DEV Community: flo merian

Who's hiring? (November 2024)

flo merian — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 11:51:39 +0000

Developer advocates, product specialists, or technical writers?

If you're looking for a new opportunity in the dev tools space, this post is for you.

9 dev-first companies hiring in November 2024

Below are 9 open roles in developer-first companies:

Wrapping up

I hope this selection will help you take a new step in your career.

Every Sunday, I hand-pick open roles in the dev tools space and post them on Twitter / X and LinkedIn.

Looking for more open roles? You can find my latest posts on Twitter / X here.

The documentation you want, effortlessly

Meet Mintlify — The modern standard for public-facing documentation. Beautiful out of the box, easy to maintain, and optimized for user engagement. 🪴

Get started for free

Who else's hiring?

Is your company hiring? Please let me know! Reply here or send me a DM, and I'll make sure to add it to the next edition.

See you next month — keep it up! 👋

Who's hiring? (October 2024)

flo merian — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 11:37:00 +0000

Developer advocates, product specialists, or technical writers?

If you're looking for a new opportunity in the dev tools space, this post is for you.

8 dev-first companies hiring in October 2024

Below are 8 open roles in developer-first companies:

Wrapping up

I hope this selection will help you take a new step in your career.

Every Sunday, I hand-pick open roles in the dev tools space and post them on Twitter / X and LinkedIn.

Looking for more open roles? You can find my latest posts on Twitter / X here.

The documentation you want, effortlessly

Meet Mintlify — The modern standard for public facing documentation. Beautiful out of the box, easy to maintain, and optimized for user engagement. 🌿

Learn more

Who else's hiring?

Is your company hiring? Please let me know! Reply here or send me a DM and I'll make sure to add it to the next edition.

See you next month — keep it up! 👋

Who's hiring? (September 2024)

flo merian — Fri, 06 Sep 2024 20:56:23 +0000

Developer advocates, product specialists, or technical writers?

If you're looking for a new opportunity in the dev tools space, this post is for you.

5 dev-first companies hiring in September 2024

Below are 5 open roles in developer-first companies:

Wrapping up

I hope this selection will help you take a new step in your career.

Every Sunday, I hand-pick open roles in the dev tools space and post them on Twitter / X and LinkedIn.

Looking for more open roles? You can find my latest posts on Twitter / X here.

The documentation you want, effortlessly

Meet Mintlify — The modern standard for public facing documentation. Beautiful out of the box, easy to maintain, and optimized for user engagement. 🌿

Learn more

Who else's hiring?

Is your company hiring? Please let me know! Reply here or send me a DM and I'll make sure to add it to the next edition.

See you next month — keep it up! 👋

Lessons from 42 launches on Product Hunt

flo merian — Fri, 05 Jul 2024 11:01:00 +0000

Product Hunt definitely is a great place to launch a developer-first product.

If there certainly isn't a formula to launch successfully, there may be a set of principles to help maximize your chances:

Polish the details: keep the tagline and description simple and straightforward;
Show the product: no stock images, no marketing fluff;
Find a Hunter;
Schedule your launch early;
Schedule as much content as possible: first comment and social posts;
Raise awareness: build an audience, support other product launches;
Go live at 12:01 AM PST on a weekday for maximum exposure;
Rank in the Top 5 within the first 4 hours;
Engage: upvote and reply to every comment;
Keep launching.

Further inspiration

Below are more resources for inspiration:

Product Hunt Launch Guide, by Product Hunt;
Lago's Product Hunt Launch Playbook, by Lago (launched in April 2023, ranked #1 Product of the Month);
How not to launch on Product Hunt, by Plausible (launched in August 2020, ranked #2 Product of the Day).

You can find here more resources to help you get started:

awesome-product-hunt: a collection of great dev-first product launches;
product-hunt-launch-kit.md: required inputs to submit a new product;
product-hunt-community-kit.md: ideas to leverage your network;

Wrapping up

Over to you! I hope this series gave you some insights to prep your launch on Product Hunt. I enjoy contributing to launching dev tools and am happy to help more folks.

If you're launching something new, feel free to reach out on Twitter / X or LinkedIn.

