Devtools startup advisory
Six months of working sessions with Evil Martians CEO Irina Nazarova on the decisions that set a devtools company’s trajectory: positioning, pricing, fundraising, and go-to-market.
Evil Martians method
Six one-hour sessions over six months with Irina Nazarova, spent on the calls a founder cannot delegate: value-based pricing that matches how developers buy, the product-market fit signals that actually mean something for devtools, who invests in this category and how to approach them, and a go-to-market plan covering open source, community, and launches. This is not startup coaching. Irina has worked in this one market since 2006.
Deciding what to build before you build it?
Social proof
The portfolio behind the advice
Evil Martians work with about 40 developer tools startups a year. Eight of them grew from seed to unicorn, and 65% raise a Series A or B within one to three years. That is the pattern library Irina brings to a session: what to validate before building, when platform engineering starts paying for itself, and which way this market is moving.
Where Irina works in public
- SF Ruby: she runs the community and the conference, and meets hundreds of devtools founders a year.
- Dev Propulsion Labs: our show where founders like DHH, Paul Copplestone, and David Cramer explain how they built their businesses.
- Top developer tool investors: the list we keep on who funds this category.