Jon Gottfried recounts the founding story of Major League Hacking (MLH), from its origins in connecting university hackathon communities to becoming a platform that has reached over one million developers.

He discusses pivotal moments like landing Dell as their first major sponsor and explains why word-of-mouth marketing outperformed paid acquisition for their developer audience. Jon reveals their intentional strategy of using branded merchandise as identity markers and demonstrates how initially unscalable personal connections evolved into systematic community-building processes.

Throughout the conversation, Jon emphasizes that measuring impact through changed lives has been far more meaningful than tracking vanity metrics, offering valuable insights for anyone building developer communities.

Developer Marketing Stories is brought to you by Developer Marketing in Practice, the training and coaching program that helps you level-up your developer marketing career. https://developer.marketing

Launching GitHub Copilot wasn’t just another product launch—it was a shift in how developers interact with AI.

Alyss Noland breaks down the challenges of taking an experimental product from a skunkworks project to a widely adopted tool, while managing internal expectations and developer trust.

Alyss shares what worked, what didn’t, and the lessons that apply to any developer-focused go-to-market strategy. From balancing executive priorities to making pricing decisions with limited data, this conversation is packed with insights for anyone bringing a developer product to market.

See the transcript and more at https://developer.marketing

01:26 – Understanding Twitch’s developer audience
Katie explains how Twitch initially focused on gaming integrations but saw the opportunity to expand into a broader developer ecosystem.

03:35 – Using live streaming to engage developers
Katie shares how her team experimented with live coding streams, unexpectedly drawing in developer advocates and growing a new community.

07:21 – The challenge of trust in developer marketing
Reflecting on Twitter’s Fabric launch, Katie highlights the difficulty of rebuilding developer trust after past missteps.

10:17 – Why showing ‘under the hood’ matters
Katie emphasizes how transparency—whether through blog posts or live demos—helps developers connect with a platform.

12:29 – Segmenting developer audiences effectively
Katie discusses how different types of developers (enterprise, hobbyists, mobile app developers) have distinct motivations and engagement patterns.

19:19 – Strategies for engaging different developer types
Katie outlines how different audiences require tailored approaches, from partnerships to content marketing to meetups.

26:30 – Metrics for tracking developer engagement
Katie breaks down key metrics Twitch used to measure the health of its developer community, from API calls to extension adoption.

30:06 – Lessons from Twitter and Twitch
Katie reflects on the risks of overpromising to developers and why developer programs need to be core to a company’s business.

35:18 – Advice for new developer marketers
Katie shares why product marketing skills are essential in DevRel and how marketers can establish themselves as strategic partners.