The early 2010’s were exciting times for Scala. The language & ecosystem started to professionalize, both from a technical (binary compatibility) and a community point of view (many conferences were started). Not too long after Lightbend – then Typesafe – was founded, I registered the typelevel.org domain on a whim and put together a rudimentary website advertising a few FP-minded Scala libraries. Fast forward to today: Typelevel is known for a wealth of functional libraries, beginner-friendly educational resources, a series of conferences and a distinct ecosystem – including a custom compiler – within the Scala community. In this talk, I’d like to examine what got us there and into the mainstream.