Content Marketing
Creating videos, tutorials, blog posts, and technical content that resonates with developers.
48:46Episode 170
Adam Frankl returns to answer my TAB questions
Adam Frankl has been the first Marketing VP at three dev-facing unicorns. He returns to the podcast, to reveal the things that DevTool startups must get right in the early days, in order to be successful. We also discuss Jack's experience implementing Technical Advisory Boards (TABs) with a new startup, and the hurdles startups face with outreach, sustaining member enthusiasm across calls, and the art of framing the problem correctly. Adam shares ongoing AI experiments to streamline TAB insights and stories that hook developers.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
• Adam's Linkedin
• The Developer Facing Startup
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
• Adam's Linkedin
• The Developer Facing Startup
41:16Episode 169
Kyle Cheung from Greybeam - jumping over bathroom stalls.. as marketing
Kyle Cheung, co-founder of Greybeam, shares how his team built a tool that reduces Snowflake costs by 70-95%, without migration, drawing from multiple pivots over two years. The discussion covers their quirky marketing tactics and advice on fundraising as storytelling.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
• Kyle's Linkedin
• Greybeam
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
• Kyle's Linkedin
• Greybeam
64:07Episode 166
DevRel is unbelievably back - with swyx
In Shawn "swyx" Wang's third appearance on the podcast, we talk about his recent interview with Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan about AI in biomedical research, and the goal to understand and eventually eradicate all diseases. We also talk about how DevRel is unbelievable back, the challenges of uphill DevRel, the dynamics of the current AI investment bubble, and the new projects he is working on.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
• Uphill DevRel article
• DevRel is unbelievably back article
• Particle/wave duality article
• The Economics of Superstars
• AI Engineer conference videos
• Swyx's Linkedin
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
• Uphill DevRel article
• DevRel is unbelievably back article
• Particle/wave duality article
• The Economics of Superstars
• AI Engineer conference videos
• Swyx's Linkedin
35:07Episode 165
Growing Marimo's YouTube channel, with Vincent D. Warmerdam
Vincent D. Warmerdam from Marimo shares how they grew their YouTube channel for their Python notebook, using regular Shorts to reach thousands of new viewers each week. He talks about the importance of being genuinely excited about what you’re building and how consistent, authentic content can help both founders and creators connect with their audience. He gives practical advice and real-world insights for anyone interested in DevRel or growing a DevTool channel.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
• Vincent's blog
• Vincent's X
• Marimo
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
• Vincent's blog
• Vincent's X
• Marimo
36:45Episode 161
Sales 101 with my ex-boss Guy Zerega (former Stack Overflow EVP)
Guy Zerega led sales and marketing at Stack Overflow, where he once hired me.
Now he leads sales at Cyborg - they offer end-to-end encrypted inference data.
This is a 101 on what matters in sales; especially to developers.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
• Guy's Linkedin
• Guy's new startup, Cyborg
Now he leads sales at Cyborg - they offer end-to-end encrypted inference data.
This is a 101 on what matters in sales; especially to developers.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
• Guy's Linkedin
• Guy's new startup, Cyborg
47:58Episode 160
How can you actually use AI in DevTools content? With Victor Coisne from Strapi
Victor, VP of Marketing at Strapi, walks us through how AI can be used in content creation—what tools work, what to watch out for, and how you can try some of these techniques yourself.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
• Victor's X
• Victor's Linkedin
• Strapi
• GrowthX
• Kapa
• Octolens
• Semrush
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
• Victor's X
• Victor's Linkedin
• Strapi
• GrowthX
• Kapa
• Octolens
• Semrush
43:41Episode 159
How PlanetScale write content, with Ben Dicken
Ben Dicken is a developer educator at PlanetScale, he's an incredible writer and teacher, who's made some amazing technical articles that developers actually love reading. We get into his reasons for working so hard on these articles, his process, and how he makes content that genuinely helps engineers understand complex ideas.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
• Ben's X
• B-trees and database indexes article
• IO devices and latency article
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
• Ben's X
• B-trees and database indexes article
• IO devices and latency article
24:24Episode 155
Better documentation with the Diátaxis Framework
Creating docs that actually work means knowing what to write, how to write it, and where it belongs. In this episode, we break down the diataxis documentation framework—a simple but powerful system that splits docs into four clear types: tutorials, how-to guides, explanations, and reference. We look at examples of tools that have implemented diataxis to write their documentation with clarity and purpose.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
• Diataxis
• Sequin
• Layercode
• Logdy
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
• Diataxis
• Sequin
• Layercode
• Logdy
44:22Episode 154
Karan Vaidya, founder of Composio: MCP use cases & Elon retweets
Karen from Composio shares how developers are using MCP to connect tools like Slack, Notion, and Gmail with AI agents, growing from nearly zero to 100,000 users in 6 months. They capitalized on key moments when new AI tools, such as Grok versions and Claude releases, came out, creating examples and demos that resonated strongly across social media and got them retweeted by Elon Musk. Hear how the team learns to use these tools better over time, helping each new release work smarter than the last.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
• Composio
• Composio's X
• Karan's X
• Launch Video
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
• Composio
• Composio's X
• Karan's X
• Launch Video
36:13Episode 153
Studying Lee Robinson, Cursor's new VP of Developer experience
Lee Robinson helped Vercel grow to $200M+ in ARR and scaled the Next.js community to over 1.3 million active developers. I dive into his blog posts to uncover valuable insights and lessons about how he achieved this success, covering topics like docs, community building, developer education, marketing, and product development.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
• Lee Robinson's blog
• Lee Robinson's X
• Peter Yang's interview
• swyx's interview
• Gonto on Scaling DevTools
• Developer Marketing Community
P.s. this is a new style of episode, let me know what you think.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
• Lee Robinson's blog
• Lee Robinson's X
• Peter Yang's interview
• swyx's interview
• Gonto on Scaling DevTools
• Developer Marketing Community
P.s. this is a new style of episode, let me know what you think.
44:42Episode 150
Matt Palmer on Replit's speedrun to $100M ARR
Matt Palmer from Replit shares how the company scaled to $100M in ARR from ~$10M in under a year. We talk about the importance of video for teaching the non-linear process of working with AI, the challenge of rewriting documentation for a broader audience using the Diátaxis framework, and how they support a diverse community of users navigating this new AI-driven development landscape.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
37:51Episode 149
Logan Kilpatrick from Google DeepMind: Building for 100m developers
Logan Kilpatrick shares how DeepMind's organizational changes helped their resurgance in AI. What needs to happen to reach 100m developers. And why the next six months are more exciting than ever.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
52:14Episode 146
I sold my DevTool. ft Paul Anthony Williams from ittybit
This is the first time I'm turning the mic around.
This is the story of StreamPot. A DevTool I launched about a year ago.
It was just acquired by ittybit so I thought I'd bring ittybit's founder Paul on to basically interview me about what went right and what went wrong.
Hopefully you enjoy learning a bit more about the guy usually asking the questions.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
- Jack Bridger
- StreamPot
- StreamPot GitHub
- Announcement
- Paul Anthony Williams
- ittybit
- FFmpeg
- Hetzner
This is the story of StreamPot. A DevTool I launched about a year ago.
It was just acquired by ittybit so I thought I'd bring ittybit's founder Paul on to basically interview me about what went right and what went wrong.
Hopefully you enjoy learning a bit more about the guy usually asking the questions.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
- Jack Bridger
- StreamPot
- StreamPot GitHub
- Announcement
- Paul Anthony Williams
- ittybit
- FFmpeg
- Hetzner
42:47Episode 145
Paul Copplestone, CEO of Supabase - don't kill your channel
Paul Copplestone is the CEO of Supabase, the Postgres development platform. He talks about the discipline needed to cross the enterprise chasm without isolating your original community.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
- Paul's LinkedIn
- Paul's X
- Paul's website
- Supabase
- Enterprise Sales vs Product-led Growth
- Friction logs
- Ant Wilson
- Multigres: Vitess for Postgres
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
- Paul's LinkedIn
- Paul's X
- Paul's website
- Supabase
- Enterprise Sales vs Product-led Growth
- Friction logs
- Ant Wilson
- Multigres: Vitess for Postgres
42:32Episode 144
Quinn Favret from Tavus: AI video API that saved our episode
Quinn Favret is the founder of Tavus. They do AI video research and products. They saved a Scaling DevTools episodes with their lipsync feature.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs. https://workos.com/
Links:
- Tavus
- Tavus lipsync API
- Quinn Favret
- Scaling DevTools episode saved by Tavus
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs. https://workos.com/
Links:
- Tavus
- Tavus lipsync API
- Quinn Favret
- Scaling DevTools episode saved by Tavus
57:21Episode 141
Tony Holdstock-Brown, CEO of Inngest: orchestration, traction and not using LinkedIn
Tony Holdstock-Brown is the CEO and founder of Inngest, a tool to run AI and backend workflows at scale.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
- Inngest
- Tony's (inactive) LinkedIn
- Traction book
Note: the studio lost video footage about 20 minutes in. Sorry about that. Audio is fine though.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
- Inngest
- Tony's (inactive) LinkedIn
- Traction book
Note: the studio lost video footage about 20 minutes in. Sorry about that. Audio is fine though.
