🍐#18: Great HN launch copy, product tour masterpiece, and a homepage section idea

Hey,

Worry not as I come pre-pear-ed ;)

This week I:

• Learned that "Brut" is just a level of dryness of the "Cava" wine (thought it was a different wine type).

• Added a 100th swipefile to my developer marketing examples.

Here are my insights this week. 

Developer marketing insights

1. Product launch loved on HN (+  a new devmar newsletter)  

Francesca Krihely (Senior Director of DevEx at Snyk, ex-Director of Growth Marketing at Mongo) has started a newsletter. Yasss!

It is called DevFirst and I just read all the issues. 

In the latest one, she breaks down fly.io Hacker News launch description which HN devs absolutely loved. 

This is such a dev-to-dev copy that I'll just share it instead of explaining it whenever someone asks me for it;)

No one is "streamlining" or "building better software faster".

They explain:

• What you do? "a way to run Docker images..."

• How you do it? "convert your Docker image into..."

• How are you different? "As your app gets more traffic..."

And devs loved it, this is how they would explain the product to their friends. 

Read the latest issue of DevFirst or check out the Hacker News thread ->

2. Product tour masterpiece from Vercel

Interactive product tours are all the rage.

But making them work for the dev audience can be tricky.

How do you deal with:

• Explain your complex dev tool value proposition quickly

• Show both code and UI elements

• Make devs feel great developer experience of your product

• Push devs to the conversion action without being to pushy

• And do all that without overwhelming

That is hard.

But Vercel somehow made it.

This is by far the best product tour I have seen so far.

What I love:

• Great, clean navigation that lets me go back if I want to

• They use their slogan "Develop, Preview, Ship" to reinforce the product message

• They show both code and the UI

• The CTAs are visible but subtle enough not to distract

This product tour is what dev tool startups will aspire to for years (or months ;) ) to come.

See more developer examples like this one ->

3. "How fast do you ship?"

 Not many dev tools answer that on their homepage. PostHog does.

In a typical (enterprise) sales process, people often ask:

• what is on your roadmap?

• how fast do you deliver new features?

• what has your product progress been like last year?

And you show them the roadmap or get someone from the product on the next call.

But I haven't yet seen dev tools talk about it on their homepage. But why not?

Devs who want to buy self-serve want to know it almost just as much.

After all, they won't be able to twist your arm to build that custom feature cause "we are your biggest client and we need it".

I like it:

• it builds trust

• it shows me you are transparent

• it shows me that those features I can see on the public roadmap will come true.

WDYT? Have you seen it anywhere else?

See more dev tool homepage examples ->

Something about pears 🍐

Pears ripen better after being picked, not while on tree branches. 

Now that is an insight!

I hope you learned something new.  

Talk to you next week, Pears!

Need more developer marketing insights?

1. Book 1:1 session with me

I have a few slots every week for 60-min coaching sessions.

We can talk strategy, tactics, ideas, whatever you need right now.

Book a session ->

2. Join our Slack community

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Check out marketingto.dev ->

3. Bonus links to check out 

• The Ultimate guide to Product led Sales | Elena Verna (Lenny's Podcast)

• The Red Hat model only worked for Red Hat (Hacker News)

• Awesome developer first channels (GitHub repo)