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They're anti-advertising on paper. Are you telling me no one's ever run a successful ad campaign targeted at developers? I don't believe that for a minute.

nostrademons 9y ago
I wouldn't go so far as "never", but historically, developer tools with lasting growth tend to spread via word of mouth & community recommendations rather than ad campaigns. See eg. Ruby/Rails, Python and supporting ecosystem, JQuery, Node.js, Express, Postgres, Vue.js, GitHub before they took VC, Parse before they were acquired by Facebook, etc. Even Google - they had distribution deals starting early on, but they were very reluctant to spend money on advertising up until about 2010 (I remember watching the first Google SuperBowl commercials at TGIF, and hearing a lot of questions about why were spending money on advertising and what it meant for organic growth). When ad campaigns are run, they usually work by targeting programmers' bosses, encouraging the organization to purchase & standardize on one solution and then forcing developers to adopt it via management fiat. That's the route taken by Java, MongoDB, Oracle, .NET, many of the companies in the Hadoop ecosystem, etc. It certainly works - these are big companies - but it requires a consultative enterprise sales team that can work to get the solution deployed across the whole enterprise. The author obviously doesn't have the resources for that. The middle ground, where you provide a developer tool with $100-200/year CLTV and hope to get it distributed via paid advertising, is a very difficult place to occupy. That's the area occupied by FogBugz and RethinkDB and Sandstorm and many analytics providers. Most of them go the community-building route, and it's still very difficult. Only company I can think of that's thrived here is GitHub, and they went the word-of-mouth, community-building route first. Companies like Jetbrains, Atlassian, Rational, etc. thrive as well, but they've got large enterprise sales teams that standardize a whole organization on their products.
- davidivadavid 9y ago
  But you're looking at a very narrow set of products used by developers. What about, say, Aeron chairs?
  - nostrademons 9y ago
    Sold to the boss, not the developer. The best devs I know actually get very suspicious when they see a startup full of Aerons, because it means that management is more focused on appearances than frugality. They look for chairs that are comfy but cheap, like something you'd get used off Craigslist, or if you do have Aerons, they'd like to hear that you picked them up from a bankruptcy auction of another startup.
    - quickthrower 9y ago
      Or maybe it's like a profitable established company with Aerons.
    - davidivadavid 9y ago
      That was just an example. Besides, I'm not sure what you can infer about developers from the beliefs of the "best devs", considering they're only a fraction of the whole. The point is that developers don't just buy software. They're marketed stuff constantly, like everybody else. To suggest they're immune to it seems a little naive to me.
  - losteric 9y ago
    What about them? I just learned they exist, from you. Do they have a history of running ads targeting developers? Why is a chair worth $500?
    - billmalarky 9y ago
      >Why is a chair worth $500? Same reason a good mattress is worth $1k+. You spend a lot of time in it, and quality product greatly increases your quality of life (back pain etc). Note: I have no idea if Aeron chairs are good or not.

nostrademons 9y ago

I wouldn't go so far as "never", but historically, developer tools with lasting growth tend to spread via word of mouth & community recommendations rather than ad campaigns. See eg. Ruby/Rails, Python and supporting ecosystem, JQuery, Node.js, Express, Postgres, Vue.js, GitHub before they took VC, Parse before they were acquired by Facebook, etc. Even Google - they had distribution deals starting early on, but they were very reluctant to spend money on advertising up until about 2010 (I remember watching the first Google SuperBowl commercials at TGIF, and hearing a lot of questions about why were spending money on advertising and what it meant for organic growth). When ad campaigns are run, they usually work by targeting programmers' bosses, encouraging the organization to purchase & standardize on one solution and then forcing developers to adopt it via management fiat. That's the route taken by Java, MongoDB, Oracle, .NET, many of the companies in the Hadoop ecosystem, etc. It certainly works - these are big companies - but it requires a consultative enterprise sales team that can work to get the solution deployed across the whole enterprise. The author obviously doesn't have the resources for that. The middle ground, where you provide a developer tool with $100-200/year CLTV and hope to get it distributed via paid advertising, is a very difficult place to occupy. That's the area occupied by FogBugz and RethinkDB and Sandstorm and many analytics providers. Most of them go the community-building route, and it's still very difficult. Only company I can think of that's thrived here is GitHub, and they went the word-of-mouth, community-building route first. Companies like Jetbrains, Atlassian, Rational, etc. thrive as well, but they've got large enterprise sales teams that standardize a whole organization on their products.

davidivadavid 9y ago
But you're looking at a very narrow set of products used by developers. What about, say, Aeron chairs?
- nostrademons 9y ago
  Sold to the boss, not the developer. The best devs I know actually get very suspicious when they see a startup full of Aerons, because it means that management is more focused on appearances than frugality. They look for chairs that are comfy but cheap, like something you'd get used off Craigslist, or if you do have Aerons, they'd like to hear that you picked them up from a bankruptcy auction of another startup.
  - quickthrower 9y ago
    Or maybe it's like a profitable established company with Aerons.
  - davidivadavid 9y ago
    That was just an example. Besides, I'm not sure what you can infer about developers from the beliefs of the "best devs", considering they're only a fraction of the whole. The point is that developers don't just buy software. They're marketed stuff constantly, like everybody else. To suggest they're immune to it seems a little naive to me.
- losteric 9y ago
  What about them? I just learned they exist, from you. Do they have a history of running ads targeting developers? Why is a chair worth $500?
  - billmalarky 9y ago
    >Why is a chair worth $500? Same reason a good mattress is worth $1k+. You spend a lot of time in it, and quality product greatly increases your quality of life (back pain etc). Note: I have no idea if Aeron chairs are good or not.