47:37Episode 139
Steve Ruiz, founder of tldraw - taste, creativity and obsession
Steve Ruiz is the founder of tldraw - a whiteboard SDK / infinite canvas SDK. We talk creativity, taste and obsession. And marketing to developers.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
50:48Episode 138
Luke Harries from ElevenLabs - Maximize your launches
Luke Harries leads growth at ElevenLabs. ElevenLabs builds incredible AI voice models. Luke dives into why launches matter so much, the origin story of ElevenLabs and why a hackathon can change your life.
Links:
Links:
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
P.s. I used Eleven Labs without any edits for the transcript/subtitles.
P.s. I used Eleven Labs without any edits for the transcript/subtitles.
48:48Episode 137
ChatGPT didn't kill SEO - Elston Baretto, founder of Tiiny.host
Elston Baretto is the founder of Tiiny.host - the simplest place to put your work online. In this episode we talk about how Elston has been able to grow Tiiny to 70,000+ sign ups per month with content marketing.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
- Tiiny.host
- Elston Baretto
- Ramen Club
- Charlie Ward
- Sabba
- Veed
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
- Tiiny.host
- Elston Baretto
- Ramen Club
- Charlie Ward
- Sabba
- Veed
51:36Episode 134
DevTools Marketing with Jason Lengstorf
This episode is a deep dive into DevTools marketing with Jason Lengstorf, founder of CodeTV.
Links:
Links:
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
49:06Episode 130
Chris Evans & Pete Hamilton: Incident.io cofounders
Pete Hamilton and Chris Evans are cofounders of Incident.io. Incident is an incident management tool.
We discuss:
- How they think about brand and how it comes from their deep understanding of incident culture
- Lawrence’s article asking for new macbooks that went viral
- Gallows humor in incidents
- Why incident.io started on Heroku despite being an incident response platform—and why “shipping fast” mattered more than “scaling perfectly.”
- The benefit of building for users who are just like you
- How Incident is using GenAI
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign-On and audit logs.
Links:
- Pete Hamilton on Twitter
- Chris Evans on Twitter
- Incident
- Macbook article
- The flight plan that brought UK airspace to its knees
- How Netflix drives reliability across their organization
Note: this was recorded on 13th December 2024.
19:34Episode 120
Four tips for early stage DevTools
In this episode, I pull out some of the key DevTools lessons I've learned in the last 120 interviews.
Including:
- The importance of deeply understanding the problem you're solving by talking to developers directly, as emphasized by Adam Frankl.
- Ant Wilson's advice on experimenting with different go-to-market strategies and channels rather than relying on conventional wisdom.
- Zeno Rocha's emphasis on the importance of the last mile—packaging and presentation. He shares how spending more time on documentation and onboarding materials helped his open-source project gain massive traction.
- Gonto's perspective that "it's better to be different than better," and how creativity, uniqueness, and understanding developer habits are key to successful marketing.
- My personal reflections on overcoming fear and discomfort in go-to-market efforts.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs. https://workos.com.
54:00Episode 118
The future of DevRel, with "Danger" Keith Casey
Keith Casey aka Danger Casey is a Senior Product Manager at Pangea - a Security Platform as a Service.
Before Pangea, Keith was Director of Product Marketing at ngrok and worked at Okta and Twilio in a variety of roles - including DevRel. Keith also curates API Developer Weekly.
In this episode we discuss Keith's writings on the future of DevRel.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
- original article
- followup article
- How to kill your sdks in one easy step
- Developer productivity and selling to developers
- api developer weekly
- Pangea
- DevRel = zirp phenomenom?
Before Pangea, Keith was Director of Product Marketing at ngrok and worked at Okta and Twilio in a variety of roles - including DevRel. Keith also curates API Developer Weekly.
In this episode we discuss Keith's writings on the future of DevRel.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
- original article
- followup article
- How to kill your sdks in one easy step
- Developer productivity and selling to developers
- api developer weekly
- Pangea
- DevRel = zirp phenomenom?
38:28Episode 112
Daksh Gupta from Greptile - do marketing differently
In this conversation, Daksh Gupta, the CEO of Greptile - an AI code understanding API - shares:
- Why it’s important to do unique types of marketing, like making an energy drink
- Why most people misunderstand sales
- How companies are buying AI tools and why it will probably change soon
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
42:18Episode 108
John O'Nolan, Founder of Ghost - the Open Source blogging tool making $7.2m ARR
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John O'Nolan is the Founder and CEO of Ghost.org. Ghost is an open source blog & newsletter platform. We use them for the Scaling DevTools' blog.
Note: this episode was recorded on 17th October 2024.
We talk about:
John O'Nolan is the Founder and CEO of Ghost.org. Ghost is an open source blog & newsletter platform. We use them for the Scaling DevTools' blog.
Note: this episode was recorded on 17th October 2024.
We talk about:
- How to communicate the benefits of Open Source to non-developers
- How Ghost manages to align open source and money making
- John's thoughts on the Automattic/Wordpress drama
- Advantages and disadvantages of VC funding and open source
- What would John do with VC dollars
Resources:
- Ghost https://ghost.org/
- John's website https://john.onolan.org/
- The WordPress vs. WP Engine drama, explained https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/07/wordpress-vs-wp-engine-drama-explained/
- Indie Hackers podcast https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/139-john-onolan-of-ghost
- Cursor cursor.com
- Ben Thompson's blog https://stratechery.com/
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
37:49Episode 107
Gonto - Auth0 Employee #6 shares developer marketing secrets
Gonto (Martin Gontovnikas) was the 6th employee at Auth0 and helped them grow fast and sell for $6.5billion to Okta.
Now he is the founder of Hypergrowth Partners and helps DevTools grow fast.
We discuss:
Now he is the founder of Hypergrowth Partners and helps DevTools grow fast.
We discuss:
- What Auth0 did to become so valuable so fast
- What the best founders do (Guillermo Rauch)
- Different is better than better
- People follow people not brands
- Why bleeding edge matters
Resources
- Why Technical SDRs are the Future of DevTools
https://playbooks.hypergrowthpartners.com/p/product-advocates-technical-sdrs - Gonto's website https://gon.to/
- Gonto's Twitter https://twitter.com/mgonto
- Hypergrowth Partners https://www.hypergrowthpartners.com/
- Code to Market https://codetomarket.fm/
- Guillermo Rauch https://x.com/rauchg
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
76:17Episode 103
Shawn Wang (swyx) - founder of smol.ai, Latent Space, AI Engineer, DX.tips
Shawn Wang (aka swyx) is the founder of smol.ai (AI news curation), and the cohost of Latent Space (popular AI Engineer podcast).
Plus, Shawn started the AI Engineer movement with his essay Rise of the AI Engineer and organized two incredible AI engineer conferences in the past twelve months - AI Engineer World's Fair and AI Engineer Summit
And Shawn has angel invested in DevTools like Airbyte, Railway, Supabase, Replay.io, Stackblitz, Flutterflow, Fireworks.ai while running the DevTools angels community.
Besides this, Shawn curates DX.tips (DevTools magazine) and in a past life wrote the Coding Career handbook, championed learn in public, cofounded Svelte Society and was previously Head of Developer Experience at Temporal, and a Developer Advocate at AWS and Netlify.
Also, before this, Shawn had a very successful career in investment banking, trading, building data pipelines and performing quantitate portfolio management. I think this brings him a very unique perspective - I've always admired his ability to zoom out and see the big picture and the trends.
Even though Shawn is now all-in on AI, he's still one of the go-to authorities on DevTools go-to-market.
As you can tell, Shawn is someone I deeply admire. So I'm glad he came back.
What we discuss:
Plus, Shawn started the AI Engineer movement with his essay Rise of the AI Engineer and organized two incredible AI engineer conferences in the past twelve months - AI Engineer World's Fair and AI Engineer Summit
And Shawn has angel invested in DevTools like Airbyte, Railway, Supabase, Replay.io, Stackblitz, Flutterflow, Fireworks.ai while running the DevTools angels community.
Besides this, Shawn curates DX.tips (DevTools magazine) and in a past life wrote the Coding Career handbook, championed learn in public, cofounded Svelte Society and was previously Head of Developer Experience at Temporal, and a Developer Advocate at AWS and Netlify.
Also, before this, Shawn had a very successful career in investment banking, trading, building data pipelines and performing quantitate portfolio management. I think this brings him a very unique perspective - I've always admired his ability to zoom out and see the big picture and the trends.
Even though Shawn is now all-in on AI, he's still one of the go-to authorities on DevTools go-to-market.
As you can tell, Shawn is someone I deeply admire. So I'm glad he came back.
What we discuss:
- Organizing the AI Engineer Conferences
- Rise of the AI Engineer
- Intentionality and principles (yes we even talk about Alcoholics Anonymous)
- The AI CEO
- Invisible deadlines
- Ilya believing in AGI more than most people at OpenAI
- Are developers going to be obsolete?
