Episode 115
· 38:13
Tessa Kriesel is the founder of Built4Devs where she helps dev tools with GTM. She's previously held senior dev rep positions at Snap and Twitter. Today, we talk about doing a one day sprint that will massively accelerate your go to market.
Tessa Kriesel:And it is so enlightening as a founder to watch someone else actually try to use your tool because you think that you understand and you see it because you're in it every single day and you're using it all the time, but we're using it as, like, ourselves. We're not using it as the developer.
Jack Bridger:I guess the first question is, like, why should anyone think about, like, trying to do something in a day? Yes.
Tessa Kriesel:Yes. That's that is a really good, question. So as I started building out my business, I was pitching, and I was pitching sort of a 4 week program. Right? We'd break down sort of the different aspects of bringing together a DevRel program and just, you know, understanding their developers.
Tessa Kriesel:Right? And it just wasn't landing. And so I had this advice to bring together what could I offer in a day. And if you kinda if you go and Google it, it's actually things that consultants and other people have tried, and so they call it VIP day or something in that range. And so I tried it, and I brought what I do over 4 weeks.
Tessa Kriesel:I'm like, how can I do this in a day? Right? And I scrunched it down. I brought into a day. And I pitched it to a few people, and they're like, yes.
Tessa Kriesel:Yes. Yes. And I was like, wait a minute. This is the same services, but it's now in a day. What's different?
Tessa Kriesel:And after I thought about it, it's like, we're all so busy. Right? Especially dev tool founders. So busy trying to balance all the things between the resources and the time and everything that needs your attention. And so that's what ended up happening.
Tessa Kriesel:Right? I I started capturing feedback, and they're like, going to a meeting here and going to a meeting there and having coaching session here and a session here, that's all great. Right? But, like, how does this all fit into a bigger picture, and how do I get to that end result when I need to? And and looking at it in a day, they're like, I can get what I need in the at the end of a day.
Tessa Kriesel:Like, if I can just dedicate one day, block out my calendar for a day, I get the results I need. And I'm like, yes. Yes. You do. So we can block out a day in our calendars to get something done, but it's much harder to continually block time and continually chip away at working on something.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. What what typically, like, the results that people get out of? You know, what what can because, you know, a day is a short space of time. Right? Like, a business Mhmm.
Jack Bridger:Rome wasn't built in a day. Like, what what can people realistically expect to get out of a day? What what kind of things can change?
Tessa Kriesel:Yeah. Absolutely. Well, I mean, if you're an enterprise company and you're trying to build your DevRel strategy for the next 90 days, you could maybe do that in a day. And I think that's that's sort of the objective, right, of what I just shared there is that in a day, it's not a lot of time. And if depending on the dynamics and where you're at with your dev tool and how much you've been talking to developers already, there might be a lot of work that goes into improving developer experience before we could go to market, for example.
Tessa Kriesel:But when you think about it and say, no. We're gonna focus on the next 90 days. Right? A quarter. What do we get done this quarter?
Tessa Kriesel:What is our high level objective, and how do we focus on that high level objective to get it done? Because another thing that tends to happen is that when we're in this space and we're building something, we're like, okay. It can be this for this person and this for this person and this for this person. When at the end of the day, when you look at it like that, you're spreading yourself too thin, and you're trying to go after too much. And so it's, like, 90 days, who is it they were going after?
Tessa Kriesel:What is this very fine tuned use case? And at the end of it, you have this strategy that tells you exactly what you're gonna do, why you're gonna do it over the next 90 days, and how that's gonna meet the objective. And in most cases, in early stage dev tools, as you can assume, right, you know better than me as a podcast, you know, host of an amazing podcast. Like, they need adoption. They need developers to find that tool.
Tessa Kriesel:And so when they're in that early stage, they're not only validating how and where they find developers to use their tool, but they're also validating, am I building the right thing? Am I doing the right thing?
Jack Bridger:Yep.
Tessa Kriesel:And so there are less challenges in this earlier stage. Feels like it's complicated, but from a DevRel sense, right, there are less challenges. And so in a day, we are able to work through and just discuss those different pieces because we're not looking at an extremely complicated product with 5 SDKs and 4 different types of APIs or something. Right? It's you're in those early stages so we can get a lot done in a day.
Jack Bridger:This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. At some point, you're gonna land a big customer, and they're gonna ask you for enterprise features. That's where Work OS comes in because they give you these features out the box. Features like SCIM provisioning, SAML authentication, and audit logs. They have an easy to use API and they're trusted by big dev tools like Vercel, as well as smaller fast growing dev tools like Nock.
