♪ [music] ♪
So who remembers GeoCities?
Thank you.
Yeah.
Okay.
Because you're older.
No, I'm just kidding.
Me too.
No.
Actually, I was thinking about
this the other day.
I love Geocities, and I actually remember
that was one of the first times I
really got started.
I actually remember going to my first
coding boot camp in fifth grade.
My mom sent me to an HTML class every
summer, and I thought to myself,
I literally thought to myself,
"When am I ever going to need
to use this?"
Because I just wanted to go to soccer camp
like all of the other cool girls.
But I went to HTML camp and theater
camp every summer.
And so now, I give talks on dev stuff,
very telling.
So this talk is your first 100 devs.
That means, what does that look like to
bring on your first 100 developers
onto your project.
If you guys have any questions for me,
feel free to DM me.
If you want to have the slides to this
talk, it is also pinned to my handle.
So you guys can access that
at anytime, anywhere.
So who is this for when you're thinking
about your first, a hundred developers?
Oftentimes, this talk is kind of relevant
for solo developers,
if you're a new developer tool, or
if you're already a startup or a project
that is looking to release a new product
or going to a new channel.
Maybe you are experimenting with an open
source platform play,
but you don't really know what that market
is going to look like for you,
this is really helpful to keep in mind.
So why me?
Why do I love talking about this stuff?
Like I said, I got started pretty young,
but at the end of the day, one of my
biggest passions in life is providing
resources and opportunities for those who
want to create.
I'm a child of immigrants.
My parents, they immigrated here from
Taiwan and they said...
I remember my mom saying this to me,
she said, "Well, I never had
an opportunity to learn this stuff, so I
really want you to learn,
so that you come back and teach me."
And so, at a very young age,
I realize that teaching others is just a
really empowering opportunity.
And not so much teaching because I'm a
professional or anything, but just, "Hey,
here's some knowledge, and I want to share
this with you.
If I don't know the answer, here's the
community that can help you out."
Right?
So I just love talking about this because
I think it's really empowering.
So what you're going to learn in the next
15, 20 minutes is really five things.
One, I'm going to help you identify what
your tribe is specifically
within your audience.
Number two, I'm going to help you guys
think about what a success metric is going
to look like especially as you're bringing
in your first 100 developers.
Number three is one of my favorite,
is the rule of 1%.
You'll learn a little bit more about that.
Four, is what does that inflection point
look like for when you're bringing
on the developers.
And number five, an acquisition strategy,
to really consider, especially as you're
starting early on.
Now, build it, will it come?
You know, oftentimes as we're making
developer tools, we think if it's
highly functional, if it's really the
perfect solution, they will come.
However, like the premise of Bob's Burger,
they have this awesome restaurant, and
they're there working every day,
except no one really comes
except that one guy.
Does anyone know the name of that guy?
Yeah.
I don't actually remember it, but, yeah,
he's just kind of like... Teddy, Teddy.
That's his name.
Teddy is his name.
Right.
So besides Teddy, he really doesn't have a
lot of traffic, but Bob's Burger is
still well-loved.
So number one is thinking about
your tribe, right?
Your tribe, what does that mean?
You know, oftentimes you hear the
marketers, marketing team,
they're like, "Hey, know your audience,
understand your users."
Audience, audience, audience, right?
But right now, I'm talking about your
tribe because often we say, "Oh..."
Especially those who are not as
experienced, you know, like, "Oh,
we'll just market to developers."
Right?
Well, developers is kind of too vague.
It's like saying, "I'm just going to
market to Pokémon."
You know, there's, like,
there's eight generations now.
There's north of 800 types, right?
So there's...
It's, like, you know,
there's only some that we
really care about.
Does anyone know who these are?
[Audience member:] ...
[Sydney:] Yep, yeah.
But which generation?
[Audience member:] ...
[Sydney:] Thank you.
Who's your favorite?
[Audience member:] ...
[Sydney:] Goldeen?
Goldeen is your...
Okay. Yeah. I'm...
I've never heard of that one before.
All right. All right.
So on the top of Goldeen...
I'm dying.
On top of Goldeen, like,
you want to also understand what is your
tribe because within Pokémon, it's very
vast, there's different types
of Pokémon, right?
But within your tribe, you love Goldeen.
You know what?
Goldeen is the water type, right?
And so, even within Pokémon itself,
it's, like, you know what?
I really want to just target the water
type Pokémon especially the ones that can
do like ice moves, right?
Like, ice move, ice move, ice...
That's their stack.
Okay?
So that's something to consider is really
have one tribe in mind because they're
going to be your biggest fans,
they're going to love you the most.
And just so you know,
there's just really different types
of developers, and they're reached in
different ways, they live
in different communities.
And for some, this is funnier
than others, right?
Yeah, yeah.
See, this is all so relatable if you're
not a dev.
It's still pretty funny.
But, you know, I keep rallying on having
one, just one tribe to focus on first
because something you really want to
leverage is the 80/20 rule, right?