- Thor convinced swyx to invest in Supabase
- Building DevTools that work well with LLMs
- Angel investing in DevTools - why and how
- Is DevRel dead?
- How to hire DevRel
- Why DX.tips exists
Links:
- Rise of the AI Engineer https://www.latent.space/p/ai-engineer
- Latent Space Podcast https://www.latent.space/
- swyx's Twitter https://x.com/swyx
- swyx's website https://www.swyx.io/
- swyx's LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnswyxwang/
- smol.ai https://smol.ai/
- DevTools Angels https://github.com/sw-yx/devtools-angels
- DX.tips https://dx.tips/
- DevRel's Death as Zero Interest Rate Phenomenon https://dx.tips/zirp
- AI Engineer Summit https://www.ai.engineer/summit/2023
- AI Engineer World's Fair https://www.ai.engineer/worldsfair
- Coding Career Handbook https://www.learninpublic.org/
- Shawn's previous appearance on Scaling DevTools https://podcast.scalingdevtools.com/episodes/swyx
- Eisenhower Matrix https://asana.com/resources/eisenhower-matrix
- Thor from Supabase https://x.com/thorwebdev
- Solaris AI coworking space in SF https://www.solarissf.com/
- Browserbase https://www.browserbase.com/
- Indent https://indent.com/ and Fouad https://x.com/fouadmatin
- How to do hackathons https://dx.tips/hackathons
- How to do conferences https://dx.tips/conf-guide
- How to hire DevRel https://dx.tips/mailbox-first-devrel-hiring
- Climbing the ladder of abstraction with Amelia Wattenberger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAy_GHUAICw
Check out the Enterprise Ready Conf from WorkOS https://enterprise-ready.com/
42:40Episode 100
Ant Wilson - Cofounder of Supabase (100th Episode!)
This is our 100th episode!
And we're thrilled to welcome back fan favourite Ant Wilson - the cofounder and CTO of Supabase.
And we're thrilled to welcome back fan favourite Ant Wilson - the cofounder and CTO of Supabase.
They discuss the evolution of Supabase, the importance of open source, and effective marketing strategies.
Ant shares insights on community engagement, the significance of developer-centric branding, and the challenges of navigating the enterprise landscape.
We also touch on the rise of AI and vector databases, emphasizing the power of open source in development. The conversation concludes with reflections on the journey and future aspirations.
Thank you to everyone who made it our 100th episode!
Ant shares insights on community engagement, the significance of developer-centric branding, and the challenges of navigating the enterprise landscape.
We also touch on the rise of AI and vector databases, emphasizing the power of open source in development. The conversation concludes with reflections on the journey and future aspirations.
Thank you to everyone who made it our 100th episode!
Takeaways
- Open source can significantly enhance hiring opportunities.
- Building a strong brand requires understanding your audience.
- Open source provides a competitive edge against incumbents.
- The importance of stability and security for enterprise clients.
- Time in the market builds trust with potential customers.
Links
- Supabase https://supabase.com/
- Ant Wilson's Twitter https://x.com/antwilson
- pgvector https://supabase.com/docs/guides/database/extensions/pgvector
- Greg Richardson https://x.com/ggrdson
- Previous episode with Ant https://podcast.scalingdevtools.com/episodes/product-market-fit-is-one-pivot-away-with-ant-wilson-founder-of-supabase
Keywords
open source, developer tools, marketing strategies, community engagement, AI, vector databases, enterprise solutions, product development, tech podcast
89:43Episode 98
The Developer Tools playbook, with Adam Frankl - VP of 4 DevTools unicorns
Adam Frankl has been VP at four Developer Tools unicorns, including JFrog, Neo4J and Sourcegraph.
Adam is the author of the Developer Facing Startup and recently launched the Developer Facing Startup Founders Academy: a program that helps founders launch and grow their developer tools.
In this conversation, Adam Frankl discusses the critical role of a Technical Advisory Board (TAB) in the success of developer-facing startups.
He emphasizes the importance of understanding developer needs, effective interviewing techniques, and the necessity of building credibility and community. Adam outlines a structured approach to gathering insights from developers.
He also highlights the significance of storytelling in marketing and the need for founders to engage deeply with their user base to discover and address their problems effectively.
Takeaways:
Adam is the author of the Developer Facing Startup and recently launched the Developer Facing Startup Founders Academy: a program that helps founders launch and grow their developer tools.
In this conversation, Adam Frankl discusses the critical role of a Technical Advisory Board (TAB) in the success of developer-facing startups.
He emphasizes the importance of understanding developer needs, effective interviewing techniques, and the necessity of building credibility and community. Adam outlines a structured approach to gathering insights from developers.
He also highlights the significance of storytelling in marketing and the need for founders to engage deeply with their user base to discover and address their problems effectively.
Takeaways:
- A Technical Advisory Board is essential for startup success.
- Founders must prioritize understanding developer needs.
- Effective interviews should focus on the problem, not the product.
- Social proof is crucial for building credibility.
- Developers are influenced by their peers and community.
- The 'Dream Sequence' outlines the developer adoption process.
- Storytelling is key to engaging potential users.
- Founders should continuously engage with their user base.
- Identifying key personas is vital for targeted outreach.
- Developers are not leads; they require a different approach.
Links:
- Developer Facing Startup Founders Academy https://developer-facing-founders-network.mn.co/
- Adam Frankl's LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamfrankl/
- The Developer Facing Startup https://www.amazon.co.uk/Developer-Facing-Startup-market-developer-facing/dp/B0D4KJNSPP
Keywords:
Technical Advisory Board, Developer Startups, User Research, Developer Needs, Social Proof, Community Building, Founder Responsibilities, Developer Adoption, Interview Techniques, Startup Success
Technical Advisory Board, Developer Startups, User Research, Developer Needs, Social Proof, Community Building, Founder Responsibilities, Developer Adoption, Interview Techniques, Startup Success
45:27Episode 96
Clerk's Hockey Stick growth, with Colin Sidoti
In this episode, we're joined by returning guest Colin Sidoti - the cofounder and CEO of Clerk.
Clerk is a comprehensive user management platform.
What we cover:
- The origin story and South Park Commons
- Clerk's dramatic growth since the first episode - what changed? What did they do right?
- 7% growth per week
- Tiny details that improve the developer experience
- How to you know if a change is better - watching people's faces as they try it
- The difficulties of bringing new joiners up to speed in a very high context environment
- Obsessions of founders
- Zuckerberg's obsession and South Park Commons talk
- Nick Parsons appreciation: why it's hard to hire good developer marketing people
- The uniqueness of marketing developer tools
- Buying a van and parking it outside YC
- Local marketing campaigns in San Francisco
Links:
- Clerk https://clerk.com/
- Colin's Twitter https://x.com/tweetsbycolin
- Nick Parsons' Twitter https://x.com/nickparsons
- Jakob's tweet https://x.com/jakeplusev/status/1827791946380877828
- Malte Ubl's blog https://www.industrialempathy.com/
- Zuck's talk at South Park Commons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02fBBoZa9l4
Clerk is a comprehensive user management platform.
What we cover:
- The origin story and South Park Commons
- Clerk's dramatic growth since the first episode - what changed? What did they do right?
- 7% growth per week
- Tiny details that improve the developer experience
- How to you know if a change is better - watching people's faces as they try it
- The difficulties of bringing new joiners up to speed in a very high context environment
- Obsessions of founders
- Zuckerberg's obsession and South Park Commons talk
- Nick Parsons appreciation: why it's hard to hire good developer marketing people
- The uniqueness of marketing developer tools
- Buying a van and parking it outside YC
- Local marketing campaigns in San Francisco
Links:
- Clerk https://clerk.com/
- Colin's Twitter https://x.com/tweetsbycolin
- Nick Parsons' Twitter https://x.com/nickparsons
- Jakob's tweet https://x.com/jakeplusev/status/1827791946380877828
- Malte Ubl's blog https://www.industrialempathy.com/
- Zuck's talk at South Park Commons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02fBBoZa9l4
30:30Episode 95
David Mytton - Arcjet and console.dev
David is the CEO of Arcjet. Arcjet is a tool that helps developers protect their apps once they go into production. It offers Bot detection, rate limiting, email validation, attack protection, data redaction.
David is also the creator of the console.dev newsletter and podcast. It's where thousands of developers discover developer tools.
In this episode we discuss how David thinks about creating content. Why he believes go-to-market is more difficult than product and how he works on creating great developer experience.
Links:
- Arcjet https://arcjet.com/
- David Mytton - https://davidmytton.blog/
- Console https://console.dev/
AI DevTools hackathon this weekend in SF:
- Event page https://lu.ma/devtools-hackathon
- More info https://www.devtoolshackathon.com/
- Arcjet https://arcjet.com/
- David Mytton - https://davidmytton.blog/
- Console https://console.dev/
AI DevTools hackathon this weekend in SF:
- Event page https://lu.ma/devtools-hackathon
- More info https://www.devtoolshackathon.com/
34:37Episode 93
Always be dogfooding, with Andrew Lisowski of devtools.fm
Andrew Lisowski is the cohost of devtools.fm.