Jack Bridger:So if you're looking to cross the enterprise chasm and make yourself enterprise ready, check out WorkOS. We've also done an episode with Michael, the founder of WorkOS, where he shares a lot of tips around crossing the enterprise chasm, landing your first enterprise deals and making sure that you're ready for them. Thanks, WorkOS, for sponsoring the podcast and back to the show. From from, like, an outside perspective, the value that I see of just, like, setting aside a day to do this sort of thing is that I think that most of that work is kind of, like, painful, uncomfortable, like, going and asking people to, like, try your thing, to ask how what problems they have. And it's the sort of thing that's really easy to procrastinate on, but actually is gonna define whether you succeed or not.
Jack Bridger:And otherwise, you're just doing loads of busy work. But it's very easy to put it off because, like, you're trying to scale up your service. You've got some existing users. Like, you know, there's so many things to do, and this stuff is not, like, urgent in the sense of you could get away with pushing it to next week. But if you keep pushing it, your business is probably gonna fail.
Tessa Kriesel:Yes. Yes. I like I so agree with that. And I think, I think also too, like, when you when you kinda think about that, right, it's like when you do dive into it and you do have the time and you don't have that strategy there that's that's sort of pointing you in that direction, right, then you're just kind of, like, all over the place. You're maybe trying to do some thought leadership here.
Tessa Kriesel:You're maybe trying to post a little bit there. Maybe you're, like, nagging on yourself because you're like, oh, I really wish I was, like, hanging out on LinkedIn more and talking about whatever. Right? Maybe it's not LinkedIn. Right?
Tessa Kriesel:Maybe it's somewhere else. Actually, LinkedIn is is pretty popular right now, though, so it it may be LinkedIn. Right? And so I agree. And I think that when I do the program in the one day or when anyone does the program by the one day, right, you can bring people by your side, schedule that day out, and you're like, yes.
Tessa Kriesel:Let's do this together. Let's get it done. Maybe bring in your founding engineer. Maybe you bring in a couple early customers, or you do go out and you find some prospects to bring in. And so, you know, I know we're gonna get into kind of the nitty gritty, but I do agree with you and that this is one of those things that, especially, I like to hang out with a nerd herd, which is like my target audience.
Tessa Kriesel:Right? These technical founders, I wanna hang out with fellow developers. And the last thing that they wanna do is think about marketing.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. It's, it's it's really uncomfortable sometimes. I think, it's a lot of people suffer suffer with it. Like, I'm doing Adam Adam Frankel's course right now, working through my own stuff and
Tessa Kriesel:Love it.
Jack Bridger:You know, I can just sit, like, at a screen, and, like, okay. I've been given a task to write a tweet every day, and it's, like, I'm just I just don't wanna there's something in me that's, like, you know, I'm kinda I don't know. It's uncomfortable. It's, like, you're trying to put up like, it's hard. And it it's not necessarily like, it sounds easy, and it it should be easy, but it's it's not often the stuff.
Jack Bridger:And I I feel like that's kind of the sort of thing that you're pushing is, like, you know, rallying your friends or customers or, like, anyone that's your target audience and, like, getting them to come and give you feedback or, like, ask them what they care about, that sort of thing.
Tessa Kriesel:Exactly. Well, it's unnatural. It's, like, unnatural, right, to go out and feel like we're selling ourselves. So by the way, even though I'm great at selling other dev tools, quote, unquote selling, horrible at doing my own marketing. So I completely resonate and relate.
Tessa Kriesel:I'm in the same exact boat.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. It's, I really I actually really think this is, like, the the, it really boils down to, like, just doing uncomfortable things. Like, that's what
Tessa Kriesel:Yes.
Jack Bridger:I I don't know. It feels like that's that's really what you're you're helping people with is doing those uncomfortable things, and or, you know, or setting up, like, pushing them to set set a day aside and and actually just work on it.
Tessa Kriesel:Yep. Exactly.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Amazing. And so, like, before they get to this day, what kind of stuff do they need to do in advance?
Tessa Kriesel:So I think kind of thinking about sort of the day. Right? And maybe just, like, taking a little bit of a step back. There is objectives that we have set for the day. And so I wanna kinda go through sort of the framework that I look at, and then I think that will will guide and and make that day a lot clearer.
Tessa Kriesel:So when dev when dev tools come in, and I again, we all know this. Right? We're all we've all been in this spot. Right? We build a thing, and we're like, this is the audience that wants the thing.
Jack Bridger:Yeah.
Tessa Kriesel:And we pitch it to the audience, and they're like, I don't want your thing. And you're like, what? I knew this was the audience. Like, I knew in my gut this was right. Or maybe we get lucky, and we pitch to the audience and they love it and we're great, and we don't we don't need to do things like this.
