Year In Review: I Just Want to Hang with the Nerd Herd
Discover how a transformative year shifted from leading developer relations at Snapchat to founding Built for Devs. Explore my journey and the insights that shaped a new approach to supporting technical founders.
2024 Was Going to Be Incredible
This time last year I was thinking about how my small but mighty team at Snapchat would have to hustle hard in 2024 to see what was possible while we had the chance. Our team had made the cut through two layoffs in the two plus years I spent there, and I expected that in September 2024 we’d be laid off, unless the business found a promising use-case for Camera Kit, the Snapchat camera technology SDK.
I planned back-to-back conferences in January 2024, MIT Reality Hack and That Conference TX. I knew I could get Camera Kit in the hands of creative developers at these events. I was looking to understand innovative use-cases that could drive revenue or lead to business opportunities for SnapAR. We saw some early promising use cases in enterprise, specifically education and travel, and I was eager to see what developers would do with the technology.
Previous to 2024’s strategy, we were in beta and focused on improving developer experience and building a self-serve motion that could support developers at scale without drastic changes internally. We implemented weekly office hours where early-adopters began to build an admiration for the product and team, then we launched a community forum where those developers continued engaging and shared use cases and technology solutions—a necessary element to a self-serve developer motion. We also worked alongside the engineering team to improve the SDK offering, documentation, and educational resources.
In late 2023, we had successfully tested the technology through enterprise hackathons. We had all the elements in place to help developers start innovating and building—2024 was going to be incredible.
Until it Wasn’t
On my first day back from the conferences, I learned I was included in an unexpected off-season layoff. I was devastated—Snapchat had been one of the best companies I'd ever worked for. What made it even harder was that we’d just crushed it at MIT Reality Hack, generating more opportunities than I could have imagined. It may have been my most successful event ever in terms of growth opportunities, and it no longer mattered. That part was the hardest of all.
I entertained a number of interviews, but the new job excitement just wasn’t there.
Starting a Business
I quickly realized that it was time to go out on my own and see what I was capable of. At first, I was doing fractional DevRel, because that was the work that happened to come my way naturally, then I started delivering Developer Experience Audits, providing dev tools with key insights into areas of improvement, red flags, and opportunities they may be missing. As I worked with client after client, I learned what worked, and what didn’t. Until I fine-tuned my service offerings to cater to the audience I wanted to serve, technical founders of early-stage developer products or tools.
I’m a developer at heart. I want to use technology to solve problems. As I worked with various types of clients, I began to realize that my favorites were the technical founders who built something really cool but struggled to distribute it.
I’m a nerd and I want to hang with the nerd herd
How It’s Going Now
Today, Built for Devs has a clear offering, after months of experimentation and learning, that supports early-stage technical founders building products or tools for developers. Throughout 2024, I learned exactly what this audience needs, and I did that by speaking to many prospective clients and developers to understand the disconnect.
Early-stage technical founders are looking to understand the following:
Where their target developers spend their time
What drives developers' tool selection decisions
How to increase their product's visibility
Which developer channels work best for them
What's preventing wider adoption of their product
Which competitors they should care about
And developers are generally tired of tools being shoved in their faces and would much prefer to engage with their peers and learn what tools their peers are using. This isn’t necessarily a shift from their normal behavior, but since Covid, developers are yearning for both virtual and in-person engagement with their peers. They’re not eager to return to the for-profit events with giant conference booths, but they’re eager to attend local meetups and hang out in developer-curated channels.
I'm also starting to productize a valuable service offering, so watch out for updates there. I'm pretty pumped about the market gap it can fill for technical founders looking to understand what to do next. Teaser: Your developers will tell you.
Opportunities for 2025
I feel like I’ve been heads down for most of the year, only recently being more public about my work. It’s time to tell the world what I’m doing and hopefully there is a way that we can work together this year!
Built for Devs Core Offering: Developer Ecosystem Navigator
I start with Mapping the Ecosystem, where I help uncover market gaps, identify your ideal developers, ease your competitor concerns (by positioning you in unique market gaps), and improve your developer experience through my findings and recommendations report. Together in a focused 4-hour workshop, we'll build your 90-day growth plan—designed to work with your existing resources, whether that's your current team or bringing in experienced contractors.
After we establish your growth plan, you can transition to Ongoing Navigation. I'll provide growth accountability, strategic planning sessions, content and channel distribution strategy, developer trends and insights, plus quarterly ecosystem report updates.
These services are perfect for technical founders who need developer growth support but aren't yet ready to hire a CMO.
Over this last year, I had the opportunity to dive into years of data and network connections I’ve been building over my career and realized I have over 5,500 developers across my networks, ranging from all industries and verticals! I’ve been able to leverage that network to provide feedback for clients, share trends and insights from their work, and invite them to join the Built for Devs Hub where we host virtual events and talk shop.