Enjoy your launch day!

Thanks to Laura Du Ry (Appwrite), Tanya Rai (LastMile AI), Luis Guzmán (n8n), and Rishabh Kaul (Appsmith) for your contributions. Thanks to Jack Bridger for bs-checking this post. They're all in the Developer Marketing community, a place where 1,600+ tech founders and marketers from awesome dev-first, open-source companies hang out to share insights and best practices. Join the fun!

Keep launching

flo merian — Fri, 05 Jul 2024 07:01:00 +0000

You just launched your developer tool on Product Hunt. Bravo!

There's two more things to keep the momentum going:

Maximize efforts and,
Keep launching.

Maximize efforts

With the assets you've worked on for your Product Hunt launch, you can maximize efforts by launching on more places, like Hacker News and Dev Hunt, an open-source alternative for dev-first products.

Launch early, launch often

Launching on Product Hunt isn't a one-time opportunity. Launch early, launch often.

You can pre-launch your product.

When submitting a new product on Product Hunt, you can mark it as pre-launch.

You can launch multiple times.

Take Stripe. The company launched 68 times on Product Hunt in the last 10 years. Supabase launched 12 times in the last 4 years. Raycast has launched 11 products since 2020.

Launching multiple times creates a tailwind.
— Repost this

Luis Guzmán, Head of Marketing at n8n (launched 5 times since 2019), sums it up perfectly:

Every follower we collected from past launches receives a notification about recent launches. This helps get more exposure.
— Luis Guzmán, Head of Marketing, n8n

So, keep launching.

24 hours on Product Hunt

flo merian — Thu, 04 Jul 2024 07:01:00 +0000

Here's the day. Launching on Product Hunt is a 24-hour race — and it starts at 12:01 AM PST.

For the first 4 hours of the day, Product Hunt hides upvotes and sorts the homepage randomly. According to Product Hunt, this should give products "a more distributed chance at exposure early." Your objective is to rank in the Top 5 within that time to maximize exposure.

Pro tip: use hunted.space to monitor your launch day in real time.

https://hunted.space/dashboard/{yourProduct}

During the day, upvote and reply to every comment. Make this day an opportunity to engage: start conversations and ask for feedback.

Laura Du Ry and the Appwrite team launched its Cloud Beta in October 2023 and ranked #4 Product of the Day. Laura tells:

The team was quick with responding and engaging. We cleared a part of the teams' calendar to be able to engage.
— Laura Du Ry, Growth Manager, Appwrite

Tanya Rai from LastMile AI shares the feeling:

On launch day, we had the whole team on board to respond to messages almost instantly. This was a round-the-clock effort by the team to show that we were actively engaged and interested in what feedback we were receiving from the Product Hunt community. We left no questions or comments unanswered.
— Tanya Rai, Product Manager, LastMile AI

Make this launch day an opportunity to celebrate your efforts with your team and community. Make the most out of it by engaging in conversations and brainstorming new ideas, and above all, enjoy it.

The anatomy of a launch plan

flo merian — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 07:01:00 +0000

Despite what you can read here and there, there certainly isn't a formula to launch on Product Hunt. Still, there's a set of principles to help maximize your chances with your launch:

Polish your content and visual assets;
Engage with the community;
On launch day, launch at 12:01 AM PST and spread the word;

Setting up the launchpad

To start, below are the required inputs to submit a new product on Product Hunt. You can find them here on GitHub to get started.

Name of the product: simply the name of your product in 40 characters or less;
Tagline: a concise and descriptive tagline in 60 characters max; avoid hyperbolic words and emojis — keep it simple;
Description: a short description of what the product does in less than 260 characters; supports basic HTML: <strong>, <em>, <a>, <li>;
First comment: tells the story, explains why you’re building the product, and invites people to join the conversation;
Thumbnail: a 240 x 240 pixel thumbnail;
Image gallery: 2 to 8 images to show your product; avoid stock images and marketing fluff. Show the product, i.e. product screenshots. You can add social proof and a call-to-action to inspire action; The first image is used as the social preview when you share the link to your launch page.

For inspiration, below are some images from great dev-first product launches:

Appwrite shows the product.