Tessa Kriesel:Right? But that's pretty few and far between. So
Jack Bridger:I I think the other one is, oh, they're just not the right person. I just does they they just don't get it. This must be, like, the wrong person. I need
Tessa Kriesel:to just
Jack Bridger:find the right people, which which I think is the same issue. I don't know. Even worse.
Tessa Kriesel:Actually, even worse. I do agree. Because then you're like, okay. How many people should I talk to before I should invalidate this hypothesis, right, which is a whole another ballgame that we'll probably talk about soon here. Anyway, so it it's always about, like, starting with the foundation of problem fit.
Tessa Kriesel:And I call it problem fit. Everyone else calls it product market fit. I've seen, like, solution problem fit or problem solution fit, one of the one of those versions. Either way, to me, it's a problem fit. You solve a problem, and that problem is a fit to some developer somewhere.
Tessa Kriesel:And when we are to think about go to market, you know, any marketing outreach, and in this case, it's a DevRel, and so I hate calling it marketing because it's not, but it is definitely a channel of marketing, and it's the channel that works for early stage dev tools. And so when you're thinking about sort of this this fit, right, it has to be the foundation. It has to be at that bottom. You have to be deeply rooted in it. You have to know who has the problems that your dev tools solve.
Tessa Kriesel:Like, what do those people look like? Right? Like, so what is it that the pain point? What's the pain point or the problem that you solve generally? K?
Tessa Kriesel:Who wants or has that pain point? But then from that, it can't just be who wants and has that pain point. It has to be who has the money and the willingness and the pain point that is, like, literally a thorn in their side to pay and actually adopt your dev tool. And so that's really, like, problem fit. And it sounds so straightforward, but it's it's not.
Tessa Kriesel:Because when you think about it, there's all these different sort of, industries or use cases to think about. I just finished a sprint this week, actually, with a really super cool dev tool, security as code. I'm actually gonna drop the name just because it's awesome, and we're actually doing dev rel done for you together. So architect is the name.
Jack Bridger:Oh, David Mason. Yeah.
Tessa Kriesel:Yes. Yes.
Jack Bridger:He's been on the show, actually.
Tessa Kriesel:Yeah. He has. And on top of it, we went through a whole consult, and I was like, oh my gosh. After the fact realized he's council dot dev. I'm like, oh, I just talked to David and didn't know it.
Jack Bridger:He's a modest guy. Very nice guy.
Tessa Kriesel:So, so nice. I adore him. Anyways, so we're going through. Right? And we're sort of thinking about, like, all these different angles.
Tessa Kriesel:Like, his product is just first off, his developer experience is fire. I have never had a client come in and have that experience be so good. And so we really got to spend a great deal of time just like, okay, this versus that versus this, and really thinking about who needs his product the most. And we actually started narrowing it down. Right?
Tessa Kriesel:And oftentimes, he is a great deflection for a really high Vercel bill. Right? You're getting a bunch of bots. You're getting a bunch of different traffic that shouldn't be there, you know, spamming, whatever it might be. Right?
Tessa Kriesel:And so, boop, apply ArcGet, and you're like, done. But Vercel's a partner, and so you have to be very tasteful about we can't just go after this this high Vercel bill. Right? And so we had to think about who needs this actual tool and why do they need it. And so narrowing it down.
Tessa Kriesel:Right? We looked at ecom and new SaaS products and AI and ML, and AI and ML actually shined bright because they have to have cost reduction due to the GPU usage, also aligns to other clients I'm working with. And so there's this beautiful synergy now, that in this next 90 days, right, there's this duplicative work for my company, but, also, it's the it's the most it's the biggest market opportunity for for ArcJet. Right? And so that's kind of that foundation is we have to understand what and where we're gonna go to market.
Tessa Kriesel:And it isn't just, oh, yeah. These devs need my tool. It's like, oh, no. These devs have the thorn in their side that is my tool, and they need this solution. Right?
Tessa Kriesel:Then sort of the next pillars is, like, I think, you know, everyone kind of is semi familiar as we think about developers, but it's discoverability. Where are the devs? How do we get our stuff into their hands in a very authentic way? It's credibility. Like, credibility is so, so, so important.
Tessa Kriesel:And I know that we all know that, right, when it comes to developers and dev tools. Absolutely have to be credible and build that trust. 3rd piece is the moment. Right? They have to see that moment, whether it be immediately on your home page.
Tessa Kriesel:They're like, yes. I'm trying this. This might be the solution for me. Or maybe it takes them a little bit. Right?
Tessa Kriesel:They find the in the docs. But whatever you have to do, it has to be as fast as possible that they reach that moment so that they begin to hit into that adoption. Right? They need to adopt the tool, try it, hopefully, give feedback if there's some sort of mismatch, and and hopefully become a customer that then shifts into advocacy. And when I say advocacy, I'm not talking about a developer advocate.
