“DevRelCon made its debut in New York City in July 2024 and congregated industry experts, speakers and attendees from promising startups to top tier organizations. It successfully invigorated the audience with thought provoking conversations, informative talks and practical tips to amplify your DevRel program.”
As Director of Developer Relations at PAR Punchh, I had the privilege to represent PAR Punchh at the DevRelCon. It was energizing to engage in thoughtful conversations with like-minded people working towards a shared purpose. The diverse perspectives, the exchange of ideas, success stories and challenges were enlightening. Inarguably, forums like these contribute towards building vibrant technology communities and play a crucial role in paving the path of innovation for our economies. In this post, I have summarized my top seven takeaways from the event.
1. Developer Relations is now mainstream
Developer Relations has evolved over the last many years and has now become a distinct discipline. Popularized by the likes of Stripe, Twillio, Google, AWS etc., Developer Relations is now deemed crucial to the success of every tech company with developer facing products. The shape and form of a Developer Relations program may vary from company to company, but the need is progressively becoming more evident across the technology industry. Naturally, many already have joined the bandwagon and more continue to do so on a rapid scale.
2. Define your Developer Relations strategy
You’ll have to tailor your Developer Relations program strategy that aligns with your business’ north star. How you define your strategy will depend on various factors including the size of your company, culture, customer and partner needs etc. For instance, if you are an early-stage startup, the developers themselves may play the role of Developer Relations. As your company scales, you’ll need to build and scale a dedicated team to operate the Developer Relations program. For some companies, the products may appeal to the broad developer community while some may be very partner focused. You’ll also need to define your ICP (ideal customer profile), KPIs (key performance indicators), developer experience, content strategy among other things. No matter where you stand today, it is important to have a sound strategy in place that you continuously monitor and iterate on. A Developer Relations program includes multiple facets including developer evangelism, advocacy, community building and enablement. A strong emphasis on developer advocacy enables you build feedback loops with your target consumers and tune your product strategy. Doing so in a timely manner can potentially change your company’s fortunes.
3. Build the right culture – early
Building a Developer Relations mindset in your people early can set the right foundation for your company. Headley Harris, one of the panelists at the conference and investor by profession, shared a simple but powerful anecdote that really impressed me. He shared his experience about this early-stage startup focused on building developer products that made performing Developer Relations related activities an essential requirement from their software developers right from the onset. Hiring developers with this skill set led to Developer Relations being ingrained in the company culture early on. As they scaled, it helped them showcase the value of their technology and always be in tune with their customers (developers) which in turn helped them execute a successful product strategy.
4. Quantify & communicate your impact
As with any other company function, Developer Relations must define KPIs and align them with the business’ objectives. Specifically for advocacy, these may include metrics such as impressions on social channels, blogs or newsletters published, API (application programming interface) usage, etc. They could also be more revenue centric, for example, number of product activations or downloads or revenue that is unlocked by enabling partner developer integrations. It’s also important to socialize and communicate your impact internally to the right stakeholders. This helps maintain strong cross-functional alignment and a healthy investment in the function.
5. Leverage internal stakeholders
Developer Relations as a function can’t succeed alone. This is a very cross-functional discipline. It must cultivate partnerships with Customer Success (CS), Sales, Product, Engineering, Partnerships, the list goes on. CS understands customers’ needs more than anyone in the company. Product and Engineering enable Developer Relations understand the minutiae of the company’s products/technology. Sales can provide Developer Relations insights into underserved areas of the market. Note, however, that Developer Relations should refrain from investing in individual customer success.
6. Invest in a strong technology stack
You’ll need a good set of tools to build, host and serve your technical content, manage your developer community and developer experience. Some prefer to keep it old school, but I believe investing in a relatively modern technology stack can pay dividends in the long run. Unsurprisingly, a plethora of tools have emerged in the market that serve this purpose including developer community management, developer education, building tools etc. With the advent of modern AI (artificial intelligence), some promising solutions are also emerging in the market that will advance the cause of Developer Relations.
7. Finally, get the basics right
To succeed, you’ll need the fundamentals right. Think PPP – People, Process, Product. When it comes to people, you’ll need people on your team that are passionate about solving problems, customer focused, technically capable and relentless. For process, have a clear playbook laid out for managing your partner developers, think long term and build and maintain reusable technical assets that will help you scale, highlight your impact broadly and invest in meetups to nurture your relationships. For product, be the eyes and ears of your organization and build strong feedback loops to meet customer expectations. Ultimately, they are the ones that will help you succeed.
The PAR Developer Relations group is on a mission to build a robust bridge between PAR and the Developer Community with best-in-class developer experience, advocacy and evangelism. We recently launched the PAR Punchh APIs on Postman to enable our customers and partners to seamlessly integrate with the Punchh platform. Many more innovations to come soon.
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