If your company is looking for new growth techniques or want to supplement their current growth tactics, I have a few opportunities in 2025 to work directly with me and my network.
In-Person Developer Event Representation: I’ll attend a developer event on your behalf driving awareness, capturing developer insights, and collecting leads for sales and partnership opportunities. (4 total opportunities available)
Virtual Developer Event with Your Target Audience: I will curate an engaging developer event inviting your target audience and beyond, driving awareness and invoking curiosity to try your product. (5 total opportunities available)
Elevate Your DevRel Team: I will curate a team-building two-day workshop on building an impactful Developer Relation program that will be customized for your business needs and delivered to your team either virtually or in-person. Likely for mid to late stage startups or enterprises. (3 total opportunities available)
These opportunities are only available as a part of my year-in-review post, and must be arranged by January 31, 2025, as these events will dictate my client availability for the year. If you have any intrigue, reach out with questions immediately.
Supporter Looking to Support?
If you’re one of the awesome humans who’ve asked how they can help me while I grow and build my business, here’s your chance!
I’m looking for support in the following areas;
Feedback! What misconceptions do you have around my messaging and presence? What could I be doing better? What opportunities am I misisng?
Client Leads. If you know any early-stage technical founders building a developer product or tool and they’re struggling to market and distribute it, I’d love to meet them!
Guests for 99 Dev Problems. I’d like to interview developers I don’t know yet, especially ones that are solving complex technical challenges.
Insights, Great Humans, and Impactful Work. I enjoy learning, meeting great people, and doing awesome work. If you have any of those opportunities, just say the word!
TLDR Year in Review
January: continued supporting the DevRel Foundation, MIT Reality Hack, That Conference Texas, and a lot of excitement around driving developer awareness and adoption in 2024!
February: Affected by Snapchat layoff, took a minute, registered builtfor.dev, interviewed with GitHub
March: Lots of interviews, wasn’t feeling it. Hired an executive coach. Had a sad birthday.
April: Landed my first client for builtfor.dev, spoke to many VCs and founders in various stages, hosted a virtual developer conference, started doing DevRel coaching (for DevRel practitioners)
May: Fractional DevRel role, continued DevRel coaching, started chatting with a Stealth Startup about a co-founder role.
June: Added another client in the AI space, continued DevRel coaching, continued conversations with Stealth Startup.
July: Continued with clients, another AI one, and DevRel coaching, decided against being a co-founder with Stealth Startup (but I might regret one day, its going to be great)
August: Landed a new client in the AI & Robotics space, super cool work. Served clients, spent zero time on marketing, still having good feedback sessions with VCs, founders, and developers.
September: Ended contract with first client, continued serving other clients, attended WordCamp US, drama drama drama.
October: Attended CaboPress, continued serving clients and offering DevRel coaching, made big shifts and improvements in my business model that immediately led to more clients ready to buy. Yay!
November: Shifted my business model from big contracts to small deals, didn’t think about the revenue flow effects, whoops, also, didn’t properly market for more client prospects before shifting business models, another whoops, lost biggest client due to an amazing opportunity for them, horrible time for me to lose most of my revenue (with the biz model shift), learned a painful lesson about revenue flow in business, enjoyed attending Generative AI Summit & MLOps World because I learned a ton.
December: Doubled-down on my own marketing, investing heavily in the Built for Devs Hub, launched 99 Dev Problems week-daily show, spoke at Commit Your Code, planned 2025 Built for Devs objectives and growth plan, and spent two weeks off and on overthinking this post, but I'm optimistic and ready to take on the world.
Have you ever given a presentation, had a developer ask you questions afterward, and later that same developer became a customer? Who influenced that sale?
Developer Relations aka DevRel is an ever-changing landscape as the industry becomes more widely known and evolves. The tech industry, in general, is seeing a shift in hiring prioritization and an increasing number of layoffs most recently. I’ve watched many of my DevRel peers find themselves laid off looking
2024 Was Going to Be Incredible
This time last year I was thinking about how my small but mighty team at Snapchat would have to hustle hard in 2024 to see what was possible while we had the chance. Our team had made the cut through two layoffs in the two plus years I spent there, and I expected that in September 2024 we’d be laid off, unless the business found a promising use-case for Camera Kit, the Snapchat camera technology SDK.
I planned back-to-back conferences in January 2024, MIT Reality Hack and That Conference TX. I knew I could get Camera Kit in the hands of creative developers at these events. I was looking to understand innovative use-cases that could drive revenue or lead to business opportunities for SnapAR. We saw some early promising use cases in enterprise, specifically education and travel, and I was eager to see what developers would do with the technology.