Tessa Kriesel:I'm not saying go hire a developer advocate. I'm saying serve your customers so well that they are your advocate. They go out and start talking about your tool. They and they absolutely will. They will give you feedback.
Tessa Kriesel:They'll build code samples. They'll build integrations. They will do a variety of things. Right? Because they're like, yeah.
Tessa Kriesel:I love this tool. It fits into my workflow. They're not trying to change my everyday workflow as a developer. They're plugging perfectly into everything that they know that I already use, and they're just delivering everything I need. And that's when you get customer advocacy.
Tessa Kriesel:So the framework is all of that. Right? And so when we go in and start thinking about the day, we are trying to ensure we've got that problem that problem fit, and that requires research. Right? If you have picked up Adam's book, which I know you have, I have absolutely amazing book.
Tessa Kriesel:Love it. Yes. Exactly. I was like, it's right
Jack Bridger:How does
Tessa Kriesel:this podcast
Jack Bridger:for the podcast I'm holding the book.
Tessa Kriesel:Oh, video. I can't do it. It's right there somewhere. Anyways, absolute amazing book. And if you have read that book, which you haven't, go get it.
Tessa Kriesel:You need it. Anyone who's a dev tool founder needs it. If you've read that book, he talks about tabs. Right? Technical advisory boards.
Tessa Kriesel:I've always called them developer advisory boards. I go back and forth because I'm like, should I just follow Adam's, like, synergy here since there's a book out and now we can all follow the same path? But I'm trying to retrain my brain to call them tabs.
Jack Bridger:So your yours is dab.
Tessa Kriesel:And mine's dab, and he's tab.
Jack Bridger:Isn't that the dance? Like, I I'm way too way too old for this, but is that like
Tessa Kriesel:is
Jack Bridger:this something I don't you should dance when you Yeah.
Tessa Kriesel:I know. Right? The dab. Okay. I'm gonna switch it to a tab.
Tessa Kriesel:No. Okay. Anyways, if you read the book, you know that you have to talk to your developers. So in order for us to define that problem fit, it isn't just me and the founder. It isn't just the founder.
Tessa Kriesel:Right? You can't just say, I'm gonna define my problem fit. You have to talk to I mean, I think that Adam says, like, 50 developers that are your prospects by the end of all of your interviewing. It's not a small amount. Because exactly what I just said about the foundation, right, is, like, you have to understand their workflow, understand everything that they do day to day.
Tessa Kriesel:How do you plug into that? You don't wanna change that. You can't be like, oh, you can no longer use GitHub, or you can no longer use, you know, your favorite IDE. Right? Like, you can't be messing with the dev sitch, but you have to come in and figure out how do we how do we come into that, and what is that actual pain point?
Tessa Kriesel:Like, one of my other clients, we had some assumptions that we were making there in the MLOps space. So we had some assumptions that we were making, and we were at an event, and we got to chat with a couple, obviously, a variety of different devs. Hallelujah to the great developer events. Those are awesome. We got to chat with them.
Tessa Kriesel:Right? And then all of a sudden, we had this moment about a a piece of their workflow that just it wasn't quite convincing that the the dev tool I'm supporting was gonna perfectly fit in there. And we're like, oh, yes. This is what we should shift so that we fit into that workflow. So preparation, talk to your developers.
Tessa Kriesel:Talk to your customers if you have them. Talk to your prospects if you don't. You obviously have to make a hypothesis about who you think your prospects are. Start somewhere just like Adam has in his book and start to shift. Right?
Tessa Kriesel:Because you're gonna learn. Oh, I'm going this direction, or, oh, I'm going that direction. And so you want to continue to follow that path and speak to your developers. For me, when I'm prepping for that sprint, I also, which hallelujah for AI and Claude specifically, I have a lot of prompts that I run-in terms of, okay, here's the consult that I had with the client, and I make sure that I ask these very specific probing questions, like, what's the state of your dev tool? What problem are you solving?
Tessa Kriesel:Kind of the variety. Honestly, Adam has a lot of sort of the similar context of questions. I'm trying to sort of break it down, so that book is is is quite helpful in terms of how someone could think about that. And from that recorded consult and from the customer, transcripts and from the prospect transcripts, I bring all of that through, and I've got, like, different prompt templates that I go through. And I'm like, hey.
Tessa Kriesel:This is the scenario. Here's what I need to do, and I'm able to almost get what is sort of a hypothesis. Right? I can get some research. I go out and I do my manual research with the devs, and then I come into a sprint with a hypothesis.
Tessa Kriesel:And so, really, what goes into that prompting is just understanding, like, what are those pain points? And it comes down to a strategy format that I have, actually, that's like, what's our mission? How do we win? Like, who is it that we're trying to win with? Like, how do, what do we offer them?