In this episode we talk about why Andrew started devtools.fm and what he's learned along the way.
In this episode we talk about why Andrew started devtools.fm and what he's learned along the way.
- Life as an open source maintainer.
- How the JavaScript ecosystem is different to other developer ecosystems.
- The importance of dogfooding.
- The power of DHH.
- Why obsessing over one problem eventually leads to great results
- Should DevTools start podcasts and how?
Links:
- devtools.fm - https://www.devtools.fm/
- Andrew's Twitter - https://x.com/HipsterSmoothie
- devtools.fm Twitter - https://x.com/DevtoolsFM
- Interview with DHH https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEZNbM4MUdo
- Interview with Evan You https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycuYlzuBqcA
- Interview with Richard Harris https://www.devtools.fm/episode/15
38:26Episode 87
Ellen Chisa - Partner at Boldstart Ventures
Ellen Chisa is a partner at Boldstart Ventures. Prior to Boldstart, Ellen founded Darklang - a programming language. Before Darklang, Ellen worked in product.
What we discussed:
What we discussed:
- Startups should focus on building one SDK and doing it well, rather than trying to build multiple SDKs at once.
- North Star metrics
- Developer tooling companies can learn from consumer-facing companies in terms of marketing and creating an identity for their product.
- Being authentic as a founder and actively engaging with the community can help establish a strong brand and attract users. Recognize and leverage your unique strengths and skills.
- Busy work can be valuable
- The importance of segmenting your message
Links:
- Ellen's Twitter/X https://x.com/ellenchisa?lang=en
- Boldstart Ventures https://boldstart.vc/
- darklang https://darklang.com/
62:33Episode 82
Aaron Francis - how to make videos developers want to watch
Aaron Francis is someone who needs little introduction. Especially if you've ever used Laravel or MySQL.
Aaron built up the highly acclaimed PlanetScale YouTube channel and now publishes content on his own channel and founded Try Hard Studios to help developer tools make amazing video content.
Here are some quotes from Aaron's viewers:
Aaron built up the highly acclaimed PlanetScale YouTube channel and now publishes content on his own channel and founded Try Hard Studios to help developer tools make amazing video content.
Here are some quotes from Aaron's viewers:
- hey man your videos kick ass and i cannot thank you enough for your approach with these. your videos can be watched once and understood... every single one of them... i don't know how you do it, but the way you have picked to teach anything you teach is incredible. you freaking rock! thank you!
- Great stuff! Love that you mix in a bit of fun with the content, it's what got me to subscribe!
- I have been working with MySQL for last 17 years and I never use cursor but your video helped me to understand MySQL cursor. Thank you
- iterally laughing out loud several times. absolute gold.
(partner's like "what are you watching?!" "a guy seeding a database!"
In this episode, we take a deep dive into how Aaron makes videos and what you can learn from his approach.
This episode is sponsored by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
- Aaron's channel: https://www.youtube.com/@aarondfrancis
- Aaron's Twitter https://x.com/aarondfrancis
- Mostly Technical Podcast - https://mostlytechnical.com/
- Try Hard Studios: https://tryhardstudios.com/
- Aaron's Handwriting robots - https://x.com/aarondfrancis/status/1438888219471491074?lang=en
41:42Episode 73
Why developers trust Resend, with Zeno Rocha
Zeno Rocha is the founder of Resend. Zeno is also the founder of React Email.
Resend is a simple-to-use email API built for developers.
Previously Zeno was the VP of DX at WorkOS and the creator of the popular Dracula VS Code theme as well as the popular open source project Clipboard js.
This episode is sponsored by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
What we talk about
Resend is a simple-to-use email API built for developers.
Previously Zeno was the VP of DX at WorkOS and the creator of the popular Dracula VS Code theme as well as the popular open source project Clipboard js.
This episode is sponsored by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
What we talk about
- Building trust and a great developer experience
- Creating a successful open-source project (Clipboardjs)
- The importance of storytelling and a coherent (launching react email and Resend)
- The importance of a great readme
- Prioritization, descoping and making something worthy of being shared by Guillermo Rauch
Links:
- Zeno's Twitter Rocha - https://twitter.com/zenorocha
- Resend - https://resend.com/
- React email - https://github.com/resend/react-email
- Dracula theme https://draculatheme.com/visual-studio-code
- Clipboardjs - https://clipboardjs.com/
- WorkOS - https://workos.com/
23:36Episode 70
How to launch on Product Hunt with Flo Merian
Flo Merian is a developer marketer who has run successful Product Hunt launches for numerous developer tools.
Flo is also a maintainer of the Developer Marketing community and curates LaunchWeek.dev
Flo is a Product Marketer at Clerk - a user management tool
Links:
Flo is also a maintainer of the Developer Marketing community and curates LaunchWeek.dev
Flo is a Product Marketer at Clerk - a user management tool
Links:
- https://twitter.com/fmerian
- https://marketingto.dev/
- https://launchweek.dev/
- https://github.com/fmerian/awesome-product-hunt
30:32Episode 69
Make it real: Show the whole process - Lu Wilson from tldraw
Lu Wilson AKA todepond is one of the people behind tldraw, the infinite canvas for the internet.
Lu also has a youtube channel, todepond.
Lu also built the [hilarious] programming language dreamberd
Lu is also a researcher with Ink & Switch - an independent research lab
In this episode Lu shares how tldraw went viral again and again and again this year.
My biggest takeaways were to share your whole process and default to visual communication.
Links:
- https://www.todepond.com/
- https://www.youtube.com/@TodePond
- https://github.com/TodePond/DreamBerd
- https://www.tldraw.com/
- https://www.inkandswitch.com/
Lu also has a youtube channel, todepond.
Lu also built the [hilarious] programming language dreamberd
Lu is also a researcher with Ink & Switch - an independent research lab
In this episode Lu shares how tldraw went viral again and again and again this year.
My biggest takeaways were to share your whole process and default to visual communication.
Links:
- https://www.todepond.com/
- https://www.youtube.com/@TodePond
- https://github.com/TodePond/DreamBerd
- https://www.tldraw.com/
- https://www.inkandswitch.com/
36:36Episode 67
OpenAI want to build the best developer product ever - OpenAI's first DevRel, Logan Kilpatrick
Guest: Logan Kilpatrick, member of OpenAI’s developer advocacy team, often described as OpenAI’s first DevRel.
Highlights:
- Challenges and Growth: Logan discusses the evolution of developer engagement from GPT 3.5 to the explosive growth following ChatGPT's success. Initially faced with the challenge of generating developer interest, the release of ChatGPT marked a significant shift, highlighting the shift from awareness to scaling and improving developer experience amidst high demand and compute-intensive operations.
- Developer Experience Focus: Logan emphasizes the focus on developer experience, detailing the balance between improving platform features and releasing new models and APIs. Despite past trade-offs, the goal remains to enhance core platform functionalities and developer-friendly features.
- Decision Making and Prioritization: Logan shares insights into the dynamic and fast-paced environment at OpenAI, which requires flexibility in planning and prioritization. Key focus areas include documentation, product improvements, direct developer interactions, internal coordination, and supporting launches, especially the GPT Store.
- Impact of Documentation: Underscoring the critical role of documentation, Logan points out that effective documentation is paramount for developer success, guiding the use of OpenAI's API and models. Efforts are underway to improve documentation quality and support various user personas beyond developers.
- Developer Community Engagement: Lessons from engaging with the developer community include the need for diverse content formats and accommodating various user personas. Logan acknowledges the challenge of keeping documentation and resources updated in a rapidly evolving API landscape.
- Building a Superior Developer Experience: Logan stresses the importance of OpenAI's mission to benefit everyone and the role of the API in achieving widespread impact. The commitment to providing the best tools for developers is seen as a differentiator in the competitive landscape of AI model providers.
- Managing Attention and Feedback: Despite the challenges of being a public figure within the developer community, Logan values direct feedback for continuous improvement. Balancing public engagement with deep work, especially on documentation and launch support, is highlighted.
- Community Questions and Answers: Logan addresses questions from the community, touching on the desire for innovative applications of OpenAI technology, plans for global events, prioritizing documentation, addressing developer concerns about scaling, and sharing personal preferences for deep dish pizza in Chicago.
Rapid Fire Community Q&A:
- Innovative Applications: Logan hopes to see development of multiplayer, multimodal text-first AI assistants.
- Global Events: OpenAI is expanding its presence, including hiring in London and considering events in cities like Atlanta.
- DevRel Strategy for 2024: Focus on creating excellent documentation.
- Developer Concerns: Addressing challenges around freedom to scale and capacity constraints.
- Personal Time: Logan plans to take vacation during the end-of-year code freeze in 2024.
- Chicago Deep Dish Recommendation: Lou Malnati's and Paradise Park are Logan's picks for the best deep dish pizza.