Previous to 2024’s strategy, we were in beta and focused on improving developer experience and building a self-serve motion that could support developers at scale without drastic changes internally. We implemented weekly office hours where early-adopters began to build an admiration for the product and team, then we launched a community forum where those developers continued engaging and shared use cases and technology solutions—a necessary element to a self-serve developer motion. We also worked alongside the engineering team to improve the SDK offering, documentation, and educational resources.
In late 2023, we had successfully tested the technology through enterprise hackathons. We had all the elements in place to help developers start innovating and building—2024 was going to be incredible.
Until it Wasn’t
On my first day back from the conferences, I learned I was included in an unexpected off-season layoff. I was devastated—Snapchat had been one of the best companies I'd ever worked for. What made it even harder was that we’d just crushed it at MIT Reality Hack, generating more opportunities than I could have imagined. It may have been my most successful event ever in terms of growth opportunities, and it no longer mattered. That part was the hardest of all.
I entertained a number of interviews, but the new job excitement just wasn’t there.
Starting a Business
I quickly realized that it was time to go out on my own and see what I was capable of. At first, I was doing fractional DevRel, because that was the work that happened to come my way naturally, then I started delivering Developer Experience Audits, providing dev tools with key insights into areas of improvement, red flags, and opportunities they may be missing. As I worked with client after client, I learned what worked, and what didn’t. Until I fine-tuned my service offerings to cater to the audience I wanted to serve, technical founders of early-stage developer products or tools.
I’m a developer at heart. I want to use technology to solve problems. As I worked with various types of clients, I began to realize that my favorites were the technical founders who built something really cool but struggled to distribute it.
How It’s Going Now
Today, Built for Devs has a clear offering, after months of experimentation and learning, that supports early-stage technical founders building products or tools for developers. Throughout 2024, I learned exactly what this audience needs, and I did that by speaking to many prospective clients and developers to understand the disconnect.
Early-stage technical founders are looking to understand the following:
And developers are generally tired of tools being shoved in their faces and would much prefer to engage with their peers and learn what tools their peers are using. This isn’t necessarily a shift from their normal behavior, but since Covid, developers are yearning for both virtual and in-person engagement with their peers. They’re not eager to return to the for-profit events with giant conference booths, but they’re eager to attend local meetups and hang out in developer-curated channels.
I'm also starting to productize a valuable service offering, so watch out for updates there. I'm pretty pumped about the market gap it can fill for technical founders looking to understand what to do next. Teaser: Your developers will tell you.
Opportunities for 2025
I feel like I’ve been heads down for most of the year, only recently being more public about my work. It’s time to tell the world what I’m doing and hopefully there is a way that we can work together this year!
Built for Devs Core Offering: Developer Ecosystem Navigator
I start with Mapping the Ecosystem, where I help uncover market gaps, identify your ideal developers, ease your competitor concerns (by positioning you in unique market gaps), and improve your developer experience through my findings and recommendations report. Together in a focused 4-hour workshop, we'll build your 90-day growth plan—designed to work with your existing resources, whether that's your current team or bringing in experienced contractors.
After we establish your growth plan, you can transition to Ongoing Navigation. I'll provide growth accountability, strategic planning sessions, content and channel distribution strategy, developer trends and insights, plus quarterly ecosystem report updates.
These services are perfect for technical founders who need developer growth support but aren't yet ready to hire a CMO.
Learn more at builtfor.dev or schedule a growth consult to learn more.
Opportunities to Work Directly With Me
Over this last year, I had the opportunity to dive into years of data and network connections I’ve been building over my career and realized I have over 5,500 developers across my networks, ranging from all industries and verticals! I’ve been able to leverage that network to provide feedback for clients, share trends and insights from their work, and invite them to join the Built for Devs Hub where we host virtual events and talk shop.
If your company is looking for new growth techniques or want to supplement their current growth tactics, I have a few opportunities in 2025 to work directly with me and my network.
These opportunities are only available as a part of my year-in-review post, and must be arranged by January 31, 2025, as these events will dictate my client availability for the year. If you have any intrigue, reach out with questions immediately.
Supporter Looking to Support?
If you’re one of the awesome humans who’ve asked how they can help me while I grow and build my business, here’s your chance!
I’m looking for support in the following areas;
TLDR Year in Review
Things You May Have Missed This Year
Built for Devs Hub
Recent blog post on lean dev tool marketing budgets
Recent blog post on asking the right questions when you interview developers
99 Dev Problems Past & Upcoming Shows
Built for Devs Marketing Site
Presenting at Commit Your Code 2024
Guest on Multithreaded Income Podcast
Guest on Scaling Dev Tools [that face!]
Webinar Appearance with Draft.dev
Guest on Community Pulse alongside the awesome Rosie Sherry
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Developer Relations aka DevRel is an ever-changing landscape as the industry becomes more widely known and evolves. The tech industry, in general, is seeing a shift in hiring prioritization and an increasing number of layoffs most recently. I’ve watched many of my DevRel peers find themselves laid off looking