Tessa Kriesel:Right? And then how do we actually go about winning? And so I bring that in to kinda get a hypothesis. That was a lot, but I felt like it was like, you gotta have all the prep to understand how I look at building these types of programs out.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That I mean, so I guess, like, in a in a kind of, like, playing it back, so they need to just basically just line up, like, a lot of people who really have this, like, burning problem. Is that how you would?
Tessa Kriesel:Yes. If you haven't been doing that already, yes. That's absolutely what you need. Because what, we go into it is we go into it with, like, okay. What are the potential use cases?
Tessa Kriesel:Right? How does that actually fit into thinking about the jobs to be done type of exercise. Right? A developer has a job to do. How can we come in, understand when that job is, and that leads into that use case.
Tessa Kriesel:And so talking to the prospects, talking to your customers, kinda talking to any developers that are gonna give you that information is gonna give you the intel you need to start to understand what are the jobs that need to be done that you might fit into, and how does that turn into a use case.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. And what would you say is, like, the minimum like, if someone had to, like, MVP this? Like, what what would you say is, like, the minimum that they should, be coming in with?
Tessa Kriesel:Well, that's a good question. How good of an interviewer are they in terms of can they prompt to get the right details out? Because that's what it comes down to, which I have a blog post on that, by the way, that is customer questions and prospect questions. Some insights from Adam and his book, which also came other insights that have come from other customer led books. There's definitely some methodologies out there where they all sort of have the same agreeance in how we ask customers questions.
Tessa Kriesel:And so I think that matters. The questions that you're asking matter, and how you're sort of following up into those questions. I think if I could give any sort of instillment there is, like, you have to absolutely understand their workflow from the beginning to the end. What are they starting with? What are they ending with?
Tessa Kriesel:What are the tools that are coming in between? What are the pain points that they're feeling in between? What are sort of those little intricate things that you maybe don't think about? Like, oh, actually, they have to go from this tool to that tool to this thing because that's, like, obviously a pain, and maybe they haven't seen the pain yet. So I think number of interviews depends on quality of interviews.
Tessa Kriesel:But Adam says 50, and I don't disagree. The more you can do, the better. MVP would say 5 to 10 to sit and go through the rest of the day.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. And, I I would say on just on my own thing of doing it now is, like, I've been struggling to book as many as, some of the other people doing Adam's stuff because I'm doing on my own. That's a bad excuse, but it's the truth.
Tessa Kriesel:It's the It's so embarrassing.
Jack Bridger:Struggling. And even doing you know, even in, like, one when you do one, you learn a lot. And for I learned a lot from the first one I did, and I need to do more. And I have, like, more lined up, but I feel like people shouldn't put up too much of a blocker of, like, just getting started because I think even one is one is a lot better than 0.
Tessa Kriesel:I I fully agree. I think if you have customers, those should be weighted heavier because your customers are using your tool, and so those are far more important. If you don't have customers, then, obviously, you're leaning on prospects only. And I think if you're leaning on prospects, you need at least 10. Because of the example I shared with you, right, in terms of the MLOps case, it was like, we had talked to a lot of customers, but there was just a customer that came in and we're like, okay.
Tessa Kriesel:This is actually a use case that falls into a future target audience that we've sort of projected. We need to understand this problem because it's it can potentially, in the future, need a different approach or a different feature set to actually go about this type of solution. So I think that when you when you look at it that way, of course, it's very easy to push it off, but I think at the end of the day, like, write the email template. Right? That's like the quick template.
Tessa Kriesel:Hey. I wanna chat about the tool. Make your list of people that you actually want to reach out to. Create a Calendly or Savvy Cal. I'm gonna say Savvy Cal another time, Savvy Cal 1 third time because I Oh, you Savvy Cal.
Jack Bridger:How you like it.
Tessa Kriesel:Make your calendar link for people to book with you and just make it a specific day. Right? Maybe it's a day that, like, is is chiller or maybe it's like, okay. I'm gonna get in the head space where Friday afternoons are my social day. It'll, you know, energize me to, like, you know, think about how to change or shift.
Tessa Kriesel:I don't know if that's whatever. Right? Find your timing for that calendar and just put it out there and just send them messages because then they'll just start to schedule it on their own. Right? And so you've done the work.
Tessa Kriesel:You don't have to have any more pressure on you. And when they show up in your calendar, be ready, have your questions ready, and and absorb it. Right? And then when you feel like you've got enough, then dive into this the sprint idea of bringing all this work together.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. And maybe we could go to the sprint and kinda talk about exactly what, like, a day might look like.
