Um. ~And also like at some point I'd love to have children.
So for me to be able to say I was a part of that,~ uh,~ is a big part of,~ um,~ yeah, where I'd like to see myself in 10 years. I'd like to see myself still in tech. ~Um, ~I also have a YouTube channel,~ uh,~ which from which helps people to code. It's currently at,~ uh,~ I think now 17,000 subscribers. And,~ uh,~ I'd like to grow that into a way to.
Just get more people into code to allow them to build. Cool. Phenomenal what is, whether it's an AI tool, whether it is to just get to grips with a programming language. ~Um, ~so I'd like to grow that as well,~ um,~ and see what, what comes out of that. But,~ uh,~ yeah, I, I like to see for myself that thus I would be the last company I work for if it's not my own.
What a testament of,~ uh,~ your ambition and your kind of loyalty to the business.
What a testament to the, your ambition and loyalty to business. Thank you. ~Um, ~really lovely to hear that. Three words about Dubai, that you feel about it, like adjectives that describe Dubai. You're being here now.~ Uh, ~hot. Yep. Ambitious. A [00:13:00] hundred percent. And hospitable. Perfect. Yeah. Hospi Hospitality is one of the biggest key winners here of why people move here to the staff here everywhere I've been Fantastic.
You'll notice that across the entire region. ~Um, ~people here have a very, very, very fixed,~ um,~ kind of cultural nuance on, on hospitality, on being hospice born humility. And it's something that really makes businesses flourish here because you wanna work with good people. ~Um, ~there was a famous quote from,~ uh,~ bill Burn Back who set up,~ um,~ DDB, the creative agency in London, who said, I don't wanna work with bastards, excuse my French, but nobody does.
And you wanna work with good people that are humble and decent, so that's really nice here. Last question. If you don't mind, last question, if you don't mind.~ Um, ~if you had to meet somebody here that would make Thele Network more interesting and better, who would it be? It doesn't have to be a particular name or a company, just the type of persona that you're looking for.
If I were to meet someone, would it be a minister of e-commerce? [00:14:00] Would it be a minute? Would it be a,~ uh,~ somebody big in, in investment banking? Would it be,~ uh,~ a small little startup? Yeah. I would say I'm very excited at the potential of one day in the future, versatile collaborating with, say, the UAE, the Dubai government.
~Um, ~given the way things are going with Dubai in terms of technological advancements, say this event itself speaks for, speaks for Dubai,~ um,~ I would like, I, I would like to have met someone, or I'd like to, I'd love to meet someone from say, ~um. Um, ~the ministry or someone who is a government official in Dubai to see what sort of problems are they facing, what's on their roadmap, what are they looking to do that just makes that sort of life in Dubai a lot easier using the internet.
And how can we, can we help that? And it's not just the internet. Also, in terms of ai, knowing that they're probably most likely looking towards,~ uh,~ how can they adopt AI internally,~ uh,~ for their gov for the government? So how can we help with that? Incredible. Beforehand, thank you [00:15:00] so much for your time.
Thank you for yours and look forward to talking to you more later. Of course. Thank you for your questions. Go bless you too