Lago highlighted testimonials and GitHub stars.

Supabase added a call-to-action to inspire action.

Tanya Rai and her team launched LastMile AI in October 2023 and ranked #2 Product of the Day and #4 Product of the Week. In this blog post, Tanya shared some lessons learned, and I really enjoyed this quote on polishing the details:

We spent some time nailing the messaging in a way that was palatable to the Product Hunt community. It's good to tailor your messaging and media assets to the community — it will resonate more.
— Tanya Rai, Product Manager, LastMile AI

Now that you've polished the details and tailored the messaging and visual assets in a simple and straightforward way, it's time to schedule the launch and submit the product. I recommend finding a Hunter.

Finding a Hunter

Do you need someone specific to submit your open-source product on Product Hunt? By default, the answer is no. According to Product Hunt, using a Hunter isn't a barrier to success:

79% of featured posts were by makers who self-hunted;
60% of #1 Product of the Day winners were self-hunted.

If finding a Hunter isn't a requirement per se, you may need one for three main reasons:

a Hunter reviews your inputs, gives feedback, and suggests improvements;
on launch day, a Hunter can support by upvoting and replying to comments;
a Hunter can leverage networks by promoting your launch on socials;

When done right, a Hunter is a catalyst for your launch.
— Repost this

Take n8n, an open-source Zapier alternative. When the team launched its 1.0 in July 2023 (ranked #1 Product of the Day and #2 Product of the Week), it partnered with Chris Messina, and Luis Guzmán, Head of Marketing, puts it very eloquently:

A recognized Hunter makes a difference. We partnered with Chris Messina to be our Hunter, and it helped a lot — even when Product Hunt says it doesn't.
— Luis Guzmán, Head of Marketing, n8n

Here's another example. When we launched Specify, we collaborated with Hiten Shah. We chose to partner with Hiten because he has an influence on Product Hunt and beyond. Above all, it was a fantastic feeling for the team, e.g. an extra source of motivation prior to the launch.

More personally, when I collaborate with teams to help them launch, like Corbado (launched in January 2024, ranked #4 Product of the Day), I'm committed to challenging every aspect of the launch plan and supporting on launch days by leveraging my network.

If anyone can submit a product on Product Hunt anytime, a Hunter certainly helps with the launch.

Warming up

In this blog post, Product Hunt's founder, Ryan Hoover, wrote:

Building a startup? Build an audience, first.
— Ryan Hoover, Founder, Product Hunt

This could apply to product launches, too: if you're launching on Product Hunt, build an audience first.

You can schedule your launch up to 30 days ahead. Below are some ideas to get started:

Create a Coming Soon page;
Add your upcoming launch on hunted.space;
Schedule as much content as possible: social posts, website banner, email campaigns;
Host an AMA session — see examples from Documenso here and Supabase there;
Support other product launches.

Also, make sure to tease your network and community early.

We let our network and product community know that we had planned to launch on Product Hunt. It was super valuable for us to have support from our existing users and network and they came through for us.
— Tanya Rai, Product Manager, LastMile AI

In this file, I suggest some ideas to leverage your community:

List some key elements to play and mix;
Include links to posts and comments for inspiration.

Let's recap.

So far, you have:

polished the details: messaging and visual assets;
found a Hunter;
scheduled your launch;
scheduled as much content as possible;
started raising awareness, reaching out to your influencers, and engaging on Product Hunt;

You're ready to go live.

Launching a dev tool on Product Hunt? Keep it simple

flo merian — Tue, 02 Jul 2024 07:01:00 +0000

The question isn't if you should launch on Product Hunt. It's how.

To start, some definitions:

Maker: a user who works on the product;
Hunter: a user who submits a product and doesn't work on it;
Upvoter: a user who upvotes a product;
Commenter: a user who comments on a product;
Launch page: where your launched product lives;
Kitty coins: Novice (Level 0-100), Bronze (Level 101-500), Silver (Level 501-1,000), Gold (Level 1,001+);
Ranking: Product of the Day / Week / Month / Year (i.e. Golden Kitty Award).

Let's be upfront. Over the years, I've contributed to launching many dev-first products and, is there a secret sauce? No.

