Code to Market

Executives overreacting publicly can backfire, especially when intent is misunderstood, while thoughtful follow-ups and apologies can actually strengthen perception. Replit’s polished launch shows that high production alone isn’t enough, and the real missed opportunity is in how companies “land” launches through follow-up distribution. Meanwhile, Cloudflare continues to dominate the narrative with aggressive platform moves, raising questions about control, positioning, and consistency across their ecosystem.

Which side benefitted more from Cloudflare’s “slop fork” of Next.js and the attention war with Vercel. Also, Raycast’s standout Glaze launch, Resend’s smart migration tooling, clever partner marketing plays that turn product moments into distribution, a bold live demo lesson from Laravel, and a deep dive into AI agents replacing operational work.

Episode 45 of Code to Market covers three very different marketing lessons from the dev world:• A bizarre launch from Taalas that broke some “best practices” on Twitter… and still pulled 4M views.• The HubSpot / OpenCode drama, where Dharmesh Shah forked an open-source project and the maintainers may have fumbled a massive partnership opportunity.• How companies should respond when infrastructure fails, from Clerk outages to the reality that “it’s always your fault” even when an upstream provider goes down.Sometimes great products win even with messy launches.Sometimes founders react instead of spotting the opportunity.We break down what actually matters.

Claude took a direct shot at OpenAI before the Super Bowl.
OpenAI responded with an essay (weak!).

We break down why the best marketing rattles competitors into reacting, what Claude got right with counter-positioning, why Sam’s response made it worse, and what B2B companies can learn from Salesforce x MrBeast.

Plus: how to “surf the wave” when something like OpenClaw blows up without shipping a mediocre take.

A $260 DIY CMS sparked debate on Twitter last month. Hank and Gonto break down Lee Robinson’s (Cursor) post, Sanity’s response, and why both sides actually won from a marketing perspective. They dig into the gap between CMS theory and real-world practice, the rise of vibe coding, and why DevRel’s real job is expanding imagination.

Then Hank brings backfield notes from AWS Re:Invent with a rapid-fire “worth it or not” game on booths, swag, and side events. Practical, opinionated, and very online.

Most sales & marketing people hate my email drafts.

Because I'm not writing for them; I write for developers.

I crafted & tested these drafts for the last decade specifically to get enterprise pipeline from developers in product signup funnels at Vercel, GitLab, Neo4j, & Laravel (plus several startups I've advised).

And these emails beat every challenger's drafts for ten years! I believe they're strong enough to endure even if widely used, so I'm happy to share them (just ask).

So here's ten minutes of me nerding out about some emails I've worked on for years, including when I first wrote them, the behavioral psychology and cognitive biases I play into, and why sales and marketing people usually dislike them (until they see the results).

The drafts: https://ctm.fm/signup-emails

A quick review of a few post-unsubscribe pages and ideas to improve yours

In Episode 40, we break down two big announcements this week and why one absolutely outperformed the other. Cloudflare’s Replicate acquisition vs. RunLayer’s launch and fundraise: clarity, positioning, what’s-in-it-for-me, and how a single quote-tweet can reshape a narrative.Then we dive into Kalshi and PolyMarket’s “news as growth” strategy and how devtools can copy it using zero-click content and product-aligned insights. Fast, tactical episode. Enjoy.Also Hank cut his hair

A startup spent half its preseed on a Nordic sauna office and turned it into pure rage bait. We break down why attention without a real product or halfway decent website is a waste, and how to time fundraise announcements so they actually help you. Then we get into technical SDRs and GTM engineers, how to source and comp them, and why the future of selling devtools looks a lot more like sales engineers than classic AEs. Plus, a quick invite-only peek at the Code to Market Summit at Snowbird.

From AI-generated badges to algorithm-killing YouTube settings, Vercel’s events were full of lessons. We talk about the rise of dual-event strategies, why practice still matters, and how conferences became brand design in motion.