Opbeat
References from this period: 2 LinkedIn recommendations, full text. They vouch for the role, not for any one claim.
Proof points: 4
| Role | Product | Situation | Task | Action | Result | Year | Skills |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Head of Marketing, Opbeat | Opbeat Opbeat, developer tools SaaS startup providing application performance monitoring. Backed by the cofounders of Facebook and Instagram. | New product came out of stealth and lacked traction. The audience was developers, who are allergic to advertising. | Build the brand, marketing strategy, team and channels from scratch, and get traction without advertising at people who ignore advertising. | Learnt the developer audience by sitting with the engineers in the team. Defined the core product proposition and the developer narrative, and told the story. Built the brand, the team and the channels from nothing, then ran growth experiments across them. The two biggest levers, the meetup video engine and the pricing restructure, have their own rows. | Trebled traffic and sign-ups in 12 months. The brand became known in the Python, Django and Node.js communities. | Nov 2014 - Apr 2016 | growth, conversion, experimentation, KPIs, launch, 0 to 1, brand, marketing, SaaS, startup, developer tools, team leadership, international, budget |
| Head of Marketing, Opbeat | Opbeat Opbeat, B2B devops startup backed by Balderton Capital and the cofounders of Facebook and Instagram | A small startup with no marketing processes, KPIs, reporting or budgeting, and a runway to extend. | Put the basics in and create enough traction to raise. | Introduced marketing processes, KPIs, reporting and budgeting to the business. Grew grassroots meetups and built a video engine to reach developers. | Traction that enabled a $2M bridge-funding round. | Nov 2014 - Apr 2016 | growth, conversion, KPIs, launch, 0 to 1, brand, marketing, SaaS, startup, developer tools, team leadership, international, budget |
| Head of Marketing, Opbeat | Opbeat meetup video engine Opbeat developer community channel | The audience was developers, who are allergic to advertising. Brand-building and acquisition with no budget for ads that would not have worked anyway. | Reach developers where they already were, and have them bring the audience. | Advertised for a video marketing intern to travel the world attending developer meetups, unpaid but all expenses covered. Filmed and live-streamed the meetups on the company blog; speakers promoted the stream to their own developer audiences. No direct advertising in the video; the audience captured with retargeting ads, organic traffic and backlinks. | Grassroots meetup presence and a content engine that fed the trebling of traffic and sign-ups. Scrappy, high-leverage. | Nov 2014 - Apr 2016 | growth, conversion, SEO, KPIs, launch, 0 to 1, brand, marketing, SaaS, startup, developer tools, team leadership, international, budget |
| Head of Marketing, Opbeat | Opbeat pricing Opbeat pricing and free tier | The pricing model inadvertently disincentivised upgrading, and there were barriers at the point of entry for a product that needed developers to try it first. | Remove the barriers to entry and to upgrade. | Found the disincentive in the pricing structure and persuaded the CEO to restructure it. Put the emphasis on the free tier so growth came from the ground up: developers adopt first, teams pay later. Demoted pricing from the navigation to the footer to cut friction at entry. | Pricing that no longer worked against the product's own growth loop, feeding the trebling of sign-ups. No separate figure for this lever. | Nov 2014 - Apr 2016 | growth, conversion, KPIs, launch, 0 to 1, brand, marketing, SaaS, startup, developer tools, team leadership, international, budget |
Tell me about Opbeat
source: Tom's own account
Opbeat was a developer tools SaaS startup providing application performance monitoring. Backed by the cofounders of Facebook and Instagram.
I joined as Head of Marketing and built the brand, marketing strategy, team and channels from scratch.
Key achievements:
- Defined the product proposition and developer narrative
- Trebled traffic and sign-ups in 12 months
Direct answers
- The founders had a good product and famous backers, and believed that if they built it, customers would come. They launched into silence.
- Our customers were in the US, so most of the marketing was international.
- B2B devops startup backed by Balderton Capital and the cofounders of Facebook & Instagram.
- Company context: a founder-led startup. 12 people in the company, 4 in marketing including design.
- Introduced KPIs, reporting & budgeting. Grew grassroots meetups and created video engine to connect with developers, creating the traction that enabled a $2M bridge-funding round.
- Opbeat: restructured pricing, emphasised the free tier and removed the upgrade barriers that were killing conversions, alongside the growth engine that trebled sign-ups[OPBEAT.R1.GROWTH].
source: Tom's own account, direct answers
Related
- Growth: what growth results have you delivered THEME.GROWTH
- Ask: tell me about your career journey META.ARC
- TwentyThree: tell me about T23 T23
- Opbeat: How did you grow Opbeat? OPBEAT.R1.GROWTH
How did you grow Opbeat?
source: Tom's own account
Used data-driven marketing principles to treble traffic and sign-ups in 12 months. Blended experimentation, growth hacks and activation tactics.
The key here was understanding the developer audience - which I did by talking to the engineers in the team. This approach built loyalty that converted to sign-ups, and the brand became well known in the Python, Django and Node.js communities.
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