DEV FOUNDERS
OUR VISION
Many of the most successful companies today are built by first time founders that don’t have gold-plated credentials, but they all work hard and iterate quickly based on market feedback. We help each other and figure it out together.
BUILDING A COMPANY IS HARD
For example, landing the first customers, debating whether to go self-serve or sell top down, recruiting in this competitive talent environment, and marketing to an audience that doesn’t like to be marketed to (yes, that’s your engineer self 🙂).
The go-to-market side has many common tools of the trade that apply to companies utilizing,
for instance, open source, product-led growth, community, content-led acquisition, and so on.
We share what works, from the strategic to the tactical. Learn in an interactive setting from founders and operators who have done it before in intimate, off-the-record, monthly virtual salons.
UPCOMING SALON
7/12/2022
Marketing to Developers with Krithika Muthukumar from Retool (& ex-Stripe)
RECENT SALONS
3/16/2022
Fireside Chat - Security for Startups with Devdatta Akhawe from Figma
"While the security and compliance of your product itself is important, what will get you hacked is what gets everyone else. That latest complicated side-channel exploit you read on HackerNews is unlikely to affect your startup."
2/23/2022
Fireside Chat - Finding Product-Market Fit with Ry Sullivan from Carta
"A framework I like: by this date, we’ll have solved x. We won’t say how we’ll do x, but we’ll do x. This will challenge our team to figure out how to get x, even if it means brute forcing it, through which we still would have learned a lot."
11/30/2021
Building Developer Platforms at Twitter, Twitch, Slack and Google
Amir Shevat
Head of Product, Developer Platform at Twitter
Acquisition and Activation
“You have to pick an area that’s related to your brand and own it everywhere, eg content, events, and everyone will associate you with that word. We chose mobile growth.”
“Have orthogonal paths to success, i.e., different ways of resonating with your users, as each one will capture a different segment of the user base.”
3/16/2022
Fireside Chat - Security for Startups with Devdatta Akhawe from Figma
"While the security and compliance of your product itself is important, what will get you hacked is what gets everyone else. That latest complicated side-channel exploit you read on HackerNews is unlikely to affect your startup."
2/23/2022
Fireside Chat - Finding Product-Market Fit with Ry Sullivan from Carta
"A framework I like: by this date, we’ll have solved x. We won’t say how we’ll do x, but we’ll do x. This will challenge our team to figure out how to get x, even if it means brute forcing it, through which we still would have learned a lot."
Acquisition and Activation
“You have to pick an area that’s related to your brand and own it everywhere, eg content, events, and everyone will associate you with that word. We chose mobile growth.”
“Have orthogonal paths to success, i.e., different ways of resonating with your users, as each one will capture a different segment of the user base.”
How to Land Your First Ten Customers
“The question is not ‘would people pay $50/mo for it’, the question is ‘would you specifically give me your credit card and pay $50/mo for it now?’ The first question has no signal.”
What topic do you
want to hear about?
Who is Dev Founders for?
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Dev Founders is a community for founders building products for developers, data scientists, ML practitioners, and creators of all skill levels (everything from complex to no code).
Who runs Dev Founders?
Dev Founders is run by Chang Xu of Basis Set and Rez Khan (Co-founder of Pace, ex-MongoDB). We're a team of founders, builders, and technologists, and have leaders across our team and in our community that have launched and run some of the fastest growing companies in technology. Our goal is to bring people together and democratize access to expertise typically only available to a select group of people in silicon valley.
Although Dev Founders is funded by Basis Set, it only has a loose affiliation in that its goal is for founders to help each other and not for investment purposes. For example, we encourage founders to self-organize on topics or groups that are interesting to you, and we are happy to provide logistical support, if helpful, but do not have to participate.
How do you join Dev Founders?
You can join Dev Founders either by applying or by being referred by a current member. Membership applications are reviewed by a group of volunteers to ensure that we continue to serve founders building in our target markets.
What stage of founders can benefit from membership?
We have programming tailored to founders at different stages. Most members will join the Dev group and enjoy all the programming as well as community. If you’ve already raised Series A funding, we will induct you into the Prod group where you get exclusive access to events and channels to help you recruit and get customers.
What is expected of members?
As a member of Dev Founders, you are part of a close-knit community. Involvement in the community includes regular attendance at events and participation on Slack community. Co-create this community, suggest ideas for events and bring in awesome people as speakers. If another member has a question, share your experience on what worked or what didn't work for you. Our goal is to maintain an active, thriving group.
If you would like to deepen your involvement, raise your hand and we would love to involve you in the rotating committee of members that volunteer to run core areas of the community.
Where do I have to be based?
Anywhere. The community is default global. Though in the future we may have in-person meetups.
Is there a membership fee?
More questions?
Let us know >
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