So 20% of the people are going to bring in
80% of the business.
Now, what that means is sure,
you're going to have tons of developers or
fans on your platform,
but there's going to be that subset
of freaks who's just going to, like,
ride or die with you.
They're going to celebrate you,
they're going to use your platform,
they're going to contribute back, right?
So I'm going to bring back
an O.g. example.
Who remembers this?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm surprised that I remember this.
Right?
So Red Hat, what they do is they build
enterprise solutions on Linux, and
of course, that means this is open source,
you can access this.
And that was what was so revolutionary
with Red Hat because they're able
to provide this open source, and they
wanted to ensure that they reached a
mass of people.
But they also ensured that, you know,
we're going to bundle this up and deliver
it to you.
And back in the day, you know,
it was $49, right?
But nonetheless, only some of them paid.
You can still access the free one,
but you also get, like,
installation guides, how-to manuals.
This is before, like, forums and Q&As, and
oh, man, like, dev talks, those days.
Right?
So they wanted to ensure that most people
got access, but those who paid,
it also drove, you know,
most or all of their revenue.
So step two is to think about your success
metrics. You know, you know that you're
looking to bring in devs,
you know you want to identify
your audience, but you also want to figure
out at what point do you want to achieve
the 100 developers.
Oftentimes when you're working, especially
in small teams, it's like, "Oh,
we have this date," you know, "Oh, gosh.
We need to move it to that date."
And sometimes what I've also seen is
people just say, "Oh, you know,
I want to have a bunch of developers," or,
"I want to grow a dev community."
I'll come in and be like,
"All right. When?"
They're like, ''Whenever."
And I'm like, ''No.
It's like saying, 'I'm going to get
married.' When?
Not when..."
You know, like, it's just,
you got to plan for it, right?
So pick a date, just one date.
Don't have multiple ones because if you
just pick one date, you're going
to be hyper-focused, right?
And then now, pick one of the milestones
that's going to be really
important for you.
Now, I don't know what your project is,
but different milestones where actions
it's going to be, have different meaning
for your project, right?
So maybe its followers or
impressions, right?
If you're a fairly big company like
Google, all they really care
about is like, "Hey,
brand awareness," you know.
That's going to be really,
really important for them,
that's going to be a clear
return for them.
Now, if you're a smaller project or a
team, maybe impressions aren't as useful
in the early beginnings.
Maybe if you're a dev tool, you know,
downloads are really important, and you
really just want to make sure you have
installs, right?
Or if you're already monetizing,
maybe you want to have paid users.
I think charging a nickel would
be really funny.
You should try that out.
So for this example,
we're going to go with the metric
of downloads, right?
So this is going to follow
out through the talk.
Step three is the rule of 1%.
This is actually really straightforward
and it's quite surprising because I think
a lot of people miss this a lot.
So let's say, again, we want to have 100
developers for your project, and that
means we're going to have
a 1% conversion rate.
So the rule of 1% is if you don't have
benchmark metrics yet,
if you're first starting,
or if you're already established,
and if you already have users, however,
maybe, again, you're starting a
open source project, something else,
and you haven't migrated them over yet,
the go to rule of thumb is that 1%
conversion rate.
And again, with this example,
we will do installs, downloads.
So you said, "All right.
I want to have a hundred downloads, what
does that look like?"
If I just have a hundred developers,
is that enough?
You know, are they here
for just the pizza?
I don't really know.
But if you think about the user journey,
if you think about the user journey, right
before the download, it's like, "Ah,
we have to get sign ups
before they even download."
So if you work backwards, right?
Ten thousand, 1% is 100.
So you think, "All right.
I need to have 10,000 sign ups just to get
that 100 downloads."
And what's the step right before the
10,000 sign ups?
Oh, my God, right?
There's a million...
Yeah.
That's not how math works, but
if you imagine there's
like a zero, a zero, zero,
and if you're real sad, zero, zero, zero,
zero, zero, zero, over there to the...
Oh, wow, distracted.
But as you can
imagine, it's a million, 10,000,
100 for that 1% conversion rate.
So when you're thinking about, "Oh,
I need my first, a hundred developers,"
you're thinking, "Oh, my gosh,
I might need my
first million impressions."
Now, bear with me because it almost seems
unattainable, right?
And just as a reminder,
this is only if you don't have any, like,
previous cohorts, or users,
or consumer base, right?
So forecasting your metrics
are really important.
As I mentioned before,
you really want to pick a date, and
oftentimes if you go in to a project,
you want to think, "All right.
We want to try to acquire 100 users in the
next 3 months, in the next 2 months."
So what does that look like?
I mean, this is really simple.
It's really breaking down to ensure that
you're on track.
Every day 300 impressions,
400 impressions, 300 impressions.
Right?
And now again, a million is really, it's
really far out.
If you look at your industry,
some has either higher or lower
conversion rates, 20% is the industry
benchmark, 19%.