Tessa Kriesel:Yeah. Absolutely. So just, you know, if you were to you know, obviously, what we're kind of referring to here is, like, coming together for a single day to build out this DevRel strategy for the next 90 days. And so, yes, next 90 days feels like, well, that's not very much time. But what you just said, right, we can't even dedicate time to customer feedback.
Tessa Kriesel:So it needs to be short and focused and and objective driven. Right? What is it that we're trying to accomplish? So when I bring the expense together, the beginning of it is that hypothesis that I talked about. Right?
Tessa Kriesel:What do we think is that target audience? Who do we think is willing to pay for the tool? What do we think the problems are that we solve with our tool? And that turns into kind of an exercise. And, honestly, it's so fun.
Tessa Kriesel:Like, this is one of my favorite parts is because it's like, well, what else could we do? What other problem could we solve with the same tool or feature set that is a different set of developers or a different audience? Right? And then we get kinda big pie in the sky dreamy because it that's what's fun about being a developer, is how do we solve this problem? And if we're thinking about how we built something that solves a problem, but how we can morph that into a solution for different types of devs is a whole fun ideation, like, game.
Tessa Kriesel:Right? So we go through and we're working through, you know, the different ideation, how what are these potential use cases? And then we have to get serious. Right? We have to start making decisions.
Tessa Kriesel:And, really, this is me just sort of, like, pushing them to, like, have to make decisions because, eventually, we're gonna make a decision on one single use case. And most founders are like, I need a huge total addressable market. Please don't take me down to a 5 k market. And I'm like, yes. Just do it.
Tessa Kriesel:Just take the leap because they're focused. Right? And so I'm prepping them for this decision that they have to make in a little bit. And so as we go through it, then we're narrowing down. Okay.
Tessa Kriesel:Yes. This is beautiful. This is a great dream, but what do we actually want to accomplish? And so with, one dev tool, we were talking about this, and it ended up being that a front end language was, like, absolutely going to be sort of this tech this tech stack and situation was gonna fall into a front end, type of a developer, persona. However, his knowledge, examples, you know, guides, docs, kind of everything was all built for a back end, audience.
Tessa Kriesel:So even though we, yeah, so even though we saw this amazing market opportunity, we didn't choose that or prioritize that because of the amount of effort it was going to take to actually come up to par, have credibility, and have them reach that moment. And so instead, we're like, no. Actually, Actually, let's niche into a very specific part of the back end programming where we can solve this problem in a in a very niche way, if that makes sense.
Jack Bridger:Because flipping it, yeah, flipping it would be a lot of work. Yeah. Because
Tessa Kriesel:More docs.
Jack Bridger:The credibility.
Tessa Kriesel:Yeah. You don't have the integration partners. You're you don't have the developers. Hopefully, you know, dev tools got quotes from their developers in different sort of those credibility moments that I talked to. Right?
Tessa Kriesel:And if it's from a back end dev and you've got back end examples, right, as a front end dev, you come in and you're like, I don't belong here. These are not my people. This is not my stuff. Right? So you can't fundamentally completely shift.
Tessa Kriesel:Then we review all that feedback. Right? So we're like, okay. What did we hear from prospects? What did we hear from customers?
Tessa Kriesel:If I'm going through and helping them review that feedback, I've got sort of a methodology and trends that I go through with that with the jobs to be done exercise, if anyone's ever heard of that. You're doing a lot of, like, motivation, struggles, desired outcomes. Right? You're really taking that story and trying to bring it down into those 3 columns. And then those motivations, those desired outcomes, and those struggles really show you, oh, there's some overlap here.
Tessa Kriesel:Yes. Okay. These customers align. These prospects align. Nope.
Tessa Kriesel:This doesn't align. Is this an outlier that makes sense? Or did we interview something someone that didn't align with what we thought? And so we go through that feedback, and sort of the results of all of that. If if I'm actually facilitating it, I have different groups of, prospects of developers that I will go and do the interviews for my clients.
Tessa Kriesel:And so then we'll bring all of that in. And so I have them do the full video, you know, screen record, all the things. And then from that, they've already got sort of a gut feeling. Right? I've got a gut feeling.
Tessa Kriesel:They've got a gut feeling. We're all kinda, like, going towards that gut feeling. And then we're like, okay. Great. From all this information, we've defined maybe 1 or 2 jobs to be done, or we've didn't have to do the jobs to be done.
Tessa Kriesel:And it was already so clear to us that these are sort of the use cases, which was the ArcJet scenario because, like, David is so awesome. Like, seriously, like, his product is just so good. The experience is so good, that, like, we didn't have to do a lot of that stuff. It was really clear, those use cases. And so then we're sitting here with, you know, 3 to 4 different use cases.
