# QCon San Francisco 2025

Published articles for QCon San Francisco 2025.

This is one page of public article previews, not the complete archive. Follow Next page to continue. Summaries are not the original full articles.

## From Staff Platform Engineer to Startup Founder: Lessons on Product-Market Fit and Leadership

DevFeed: [From Staff Platform Engineer to Startup Founder: Lessons on Product-Market Fit and Leadership](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/presentation-from-staff-platform-engineer-to-a-16z-founder-what-i-wish-i-d-known-61647.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.infoq.com/presentations/staff-founder-lessons/>)

Author: Gonzalo Maldonado

Published: 2026-09-29T09:14:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [InfoQ](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/infoq.md>)

Topics: [Platform Engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/platform-engineering.md>)

Tags: [best-practices](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/best-practices.md>), [co-founder](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/co-founder.md>), [culture-methods](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/culture-methods.md>), [engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/engineering.md>), [infoq](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/infoq.md>), [presentation](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/presentation.md>), [product-market-fit](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/product-market-fit.md>), [qcon-san-francisco-2025](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/qcon-san-francisco-2025.md>), [qcon-software-development-conference](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/qcon-software-development-conference.md>), [staff-founder-lessons](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/staff-founder-lessons.md>), [staff-plus](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/staff-plus.md>), [transcripts](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/transcripts.md>)

### AI overview

Gonzalo Maldonado shares lessons for technical leaders moving from engineering into startup work. He discusses finding product-market fit, structuring pitches like technical documentation, avoiding co-founder conflict, and considering internal platforms as commercial ventures in a post-ZIRP environment.

### Source excerpt

Gonzalo Maldonado explains how technical leaders can translate engineering skills into startup success using his "VC Abstraction Layer Knowledge" (VALK). He shares hard-won lessons on finding product-market fit, structuring pitches like technical docs, avoiding co-founder drama, and evaluating internal platforms as commercial ventures in a post-ZIRP environment. By Gonzalo Maldonado

## Presentation: Accelerating Performance by Incrementally Integrating Rust Into Existing Codebase

DevFeed: [Presentation: Accelerating Performance by Incrementally Integrating Rust Into Existing Codebase](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/presentation-accelerating-performance-by-incrementally-integrating-rust-into-existing-codebase-8464.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.infoq.com/presentations/rust-refactoring/>)

Author: Lily Mara

Published: 2026-09-10T09:34:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [InfoQ](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/infoq.md>)

Topics: [Rust](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/rust.md>), [Refactoring](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/refactoring.md>), [Integration testing](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/integration-testing.md>)

Tags: [architecture](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/architecture.md>), [cost](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cost.md>), [culture-methods](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/culture-methods.md>), [design](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/design.md>), [development](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/development.md>), [engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/engineering.md>), [infoq](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/infoq.md>), [infrastructure](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/infrastructure.md>), [performance](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/performance.md>), [presentation](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/presentation.md>), [python](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/python.md>), [qcon-san-francisco-2025](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/qcon-san-francisco-2025.md>), [qcon-software-development-conference](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/qcon-software-development-conference.md>), [refactoring](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/refactoring.md>), [rust](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/rust.md>), [rust-refactoring](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/rust-refactoring.md>), [system-programming](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/system-programming.md>), [testing](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/testing.md>), [transcripts](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/transcripts.md>)

### AI overview

A presentation on incrementally refactoring Python bottlenecks into Rust with PyO3 to improve function-level performance, retain integration testing, and reduce infrastructure costs.

### Source excerpt

Lily Mara explains how to avoid high-risk software rewrites through incremental FFI refactoring. She shares how engineering teams can replace Python bottlenecks with Rust via PyO3, demonstrating how to achieve dramatic function-level speedups, seamless integration testing, and meaningful infrastructure cost savings without microservice overhead. By Lily Mara