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  • 🍐#104: Great feature section design pattern, Clay + YC workflow for booking meetings, and learnings from "Marketing to DevOps"

🍐#104: Great feature section design pattern, Clay + YC workflow for booking meetings, and learnings from "Marketing to DevOps"

Go humans! And go pears!

Author

Jakub Czakon
March 23, 2025

Hey,

I saw something on the front page of Hacker News this week that made me feel like there is still hope for us humans. It was a discussion about Blue (the children's book/TV character). The HN crowd who is often aggressive and meritocratic, showed their soft side, talking about their favorite episodes, and what they loved. Idk, made me smile. Go humans! And go pears 🍐!

This week on the agenda:

  • Learnings from “Marketing to DevOps” webinar by Powered by Search CEO

  • Compact, scrolling feature sections from Graphite

  • Clay + YC workflow for booking meetings

  • + a few bonus links at the end

Total pearusing time: 7min

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Developer marketing insights

1. Compact, scrolling feature sections from Graphite

Scrolling through many feature/capability sections of a dev tool website mostly sucks. But dropping things to make it shorter can suck even more.

This is a cool design pattern that deals with that problem.  

Single section that switches subsections on scroll. And folks over at Graphite did a great job with that on their homepage.

It works like this:

  • as you scroll the progress bar moves to make it clear what is happening right away

  • eventually, as you scroll down, the subsection switches to the next one

  • each subsections has a headline + one-liner description + call to action + a visual

Also, I saw variants of this that also looked great:

  • without the one-liner or Learn more

  • auto progress/section switch if you don't act

What this design helps you achieve is:‍

  • you get to show many features/capabilities (Graphite showed 5)

  • the site feels shorter than it is and you don't feel as tired/lost as you scroll

  • because it is all interactive it is easier to drive your attention to a section header

I really like this pattern and I have already recommended it to some folks working on their sites recently.

2. Clay + YC workflow for booking meetings

Always good to see real examples from real startups making plays in the trenches.

Figured I’d share this case study (from a great new newsletter by one of the newslepear readers 💪) of how one devtool startup booked meetings / got users by tapping into YC’s “Deals” page, offering free usage, and personalizing outreach with Clay.

Here’s the quick playbook:

  • Scrape YC Startups: Used Clay + the YC directory to build a targeted list (670 relevant startups, 1,150 founder contacts).

  • Enrich and personalize: Normalize names, find emails, LinkedIn URLs all with Clay’s enrichment.

  • “Free Usage” offer: YC founders love test-driving new tools. Spell out exactly how it helps them and drop clear CTAs (try the product, book a call).

  • Use a sequencer: La Growth Machine, or any integration with Clay, to automate follow-ups.

  • Results: 77% open rates, 50 sandbox trials, 25+ meetings, 10 deals closed.

Here is an outreach email copy they used:

Subject: New YC Deal For {BATCH XXX}


Body:

Hey {FIRST NAME},


It’s been cool to read about what you are building at {COMPANY NAME} and your story with YC in the {BATCH XXX} batch.


Given your stage [some line about a problem similar companies see, maybe even reference a customer linked to a customer story].


We’d love to help share those learnings and give you some free usage of [our platform], to [explain what it would help them do].

If interested, feel free to [CTA - download GitHub repo] or [book time here using my Calendly link and I can explain more of what we’ve seen].


Here as a thought partner should you need it around [xyz].

Best,

Name @ Company

3. Learnings from “Marketing to DevOps” webinar by Powered by Search CEO

For this one preface is important. PoweredbySearch is a top-notch SaaS marketing agency. They focus on fundamentals, SEO, paid search, websites. And they don’t come from dev marketing / dev rel / growth.

It was fun to watch their take on marketing dev products. Some things felt a bit off but seeing how great classic SaaS marketers see dev marketing, the tried and tested tactics that didn’t work, and things that did work for their clients → it was a great learning experience.

Key takeaways:

  • Comparison pages: Devs conduct competitive searches more frequently than typical business buyers. Clear, concise comparison pages effectively capture high-intent searches.

  • Architecture diagrams: Including architecture diagrams as link thumbnails in docs or articles increases visibility in Slack and dark social channels. + it feels like a nugget you want to check out

  • Docs without CTAs lose potential users: Your knowledge base often attracts non-users. Insert clear, contextual CTAs, such as: "Not a user yet? Sign up to {use case} today.". Btw, a few months back I shared a tip from David Nunez (ex-Stripe Head of docs) of how they bumped conversions by 20% by adding a Signup button in the navbar.

  • Paid Ads for recall: While “classic” ads with gated content rarely work, targeted retargeting does help keep you top of mind. As the market research saying goes: for each product category, you recall 2 products, the leader, and the most memorable one.

  • Tailored messaging: Speak differently to each buying stakeholder by emphasizing power for individual developers, reliability for ops teams, and safety for leadership.

  • Gated content doesn’t work: For developers, gated content often creates unnecessary friction. Strongly consider ungating everything.

  • Scale sales insights: Record effective sales or solutions architect calls and transform them into accessible, self-serve content.

Need more developer marketing insights?

1. Work with me 🍐

"Jakub immediately got to the heart of our concerns.

Especially the unique challenges of crafting a marketing and content strategy for a developer audience."

David Burton, Head of Content, Apify

If you want my help I do Workshops (60-minute session on whatever you want), Teardowns (audit+suggestions for your homepage, messaging, ads etc), and longer-term Advising.

2. Bonus links to check out

3. Join our Slack community

"Been here 20 min and already folks are sharing great advice."

Charles Cook, VP Marketing & Ops @Posthog

2000+ dev tool CMOs, heads of growth, product marketers, and other practitioners talking shop.

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