Selling Open Source software? Here's how.
Learn from Crowd.dev and Flagsmith. And discuss is at DevRelCon.
Our cover image this week features Omotola Omotayo and Carla Gaggini, the speakers at our next Dublin DevRel meetup, August 30th. With thanks to our sponsors, Contentful! More on this at the end of the newsletter.
Each of my conversations with company founders, DevRel professionals, market strategists and engineers teaches me something. As I reflect on the last few podcast episodes, and the upcoming DevRelCon in London in September, two main themes emerged: open source companies solving developer problems are embracing the power of DevRel; and when you care about your end user, good things happen.
When software met hardware
That last point was brought home to me by Zach Peterson. Zach is an electronics engineer and design consultant. Yes, software is great, but it does need to run on a device! So when Zach sprinkles DevRel magic and design thinking on conversations between software developers and electronics engineers, magic happens!
This is how you sell Open Source software
I got to spend a bit of time with two fab open source companies too recently. Crowd.dev’s Jonathan Reimer explained the pain they solve and it did trigger many, many memories of when I had that pain, but no Crowd.dev. Jonathan wowed me with the power of Crowd.dev’s collation and curation tool, allowing open source software companies to really understand and see who is using their software. This is lead generation with context and thought.
We both agreed that developer led growth is not going away any time soon, despite the crazy numbers of DevRel layoffs in 2023.
And is you are trying to sell your open source software to developers, take a leaf out of Flagsmith’s website! I had the pleasure of speaking to Anna Redbond, CMO with Flagsmith and she talked me through the balance she strikes in selling to developers. While her tips might appear simplistic, (talk to and listen to what your customer says about your product) but to present that feedback without over simplifying is a skill in itself. I have to say, their website just wowed me. It’s a great example of giving a developer what they need to enable them to make decisions fast.
Dublin DevRel Meetup
While you’re here, check out our next Dublin DevRel meetup, an international and online event, the last Wednesday of every month. This month, Carla Gaggini and Omotola Omotayo will give a masterclass on Community.
Thanks for reading!