Ivan Burazin is a serial entrepreneur, the co-founder and CEO of Daytona, and the founder of the globally recognized Shift Conference. His career has been defined by a relentless focus on Developer Experience (DX), pioneering cloud-based IDEs with Codeanywhere, and now building the fundamental computing infrastructure for autonomous AI agents.

Infographic for "Lessons from Ivan Burazin".

Part 1: The Foundations of Developer Experience (DX)

  1. On developer velocity: Burazin writes "Simply put, developer velocity is about improving business performance through software development." — Forbes Technology Council: When Developer Velocity Meets Economic Velocity (June 2023).
  2. On the definition of DX: Burazin writes "DX is essentially another layer to UX, a layer that only a developer using your tool can enjoy—or not enjoy, as is too often the case," and "when DX lacks, UX does, too." — Forbes Technology Council: UX Suffers Without Strong DX (December 2022).
  3. On the "Hello World" moment: Burazin writes "It should be the goal of any software provider to help developers reach their 'Hello World' moment as quickly and painlessly as possible. The longer it takes, the more likely they are to jump ship." — Forbes Technology Council: UX Suffers Without Strong DX (December 2022).
  4. On developer productivity loss: Burazin said "Developers waste around 56% of their productive time working around dev environment issues." — The Craft of Open Source podcast, episode 68: Daytona with Ivan Burazin (October 2024).
  5. On the "works on my machine" problem: Burazin said Daytona standardizes the runtime, so whichever IDE a developer connects from, the underlying container is the same, which is why the works-on-my-machine problem goes away. — The Craft of Open Source podcast, episode 68: Daytona with Ivan Burazin (October 2024).
  6. On external developer experience: DevOps.com reports that Burazin explained Infobip's developer experience efforts "center around helping external developers consume the InfoBip API." — DevOps.com: Day in the life of a chief developer experience officer.
  7. On removing manual setup: Burazin said the goal is that with "one button you spin up your dev environment, it works. You don’t have to read through the readme, you don’t have to like debug." — RedMonk Conversation: How Daytona is simplifying development environments, Ivan Burazin.
  8. On time-to-hello-world as a business metric: Burazin wrote that "time-to-hello world" is a key metric, and that "the longer and more complex this journey, the higher the risk of churn." — Daytona blog by Ivan Burazin: Time-to-hello-world and instant in-browser environments (December 2023).
  9. On developer happiness: Burazin writes "while it is the developers’ job to maintain great service, it is also our job as leaders to prioritize the happiness of our developers." — Forbes Technology Council: When Developer Velocity Meets Economic Velocity (June 2023).

Part 2: Building and Scaling Codeanywhere

  1. On being too early: Of building a browser-based IDE, Burazin said "We were probably like fifteen years too early for that one." — The Craft of Open Source podcast, episode 68: Daytona with Ivan Burazin (October 2024).
  2. On what enterprises wanted: Burazin said enterprises' interest "was not the SaaS browser based editor, but a on prem enterprise solution to automate these dev environments." — RedMonk Conversation: How Daytona is simplifying development environments, Ivan Burazin.
  3. On the first browser-based IDE: Burazin said of Codeanywhere "As far as I know, it was the very first browser-based IDE out there." — The Craft of Open Source podcast, episode 68: Daytona with Ivan Burazin (October 2024).
  4. On machine constraints: Burazin said that even with "a brand new M4 Mac" a developer "still might not be able to run the entire dev environment that you want." — RedMonk Conversation: How Daytona is simplifying development environments, Ivan Burazin.
  5. On building before the ecosystem existed: Burazin said that when Codeanywhere started "there was no VS Code, there was no Kubernetes," and "we had to build everything to the whole stack ourselves." — Latent Space: Giving Agents Computers, Ivan Burazin of Daytona (May 2026).
  6. On carrying lessons forward: Burazin said building the whole stack at Codeanywhere "was the key learning that we brought into and that we’ve been using in Daytona today." — Latent Space: Giving Agents Computers, Ivan Burazin of Daytona (May 2026).
  7. On early cloud adoption: Recalling the move to the cloud around 2009, Burazin said "everything was moving to cloud. I’m like, 'No one has created this for dev environments.'" — The Craft of Open Source podcast, episode 68: Daytona with Ivan Burazin (October 2024).
  8. On reusing hard-won infrastructure: Burazin said Daytona's scheduler came from "our history in rewriting our own scheduler at CodeAnywhere." — Latent Space: Giving Agents Computers, Ivan Burazin of Daytona (May 2026).
  9. On tooling catching up: Burazin said that when considering Daytona, "VSCode has support for remote development," and that JetBrains and Cursor do too, so "We don’t have to do that. That’s there." — The Craft of Open Source podcast, episode 68: Daytona with Ivan Burazin (October 2024).