Links:
- Logan's Twitter - https://x.com/OfficialLoganK
- Romain's Twitter https://twitter.com/romainhuet
- OpenAI https://platform.openai.com/
- tlDraw https://www.tldraw.com/
- Bloop https://bloop.ai/
- Joyfill https://joyfill.io/
- https://portkey.ai/
- Stripe docs https://stripe.com/docs
This episode provides a behind-the-scenes look at OpenAI's efforts to enhance developer engagement, the challenges of balancing innovation with platform stability, and the importance of community feedback in shaping the future of AI development tools.
Show notes generated with gpt4 (using a blog post I wrote)
Show notes generated with gpt4 (using a blog post I wrote)
30:52Episode 62
A bootstrapper's story with Julien Danjou, founder of Mergify
Julien Danjou is the founder of Mergify - a tool that helps merge code safer and faster.
Summary (auto-generated):
- How do you split your time between work and marketing? 0:00
- Julian splits 50% of his time between building the product and the other 50% doing marketing and bringing people to the product.
- Julian talks about mergerfi.
- Where do you start with product development? 1:23
- The goal is to solve a problem for an engineer. They co-founded Mirchi Fi with Mary and wrote their own tool.
- The role of time is a lot of time.
- The importance of doing demos and showing the product around to the team, and how that has changed over time.
- How the product is simple and there are a lot of viable options around it, but it's hard to think about all the tiny details.
- How did they get started? 5:08
- They both started with a full-time job and moved from a platform to get up. They felt naked without any of their tools. They wanted to build their own tools.
- They found a first rate customer, pitch.com, and then found more startups willing to use a merge request tool.
- One of the challenges of being a bootstrapped company is that they only have two hours per week to work on the tool.
- It is easy to not get good at making decisions when you can do everything, but in air quotes, do everything.
- How long did it take to write the first dashboard? 10:07
- Before people started using it internally, they did most of the grunt work of writing the first version. The first version was a mvp.
- The first dashboard they wrote was like HTML and the bootstrap framework, which was pretty bad, but it was good enough.
- The first version of the product is the only thing that is going to be out in front of users or customers.
- The importance of being an entrepreneur-minded person.
- When they found the first customers, they decided not to build a company right away, but to focus on building a few hours a week into bots.
- The real trap.
- Marketing and getting the word out. 16:00
- The root problem is that nobody knows about you because you are not doing marketing. You have to go with the event if you have a competitor or inspire something.
- It is easy to build the things for a year or so, especially when you are a developer.
- Not everything works, but what works well is open source projects. For example, amazon is using lodgify on their open source project.
- One of their biggest customers was using one of the engineer's projects on github.com, and they talk to their manager about it.
- Marketing and marketing budget. 20:30
- Marketing is a lot of different channels that they can use, and they have tried almost everything to see if it works, and if it doesn't work, they try to future-harm.
- They try to provide value for free to open source users and projects and are happy to do that.
- Adding value in open source is about saving time and giving time to most open source projects using a merge tool.
- If a company is new to open source, they need a tool to help them with a workflow tool, marketing, etc.
- How did you find out about rescue? 25:36
- The number of people using rescue is small. There are very small projects with just one or two people mentioning it to project being run by 50 or 100 person behind.
- The main goal is to actually work on the open source projects, not start a new one.
- Redhat was working on an open source project with Eddie when they started. Redhat is a great leverage for building a company.
- One takeaway for a dev tool founder, be strict about splitting 50% of your time between building the product and doing the fun stuff.
30:59Episode 61
From getting hacked to cybersecurity founders with Antoine Carossio and Tristan Kalos from Escape.tech
Escape helps you Find and fix GraphQL security flaws at scale within your DevSecOps process
- Introduction to Tristan and Antoine. 0:00
- How did they get started in cybersecurity? 4:35
- How did you get your first few customers? 9:49
- Challenges from a product and tech point of view. 13:57
- Challenges of integration into the development process. 18:10
- How to find the right team? 22:55
Links:
- Escape.tech https://escape.tech/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=devtools-podcast
- Tristan's Twitter - https://twitter.com/TristanKalos
- Antoine's Twitter - https://twitter.com/iCarossio
37:26Episode 60
Developer copywriting mistakes to avoid, with Zach Goldie
Zach Goldie is a DevTools messaging consultant
- Ship code faster is an empty statement. 0:00
- How do you position yourself against the competition? 1:56
- The problem with free monitoring tools. 6:43
- Explain why fast is a good thing. 11:44
- Curse of knowledge and how to overcome it. 16:42
- The problem with copy length and word count. 21:37
- How do you know if a page is good? 27:05
- Pitching self-serve to users. 32:42
Links:
- Zach's Twitter https://twitter.com/DitchingData
- Zach's site https://www.zachgoldie.com/
- Benefit layers https://dx.tips/benefit-layers
- Zach's Twitter https://twitter.com/DitchingData
- Zach's site https://www.zachgoldie.com/
- Benefit layers https://dx.tips/benefit-layers
41:18Episode 59
Building a developer social network with Steve Krouse from Val Town
Steve Krouse is the founder of Val.town - a social website where you can write and run code.
- Introduction to Val.Town's vision 0:00
- How long it took Github to make money on Steve
- Val Town is a social website where you can write and run javascript or typescript, run the code on servers, and see the results.
- Knocking down friction points 2:12
- Val Town is making it so that programmers can create cool stuff without having to go through the pain of sending an email.
- Zapier for developers is another kind of tagline that has been seen other people that you've interviewed on this podcast.
- Categorising use cases on the website. 4:45
- Val Town recently made a list of favourite use cases and categorised them on the website. The challenge is explaining to people what it is and what it can be used for.
- What can be made with Val.town section
- How to get people to make cool things with your tool 15:51
- People hear about Val Town because other people are using it. The more people sign up, the more people are signing up for it.
- Val Town has a smaller number of people who are excited about it and use it a lot, but it's not a mythical product market fit.
- Every Thursday, the team is not allowed to work on the product. They all have to try and make Vals to go viral, which is a really fun creative day.
- The last one that went viral was hacker news follow, which was branded as an installable script.
- How do you think about notifications? 24:30
- Val Town is perfect for programmatic customization of notification emails, so that installing those into your account will be part of the tutorial.
- Val is passionate about education, and it feels like that's a big challenge because there's lots of new stuff with val.
- Medium-term ambition, build a learn to code interactive course on top of Val Town. Long term ambition is to have hundreds or thousands of Learn to Code courses on Val Town, embedded in the product.
- Future of coding meetups. 29:36
- An interview with Brian Dougie, early at Github, and how he helped with bootcamps and how to run code with Netlify.
- Future of coding meetup in london.
- Managing a community is a funny thing. The people who start and manage communities are often weird people.
- Date Me Docs 35:33
- Some people are looking for a unique snowflake, while others are sensitive and don't want attention on their date me docs.
- The future of dating is a great exercise to go through to get clear in words about who you are and what you're looking for.
Links:
- Val Town - https://www.val.town/
- Steve's Twitter - https://twitter.com/stevekrouse
- Val Town - https://www.val.town/
- Steve's Twitter - https://twitter.com/stevekrouse
29:47Episode 58
Dax from SST - content that has nothing to do with your tool can still convert
Dax Raad is building SST - an open-source framework that makes it easy to build serverless apps.
- What Is SST? 0:00
- The theory in January was to make content that has nothing to do with SST and still convert people. Dax validated the theory within the first hour.
- Dax tells us a little bit about SST, a framework for building applications on AWS, and how it works.
- The importance of marketing and content. 2:42
- The focus now has to be on marketing.
- The top of the funnel is when someone has no idea who you are.
- Pitching the idea to his boss. 5:16
- Dax pitched the idea and Fred Schott was immediately down. He spent a day just watching every single episode of Between Two Ferns and wrote down all the patterns of jokes.
- He learned a lot from the first one, and is doing another one today at 230.
- How much goes into the show? 8:04
- The original show is fully done and edits, and that is true of the one that video was made. The video was not close to what actually happened, but it was his response to the video.
- The original is very specific and it's funny how specific the jokes are.
- The importance of having a unique angle. 10:40
- For most companies, announcing an integration is not the most exciting thing to announce.
- The bar is incredibly low, and the expectations are super low.
- Invest more in marketing and content. 12:35
- They are looking to hire a comedian or someone who makes good content on YouTube.
- They are planning a series A, and are looking for people who are talented and can help them.
- Educational vs entertaining content. 14:57
- The only way to capture someone like you is through a different angle.
- The theory in January was to make content that has nothing to do with SST and still convert people into trying out SST.
- Finding an angle that is genuine for yourself.
- How he got over the hump of clickbait. 17:54
- He went through the same hump that everyone goes through when trying to publish content on youtube.
- He was sent a video by a guy who was very successful on youtube and he was explaining why he does what he does.
- The importance of having a good content. 20:51
- Youtube is an amazing place. People will watch it if it's good.