Tessa Kriesel:Okay. We could use it in AI or ML, or we could use it in ecom, or we could use it in new SaaS products, or, you know, for different client, it was like, oh, we can use it with, you know, front end devs versus these different types of devs. Right? And so then it's like, where is the the tool already best suited to serve? And then that's that's where we land.
Tessa Kriesel:Right? Or where's this biggest opportunity? And so that's that's, like, the first half of the sprint is just, like, understanding the customers, the prospect, the opportunities. What could we do? Who could we go after?
Tessa Kriesel:What does our tool best serve? And then by the end of that first half of it, you should be like, this. This is the use case that we best serve. This is the audience we're going after. We know that these people are willing to pay us because we've understood that they have this pain point so bad that it's a thorn in their side that they're willing to pay, to fix.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Yeah. That that makes sense. And, I think it's like you mentioned, like, gut feel, and it's, I I think there is, like, so much information from speaking with people and, like, it's like you see the you see the stress, like, for me going through, like, some the first tap call that I did, it was like, the guy was like, yeah. I couldn't I tried to do it, and I I just couldn't do it.
Jack Bridger:And yeah. I guess it was it was difficult. It was difficult. I I guess I I just couldn't do it. And it was like, you could okay.
Jack Bridger:This this thing is, like, is interesting because it's, like, you can see that. I feel like it should become as you mentioned, it's like the gut feel. It's like, hopefully, the stuff just becomes obvious and you don't need to be, like don't need to do some clever analysis or, like, run it through the run it through you know, it's just it appears.
Tessa Kriesel:Yes. If it doesn't appear, you haven't in interviewed enough people. That's essentially where it gets down to. As if it doesn't if your gut isn't like, woah. Okay.
Tessa Kriesel:Like, there's almost conviction around a feature pivot or having a conversation with your your cofounder or whatever it might be. Right? If none of those things are triggered, you haven't talked to enough people.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, that it's it's really cool.
Tessa Kriesel:Yeah.
Jack Bridger:Talk to talk to people.
Tessa Kriesel:I agree. Talk to your developers like the Twilio book.
Jack Bridger:Talk to your developers. Yeah.
Tessa Kriesel:Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I think it's ask your developers, but still
Jack Bridger:Ask your developers.
Tessa Kriesel:Same thing. Right.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. I used to read that actually. Have you read that?
Tessa Kriesel:I haven't read it either, honestly, which I I have it on my bookshelf with all the other awesome books, and I've pulled a couple pieces from it. I'm kind of a freak of nature when it comes to books. And, like, this is a gift that I'm so thankful for. But I can, like, scan through a book and even just look through the table of contents and, like, sort of be like, oh, I understand what framework they're doing here. Oh, that makes sense.
Tessa Kriesel:Then, like, maybe do, like, the scan to see sort of quotes and whatever. And then I'm like, okay. I've got the gist of it, and I'll put it back on my on my chauffeur well. Like, it doesn't mean I understood it, but it it's like Yeah. Sometimes I just need to push in the right direction.
Tessa Kriesel:I need a framework, or I need to see how someone else did it. And then it's like, ah, then I can, you know, bring it in.
Jack Bridger:So that
Tessa Kriesel:that's what happened with that book.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. That's, yeah. That that's a very, very great skill.
Tessa Kriesel:Yeah. It is. It is. It is.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. I, I keep thinking of making, like, an episode or something where I just, like, try and just distill. Like, because I I I struggle to read all these things as as, you know, when you especially when you're trying to do all this stuff, like, your brain gets so frazzled with, like, social media and stuff. It's it's so hard to actually, like, focus on these things. I find anyway.
Tessa Kriesel:Yes. Yeah. I agree. But I think that's the best part of, like, the second half of the sprint. Right?
Tessa Kriesel:If someone were to want to go in and do it themselves, it's like now they, like, have this beautiful clear picture, right, of, like, this use case. And and now they're like, oh, I know what industry I'm hanging out in. I know what my developer might look and and feel like, right, in terms of a persona. And it just gives you that clarity because, like, that's why. Right?
Tessa Kriesel:That's why we all feel so frazzled because we're like, I think I need to read this and that and that and do this and do that and do all the things because it's like, we just think we have to do all the things and maybe we do a little bit. Right? But I think that oftentimes and my coach literally just told me this yesterday, embarrassing because this is what I help dev tool founders do, is he's like essentially, was like, do you have your own business strategy? And I'm like, well, of course not. Why would I be smart enough to build my own strategy?
Tessa Kriesel:I do it for other people. And, so I had a beautiful revelation of, like, no. Like, literally and that's the impact of the one day sprint. Right? Is that we all feel like we're stretched so thin, and it's like, no.
Tessa Kriesel:Stop focus. What is it that we're trying to do? What are we trying to do to win? Right? Like, the thing.