When Specify launched, we planned weeks ahead and launched on a weekday — we thought it would maximize exposure. We ranked #2 Product of the Day, #9 Product of the Week. We hit 2.5K unique visitors.

When Documenso launched, it was the opposite. We had no plan and launched during the weekend. We ranked #1 Product of the Day and #9 Product of the Week. We hit 2.5K unique visitors, too.

Two different launches; same results.

Take Peer Richelsen. Peer is the co-founder and co-CEO of Cal.com. He launched 6 times on Product Hunt and got 10 awards. He puts it very simply:

Have a good product.
— Peer Richelsen, Co-founder and CEO, Cal.com

You don't need to overthink to launch on Product Hunt successfully. Keep it simple.

42 launches on Product Hunt

flo merian — Mon, 01 Jul 2024 07:01:00 +0000

I've launched 42 dev tools on Product Hunt in the last 2 years — or maybe 55? To be honest, I've lost count.

I could bore you with the details of how Specify launched or that Product Hunt awarded me Community Member of the Year in 2022 (runner-up).

No. What you probably care about is what my key takeaways are.

So, here we go — what I learned from 42 (or 55) dev-first product launches on Product Hunt.

Why Product Hunt

Product Hunt definitely is a great place to launch — a place where many developer-first products launched successfully: Supabase, Resend, and Warp, to name a few.

According to similarweb.com, it gets 4.8 million unique visitors every month, and according to Ahrefs, it has a 91 domain rating.

Product Hunt helps raise awareness, get feedback, and enable early traction.

Rishabh Kaul, Head of Marketing at Appsmith, who launched in March 2023 and ranked #5 Product of the Day, adds:

One of the often overlooked parts of Product Hunt is the reviews that you get during launch. They are customer testimonials for your marketing site.
— Rishabh Kaul, Head of Marketing, Appsmith

The question isn't if you should launch on Product Hunt. It's how.

Clerk Update — March 2024

flo merian — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 14:31:54 +0000

The Clerk team has been hard at work shipping new features to help you build secure applications faster. Here’s a rundown of some of the highlights:

Core 2 Beta

We just shipped a beta release with refreshed UI components, a new middleware for Next.js, and a new CLI tool to help you upgrade.

Refreshed UI Components: Our Core 2 SDKs feature redesigned UI components for an enhanced design and UX. They provide the perfect foundation for your app and allow you to focus on building.
New Default Middleware for Next.js: In Core 2, middleware settings now leave routes open by default, giving you the freedom to protect as needed.
Upgrade CLI Tool: To aid you in this upgrade, we've built a CLI tool called @clerk/upgrade that scans your codebase, guiding you step-by-step through the Core 2 upgrade.

Learn more about Core 2 Beta in this Changelog post →

Data Privacy Framework

Clerk is now self-certified under the Data Privacy Framework (DPF), enhancing the security of your business and your users.

EU Data Compliance: This certification ensures US-based businesses can transfer and store EU citizens' personal data in a manner compliant with GDPR regulations through approved mechanisms.
State-Of-The-Art Data Protection: Clerk's DPF certification places us among leading SaaS companies like Stripe, GitHub, and Auth0 in prioritizing data protection and compliance.

Learn more in this Changelog post →

Go SDK v2 Beta

We shipped an updated beta version of our Go SDK:

Enhanced Developer Experience: Go SDK v2 offers more comprehensive features and improved structure.
Feedback Request: We'd love for you to try this beta version! Find the latest here and please do share your feedback on Discord!

Learn more about Go SDK v2 Beta in this Changelog post →

Other Features, Fixes & Improvements

Improved Organization Billing Visibility: The 'Manage Organizations' section in the Clerk Dashboard centralizes your organization's billing, application usage, and seat allocation details.
Support for Twitter/𝕏 v2: Clerk now fully integrates with Twitter/𝕏's v2 OAuth workflow.
SAML Exiting Beta on April 1, 2024: As of April 1st, SAML Enterprise Connections is moving from Beta to General Availability.

