#83: Selling the Invisible & The Snyk Motion
May 25, 2025 – DevTools Brew #83
I’m Morgan Perry, co-founder of Qovery. Every week, I share the real, often uncomfortable lessons from building and scaling devtool startups—from 0 to 1 and beyond.
In today's edition:
Selling the Invisible
→ What we got wrong (and right) about positioning Qovery not as a technical product, but as a business enabler.The Snyk Motion
→ How Snyk pioneered a go-to-market motion that earned love from developers (PLG) and trust from security buyers (top-down sales).
Let’s get into it.
Selling the Invisible
You can’t sell what people can’t picture.
“The hard part wasn’t building Qovery. It was learning how to make the value visible”.
Selling Qovery in the early days felt obvious to us as founders.
Clean developer experience. One-command deployments. No infra pain.
But what felt obvious to us… didn’t land with buyers.
They didn’t see the value. Not because it wasn’t there, but because it was invisible.
We weren’t selling the wrong product.
We were selling it the wrong way.
The problem with technical products
If you’ve built something deeply technical, you’ve probably lived this:
→ The value is real; but abstract.
→ The impact is big; but indirect.
→ The pitch is clean; but it doesn’t convert.
Because your product isn’t just competing with alternatives.
It’s competing with the cost of change, the fear of switching, and the weight of ambiguity.
And ambiguity kills deals.
Where we got it wrong
At first, we pitched Qovery like a technical (dev) tool.
Faster CI/CD. Simpler infra. Better developer experience.
But to the (technical decision) buyer? That’s noise.
They weren’t losing sleep over developer experience.
They were losing sleep over delivery delays, platform instability (downtimes), missed roadmap milestones, and hiring bottlenecks.
Even worse: we realized we weren’t just competing with tools.
We were competing with:
→ Doing it in-house.
→ Hiring a DevOps/infra team.
→ Letting developers “handle it themselves.”
And when that’s your competition, then you’re not selling against features.
You’re selling against mental load, operational drag, and financial burn.
We were pitching what we built.
They were trying to solve what they felt.
The shift
What changed everything was this question: “What does this product unlock for them — that’s visible, valuable, and urgent?”
That’s when we stopped talking about infra.
And started talking about outcomes.
→ “Qovery helps your team ship faster without needing to hire X (more) DevOps engineers.”
→ “We unblock developers so you don’t block growth.”
→ “We remove infra complexity so you can scale your platform with confidence.”
Same product.
Same capabilities.
Different narrative.
And suddenly, it clicked.
Deals moved faster. Sales cycles shortened.
ACVs went up just because buyers could finally see the cost of the alternative.
The value wasn’t just technical anymore. It was financial, operational, and emotional.
And once it became real, it became worth paying for.
What I’ve learned
If you’re selling a technical product, your job is not to explain how it works.
It’s to make the value feel real.
Not abstract. Not distant. Not optional.
You’re not just competing on features.
You’re competing on clarity.
You’re competing on urgency.
You’re competing on outcome certainty.
And if your value isn’t obvious?
They won’t buy. Not because they don’t care, but because they can’t see it.
Today, the way we’re selling:
We still talk about the product.
But we start with the problem.
And we anchor on what changes, not what runs under the hood.
That’s how you sell the invisible:
→ Make it felt.
→ Make it urgent.
→ Make it obvious.
Same product.
New lens.
And it changed everything.
The Snyk Motion
“Make it easy for devs to try. Make it easy for security to buy.”
What stood out in Snyk’s story wasn’t just their product but how they built it for one persona, then scaled it for two.
Here’s what I learned:
1. Start with sharp insight
Open-source usage exploded. Security didn’t keep up. Developers weren’t equipped. Snyk’s answer? Give devs tools that made it easy (and even fun) to fix vulnerabilities themselves.
2. Build narrow to go deep
The first version? A tiny CLI tool for Node.js. Not perfect. But fast to build, fast to test, fast to learn from.
No pitch deck. No budget ask. Just a crappy little product and a hypothesis to validate.
3. Obsess over the right experience
Snyk optimized for developer joy: frictionless onboarding, a-ha moments, and even badges to wear on GitHub. They didn’t “target” a community. They built inside it.
4. Know when to switch lenses
When it came time to monetize, they hit a wall. Devs loved Snyk but didn’t hold the budget. Security leaders did. Different persona. Different logic.
Snyk added reporting, governance, multi-language support. Not to change who they were but to earn the buyer’s trust without losing the user’s love.
5. Two motions. One mission.
Snyk didn’t pivot. They layered.
→ PLG at the bottom: developer-first, fast-working, adoption-driven.
→ Top-down for scale: tailored to security buyers, with the depth they expect.
And throughout? Same conviction. Same tone. Same product. Just reframed for who needed to hear it.
Snyk’s story is a masterclass in sequencing:
→ Love from developers first
→ Trust from buyers second
→ Growth from aligning both
And that’s the part I find most inspiring: they didn’t trade off one for the other. They made both work, without losing who they were.
Final Thoughts
Selling technical products is hard.
Selling invisible value? Even harder.
Both stories this week share the same lesson:
You don’t win by telling people your product is powerful.
You win by making them feel it.
→ With the right story, they see what they were missing.
→ With the right framing, they understand why it matters.
→ And with the right entry point, they lean in before you ask.
Whether it’s a DevOps tool or a security CLI; your leverage isn’t just in what you’ve built.
It’s in how you position it, who you speak to first, and what they believe is at stake.
Get that part right and even the invisible becomes obvious.
That’s it for me today! :)
Thanks for reading and Happy Sunday!
— Morgan
Do you like personal lessons like this? More insights/stories from other devtool founders? Let me know, I’m always open to feedback.
You can reach out to me on LinkedIn.