Field guide / DevTools GTM
How great DevTools companies get customers.
Real examples from Harness, Rippling, PostHog, Supabase, Datadog and others. What they did, what worked, and practical ways to apply the lessons.
Who this is for
DevTools companies in the growth phase.
You have users, a first batch of revenue, and a team that needs a repeatable motion rather than heroics. The companies in this guide were chosen because they worked that problem out in public, and you can read the artefacts they made.
Who it isn’t for yet
Super early stage GTM is more about experiments.
Before you have a repeatable motion, the job is to try five cheap things, see what sticks, and talk to everyone who says no. Borrow the playbooks later; run the experiments now.
By problem
What are you trying to figure out?
By company
Learn from the companies
01 / Content & trust
Harness
Content that helps a buyer say yes
Read playbook →
02 / Finding buyers
Rippling
Create distribution before hiring for scale
Read playbook →
03 / Content & trust
PostHog
Write for developers, not search engines
Read playbook →
04 / Content & trust
Supabase
Make a product release worth talking about
Read playbook →
05 / Finding buyers
Merge
Founder-led sales is market research
Read playbook →
06 / Adoption & expansion
Datadog
Land one workload, then earn the next
Read playbook →
07 / Adoption & expansion
Linear
Win a narrow group of people first
Read playbook →
08 / Adoption & expansion
Tailscale
Give one developer a reason to bring the team
Read playbook →
09 / Content & trust
incident.io
Teach the job before you pitch the tool
Read playbook →
10 / Adoption & expansion
Grafana Labs
Be useful in the ecosystem before you ask to replace it
Read playbook →
By channel
Pick the channel you want to build
Thirteen channels — SEO, technical content, research, outbound, launches, DevRel, partnerships, events, email, paid — each with real examples, a workflow and a worksheet.
01 · Capture intent
SEO & search
Be there when someone is actively choosing a tool.
Read playbook →
02 · Build trust
Technical content
Make something an engineer would save even without buying.
Read playbook →
03 · Create authority
Original research & benchmarks
Publish something the market can cite, not just another opinion.
Read playbook →
04 · Create pipeline
Outbound & account-based GTM
Find a buyer with an urgent problem; send a relevant reason to talk.
Read playbook →
05 · Create momentum
Product launches
Use one shipped feature to reach the right communities in several formats.
Read playbook →
06 · Build ecosystem
Developer community & DevRel
Give people a place to learn, build and contribute before selling.
Read playbook →
By template
Copy the frameworks.
Twelve free templates, no email gate. Each one inspired by something a real company did.
Browse all templates →- Competitor comparison page
- Original research → content series
- Customer story with before/after numbers
- Account cohort + outreach
- Customer discovery notes
- Engineer-written technical article
- One-feature launch kit
- Practitioner guide + checklist
- Account expansion review
- Early-user invite and feedback
- One-person-to-team growth test
- Integration tutorial + partner distribution
Who writes this
Himanshu Saxena
I write and talk about engineering leadership and AI adoption.
My background is in psychology, which turns out to be unusually useful for the part of technical leadership nobody trains you for: how people decide, how teams avoid the obvious conversation, and why the same incident keeps happening in a different costume.
Before this I spent almost a decade doing GTM for DevTools companies — three taken from zero to one and one to about five, plus pre-seed to Series B consulting, cumulatively $5M+ in revenue.
My work
- Founding Director, Centre for Applied AI and Governanceappliedaigovernance.org
- Podcast, newsletter and tech publicationdiaryofacto.org
Questions about a playbook, a template, or a company that belongs on this list? The best way to reach me is LinkedIn.
Running GTM for a DevTools company and want a second pair of eyes on it? I take on a small number of consulting engagements — positioning, launch, pricing, and the developer-facing material that supports them.