2 builders who never spoke to each other

Earn the developer audience on its own ground

Technical buyers under-index on every network marketers default to, so retargeting them mostly buys impressions nobody sees. An open-source repo, docs that are not painful to read, a tool with one clear job, or visible contribution to the project your product depends on earns attention on surfaces they already trust.

The method

1. 01

   Contribute visibly to the open-source project your product depends on, since your product's demand is downstream of that project's health.

2. 02

   Earn a technical audience with an open-source repo, documentation that does not hurt, a tool that does one job well or an honest write-up, instead of retargeting them.

What it returned

• $2,000

  Zue joined Django's social media team writing Feature Friday posts, stood for the Django Software Foundation board, and committed Pegasus to $2,000 per person per year under the Open Source Pledge.

• SparkToro's reading of the platform data is that developer attention is earned on the surfaces they already trust, since every network marketers default to under-indexed for this group.

Sources

• How We'd Market to Software Developers at Startups - SparkToroSparkToro · sparktoro.com · Insight #2: The “social network” that matters most here is GitHub. · 2026-06-04
• Solopreneurship: Year 8Cory Zue · coryzue.com · Giving back · 2024-12-20