DevTools Brew #69: Market Dynamics & The 14-Day Series A Fundraise
February 16, 2025 – DevTools Brew #69
Welcome to DevTools Brew, a weekly newsletter on the raw lessons, strategies, and insights behind scaling devtool/ai startups—from 0 to 1 and beyond.
In today’s edition:
Market Dynamics: The invisible force for 0 to 1 (and beyond)
→ The hard truth: building a great product isn’t enough. Understanding how people buy, adopt, and integrate solutions is what actually drives growth.
Closing Recall.ai’s Series A in 14 Days
→ Fundraising can drag for months. Amanda Zhu, CEO of Recall.ai, closed their Series A in 14 days. I’ll share the lessons and playbook she used
Two things that separate companies that scale from those that stall.
Let’s dive in.
Market Dynamics: the invisible force for 0 to 1 (and beyond)
When I started Qovery, I thought the hardest part would be solving the technical problem. Build the best possible product, and adoption would follow.
I was wrong.
The real challenge wasn’t just building—it was understanding how people adopt, buy, search for, and integrate solutions. And more importantly, what we were actually replacing.
Market dynamics aren’t just about market size, industry trends or competition. They define who buys, how they buy, what drives urgency, and what prevents change. They shape pricing, positioning, sales motion, and even the channels where customers find you.
Let me break down why understanding this is the invisible force that defines your path from 0 to 1—and beyond. Once we grasped this, everything else started to fall into place.
Competing against the Status Quo
Most founders (like we did) focus on product differentiation: “How are we better than X?”
But the more important question is: “What are we replacing?”
→ If you’re swapping one tool for another, adoption is straightforward. The comparison is direct, pricing logic is similar, and switching is a matter of execution.
→ If you’re replacing a manual process—spreadsheets, scripts, internal tools—the challenge isn’t just building a better solution. It’s reframing why change is necessary.
This distinction sounds simple, but it’s a fundamental shift in how you approach the market.
For tools that replace an existing software, the buying process follows a known path. Budget exists. A comparison framework already exists. The pain point is understood.
But if you’re changing how a problem is solved entirely, you need to:
→ Identify and articulate what companies are doing today without your tool.
→ Frame the pain of the status quo so clearly that maintaining it feels more expensive than switching.
→ Understand that your biggest competitor isn’t another vendor—it’s inertia.
Search & Discovery: People don’t look for what they don’t know exists
Another big mistake I made early on was assuming developers were actively searching for a solution like ours.
But when you’re introducing a new way of working, potential customers often don’t even know a solution exists. They aren’t Googling for it. They aren’t comparing vendors. They’re just dealing with the pain.
And that changes everything.
Inbound only works when people are aware of the problem and looking for alternatives. But if they’ve been working the same way for years, they’re not searching. They need to be shown a better way.
That’s when I realized branding and trust wasn’t just an advantage—it was a prerequisite for adoption.
Buyers won’t take a risk on an unknown company for a critical workflow. Especially in industries where change means reworking established processes, getting buy-in across multiple stakeholders, and overcoming years of inertia.
But trust doesn’t happen in a vacuum. In most (traditional and critical) industries, buyers don’t act alone. They rely on trusted advisors—partners, consulting firms, existing service providers… you name it!—to guide their decisions.
For us, this changed the entire GTM motion. Instead of waiting for inbound leads, we focused on embedding ourselves within the existing industry ecosystem.
→Who already had credibility with our ideal customers?
→ Who were the consultants, service providers, and technology partners they already relied on?
→Who was shaping the buying decisions before a company even considered switching?
We stopped trying to force awareness and instead worked to be present in the right conversations, aligned with the right players.
For many startups, the real unlock isn’t just finding customers—it’s finding the channels where trust and distribution already exist.
Individual vs. Organizational problem
I also made a critical mistake early on: assuming our end users were the buyers.
We optimized for developers, assuming bottom-up adoption would drive growth. But Qovery wasn’t solving an individual pain—it was solving an organizational one.
