In the spirit of talking to our users, we've been listening to developer tooling companies explaining their evolving GTM strategies ever since starting YC.
Attempting to pattern-match their strategies has been challenging, as it differs for each company in both subtle and significant ways. However, we've identified a few common patterns after talking to a bunch of them, and are sharing them here to provide some external perspective for your dev-tool GTM strategy.
Open Source Usage Driven Outbound: The dev-tool has substantial open-source adoption. Enterprises use these open-source solutions for prototyping and internal purposes. Companies employ tools like Scarf and CommonRoom to understand usage patterns and user identities. They attempt to decipher this information through anonymized Open Telemetry data and IP address de-anonymization. However, this approach often results in mixing two noisy signals, leaving them searching for a needle in a haystack. But, if they even have 1 developer in the org who REALLY loves them through their OSS usage, it works like magic.
Content-Led Growth (Founder-Driven): The founder maintains a strong social presence and is recognized as a thought leader in the dev-tool's tech space. The company produces technical content, which the founder shares. This strategy generates decent inbound leads and builds credibility for both the founder and the dev-tool. However, it's difficult to scale, and the founder must balance content quality with quantity.
Super-Niche ICP Segments: The sales team defines very specific Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) based on factors such as customer funding stage, number of engineers, and engineering quality. Sometimes, it's even use-case specific—for example, targeting companies that rely on search as their core component. They approach accounts matching this specific niche and see decent success. The main challenge is that this niche ICP pool exhausts quickly due to the stringent criteria.
Mutuals-Driven Outbound (Founder-Led): Again, the founder takes the lead. Sales team members identify and qualify relevant customers, and the founder leverages their network (mostly YC connections) to secure warm introductions, establish credibility, and sometimes even conduct demos. The team then takes over to close the deal. Similar to the content-driven, founder-led approach, this method is difficult to scale but can be highly effective when successful.
Hybrid Approach—Mass for General + Targeted for Nuanced: Teams use a mix of lead generation tools. For those providing quantity, they employ sequencing and hope for the best. Simultaneously, they rely on search, domain knowledge, and niche ICP matching to identify fewer accounts with a higher probability of converting. This approach balances volume and quality while keeping founders sane.
We're curious to know if other dev-tool teams in the community follow different strategies or variations of these five. What an intriguing game!