- Marketing is a huge lever. 23:20
- They are a very small company. They are able to do a lot given their small size and they are going to continue to be a small company, so they need to find ways to find leverage anywhere they can.
- They are excited about what they can invest in.
- Dax would love to work with someone who is good at filmmaking and editing to keep it engaging and keep it fun. He also thinks about shows that are authentic.
- Key takeaways for anyone listening, remember that if you're building a company you do need to do marketing.
Links:
- SST https://sst.dev/
- Dax's twitter https://twitter.com/thdxr
- Between Two Nerds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I2Xep0GTQY&ab_channel=SST
- SST https://sst.dev/
- Dax's twitter https://twitter.com/thdxr
- Between Two Nerds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I2Xep0GTQY&ab_channel=SST
36:02Episode 54
Killing features with Josh Twist, founder of Zuplo
Josh Twist is the founder of Zuplo, an API gateway
- Introducing Josh Twist, the founder of Zuplo. 0:00
- Zuplo vs Azure API management.
- How do you make this fit into the developer workflow? 3:06
- How Zuplo fits into the development workflow.
- How to democratize API management and make it something every business wants to use.
- Best practices for implementing API key authentication.
- Stripe quality API out of the box.
- The power of removing friction in creating a better experience. 8:58
- The power of removing friction from the process.
- How do you create a product that is easy for beginners but still has a powerful experience? 11:31
- Loom is a great example of a product that exists only because it removes friction.
- Building a product is like building a video game.
- How to keep both the developer and the customer experience in mind.
- The formula one analogy for designing a product from scratch.
- What’s going to go into the next generation of Zuplo? 17:27
- How Zuplo keeps things simple and makes decisions.
- Why you have to have a lot of customer empathy and invest in tools. 19:39
- The importance of customer empathy.
- Why Josh made the decision to switch over to OpenAPI.
- Killing features can be hard as a business-to-business company.
- One chart to think about.
- The importance of partnerships and content. 24:29
- Making videos for supabase customers.
- Partnerships with other small businesses.
- How Zuplo got their first customers.
- Zuplo rate limiting feature. 28:02
- Rate limiting in Zuplo and Supabase.
- Developers who are small-scale loving Zuplo
- Making videos
- Removing friction and building an 11-star experience.
Zuplo - https://zuplo.com/
Josh Twist - https://twitter.com/joshtwist
Josh Twist - https://twitter.com/joshtwist
25:58Episode 53
Forums vs Slack with Dan Moore from FusionAuth
Dan is head of DevRel at FusionAuth - Auth Built for Devs, by Devs
- FusionAuth’s journey from moderation to auth provider.
- Introduction to Dan Moore, head of DevRel at fusion.
- Fusion's journey
- Free to use for many users, but also a cloud offering.
- Synchronous communication vs asynchronous communication.
- Synchronous communication vs asynchronous communication.
- 10% of their traffic is coming from forum pages.
- No one ever searches on Stack Overflow.
- What are some of the experiments that have gone well?
- Efforts to promote community feel.
- Community stories, finding out user pain points and wins.
- The importance of getting your community to know each other.
- Getting 20 or 30 blog posts on the blog.
- Dan's experience on Screaming into the cloud.
Dan's Twitter - https://twitter.com/mooreds
FusionAuth - https://fusionauth.io/
FusionAuth - https://fusionauth.io/
47:33Episode 48
How Fred Schott built two open source projects with 20,000+ GitHub stars
Fred Schott is the founder of Astro.build and the Astro technology company.
Astro is the all-in-one web framework designed for speed. Pull your content from anywhere and deploy everywhere, all powered by your favorite UI components and libraries.
Snowpack is a lightning-fast frontend build tool, designed for the modern web.
Before this, Fred founded Snowpack
Astro is the all-in-one web framework designed for speed. Pull your content from anywhere and deploy everywhere, all powered by your favorite UI components and libraries.
Snowpack is a lightning-fast frontend build tool, designed for the modern web.
Before this, Fred founded Snowpack
- What is Astro and what is it doing? 0:00
- Fred introduces himself and talks about astro.
- Fred explains what astro is and what it does.
- What’s changed in the web over the last 10 years. 2:20
- The last decade has been defined by full stack javascript.
- Astro is a server-first HTML rendering.
- Astro’s unique model of building an open source company. 4:51
- Building a sustainable company around an open source project.
- The astro technology company model.
- How Fred got started in open source.
- What Fred worked on before astro.
- How Fred got started in open source software.
- Pika was the first project that I really sunk my teeth into. 11:15
- Pika was the first project Fred really sunk his teeth into.
- Building snowpack and
- Why is it so bad to create a slack channel for your open source project? 14:00
- Stop creating slack communities for open source projects.
- The importance of community
- What it’s like at the beginning of an open source project. 16:26
- The first users are essential for an early-stage open source project.
- The power of responding quickly to feedback from the community.
- The first version of astro
- The spirit of open source and the importance of licencing code.
- The importance of having fun working on something that’s your own. 22:29
- The drive to just build it.
- The importance of having fun working on free software.
- The psychology of over-architecture.
- The importance of dog-fooding and how to use it. 26:13
- Dog fooding projects, how to build a tool for someone to use by seeing what they are doing.
- How do you get people to use the tool if they’re not already using it? 29:16
- Finding a real use case for snowpack.
- How to approach feedback from users.
- Using a Github repo to test new changes.
- Prioritising what to work on.
- Death by 1000 paper cuts.
- The importance of listening to users for feedback.
Links:
- Fred's Twitter https://twitter.com/FredKSchott
- Astro https://astro.build/
- Snowpack https://www.snowpack.dev/
- 5 Things I Learned Building Snowpack to 20,000 Stars https://dev.to/fredkschott/5-things-i-learned-while-building-snowpack-to-20-000-stars-b9d
- 6 More Things I Learned Building Snowpack to 20,000 Stars (Part 2)
https://dev.to/fredkschott/5-more-things-i-learned-building-snowpack-to-20-000-stars-5dc9
27:29Episode 46
Making developer videos with Jamie Barton, DevRel Engineer at Grafbase
Jamie Barton is a DevRel Engineer at Grafbase https://grafbase.com/ and the host of https://graphql.wtf/
34:06Episode 44
Developer Marketing with Adam DuVander
Adam DuVander is an expert in developer marketing and the author of two books: Developer Marketing Does Not Exist and Technical Content Strategy Decoded.
In this episode, we dive deep into the world of developer marketing, specifically focusing on early-stage companies building tools for developers and how to create engaging content for your audience.
In this episode, we dive deep into the world of developer marketing, specifically focusing on early-stage companies building tools for developers and how to create engaging content for your audience.
What we cover:
- Adam's journey from journalism to developer marketing
- The importance of developer marketing for early-stage companies and its role in product growth
- Identifying your target audience and understanding their pain points
- How to create content without directly promoting your product, yet staying relevant to your target audience
- The concept of becoming a media company within your niche and providing value through content
- The importance of engagement metrics over vanity metrics for early-stage companies
- The Jedi Developer Mind Trick: how to showcase the value of your product without directly promoting it, especially for early-stage companies
- Examples from successful early-stage companies like LogRocket and Stoplight
- How to measure the success of your content and know if it's working for your early-stage company
- Tips on choosing the right topics that resonate with your audience and relate to your product
- Adam's new book, Technical Content Strategy Decoded
27:48Episode 40
Building in-person developer communities with Paul Butler from Drifting In Space
Paul Butler is the cofounder of Drifting in Space. They believe that browser-based applications can feel like magic if they’re built with the right tools. They make Jamsocket, a platform for building applications with session backends, and Plane, the open-source server that powers it.
What we cover:
- The power of in-person meetups
- How to communicate complex problems
- Deconstructing topics for developer content
- Writing about trends e.g. GPU rendered UIs
- Going after developers doing "something ambitious with browsers"
- The power of in-person meetups
- How to communicate complex problems
- Deconstructing topics for developer content
- Writing about trends e.g. GPU rendered UIs
- Going after developers doing "something ambitious with browsers"
18:58Episode 38
Demand Generation for DevTools - Dino Kukic from Hygraph
Scaling DevTools is the podcast that investigates how DevTools go from zero to one. Created by Jack Bridger, founder of BitReach. BitReach helps DevTool companies reach more developers. In scaling DevTools, Jack explores how startups sell to developers, build tools and become successful.
What we cover
- Introduction Hygraph
- Finding your focus
- Demand Generation
- What is a good SEO strategy?
- Does performance marketing work with developers?
- How to target developers
- Working with sales teams
- Collaborating on content
Where to hear from Dino
- Twitter: @DinoKukic
- https://hygraph.com/
Where to hear from us
- Twitter: @JackSBridger
- https://blog.bitreach.io
- Newsletter: https://www.bitreach.io/
38:10Episode 34
Great DevRel Content is a process, not a project with Jason Lengstorf
What we cover
- Creating content is a process, not a project
- Reusing content effectively
- Stay on message!!
