AI Agents Now Read 80% of the Internet’s Docs - Han Wang - Mintlify - EP#121

Agents are now viewing docs more than humans. They make up roughly 80% of the traffic to Mintlify's docs, even as those docs reach over 100 million people a month. In January, it was the reverse. In under a year, the main readers of developer docs went from people to AI agents. The company behind that shift is Mintlify, which powers docs and knowledge bases for more than 20,000 companies, including Anthropic, Microsoft and Amazon. On this episode of Not Another CEO, David Politis talks with Han Wang, co-founder and CEO of Mintlify. Mintlify raised a $45 million Series B at a $500 million valuation, co-led by a16z and Salesforce Ventures. Han walks through the pivots that came before it, including the sleepless week that led to the idea, and how he runs and hires for a company that keeps changing. Takeaways: 1. Keep the problem, change the solution. Han pivoted about three times during YC and about twice more after, but every idea circled the same problem: helping developers learn to build with a product. Each failure fed the next attempt, unlike founders who jump from fintech to construction tech to logistics. 2. Customers will hand you the answer. At pivot number seven, Han was lying awake wondering what to tell his investors. Customers had been asking why he didn’t just power their docs. He kept not wanting to, then built a prototype in a weekend. 3. Investors are guessing too. Han says investors are acting on their best guesses and know it. The one thing he’d look for is former operating experience, ideally a founder, because they talk about how to hit the number, not just the number itself. 4. Hire for slope, then talk candidates out of the job. Startup roles change fast, so Han hires for growth. He runs an anti-sell on finalists, explaining why they shouldn’t join and what it will take to grow into the role. 5. AI made coding obsolete, not judgment. Han says product sense, system design and collaboration still matter. His interviews now lean on those, and LeetCode-style rounds and simple take-homes are gone. 6. Your job resets every few months. Scaling from two people to 100+ meant handing off what he used to do himself. Han says every few months he looks at his job and thinks he was bad at it, and the founder can’t easily be swapped out. Quote of the show The one living constant is to constantly trust your instincts and know how to rightly prioritize what really matters in front of you. - Han Wang, CEO & Co-Founder, Mintlify Guest Featured in this Episode: Han Wang, CEO & Co-Founder, Mintlify LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/handotdev/ Mintlify: https://mintlify.com/ We also break this episode down into a full write-up on Substack, where we turn every conversation into a practical playbook with the biggest lessons, frameworks, and strategies discussed in each episode. Chapters: 00:00 Trailer 00:56 Meet Han Wang, CEO of Mintlify 02:11 The Sunday habit: what really matters right now 04:57 What Mintlify does and why agents are now 80% of docs traffic 07:17 Eight pivots: how Mintlify found the "obvious" business 11:43 Pivot seven: the sleepless week and the docs idea 14:06 Founder-market fit and why pivots should compound 16:50 Why investors are guessing too 22:09 The one thing to look for in an investor 25:27 Mintlify's culture: top-down, in-office and relocating to SF 32:49 Hiring for growth over experience 37:06 The anti-sell: talking candidates out of the job 39:37 How AI changed the engineering interview 42:46 The hardest part: growing as a CEO 49:07 Why the founders you look up to are struggling too 53:38 What Mintlify looks like in 2030 54:48 Han's immigrant upbringing, the dropout and his parents 57:52 Han's support system 59:35 Advice to his younger self: dream bigger