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add more transcript notes from latest talk
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content/posts/190626-dev-led-sales-startups.markdown

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@@ -3,18 +3,18 @@ slug: developer-led-sales-startups
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meta: Talk slides, notes and more resources for a technical talk on developer-led sales and marketing for tech startups, by Matt Makai.
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category: talk
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date: 2019-06-26
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modified: 2019-06-26
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modified: 2019-07-07
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newsletter: False
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headerimage: /img/visuals/talk-header.jpg
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headerimage: /img/190626-dev-led-sales/01-dev-led-sales.jpg
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headeralt: Comment bubble with code representing a technical talk-based blog post.
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This blog post contains the slides along with a loose transcript
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from my talk on the promises and perils of developer-led sales as an
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early-stage company strategy for acquiring customers.
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early-stage company method to acquire customers.
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I gave this talk remotely to [Ubiquity.VC](http://www.ubiquity.vc/)
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portfolio company founders and the Extended Team on June 26, 2019.
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portfolio company startup founders and the Extended Team on June 26, 2019.
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----
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It seems like there are examples of this success story across many
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early-stage and mid-stage companies.
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Rollbar and DataDog are doing well by focusing on developers for new
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monitoring and analytics tools.
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<a href="https://rollbar.com/">Rollbar</a> and
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<a href="https://www.datadoghq.com/">Datadog</a> are doing well by
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focusing on developer adoption for their monitoring and analytics tools.
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</p><p>
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<a href="https://www.getpostman.com/">Postman</a> recently raised
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<a href="https://pitchbook.com/newsletter/postman-picks-up-50m-series-b">$50 million</a>
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in a Series B round of venture capital to expand their API testing
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developer tools. Postman was founded in large part because the original
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tool was virally adopted by developers building APIs and
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<a href="/microservices.html">microservices</a>.
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</p>
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</div></div>
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<div class="row talk"><div class="c6">
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<img src="/img/190626-dev-led-sales/30-conferences.jpg" width="100%" class="shot rnd outl" alt="Developers at tech conferences.">
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</div><div class="c6"><p>
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...
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Conferences split into a couple of categories: community-run and
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vendor-run. For example,
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<a href="https://developer.apple.com/wwdc19/">WWDC</a> is Apple's vendor-run
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developer conference. They run the show and control the messaging.
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<a href="https://us.pycon.org/2019/">PyCon US</a> is the community-run
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Python developer conference. There are a ton of vendors there as sponsors
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but no one company controls what happens at the conference.
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</p><p>
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Conferences, especially community-run ones, work well for brand awareness.
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Vendor-run conferences can work well for brand awareness if your product
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augments an existing company's products and solves a problem for the
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developers who attend that event.
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</p><p>
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Non-developer conferences are great for sales lead generation. Think
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of badge scanning and prize raffles in exchange for hearing a product
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pitch. However, badge scanning and lead generation activities do not
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work very well because most developers are skeptical and just want to
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avoid overly pushy situations. Be considerate of your audience and
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respectful.
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</p><p>
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Generally, I find you can spend a ton of money on conference sponsorships
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without getting a ton of value out of them. If you want to be successful
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with this tactic you should figure out your secret developer marketing
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sauce on smaller, regional conferences then expand from there.
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</p>
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</div></div>
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from launching your service to developers, having them find out and
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start to use it, then becoming large paying customers.
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</p><p>
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The reality is clearly more difficult than the dream.
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The reality is clearly more difficult than the dream. You as the
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startup founder need to be the "chief developer evangelism officer"
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and it will be expensive when you aim to hire a seasoned developer
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relations employee.
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</p><p>
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We define developer-led sales as a different sales motion than a
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traditional sales outreach approach. Instead, you appropriately
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market to developers who need a solution to a problem they are
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facing, typically with great documentation, timely tutorials or
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another respectful tactic rather than cold calling or empty
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clickbait content.
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</p>
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</div></div>
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