Part 3: The Power of Community and Shift Conference

  1. On community obligation: Burazin said "I have a feeling that everyone who is successful has a need and obligation to bring something back to their community. This is SHIFT." — Neuralab: Interview with Ivan Burazin, founder of the SHIFT conference (May 2017).
  2. On networking at conferences: Burazin said "the established contacts at SHIFT open many doors and the ability to network is reason enough for the great interest of visitors." — Total Croatia News: How SHIFT Developer Conference in Split Grew into One of the Largest Regional IT Events (May 2018).
  3. On founding Shift: Burazin recalled attending startup conferences abroad and asking "Why wouldn’t we invite all those people to Split – why wouldn’t we give everyone a chance to meet them?" — Neuralab: Interview with Ivan Burazin, founder of the SHIFT conference (May 2017).
  4. On pivoting the conference: Burazin said Shift "was the StartUp conference until 2016. Then for the first time, Shift was dedicated to developers rather than innovators." — Neuralab: Interview with Ivan Burazin, founder of the SHIFT conference (May 2017).
  5. On designing for networking: Burazin described building "an afterparty which we consider to be quite important for networking," placed close to the venue so no one would get lost. — Neuralab: Interview with Ivan Burazin, founder of the SHIFT conference (May 2017).
  6. On reaching developers: Burazin said developers "have a home. They're never going to go to InfoBip.com because there's nothing for them there," and that "you have to be better than competitors, and you have to educate them that you actually exist." — DevEducate podcast, episode 10: From Developer Fashion Lines to Onboarding Games, Ivan Burazin (October 2023).
  7. On contributing to the city and country: Burazin said "I have done this as some kind of contribution to the city and the country." — Neuralab: Interview with Ivan Burazin, founder of the SHIFT conference (May 2017).
  8. On an international event in a local city: Burazin said what made Shift different was "that SHIFT was known as an international conference, and not a local event located in Croatia." — Neuralab: Interview with Ivan Burazin, founder of the SHIFT conference (May 2017).
  9. On the acquisition by Infobip: Burazin said "we have been acquired by the globally successful company Infobip and are now planning our future together." — Kongres Magazine: Ivan Burazin, Every crisis leads to change and leaves space for tremendous growth (May 2021).

Part 4: Entrepreneurship and Decision Making

  1. On going all in: After customers kept asking for API keys, Burazin said "We are all in on this. And so that is where we made sort of the cut between the old product and the new one." — Latent Space: Giving Agents Computers, Ivan Burazin of Daytona (May 2026).
  2. On the risk of a conference: Burazin said of running Shift "Every year we risk a lot and sometimes we lose money on the conference." — Neuralab: Interview with Ivan Burazin, founder of the SHIFT conference (May 2017).
  3. On product-market fit: Burazin said "I’ve done multiple companies in my life. I’ve never experienced this, that people literally call you if you do not give them access." — Latent Space: Giving Agents Computers, Ivan Burazin of Daytona (May 2026).
  4. On raising capital: On owning data centers, Burazin said "You have to raise a large amount of capital, a large amount of risk for, single-digit percentage points." — Latent Space: Giving Agents Computers, Ivan Burazin of Daytona (May 2026).
  5. On checking the timing: When Daytona got pull from the market, Burazin said "Let’s double-check why now." — The Craft of Open Source podcast, episode 68: Daytona with Ivan Burazin (October 2024).
  6. On learning from an earlier company: Of Codeanywhere, Burazin said "We ended up paying everyone back because it didn’t have that sort of scale." — Latent Space: Giving Agents Computers, Ivan Burazin of Daytona (May 2026).
  7. On high-trust teams: Burazin said that of the 25 people at Daytona, "about 13 of them we have worked with seven years plus. So it’s like high trust, high throughput." — Latent Space: Giving Agents Computers, Ivan Burazin of Daytona (May 2026).
  8. On what a third company teaches: Burazin said "this is something I’ve learned with the third company that I founded. Even let’s say the product is done, which is never going to be done, the company isn’t done." — The Craft of Open Source podcast, episode 68: Daytona with Ivan Burazin (October 2024).
  9. On the market pulling the product: Of the first demos after the pivot, Burazin said "all the calls went long, every single one," and that afterward "everyone came back, 'Where is my API key?'" — Latent Space: Giving Agents Computers, Ivan Burazin of Daytona (May 2026).