- Consistent gentle pressure
- Boring but effective strategies
Where to hear from Jason
34:19Episode 33
Crossing the chasm with Shawn Wang (swyx)
Resources
- Crossing the chasm by Geoffrey Moore
- Airbyte
- Netlify Auth Library
- Wardley map
- Strategy Letter V by Joel Spolsky
- The hardest working graphic in software
- 10x-ing Svelte (Svelte Summit 2022 Talk Notes)
swyx’s links:
Key points:
- Everyone in tech should understand the technology adoption cycle and know which stage of the adoption cycle you’re at
- First time founders obsess about products and second-time founders obsess about distribution.
- At the beginning, focus-in on one offering - have conviction in who your users are
- Your tech IS the story at the earliest stage of the adoption cycle. Because you are targeting innovators and they love to know you use Rust for example! At the later stage, tech no longer matters; the cost matters. Your messaging evolves
- You should be picking industries and companies with a strong chance of success
27:15Episode 32
The first 2,000 GitHub stars with Matija Šošić from Wasp
What we cover
- An introduction to Wasp
- The Wasp journey so far
- The ups and the downs
- Having conviction
- Reviewing progress
- Communication with users
- Reaching Junior Developers
- What advice would you give?
Where to hear from Matija
- Twitter: @MatijaSosic
- Blog: https://wasp-lang.dev/blog
- https://wasp-lang.dev/
Where to hear from us
- Twitter: @JackSBridger
- https://blog.bitreach.io
- Newsletter: https://www.bitreach.io/
20:05Episode 31
Giving developers what they want with Deepak Prabhakara
Deepak Prabhakara is the CEO and Co-founder of BoxyHQ. BoxyHQ enables you to add plug-and-play enterprise-ready features to your SaaS product.
What we cover
- An introduction to BoxyHQ
- Getting BoxyHQ out there in the world
- The BoxyHQ Open Source model
- What developers want
- Progression and growth
- Content update
- Content distribution
- Keeping an eye out on Twitter terms
Where to hear from Deepak
- Twitter: @boxyhq
- GitHub: https://github.com/boxyhq
- https://boxyhq.com/
24:07Episode 29
Bootstrapping a SaaS boilerplate to $25k MRR with Kyle Gawley from Gravity
Kyle Gawley is the Founder of Gravity. Gravity help founders build SaaS products at warp speed.
What we cover
- Introduction to Gravity
- The journey so far
- Why trust is important
- Creating and building trust
- Marketing approach for Gravity
- Specific problem to solve
- Tips for SEO
- Selling to developers badly (things to stay away from!)
- The future of Gravity
Where to hear from Kyle
- Twitter: @kylegawley
- https://usegravity.app/
- Learn how to build a SaaS product from scratch course: https://usegravity.app/how-to-build-a-saas
- https://aigraphics.io/
21:40Episode 28
Building a brand with Ramiro Nuñez Dosio from Supabase
Ramiro Nuñez Dosio is a Growth Marketer at Supabase. Supabase is a platform designed to help devs streamline the creation of modern apps.
What we cover
- The Supabase marketing approach
- Launch weeks at Supabase
- Keeping focus
- Marketing processes
- How to measure success
- How to distribute content
Where to hear from Ramiro
- Twitter: @ramiro__nd
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramiro-nd/
- https://supabase.com/
29:28Episode 27
Product Led Growth with Thomas Peham & Julius Hemingway from Storyblok
Thomas Peham is the VP of Marketing and Julius Hemingway is an Analyst Relations Manager at Storyblok. Storyblok harnesses a headless, API-driven CMS architecture empowering developers to build anything, publish everywhere, and integrate with any technology stack.
What we cover
- What do you do at Storyblok?
- Growing up fast
- Product market fit
- Advice for startups
- Collaborating with partners
- What opportunities do you see out there, working with analyst companies?
Where to hear from Thomas & Julius
25:12Episode 25
DevRel from the ground up with Sean Falconer from SkyFlow
Sean Falconer is the Head of Developer Relations & Product Marketing at Skyflow. Skyflow is a privacy API for sensitive data that is built on a customer data vault.
What we cover
- Building a DevRel function from the ground up
- An MVP DevRel team
- A real content strategy
- Hiring the right person
- Measuring performance in the early stages
- How do DevRel and marketing interplay?
Where to hear from Sean
P.s. thanks so much to Harpreet Sahota for listening and suggesting we invite Sean!
19:11Episode 24
Developer Marketing at a startup with Zivit Katz from Zigi
Zivit Katz is the VP of Marketing at Zigi. Zigi is an AI-powered personal assistant for developers. By managing your dev workflow and handling all your mundane, non-programming tasks across multiple apps directly from Slack.
What we cover
- Marketing at Zigi
- The market and users
- Learning the right language
- Understanding the developer
- The importance of marketing plans
Where to hear from Zivit
15:26Episode 22
The importance of distribution with Brandon Gubitosa from Plural
Brandon Gubitosa is a Senior Content Marketer at Plural. Plural is a software development company that is on a mission to help DevOps teams access and deploy open-source solutions that are recognised as top-tier.
Scaling DevTools is the podcast that investigates how DevTools go from zero to one. Created by Jack Bridger, founder of BitReach. BitReach helps DevTool companies reach more developers. In scaling DevTools, Jack explores how startups sell to developers, build tools and become successful.
Scaling DevTools is the podcast that investigates how DevTools go from zero to one. Created by Jack Bridger, founder of BitReach. BitReach helps DevTool companies reach more developers. In scaling DevTools, Jack explores how startups sell to developers, build tools and become successful.
What we cover
- An introduction to Plural and it’s growth
- Distributing content
- Why startups under distribute content
- Using metrics to help define if something should be pursued
- How to decide on a compelling piece of content
- Leveraging open source communities to drive growth
- Content agency Vs In-house
Where to hear from Brandon
Where to hear from us
- Twitter: @JackSBridger
- https://blog.bitreach.io
- Newsletter: https://www.bitreach.io/
15:53Episode 21
Building tools for experienced developers with André Eriksson from Encore
André Eriksson is the founder of Encore. Encore is a backend development engine built on the belief that escaping complexity unleashes a higher state of creativity.
Scaling DevTools is the podcast that investigates how DevTools go from zero to one. Created by Jack Bridger, founder of BitReach. BitReach helps DevTool companies reach more developers. In scaling DevTools, Jack explores how startups sell to developers, build tools and become successful.
What we cover
- An introduction to Encore's Go framework
- What drove André to create Encore and where he found his conviction from frustration
- Problems faced by experienced backend developers
- Obtaining your first customers who immediately get it
- Focusing on content to bring developers to you
- Sales at Encore - tailoring everything to what is important to customers
- Building technical trust - can you trust it will do what I want?
- Building business trust with open source
Where to hear from André
- Twitter: @_eandre
- https://encore.dev/
Where to hear from us
- Twitter: @JackSBridger
- https://blog.bitreach.io
- Newsletter: https://www.bitreach.io/
16:43Episode 19
What is good developer marketing? With Nimrod Kramer from Daily.dev
Nimrod Kramer is the CEO at Daily.dev. Daily.dev is a community of developers getting together and exploring Dev news.
What we cover
(00:39): Why has Daily.dev been such a sensation from your perspective?
(02:13): Could you share your thoughts on good developer marketing and what it is?
(04:52): Could you talk about how you work with Francesco and how that's been working?
(07:28) Could you talk a little bit about examples?
(09:19) What is a developer?
(13:12) Have you got any examples of companies that have created really successful marketing campaigns with Daily.dev?
Where to hear from Nimrod
- Twitter: @NimrodKramer
- https://daily.dev/
14:43Episode 17
Developer video for startups with Richard Moot from Square
Richard Moot is the Head of Developer Advocacy at Square. Square helps millions of sellers run their business-from secure credit card processing to point of sale solutions.
What we cover
(00:32): Could you tell us about the work that you're doing on YouTube with Square?
(01:00): If a startup is thinking of getting started with YouTube, how would you suggest they get started?
(03:39): Could you talk us through the types of tasks that you or other members of the team do?
(07:28) Could you talk a little bit about examples?
(09:16) How do you approach them quality vs quantity when it comes to good examples?
(11:52) Where and how does fun come into it all?
Where to hear from Richard
17:49Episode 16
Higher versus lower order thinking with Wesley Faulkner
Wesley Faulkner is a Senior Community Manager at AWS. Amazon Web Services provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered pay-as-you-go basis.
(00:40): Would you be able to tell us a little bit more about higher-order thinking?
(00:40): Would you be able to tell us a little bit more about higher-order thinking?
(05:31): Could you share some examples of higher-order thinking versus a lower-order marketing campaign or communication that didn't work so well?
(11:06): Could you share your thoughts on developers wanting to understand how things work?
(13:38) When it comes to higher-order thinking and understanding your audience, investing long-term sometimes feels like it may have a slower payoff. How do we justify this kind of investment? Especially if we're a startup that needs users or signups really quickly.