Tessa Kriesel:Let's just stay on focus.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. That's, that's really good. Yeah.
Tessa Kriesel:Yeah.
Jack Bridger:Okay. And so I think, we're coming towards the end. But would you be able to give us kind of, like, okay. These are the takeaways, like, someone's sat at home Yeah. Dinner washing up.
Jack Bridger:What what do you want the founders to know?
Tessa Kriesel:Yeah. Absolutely. Let me share just couple quick things on on the latter half of the day. Right? Because once you find that use case, there's just a couple more things that we do to kind of fit into that day and absolutely, like, wrap it all up.
Tessa Kriesel:Once we know that use case, we have to go be that developer. Right? Like, we have to either go find that developer. We have to go be that developer. And so if, like, it's an AI or an ML type of a use case, it's like, what is that flow?
Tessa Kriesel:And so we put that hat on of that developer, and we go in and we do that audit. Right? We and if you aren't if you're not facilitating the sprint with me, right, go find those prospect developers, which ones were eager, which ones were excited. Ask them to go through and do this developer experience audit. And, essentially, it's really just what is the use case that you defined?
Tessa Kriesel:What is it that they're trying to get done, that job they're trying to do? And have them go through and use your tool to do that job. It's it's it's basically them bringing their tool in and adopting it. Right? But, like, it's from an audit standpoint where they're recording, they're screen recording, they're they're, like, commentating as they go, they're building, they're like, oh, crap.
Tessa Kriesel:I don't have this. I have to go find this, and you're watching them. And it is so enlightening as a founder to watch someone else actually try to use your tool because you think that you understand and you see it because you're in it every single day and you're using it all the time, but we're using it as, like, ourselves. We're not using it as the developer. And so doing that is, like, so imperative to, like, watch someone else use your tool.
Tessa Kriesel:Once we do that, then we know the developer experience and where that stands. Right? Because sometimes we're gonna spend the 1st sprint I do with clients, it might be all developer experience improvements, and then we shift to marketing approach. Right? Because maybe the the developer experience isn't there.
Tessa Kriesel:There's no credibility. So when they cone come to the website, they don't trust you, and they don't find that moment. And that absolutely has to be fixed first before we can do discoverability. Right? They need to adopt when they come there.
Tessa Kriesel:You don't wanna lose them. And once we understand that, we understand where the experience is, then we build that strategy. So what's happening in the next 90 days? Are we improving developer experience? Are we building towards that moment?
Tessa Kriesel:Or is it like, yes. That's great. We're gonna hit the ground running. We are doing discover, discoverability, which means hanging out where the devs are, pushing the thought leadership that's authentic, bringing the content to the people. Right?
Tessa Kriesel:Where are our people, and how do we hang out with them? Where's those developer channels? And, really, when I say developer channel, this can be an in person event, a virtual event, a Reddit, a super tiny niche Discord community. It could be a WhatsApp discussion between 5 devs. Right?
Tessa Kriesel:You're like, let me get into that network. Those are the developer channels. And so we make sure that whatever objective they're looking for, that strategy is built in a way that's gonna drive them towards that that next 90 days of getting that done. So with all of that to say, in summary, what I have built has taken me, like, 7 to 8 months to perfect in terms of how do I deliver this to founders, how do I deliver this to the dev tools that need it. But it's been things I've been doing for years.
Tessa Kriesel:Right? Just years years. And I think that, you know, when we take in and distill sort of all of what DevRel is and what it can be and how developers wanna be marketed to, I personally feel like developers are the most simple people. Right? We wanna learn, and we wanna be like, I built that.
Tessa Kriesel:Give us the chance to learn. Give us the chance to say I built that and just understand. Right? When you understand those users, you understand the pain point. You're hanging with the nerd herd, which is my goal in life.
Tessa Kriesel:Then you know exactly what to build them and how to build that. And so I think more than anything, it's you know, if I could sort of TLDR it, I've got a playbook that I put out there that will give you sort of the fundamentals, the foundation. How do you go about approaching developers? What does that look like in building out this problem fit pillar and these other 4 boxes? And from there, I feel like folks will be like, oh, this makes sense.
Tessa Kriesel:Right? I understand why she chose those 4 boxes, why that's the framework, and how do I start filling in that framework because what you wanna get to is that quadrant that is the advocacy. You want your customers making your dev tool better. Right? You want your customers telling other devs in these back end WhatsApp messages, like, have you tried this tool?
Tessa Kriesel:Have you built with this thing? And the only way to do that is to do the other 3 really, really well.
Jack Bridger:Amazing. Amazing. Well, thank you very much, Tessa. That was great. And, thanks everyone for listening.
Tessa Kriesel:Happy to be here.
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