Part 5: The Open Source Business Model

  1. On open core: Burazin said "You can think about it as open core but we split up the repositories completely." — The Craft of Open Source podcast, episode 68: Daytona with Ivan Burazin (October 2024).
  2. On users and buyers: Burazin said "the thing that you open source, you’re trying to give value to one set of people. The thing that you charge for, you’re trying to give value to another set of people." — RedMonk Conversation: How Daytona is simplifying development environments, Ivan Burazin.
  3. On licensing to prevent competitors: On Daytona's AGPL license, Burazin said an enterprise can use it, "but you essentially can’t make a competitor without open sourcing your stuff." — Latent Space: Giving Agents Computers, Ivan Burazin of Daytona (May 2026).
  4. On the community: Burazin said of keeping the open source project "We had this open source community. It felt a shame not to do that." — Latent Space: Giving Agents Computers, Ivan Burazin of Daytona (May 2026).
  5. On traction: Five or six months after open-sourcing the product, Burazin said "We hit 8,000 stars." — The Craft of Open Source podcast, episode 68: Daytona with Ivan Burazin (October 2024).
  6. On access for individual developers: Burazin asked "What about the engineers who are hacking away on a weekend at home in London, Croatia, Singapore, Accra, or wherever? They still don’t have the access." — The Craft of Open Source podcast, episode 68: Daytona with Ivan Burazin (October 2024).
  7. On enterprise features: Burazin said enterprise buyers care about "team management, compliance, logging, audit logs, sso," and "none of that is in the open source because the individual developer actually doesn’t care." — RedMonk Conversation: How Daytona is simplifying development environments, Ivan Burazin.
  8. On drawing the boundary: Burazin said "it took us a good nine months to think about how to give value to the individual user without hurting the business and have a clean cut with that." — The Craft of Open Source podcast, episode 68: Daytona with Ivan Burazin (October 2024).

Part 6: The Transition to Daytona and Standardized Environments

  1. On the one-button goal: Burazin said the open source core is "the developer experience. Like one button, it spins up a dev environment. You point where you want to run it, it does all that." — RedMonk Conversation: How Daytona is simplifying development environments, Ivan Burazin.
  2. On standardizing complexity: Burazin described the question developers ask: "Can I make this easy again? Can I standardize all this complexity so that I only have to work with it?" — The Craft of Open Source podcast, episode 68: Daytona with Ivan Burazin (October 2024).
  3. On the Codespaces alternative: Burazin said "Codespaces are similar, but they still cost you money." — The Craft of Open Source podcast, episode 68: Daytona with Ivan Burazin (October 2024).
  4. On three segments of value: Burazin said Daytona's value divides "into three segments which is developer productivity, security and scalability." — RedMonk Conversation: How Daytona is simplifying development environments, Ivan Burazin.
  5. On local and remote parity: Burazin said the guiding question was "Can we do this? The user doesn’t care what is running. It’s completely the same local or remote." — The Craft of Open Source podcast, episode 68: Daytona with Ivan Burazin (October 2024).
  6. On IDE flexibility: Burazin said "The user can use PyCharm, VS Code, Zed, or Cursor. We don’t care," because Daytona takes care of the underlying infrastructure. — The Craft of Open Source podcast, episode 68: Daytona with Ivan Burazin (October 2024).
  7. On setup complexity: Burazin said "The most popular editor is a text editor because it’s so complex that you have to set up all the dependencies." — The Craft of Open Source podcast, episode 68: Daytona with Ivan Burazin (October 2024).
  8. On security and compliance: Burazin said security-stringent companies "must as a mandate have all the source code behind their firewall on prem," and that virtual desktops, the usual answer, are "a very, very terrible experience." — RedMonk Conversation: How Daytona is simplifying development environments, Ivan Burazin.
  9. On one command: Burazin described the experience: "You hit enter, and then Daytona goes out and does everything for you." — The Craft of Open Source podcast, episode 68: Daytona with Ivan Burazin (October 2024).

