Defining the ideal customer profile for a devtool

Dario Di Carlo — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 12:12:48 +0000

The ICP is the single most crucial part of our go-to-market strategy.

Everything we do: inbound, pricing, feature prioritization—revolves around it.

Here, James Hawkins and PostHog’s approach has been a great reference for us (find out more: https://posthog.com/newsletter/ideal-customer-profile-framework).

So I’ll borrow from them: "the entire company strategy is downstream of your ICP."

That’s exactly why we put so much effort into this.

We needed a Northern light to guide our efforts.

150+ chats with devs helped us with this.

These chats had a simple goal—assessing the distinction between:

❌ Tech teams interested in Bricks AI
✅ Tech teams that NEED Bricks AI, NOW.

It turns out, those are the companies that:
🚀 Are scaling fast
💻 Have scarce engineering resources
🏗️ Deal with tons of ops tasks

Companies Scaling Fast

Selling to fast-growing companies is ideal.

They have lots going on, and most processes are broken. Pain points are amplified, and they’re constantly patching things.

This is super important for Bricks AI.

That's because fast-scaling companies:

Update their core product frequently
→ Their admin panel needs to stay up-to-date
→ High pressure on devs to ship internal features quickly

A tool that reduces dev time on internal tools becomes essential for these companies.

Companies with Scarce Engineering Resources

If a company has plenty of devs for internal tools, there’s not much for Bricks AI to solve.

They have the pain point—but also the resources to patch it.

However, most companies we’ve spoken to:
— Lack engineering time for admin panels
— Don’t want to invest a minute in their frontend

Industries like logistics, marketplace, and fintech displayed a higher concentration of these companies.

High volume of ops tasks

Some companies need internal tools to function.

Think of marketplaces verifying users, logistics handling shipments, or e-commerce platforms processing refunds.

They can’t offload these tasks to devs manually.

Business teams need to address them immediately.

For them, an admin panel is essential.

Devs know they have to build one.

What they often don’t know is how to minimize dev time on those tools.

That’s where Bricks AI shines, reducing dev time on internal tools by 90%.

And that’s how we defined our ICP. We'll be spending some more time on this topic. Follow me to stay up to date!

Selling devtools to devs ― building a growth motion in public

Dario Di Carlo — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 10:05:20 +0000

Hey everyone—first time posting here. I’d love your feedback to help me be helpful!

I’m diving into sharing my journey of selling devtools as a devtool startup founder—and I thought this community might find it interesting.

Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

Selling to devs is a unique game.

At Bricks AI, we’re still figuring out how to nail it. But honestly, it’s been a lot of fun.

One thing I’ve noticed: devs are no-BS people. They see through the typical sales fluff.

So, we ditched the standard sales tactics and crafted our own approach.

Our go-to-market strategy is all about:
― Meeting devs where they’re at
― Aligning with our mission: automating admin panel development for everyone

Over the next few weeks, I’ll share how we’re:

Defining our ICP
Generating leads
Converting leads into paying customers
Tracking the entire funnel

I have to admit, it’s a bit nerve-wracking.

Why? Because:
― We’re not 100% sure it will work
― It’s our first time doing this

But we’ve got some things going for us:
We’ve built internal tools ourselves and know the pain points because we’ve felt them.

We are our target audience.

So, here’s to figuring it out together.

I can’t wait to look back in a year and chuckle at how much we’ve learned.

Stay tuned!