Laravel Worldwide Meetup · Sep 29, 2026

I'm a marketer.
Wait, I can build this?

Samantha Sappenfield, Marketing at Laravel

@samsappenfield1

(watch me go through this deck live)

I'm a marketer.

Samantha at a Laravel booth with Nightwatch and PHP branding at a conference

Samantha taking a selfie with a kangaroo in Australia

I help organize
Laracon US.

Wide shot of the Laracon US stage and crowd, with LARACON on the big screens

We had Laracon photos.
And no way to share them.

"Abby, why don't we just
build it ourselves?"

          <h1>Hello World</h1>
          <h2>Hello World</h2>
          <h3>Hello World</h3>
          <h4>Hello World</h4>
          <h5>Hello World</h5>
          <h6>Hello World</h6>
        

Hello World

laracon.us/photos

This is what "why don't we just build it" turned into.

Wait.
I can just build things.

If I can build this,
what else can I build?

My builder framework

01Scope
02Learn
03Supervise
04Share publicly
05Write to learn

Here's what I've built since.

thesambrain.com my personal writing / thinking space building✓ shipped
Conduit an open source CRM where I can test my ideas building✓ shipped
Generate art on a shirt exactly that building✓ shipped
Simply Sourdough an app for bakers building
Tiny Farmers Market an app to share homemade goods building✓ shipped
This deck you're looking at it buildinglive

Things break.

Stripe payment failed screen: The payment service is temporarily unavailable. Error type stripe_api_error, HTTP status 503 Service Unavailable.

What is infra?

Top requests

/
/wp-admin/install.phpbot
/resend-thesambrain
/building-ruined-hubspot-for-me
//wp1/wp-includes/wlwmanifest.xmlbot
//wp2/wp-includes/wlwmanifest.xmlbot
/chapter-4-its-worth-leaving
/i-rebuilt-activebook-in-15-minutes
/talks/laravel-worldwide

A HubSpot MCP Proxy

(Aaron Francis built it, I use it.)

Consistency + progression = growth

I've spent most of my career around builders. For the first time, I feel like I'm one too.

I can build anything
if the ambition
is there.

I'm a marketer.Wait, I can build this?