# Evil Martians > Evil Martians is a developer tools consultancy that helps startups build AI agents, AI-native products, scale infrastructure, and reach product-market fit - URL: https://evilmartians.com/ - Contact: https://evilmartians.com#contact-us Design and engineering consultancy for developer tools, AI, and cybersecurity startups ## Services From AI-native products to infrastructure and security—we've shipped it ### Agent Experience Build Agent Experience for your product: discovery optimization, agent-friendly APIs and CLIs, and security guardrails against abuse Technologies: CLI, AX, MCP ### Product development Forward-deployed engineers who ship your product from PoC to PMF: embedded in your repo, your stack, your cadence Technologies: Rails, TypeScript, Go ### Design for devtools CLI, dashboard, SDK, and AI product interfaces that developers actually love: we design UX for developer tools, not consumer apps Technologies: UI, DX ### Frontend & real-time Dev tool interfaces, small libraries, design systems, real-time collaboration, LLM streaming, and voice AI: the frontend infrastructure for products developers use daily Technologies: React, WebSocket, CRDT ### Platform engineering Deploy anywhere and scale to millions: Kubernetes, Terraform, Go infrastructure, and cloud platforms for developer tools Technologies: K8s, AWS, Terraform ### Performance & scale Handle explosive growth without re-architecting: database scaling, background jobs, and the profiling to know where it hurts Technologies: Rails, Go, Rust ## Clients We work with 40+ developer tools startups each year, many backed by Y Combinator ### bolt.new ($113M total funding) With Evil Martians, bolt.new scaled to 3M+ MAU and grew ARR to $40M in 5 months - **Daylight Security** ($40M total funding): Rebuilt 5 core user workflows into a scalable design system. Cybersecurity - **Tines** ($271M total funding): Built new UX and optimized app performance for 100x gains. Devtool, AI, Unicorn - **Teleport** ($169M total funding): Developed plugin ecosystem that scaled to 100+ clients. Cybersecurity, Unicorn - **Synadia** ($51M total funding): Sped up NATS Ruby SDK by 3x for high-load cases. Devtool - **Lago** ($22M total funding): Scaled engineering team to ramp up feature delivery. Devtool - **Wallarm** ($75M total funding): Rebuilt Go event pipeline securing 20,000+ apps and APIs. Cybersecurity ## Open source We've built 100+ open source projects and help OSS devtools companies ship commercial products ### PostCSS (1.9x More downloads than React) The #2 most popular CSS tool on the web, used by ≈0.4% of all web pages. Google, Facebook, and GitHub use PostCSS in their products. - **Nanoid** (111M/wk): A nano-sized unique string ID generator for JS - **imgproxy** (32M): Fast and secure on-the-fly image optimization server - **AnyCable** (9M): Realtime server powering realtime features - **Lefthook** (1.2M/wk): Git hooks manager for Node.js, Ruby, or any other type of projects - **Nano Stores** (1.8M/wk): A tiny state manager for React, Preact, Vue, Svelte, Solid, and vanilla JS - **AgentPrism** (AI agent traces): Turn AI agent traces into clear, visual diagrams for debugging ## How we work **We embed as catalysts**: Your repo, your Slack, your stand-ups. Our engineers and designers join as teammates who ship—not vendors who bill. **We ship value, not just code**: 19 years of startup experience means we know what actually moves the needle. From architecture to UI, we deliver. **We play the long game**: Years, not sprints. We build for sustainable growth—architecture that scales, with design systems that last. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is Evil Martians? Evil Martians is a product development consulting firm for developer tools. We work with ~40 early-stage startups every year, many backed by Y Combinator, and help them find product-market fit. 65% of our clients raise their next round within 1–3 years. ### How does product development consultancy work for devtools? Product development consultancy for devtools is a collaboration between your in-house technical team and external experts who support you in complex tasks. When you pair with Martians, you get a team that handles highly complex tasks but also gives you clarity, explains trade-offs, and challenges you to find the best possible solution. ### What does Evil Martians do? Evil Martians helps startups ship developer tools, AI-native products, infrastructure, and security—from first commit to product-market fit. We embed with your team and work across Go, TypeScript, Ruby on Rails, Rust, Python, and React. We maintain 100+ open source projects with 25B+ total downloads. Companies hire us to go from PoC to MVP, iterate to PMF, and scale through explosive growth—8 of our clients grew from seed to unicorn. ### Where is Evil Martians located? We have offices in San Francisco, New York, Porto, and Osaka, but our team operates remotely, serving clients across all major time zones. ### How much does product development consulting cost? Every engagement is scoped based on your product's stage, complexity, and goals. Our rate is $8,000/week per Martian. Reach out to discuss your project and get a tailored estimate. ### What developer tools has Evil Martians built? We've worked on hundreds of devtools, including bolt.new, Teleport, NATS, Rootly, HTTPie, Aptos, and many more. ### Does Evil Martians work with AI developer tools startups? Yes, AI-native development is one of our core verticals. We help AI startups build AI agents, LLM integrations, tool-use and MCP infrastructure, and AI-native product patterns. We've shipped agent orchestration, agent observability, and agentic coding tools. We also build AI Harnesses—open source skill sets that encode architectural patterns into AI coding tools like Claude Code, Cursor, and Copilot, making agentic coding more productive for Rails and TypeScript/React teams. Our engineers helped scale bolt.new from a browser IDE into the AI-powered tool that hit $20M+ ARR in 2 months. ### Does Evil Martians work with cybersecurity companies? Yes, we work with cybersecurity startups like Teleport, Tines, Wallarm, and Daylight Security. We help security companies build dashboards, agent infrastructure, and developer-facing security tools that integrate into existing workflows. Tines, a leading security orchestration platform, runs on Ruby on Rails—we helped them with core product design, frontend, and backend. ### Does Evil Martians work with Ruby on Rails companies? Ruby on Rails is our deepest expertise. Our team authored the book Layered Design for Ruby on Rails Applications, maintains dozens of Rails open source projects (TestProf, Action Policy, AnyCable, Yabeda, Logidze), and organizes the SF Ruby meetup and the San Francisco Ruby Conference. We work with Rails companies like Tines, bolt.new, and Whop. We also build AI Harnesses for Rails teams—encoding architectural patterns into AI coding tools so agentic coding produces better code, CI time stays stable, and application performance and security stay under control. See our Ruby on Rails Startup Stack at /rails-startup-stack for our complete recommended stack. ### Does Evil Martians work with infrastructure companies? Yes, infrastructure is one of our strongest verticals. We work with companies like NATS, GMI Cloud, and Wallarm on messaging systems, GPU cloud infrastructure, and cloud platforms. We built on-prem Kubernetes deployments for bolt.new and real-time Voice AI infrastructure for Doximity. We also maintain AnyCable, our own open source WebSocket server. Our teams ship in TypeScript, Python, Go, Rust, and Kubernetes. ### Does Evil Martians work with data infrastructure companies? Yes, we work with companies building data pipelines, streaming infrastructure, and real-time analytics platforms. We have deep experience with PostgreSQL, message queues, CDC systems, and high-throughput data processing. Our open source projects AnyCable and Logux handle real-time data at scale.