Tweet we are discussing
Tweet we are discussing
Where to hear from Wesley
15:36Episode 15
Authentic Developer Education with Dylan Fox from AssemblyAI
Dylan Fox is the Founder & CEO of AssemblyAI. AssemblyAI is an AI company that researches, trains, and deploys State-of-the-Art AI models. Thousands of developers and product teams build with AssemblyAI's simple API to automatically transcribe and understand audio data at scale.
What we cover
(00:20): Could you tell us a little bit about AssemblyAI?
(01:10): Could you talk about your content strategy?
(03:37): How do you balance the goal of promoting AssemblyAI with creating authentic, useful pieces of content?
(09:59) How are you able to produce such in-depth content?
(11:22) What was it like going through YC and acquiring your first users?
Where to hear from Dylan
Where to hear from Dylan
17:39Episode 14
Painkillers before vitamins with Juri Strumpflohner
Juri Strumpflohner is the Director of Developer Experience at Nrwl Technologies. Nrwl works with global enterprises to provide remote consulting, training, and engineering. Nx is Nrwl’s open source product which provides advanced tools that help scale enterprise development.
What we cover
- The story, Nrwl, and Nx?
- Solve the problems you see
- Open source business model
- How Nx got to 2million downloads per week
- Hiring for growth
- Taking over an existing open source proejct
Where to hear from Juri
16:41Episode 13
B2C vs B2D - marketing to developers with Ronak Ganatra
Ronak Ganatra is the Director of Marketing at Lano, a global software solution enabling businesses to hire and pay full-time employees and contractors. Ronak was previously VP of Marketing at Hygraph and has also founded https://marketingto.dev/.
What we cover
(00:37): What was it like on your first day working at Hygraph versus three years later?
(07:03): What do you think being a better developer marketer means?
(08:36): How do you approach things like performance marketing?
(12:17) How should developer marketing teams be working with sales teams?
Where to hear from Ronak
14:58Episode 11
Marketing seeds that led to $5k MRR with Tiiny.host
Phil is the founder of Tiiny.host. Tiiny.host is a web hosting application that allows you to simply host & share your web project.
What we cover
(00:28): What has growth been like at tiiny.host?
(00:28): What has growth been like at tiiny.host?
(04:44): Why does the world need a new hosting provider?
(10:50): How did you decide to position tiiny.host?
Where to hear from Phil
- Twitter: @_baretto
- https://tiiny.host/
15:16Episode 9
The four pillars of developer marketing with Kuba Czakon
Kuba Czakon is the CMO of Neptune.ai, a Metadata store for MLOps, built for research and production teams that run a lot of experiments. Kuba is also the author and creator of https://www.developermarkepear.com/.
What we cover
(00:54): How should we be doing developer marketing?
(01:06): How are you applying your four pillars of developer marketing at Neptune?
(11:00): How are you thinking about SEO?
(13:21): How are you allocating your resources now that you are the CMO of Neptune?
Where to hear from Kuba
- Twitter: @JCzakon
- https://neptune.ai/
- https://www.developermarkepear.com/
- Developer Marketing community - https://marketingto.dev/
6:13Episode 8
Developer tool launches with Nico Botha
Nico Botha is the founder of Ship SaaS, a Next.js Saas boilerplate that allows you to ship your SaaS in no time. Nico is also co-founder of Supermeme.ai ****an AI meme generator. ****
What we cover
(00:28): What made you start Ship SaaS?
(01:06): How did you go about getting your first customer?
(01:29): Do you have any advice for someone starting to build a tool for Developers?
(02:06): When you describe justifying your tech stack and developers asking lots of questions, how can someone ensure they prepare their tool for that kind of scrutiny?
(02:54): Could you dig a little more into how you plan to grow Ship SaaS and your plans for the future?
(03:38): How have you currently been thinking about SEO?
(04:52): Did you specifically set out to rank for that key term? Or were you just creating content that you thought would be useful?
(05:12): One of your other projects is Supermeme, a tool for generating memes using AI. How do you think memes can play into Developer marketing?
Nico's links:
- Twitter: @nwbotha
- https://shipsaas.com (Nico's SaaS boilerplate)
- https://www.supermeme.ai (Nico's other project - a meme tool)
- https://katlinks.io - SEO tool (Nico uses this)
13:40Episode 7
Solve problems - developer marketing with Julie Reboul
Julie Reboul is a Senior Developer Marketing Manager at Algolia. Algolia is an AI-powered search and discovery platform for dynamic experiences. Julie has also previously worked with companies such as Microsoft, Twitter, and Orange.
What we cover
(00:37): Could you tell us a bit about the kinds of things you're working on at Algolia?
(02:58): How do you cultivate a community of trust at Algolia?
(04:57): What is it that you and your partner focus on?
(06:25): What do you think attracts developers to want to join Algolia's live sessions or developer conferences?
(07:24): Could you tell us a little bit about how you approach co-marketing?
(09:10): Could you share a bit about the culture at Algolia?
(10:47): What changes have you seen in Algolia in the last five years?
(11:55): In the five years that you've been there, what do you think Algolia does well that's led to its success?
Where to hear from Julie
15:51Episode 5
Experimental Marketing with Natwar Maheshwari
Natwar Maheshwari is a Developer Marketing Lead at Algolia. Algolia is known for empowering builders with the search and recommendation services they need to build world-class experiences.
What we cover
(00:43): How do you think we should think about developer marketing when we're just getting started?
(03:34): Are there things we can do to create that experimental culture?
(07:10): It's about not being afraid to do things that you don't have a lot of knowledge on and try them out just because they seem like a good idea. But also try to get at least a little bit of expertise thrown in there so that you're not, for instance, doing an SEO experiment over 24 hours and expecting to see some results.
(09:48): When you're experimenting with different things, does that play into brand building?
(12:12): When we talk about experimentation, is it experimenting within constraints? How would you describe the kind of process?
Where to hear from Natwar
- Twitter: @natwar86
- https://www.algolia.com
- Newsletter: https://www.engineeringbrew.com
22:28Episode 4
Content for developers with Karl Hughes
Karl Hughes is the founder of Draft.Dev - a marketing content agency focused on creating great content for software engineers. Since founding the company in 2020, the team has grown to include marketers, editors, engineers and over 130 technical writers. Karl also lectures and writes about his learnings and experiences and was previously CTO at a Venture-backed startup. Karl is the perfect person to talk to if you're serious about scaling your developer content.
What we cover
(01:20): Content is pretty much accepted as one of the most predictable paths to grow for developer tools, but the payback is also sometimes a little slower than other channels. Karl, against this backdrop, how should DevTools startups be thinking about content?
(09:44): How does the reputation of your DevTool come into it?
(12:42): I'd love to hear about how you think about promotion, and especially at the moment if there's anything that startups can be doing to shorten the payback of some of their content?
(16:12): Have you had any experiences with developer content on TikTok?
Where to hear more from Karl
- Twitter: @KarlLHughes
- https://draft.dev
- Blog: https://draft.dev/learn/
17:37Episode 2
Early Stage DevRel with Brandon West
Brandon West joined SendGrid, a customer communication platform for transactional and marketing email in 2011 as their first Developer Evangelist. Since then he’s had a brilliant career, working at AWS and CoScreen, which has just been acquired by Datadog.
What we cover
(00:57): What does DevRel look like at startups at the earliest stage?
(05:13): How do you balance doing the right things and building credibility with the fact that you're also willing to push and demo things, which aren't perfect yet.
(07:13): What was it like when you were at SendGrid?
(11:46): What did the relationship look like with the product team?
(05:13): How do you balance doing the right things and building credibility with the fact that you're also willing to push and demo things, which aren't perfect yet.
(07:13): What was it like when you were at SendGrid?
(11:46): What did the relationship look like with the product team?
(17:04): Where can people learn more?
Guest links
19:45Episode 1
Developer Marketing Does Not Exist with Adam DuVander
Adam DuVander is an expert on technical content strategy and the author of Developer Marketing Does Not exist. Adam was previously a Developer Marketer with Zapier & SendGrid and a journalist and developer before that.
Adam DuVander
Adam DuVander
Adam Duvander is the founder of Every Developer and author of Developer Marketing does not exist. He helps dev-focused marketers build content strategies to reach more developers. Adam was the perfect person to have on for our first episode because he literally wrote the book on developer marketing.
What we cover
- (01:47): How should these type of startups be thinking about prioritisation of content versus other things that they could be doing?
- (04:13): Where do they start?
- (05:44): You've written a lot in one of your talks about opinions and pushing an opinionated view of things.
- (07:43): How do you get those developers to also be writing great content?
- (13:55): How do they know if it was a good piece of content?
- (19:51): Where can people learn more about Adam and about all of the amazing insights that you have on developer marketing?
Links
- Twitter: @adamd
- Every Developer: https://everydeveloper.com
- Book: Developer Marketing Does Not Exist
0:50Episode 1
Scaling DevTools Trailer
Created by Jack Bridger, founder of Bitreach. BitReach helps Devtool companies reach more developers. In this series Jack will explore how startups sell to developers, build tools and become successful.