Part 7: AI Agents and the Future of Computing

  1. On an agent-majority future: Burazin predicted "We're going to go from people-majority to agent-majority," adding "It's already happening. It's going to be like 90%." — WorkOS: Composable computers for agents, a conversation with Daytona CEO Ivan Burazin (April 2026).
  2. On agent sandboxes: Burazin said "Every single agent in the world will need a sandbox for every single task it's doing." — WorkOS: Composable computers for agents, a conversation with Daytona CEO Ivan Burazin (April 2026).
  3. On composable computers: Burazin said "what Daytona is today is essentially composable computers for AI agents." — Latent Space: Giving Agents Computers, Ivan Burazin of Daytona (May 2026).
  4. On how many agents there will be: Burazin asked "How many agents are gonna be running in two years, in 10 years, in 100 years?" and answered "for every single task, they will need one of these." — Latent Space: Giving Agents Computers, Ivan Burazin of Daytona (May 2026).
  5. On different computers for different tasks: Burazin said "agents today and going forward will need all these different compositions of computers to do different types of tasks." — Latent Space: Giving Agents Computers, Ivan Burazin of Daytona (May 2026).
  6. On what the agent cloud looks like: Burazin said the cloud for agents "might look more like Stripe than AWS," with sandboxes, web search and databases built specifically for agents. — Latent Space: Giving Agents Computers, Ivan Burazin of Daytona (May 2026).
  7. On speed for agents: Burazin said "our time to spin up one is 60 milliseconds with network latency," and that spinning up 50,000 at once takes "about 75 seconds." — Latent Space: Giving Agents Computers, Ivan Burazin of Daytona (May 2026).
  8. On stateful agents: Burazin said "agents will be like humans in the sense of you don’t want your laptop to be shut down until you’re done with work," so they want to pause and come back. — Latent Space: Giving Agents Computers, Ivan Burazin of Daytona (May 2026).
  9. On the human emulator: Of an agent with its own sandbox, email and phone number, Burazin said "It is literally equal to a remote person you're working with." — WorkOS: Composable computers for agents, a conversation with Daytona CEO Ivan Burazin (April 2026).
  10. On GPUs in sandboxes: Burazin said "there are workloads that do need GPUs," so a GPU sandbox is coming, much as a laptop might have a GPU. — Latent Space: Giving Agents Computers, Ivan Burazin of Daytona (May 2026).

Part 8: Developer Relations, Web3, and the Tech Ecosystem

  1. On leading developer experience: Burazin said a chief developer experience officer's job is "to make your team’s life easier in any way you can," and "to convey the developers’ issues or ideas to the company in hopes of nudging the company in the correct direction." — DevOps.com: Day in the life of a chief developer experience officer.
  2. On Web3 skills: Burazin writes "In some form or another, Web3 will inevitably become part and parcel of tomorrow’s development ecosystem, so it is wise for developers to start planting the seeds of knowledge now." — Forbes Technology Council: Why Developers Should Invest In Web3 Skills (July 2022).
  3. On NFTs beyond the hype: Burazin writes "Inflated value is a real concern, and NFTs are the new kid on the block," but "the value is far greater than just the monetary worth." — Forbes Technology Council: Not Just Monkey Business, How NFT Technology Is Revolutionizing Creativity (June 2022).
  4. On building a regional network: Burazin said "After the first three releases, which were more focused on startup issues, we decided to move into a new direction and focus on creating a regional network geared towards developers." — Total Croatia News: How SHIFT Developer Conference in Split Grew into One of the Largest Regional IT Events (May 2018).
  5. On who uses dev infrastructure: Burazin said that although Daytona is PLG and individual developers use it, "most of the users that use Daytona are sort of a B2B2C," with app-layer agents using it at scale. — Latent Space: Giving Agents Computers, Ivan Burazin of Daytona (May 2026).
  6. On the agent as the user: Burazin said "it is the agent is the primary user, what are the ergonomics and usage patterns of agents." — Latent Space: Giving Agents Computers, Ivan Burazin of Daytona (May 2026).
  7. On the end of localhost: In a post quoted on the episode page Burazin wrote "I've been rooting for the death of localhost since 2010. And it's finally happening with autonomous agents being the final nail in its coffin." — Latent Space: Giving Agents Computers, Ivan Burazin of Daytona (May 2026).
  8. On serving individuals and enterprises: Burazin said Daytona's customers are "everything from, the single developer, the YC startup, to people say Fortune 500, I’ll say Fortune 5." — Latent Space: Giving Agents Computers, Ivan Burazin of Daytona (May 2026).
  9. On letting an LLM write configuration: Burazin said "I would prefer to wait an extra 30 seconds for the LLM to go out and do that" than write a configuration file himself. — The Craft of Open Source podcast, episode 68: Daytona with Ivan Burazin (October 2024).