But the rule of thumb again is that 1%.
And what also helps is having an ability
to identify when that inflection point
might come to help you catapult yourself
from just having a very stagnant growth.
So number four is inflection point, and
this is something that I'm going to cover
with a case study that I really enjoy.
So as we know, Airbnb,
they provide housing, right?
Housing opportunities,
housing options especially as you're
traveling, and for the most part,
you're going to have a fairly consistent
need for housing.
It's, you know, there's always a price
battle, so on and so forth.
And what they saw in the early days was
that it was quite consistent.
What they really leverage though when they
first began was there's a huge Salesforce
conference, and when the Salesforce
conference came, there's a huge influx
of people coming, right?
And for them, this is really their
leverage, their inflection point.
If you remember,
Uber did the same with South by Southwest.
In fact, when Airbnb first launched,
they actually launched at TechCrunch.
So on the TechCrunch stage, and yes,
they got a little pick up,
but their audience really wasn't there
since, you know, TechCrunch,
there's a lot of local folks as well
or in the area.
But Salesforce, you have a mass
of people coming in.
So what that means is as you're thinking
about growing your users,
what is the inflection point
in your industry?
It might not be a conference,
it could be something online.
Perhaps, you know, like, huge inflection
points so, like, Forbes, 30 Under 30.
I mean, whatever that event is.
It can also be just different, right,
AMAs, whatever that may look like.
So at that time, then there was a huge
spike in demand, and they're able to
provide multiple housing options.
And that's really what catapulted their
traffic, right?
So something to really consider is
identifying your inflection point.
Number five, is your acquisition strategy.
So as you're beginning,
there's tons of ways to approach this, and
one of the things that I hold true and
dear to my heart is something that
Paul Graham said, "Do things that don't
scale," especially if you could afford
to do so.
Why this is important is that when you're
doing things that don't scale,
that means you're usually very hands-on,
that means you're deeply interacting
with your users, your developers.
And if it's only a hundred devs,
I feel like, at least in my mind, it's a
little bit more tangible.
I feel like it's not as horrifying to
approach, and I wanted to make sure that
our team really ate our own dog food.
I mean, so much so that we named our
project after a dog.
So what we are is we're a developer
community where you can learn different
resources and also mentor one another,
developers just go on.
It kind of looks like Stack Overflow for
now, and as you know,
because we're online we thought, "Okay.
We can definitely drive traffic this way."
However, if we are going to do something
that doesn't scale and we don't really
exactly know how we're building out the
rest of the roadmap, is
we are doing a series of meet-ups.
We're doing a series
of mentoring sessions,
seven sessions to be specific because we
really want to sit down and understand
what kind of developers are we even trying
to help out, right?
And although this is super expensive and
it's a very long and painful road,
having just maybe three sessions,
we can get at least a hundred developers.
And so that becomes actually a lot less
intimidating when you're thinking about is
it a million impressions, is it 10,000
sign ups, whatever that looks like, because
at the end of the day, it's just really
important for us to understand what our
user is, and how to reiterate
from that experience.
It's almost like an ideal approach.
Right?
So with that being said,
here are the five things that we covered
today was, identifying your tribe,
what kind of personality,
identity folks are within the developer
community you're looking for because
hobbyists are very different than those
who work at enterprises perhaps or perhaps
even startup developers,
or even freelancers.
Number two is thinking about your success
metric and just picking one,
and being hyper-focused on that one just
to get you to the 100 dev mark.
Number three is the rule of 1% which is
fairly easy math, but it's a
grinding work, right?
Number four is identifying that
inflection point.
That's going to be quite important for
your team, your product.
And then number five,
an acquisition strategy,
something that doesn't scale especially if
you're starting off early on because it's
a lot more forgiving.
It's also very community-oriented. And then
lastly, if you have any questions,
I'd be more than happy to answer them.
I've been growing communities for about
six years now, and I just really,
really love helping people.
And again, if you really enjoyed this talk
or you found it very useful,
you can go ahead and share
it with your communities.
The talk is pinned onto, I think, the
first pinned post.
Also, I'm going to be really dramatic
because...
Okay.
Bye. Hold on.
I am the worst because I totally
forgot my stickers.
If you like the sticker, I only have one.
So battle royale.
No.
But if you retweet it,
I will hand mail you.
This is doing shit that doesn't scale.
I will hand mail you with, like,
hearts to your address, and we will send
you stickers.
And if your friends retweet it,
we will send them stickers.
If they're a bot, then I don't know how to
figure that out.
But yes, who wants the sticker?
Okay.
Yeah.
I saw your hand first.
[Audience member:] My manager comes back to town
next week from New Zealand, and he just
got... so...
[Sydney:] Oh, my gosh.
Okay.
You were also really excited, though.
Like, you were first but she was like...
Okay.
Do guys want to...
[Audience member:] No, it's okay.
They can have it.
[Sydney:] All right.
Also, the talk is over.
Thank you.
♪ [music] ♪
