SF Ruby Meetup, May @ Checkr
Hey, Bay Area builders and tinkerers!
This month we're hosted by Checkr — and if you've ever been hired anywhere, there's a decent chance their Rails monolith ran your background check. Founded in 2014 (YC W14), Checkr just hit a $5B valuation, powers screening for 130,000+ businesses, and does $800M+ in gross revenue. They've raised $680M from folks like Y Combinator and Accel.
In other Ruby/Rails news this spring: Gusto acquired Mosey and shipped payroll inside Claude + Slack within 48 hours. Intercom opened its Fin API platform to developers (Fin is doing $100M ARR inside a $400M ARR Rails monolith). Apollo.io absorbed Pocus on its march to $200M ARR. DHH made Basecamp agent-accessible. The "quiet force" is getting louder.
✨ New format this month
Let's try something different: fewer talks, more connecting. Two great talks, followed by a full round of intros, then we split into small interest-based circles so you actually get to know the people you're spending the time with.
🗳️ The interest circles are being voted on in Slack. Want a say in which circles we run? Join here!
Agenda
5:00 PM — Doors open, pizza, drinks, mingling
5:30 PM — Welcome + community announcements
5:40 PM — Kurt Ude "Beyond the Background Check: Engineering Fraud Solutions at Enterprise Scale"
6:10 PM — Waldemar Quevedo (Synadia) "Building Agents in Ruby with DSPy"
6:25 PM Pranav Raj, co-founder and CEO, Chatwoot (YC W21) "Lessons from scaling an open-source Rails product"
6:40 PM — Break
7:00 PM Round of intros ⚡ everyone gets up to 1 minute: name, what you're building, one thing you're hacking on or curious about. No slides, no pitches, just hi.
7:15 PM Split into interest circles: pick a corner of the room and dig in. Themes suggestions:
🤖 AI agents & LLMs in Rails
🚀 Founders & startup builders
📦 Open source maintainers
⚙️ Performance, infra & scaling
💼 Hiring or looking — open job conversations
🌱 New to Ruby / want a study buddy
8 PM — Wrap up
Want to speak?
10–30 minute talks on startups built on Ruby/Rails, open source you're shipping, hard problems you've solved, weird edge cases, AI/agent integrations — all welcome. Submit here: https://forms.gle/C9HQzaT5jvwA5xwc7
Community
Slack: join here and introduce yourself to connect with fellow Bay Area Rubyists
Past meetup recordings, talks, and the new (freshly audited!) job board: https://sfruby.com
MINASWAN — Matz is nice and so we are nice. Come build new Ruby friendships.
A massive shoutout to Checkr for hosting and sponsoring the event. 🙏
Organized by Evil Martians.