10 TACTICS ✣
Starting a DevRel Program from Scratch.
A practical guide for the founder, early-stage company, or DevRel manager building a program where none existed. This is the playbook the framework files prescribe; here distilled into operational steps.
A practical guide for the founder, early-stage company, or DevRel manager building a program where none existed. This is the playbook the framework files prescribe; here distilled into operational steps.
Step 0: Decide whether you actually need DevRel
Before any hiring, confirm:
- Are developers your decision-makers, integrators, or amplifiers? If not, you may not need DevRel as a function — technical marketing and customer engineering may suffice.
- Do you have a product that developers actually want to use? No DevRel program compensates for a product that fails for its target audience.
- Are you willing to invest beyond one hire? Lone-evangelist programs fail. Plan for at least 2–3 people within 18 months.
If yes to all three: proceed.
Step 1: Articulate the strategy (before hiring)
Write a one-page document covering:
- What goals from AAARRRP does DevRel serve at this company stage? Most likely a subset — often Awareness, Acquisition, Activation, and Product for early-stage; Retention and Referral added later.
- Who is the target developer? Specific persona: stack, seniority, employer type, geography.
- What is the success metric? Pick one to two for the first six months.
- Where does DevRel report? Decide deliberately.
If you cannot answer these, you are not ready to hire.
Step 2: First hire — a Community Manager (or generalist with community lean)
Yes, despite the temptation, the first DevRel hire should usually be a Community Manager or a community-leaning generalist — not a high-profile speaker.
Why:
- An evangelist needs an audience and a place to send them. Without community infrastructure, evangelism scatters.
- Communities take months to bootstrap; starting that early gives compound returns.
- High-profile evangelist hires are expensive and risky without anything for them to feed.
What to hire for:
- Community-management or technical-community experience.
- Some technical credibility (can use the product, hold technical conversations).
- Communication-craft excellence.
- Empathy and operational discipline.
Within the first three months, this person should:
- Build the community infrastructure (Discord / Slack / Discourse, depending on context).
- Operate consistent presence (welcome new members, answer questions, run office hours).
- Identify the first 20–50 highly engaged community members and develop relationships with each.
- Document common questions and friction points.
Step 3: Second hire — a Developer Advocate / Evangelist
Now there is a community to feed. The Advocate produces public content, demos, talks.
What to hire for:
- Demonstrated public portfolio (blog, talks, video).
- Engineering background; can credibly use the product.
- Communication craft; writing-and-speaking competence.
- Cultural alignment with the target developer audience.
Within the first three months, this person should:
- Audit existing docs, samples, content; identify gaps.
- Publish substantial first-flag content (e.g. quickstart improvements, a major blog post, a sample app).
- Establish a content cadence the team commits to.
- Begin conference-speaker submissions.
Step 4: Third hire — Developer Educator / Technical Writer
Audience and content infrastructure are now in place. Education makes the content durable.
What to hire for:
- Technical writing experience.
- Information-architecture instinct.
- Ability to code, even if not primary skill.
- Calm operational temperament.
Within the first three months, this person should:
- Restructure docs around Diátaxis (Tutorial / How-to / Reference / Explanation).
- Audit and remove stale content.
- Build a tutorial pipeline.
- Improve the quickstart specifically — TTFHW is now a tracked metric.
Step 5: Operational infrastructure (parallel)
While hiring is happening, build:
- A 12-month content roadmap mapped to AAARRRP goals.
- Measurement instrumentation for at least three metrics from each of Layer 1 (program), Layer 2 (community), Layer 3 (activity).
- Cross-functional touchpoints. Weekly sync with PM; monthly review with VP-level stakeholders.
- A documented internal-feedback flow from community to product.
- A starter ambassador / community-recognition program (don’t formalise until you have enough community to draw from — usually around 12 months in).
Step 6: Director or Head of DevRel
When the team is 3–5 people, install management. Without this, the team’s strategy can drift, cross-functional integration suffers, and senior individual contributors burn out as default managers.
What to hire for:
- Prior senior DevRel leadership experience.
- Strategic and operational thinking.
- Comfort with executive-level reporting.
- Coaching ability for the IC team.
If you cannot find a great Director hire, promote internally if a candidate is ready, or hire a more senior individual contributor (Staff or Principal level) with leadership potential.
Step 7: Expand by specialisation
After the core four roles, expand by specialisation:
- Domain-specific advocates (AI, mobile, data, security) as appropriate.
- Regional advocates if you have meaningful international audience.
- Developer Marketing Manager for launches and distribution.
- Community Program Manager for the formal ambassador / champion program.
- Developer Success Engineer for activation-deep work.
What not to do
- Do not hire a Principal-level evangelist as your first DevRel hire. Too expensive; no audience yet; structural mismatch.
- Do not under-invest in community. Community is the foundation; evangelism scatters without it.
- Do not let the founder be the only DevRel for a year. Founders are great early voices, but founder-only DevRel does not scale and creates dependency.
- Do not skip strategy. Hiring before strategy produces motion without progress.
- Do not over-promise to executives. Be specific about what you can deliver in months 1–6 vs. months 6–18.
- Do not optimise for vanity metrics in the first six months. Followers and stars distract from durable activation and community-foundation work.
Realistic timeline
| Month | Outcomes |
|---|---|
| 1–2 | Strategy locked; first community hire identified |
| 3–6 | Community Manager in place; community space launched; first 50 engaged members |
| 6–9 | Advocate in place; content cadence established; quickstart improvement shipped |
| 9–12 | Educator in place; docs restructured; first measurable activation lift |
| 12–18 | First three hires productive; Director hired; first ambassador-program members identified |
| 18–24 | Team of 5–7; specialisation begins; influenced-pipeline measurement begins |
This is realistic. Faster is possible with substantial investment; slower happens often when strategy is unclear or hiring is rushed.
What success looks like at 12 months
If the program is on track at month 12, the following are visible:
- Measurable improvement in activation rate or TTFHW (the specific metric depending on goals).
- An active community with at least monthly net positive contributor growth.
- A content engine producing at least one substantial public artefact per week.
- A documented relationship between product and DevRel — voice-of-developer reviews happening; feedback shipping in product.
- Executive recognition of the function’s value, defensible with data.
- Hired three of the four foundational roles.
If these are not visible at month 12, the program has either been under-resourced or has had strategic clarity problems. Diagnose before doubling down.