Article · 16 min read

How to Launch a Dev-First Startup: First Principles

Andrew Park · Heavybit Free Intermediate

Built from interviews with the founders of Heroku, LaunchDarkly, Netlify, CircleCI, Fastly and Tailscale, so it is the accumulated experience of people who actually did developer first GTM. Its core argument, create value for developers before you try to capture it, is the discipline that separates dev tools that spread from ones that stall.

• Stay wedded to the problem, not to the solution, which changes as the market does.
• A category needs competitors to benefit too; if only you talk about it, it is not a category.
• Team, dream and steam are the three legs an early dev-first startup has to balance.
• Create more value than you capture, and use value clarity to shave features back.