Events & Community Updates

Clerk is proud to sponsor these upcoming events:

React Miami: April 18-20 in Miami, FL
Stripe Sessions: April 23-25 in San Francisco, CA

Stop by our booth to learn more about our new features and get some awesome swag!

Resources

Webhook Workflows with Inngest & Svix: Learn how we teamed up with Inngest and Svix to enhance your authentication workflows using Clerk's new Inngest webhook transformation template.
How to Add an Onboarding Flow to Your Application With Clerk: Leverage Clerk's customizable session tokens, publicMetadata and Next.js’ middleware to create a robust first-time user experience.
Create Your Own Custom User Menu with Radix: A 2-part series to build a custom user menu for your app leveraging Clerk's hooks and methods and building on Radix primitives for a custom UI.
Ultimate Guide to Magic Link Authentication: Discover the benefits of email magic links, how they work, and why they meet the requirements for secure, passwordless authentication.

Community Highlights

Use Clerk to Authenticate Users in a Go Backend by Marcus Kohlberg
Use Clerk With Authn in Next.js by Roberto Yamanaka
Build a Code Snippet Manager With Neon, Clerk & Next.js by Olumide Micheal
How to Authenticate a Next.js Route Handler Using Clerk by Devin Rader
Create Custom Clerk Auth Forms With Next.js, Typescript & Tailwind by Steven Smodish and Alex Curtis-Slep
Build a Viral Event Sharing Page by Learn With Jason
Build a Duolingo Clone With Nextjs, React, Drizzle & Stripe by Code With Antonio
Build a File Storage App With Next.js, Shadcn & Typescript by Web Dev Cody

If you have feedback or suggestions, we want to hear them! Let us know at feedback.clerk.com. For the latest on our product releases, follow @ClerkDev on 𝕏 or join the Clerk Community on Discord.

I analyzed the 14 best open-source products launched on Product Hunt in 2023. Here's what I found.

flo merian — Fri, 19 Jan 2024 17:55:20 +0000

Product Hunt just unveiled a list of 14 products nominated for the Golden Kitty Award 2023 in the “Open Source” category.

I analyzed the following data to identify some trends:

launch dates;
# upvotes;
# comments;
awards.

Here’s what I found.

tl,dr

11 products (79%) launched on a weekday;
11 products (79%) ranked #1 Product of the Day, with 977 upvotes on average.

key takeaways

11 products (79%) launched on a weekday: 21% launched on Mon or Tue, 14% launched on Thu or Fri;
10 products (71%) launched for the first time;

On launch day, the best open-source products got on average:

977 upvotes, range:[439-2,229];
222 comments, range:[15-466].

As a result:

11 products (79%) ranked #1 Product of the Day, 13 products (93%) reached the Top 5;
2 products (14%) ranked #1 Product of the Week, 10 products (71%) reached the Top 5;
2 products (14%) reached the Top 5 Products of the Month.

wrapping up

I hope you'll find these learnings helpful. For the record, you can find the dataset here.

If you're planning to launch a dev tool on Product Hunt, find inspiration from more great dev-first product launches there.

Enjoy!

Who's hiring developer advocates? (December 2023)

flo merian — Mon, 04 Dec 2023 12:37:00 +0000

If you're looking for a new opportunity as a Developer Advocate, this post is for you.

5 open source companies hiring developer advocates in December

Below are 5 open roles in OSS companies:

BentoML

Open Platform for AI Developers
Link to GitHub -->
Link to job description -->

MongoDB

Teleport

Open Infrastructure Access Platform
Link to GitHub -->
Link to job description -->

Temporal

Open Source Durable Execution Platform
Link to GitHub -->
Link to job description -->

Wing Cloud

Open Source, Cloud-Oriented Programming Language
Link to GitHub -->
Link to job description -->

Wrapping up

I hope this selection will help you take a new step in your career.

Every Friday, I hand-pick open roles in the dev tools space and post them on Twitter / X and LinkedIn.

And if you want more open roles, go to ossjobs.dev, a job board that helps you find your next career opportunity, specifically in the open-source space.

Who else's hiring?

Is your company hiring? Please let me know! Reply here or send me a DM and I'll make sure to add it to the next edition.

See you next month -- keep it up! 👋