Scaling DevTools

In today’s episode, Jack discusses what it was like working in a sales team at Stack Overflow, selling to developers, and why you should think about sales in terms of champions. What we cover(01:07): Being a Sales Development rep.(03:34): When a salesperson gets an inbound lead, it's a euphoric moment.(03:09): Developers rarely check emails.(05:04): Connect with people that already have a problem.(05:48): Qualify your leads.(07:04): Think about sales in terms of champions.

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 NatwarTwitter: @natwar86https://www.algolia.comNewsletter: https://www.engineeringbrew.com

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 KarlTwitter: @KarlLHugheshttps://draft.devBlog: https://draft.dev/learn/ 

Michael Christofides is the co-founder of pgMustard, a Postgres tool that speeds up your journey from knowing which query is a problem to working out what can be done about it. The aim of pgMustard is to build a small, sustainable business that is the best at what it does. pgMustard recently celebrated their 100th subscriber - so they are well on their way! Michael also consults, talks at conferences and writes about Postgres performance.What we cover(00:41): Could you tell us a bit about where pgMustard is right now and what your focuses are at the moment? (01:22): Could you tell us a bit about what you're currently doing in terms of growth and, what's keeping you up at night at the moment with pgMustard? (02:47): One of the things that I’ve noticed when I go to the pgMustard website, is that you’re very ethical. There’s no small print, everything is as kind as it could be. Is that something you’ve consciously gone after? (04:22): Let's say some founders are considering this. Has there been any tangible benefits that could persuade them to become whiter than white?(06:52): You have previously worked as a Head of Customer Success at a big, what could be described as a DevTools, startup GoCardless. Do you think this is where some of your approach came from?(09:42): Stepping back from pgMustard, what has and hasn't worked in terms of growth?(14:09): Are there any kind of general lessons that you would give to maybe yourself starting again? Or another DevTools founder?(19:54): How can people learn more about you and about pgMustard?Guest linksTwitter: @michristofides Site link: https://www.pgmustard.com

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?(17:04): Where can people learn more?Guest linksTwitter: @bwest Site link: http://bwe.stDataDog: https://www.datadoghq.com/ CoScreen: https://www.coscreen.co/

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 DuVanderAdam 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?LinksTwitter: @adamd Every Developer: https://everydeveloper.comBook: Developer Marketing Does Not Exist 

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.