Adam Frankl on why 2025 is the best year ever to build a developer tool startup

Sep 3, 2025

In a compelling discussion, Adam Frankl, a renowned author and partner at Alchemist Accelerator, shares why 2025 is an ideal year to launch a developer tool startup amid the chaos of AI-driven changes. He highlights that founders should focus on the problem rather than the product, emphasizing the importance of becoming an authority on specific challenges. Adam also advises utilizing social media strategically to build authority and engage with the developer community, while pointing out that enterprise clients are eager to invest in AI solutions.

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INSIGHT

Chaos Creates Opportunity

2025 is the best year to start a developer tool because technological chaos creates many new problems to solve.
New problems mean unprecedented opportunities for startups to create fresh value propositions.

ADVICE

Choose Problems That Obsess You

Pick a problem that seizes your mind and keeps you awake because true founders must be obsessed.
Found a startup only when the problem compels you to act immediately and persistently.

ADVICE

Build Authority Before Product

Don't hide in a room writing code or reading books; go post and talk about the problem on social media daily.
Use engagement to build authority, then let that audience tell you what product to build.

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Join us for an incredible conversation with Adam Frankl - author, advisor, investor, and the final boss of development marketing. In this episode, we dive deep into the biggest challenges facing developer tool startups in 2025 and how to overcome them.

On the AI boom opportunity:

2025 has gotta be the best year ever for starting a developer tool startup because there is so much chaos, and that's what makes this exciting.

The #1 mistake founders make:

Problem not product. Become an expert on the problem. Talk about the problem. Write about the problem... Too many founders they wanna talk about the product. They want to demo the product... And quite frankly, no one is interested.

Why you need to be obsessed:

You have to pick a problem that the problem also picks you. It's the type of problem that you just can't sleep at night because you're thinking about it... You know when the problem is the right problem because it seizes a hold of your brain.

The social media strategy that works:

Your mechanistic goal is you wanna be posting about this problem every day. Because you want to be the authority on this problem. Authority author, it's the same root. To be an authority, you have to write.

On enterprise sales in 2025:

Budgets are being cleared for AI investments, and this is astonishing... top executives are basically clearing budget line items say we're gonna invest in AI.

Why San Francisco matters:

The reason you come to Silicon Valley is the best customers are here. And you're not gonna be closing these tech 100 companies if you are in Tokyo or Lisbon.

The game-changing AI workflow:

Make a recording. Make a transcript... And then use an LLM to anonymize but consolidate transcripts. And that can be extraordinarily powerful.

Links:

- Adam's book: "Developer Facing Startup" (Amazon #1 bestseller): https://www.amazon.com/Developer-Facing-Startup-market-developer-facing/dp/B0D4KGHQML

- Alchemist Accelerator: https://www.alchemistaccelerator.com/

- Evil Martians on X: https://x.com/evilmartians

- Victoria Melnikova on X: https://x.com/vmelnikova_en

Evil Martians is the go-to agency for early-stage developer tools startups: https://evilmartians.com/devtools

#DeveloperTools #StartupMarketing #AI #Enterprise #SanFrancisco #DevTools