This meant:
→ The decision involved multiple stakeholders, not just engineers.
→ The buying cycle was longer because risk was higher.
→ The ROI had to be framed beyond just “developer experience”—it had to resonate with leadership, security, and finance.
That realization forced us to rethink everything—how we positioned, how we sold, even how we structured our first touchpoints with companies.
Risk & Market Motion
One of the most overlooked dynamics in any market is risk.
Some products are plug-and-play. If they don’t work, you churn and move on.
For example, a company can try Slack, Notion, Trello, or Calendly without disrupting anything mission-critical. These kind of tool are low-risk bets. If they don’t fit, they get replaced without disrupting core operations.
But infrastructure, security, and core data platforms? These come with:
→ Deep integrations – The product doesn’t sit in isolation; it connects with critical workflows.
→ High switching costs – Adopting a new database, CI/CD tool, or cloud provider is a long-term commitment.
→ Organizational buy-in – Multiple stakeholders are involved in the decision, from security teams to finance.
The riskier the switch, the harder it is to sell on features alone. Adoption isn’t just about proving value—it’s about de-risking the decision before a company even considers making a move.
Final Thoughts
Most startups iterate on messaging, sales, and pricing before understanding how their market actually searches, buys, adopts, and integrates solutions.
The real questions to ask:
Are you solving an individual or organizational problem?
→ Is the pain point urgent, or does awareness need to be built?
→ Who actually drives the purchase decision?
→ How much risk is involved in adoption?
→ Are you selling a new category or improving an existing one?
Get this right, and everything else—sales, growth, positioning—falls into place.
Because in the end, winning isn’t just about having the best product—it’s about being the most obvious choice before the sale even starts.
Closing Recall.ai’s Series A in 14 Days
Raising money is a full-time job.
Drag it out too long, and you lose focus and momentum.
When Amanda Zhu, CEO of Recall.ai (API for meeting bots), raised her Series A in just 14 days, she didn’t rely on luck.
She treated fundraising like a sales pipeline.
Here’s exactly how she did it:
1. Line up investors before you need them.
Before opening the round, Amanda spent weeks pre-vetting investors who aligned with Recall.ai’s vision.
“We weren’t pitching strangers. We were pitching decision-makers.”
→ Lesson: Fundraising starts before the pitch. Build relationships early.
2. Group investors by speed.
Not all investors move at the same pace.
Amanda categorized them into:
- Fast movers – VCs already familiar with Recall.ai.
- Slow movers – Those needing more time to evaluate.
By keeping them on parallel timelines, she ensured term sheets landed at the same time—preventing negotiations from dragging out.
→ Lesson: Speed matters. Keep momentum by aligning investor timelines.
3. Condense meetings to build urgency.
Momentum is a fundraising superpower.
Amanda scheduled investor calls back-to-back in two weeks, forcing them to move fast or risk missing out.
“Once investors saw others moving quickly, it created natural FOMO.”
→ Lesson: Fundraising is a game of controlled scarcity.
4. Treat follow-ups like a sales funnel.
After every meeting, the Recall.ai team tracked objections, next steps, and feedback.
“We weren’t just pitching—we were tracking progress and removing blockers, just like in a sales pipeline.”
→ Lesson: Don’t just hope for a yes. Systematically work toward it.
5. Foster real, not forced, FOMO.
By running a tight, structured process, Amanda didn’t need to fake urgency—investors saw the momentum.
→ Lesson: The best deals happen when investors compete. Create conditions where they want in.
Final thoughts
Market Dynamics & Fundraising = Two levers you can’t ignore.
→ If you’re building: understand how your market works before optimizing your GTM motion.
→If you’re fundraising: Treat it like sales—structured, fast, and with clear next steps.
That’s it for this first edition of the new DevTools Brew format!
Thanks for reading!
I’d love to hear what you think. Do you want more deep dives like this? More personal lessons? More insights from other devtool founders?
Let me know, I’m always open to feedback.
You can reach out to me on LinkedIn or Twitter.
— Morgan