#84: The Silent Killers & Retool PMF Playbook
June 1, 2025 – DevTools Brew #84
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:
The Silent Killers
→ How small choices (and non-decisions) silently compound and the cost we paid when we let them drift.
Retool PMF Playbook
→ How David Hsu built PMF not through pivots, but by mastering outbound, ops, and GTM clarity from day one.
Let’s dive in.
The Silent Killers
What really breaks momentum isn’t loud. But silent.
“Startups don’t die from explosions. They die from erosion.”
I’ve seen this up close while building Qovery.
We didn’t hit a wall.
We didn’t blow up a launch.
We didn’t lose a key customer.
And yet, momentum started to fade. Quietly.
Growth flattened. Decisions dragged.
Energy scattered.
Not because of one bad move.
But because of too many things left undecided.
What really kills momentum?
Not the bold decisions.
But the ones you avoid.
→ A pricing model you say you’ll revisit “later”
→ A segment you know isn’t right but keep selling into
→ A positioning that’s fuzzy but you keep pushing content anyway
→ A product area that’s bloated but you delay the hard cut
→ A go-to-market motion that works '“kind of”
It doesn’t feel dangerous at the time.
Because it doesn’t break anything.
It just doesn’t build anything either.
And the cost? It compounds.
→ You attract the wrong customers
→ You grow into a market you don’t want
→ You start optimizing for things you should’ve never said yes to
And by the time you realize it, you’re stuck in a shape you never meant to take.
What I’ve learned (painfully)?
Some of the hardest months we’ve had weren’t chaotic.
They were… slow. Flat. Unclear.
We were working hard but not feeling progress.
And ended up to realize: we weren’t paying for our bad decisions.
We were paying for the ones we hadn’t made.
Like not choosing a sharper ICP early.
Not dropping content that pulled us toward the wrong audience.
Not shifting our narrative when we knew the story had changed.
Those choices didn’t kill us.
But they dragged down the compound curve.
So then, how to fight back?
We started with a new habit: surfacing the silent (with brutal honesty).
→ What are we avoiding?
→ What tiny choices are shaping us by accident?
→ What truth do we already feel, but haven’t acted on?
I’ve learned (hard) that fixing early always beats correcting late.
And waiting to decide? That’s still a decision, just one you don’t control.
Now, we try to:
→ Cut features and markets sooner
→ Prune the noise before it hardens
→ Align weekly on what matters now
→ Make peace with trade-offs but not inertia
Because startups don’t stall from what breaks.
They stall from what stays vague.
It’s not failure that kills momentum. But drift.
The kind that creeps in quietly:
→ Roadmaps that stretch
→ Positioning that blurs
→ Content that “almost” resonates
→ Customers that “kind of” fit
Over time, “kind of” becomes your ceiling.
And that’s the killer:
The business keeps moving. Just not forward.
The sharpest move?
Not more speed. But Sharper decisions.
Because what you don’t decide is still shaping your company.
And clarity is never neutral.
You either own the narrative or it owns you.
Retool PMF Playbook
From 60 days of runway to 1.5M ARR pilot: how Retool sold its way into PMF.
“Most people pivot the product. We pivoted the message and who we were selling it to”—David Hsu, CEO of Retool”
Before Retool, David Hsu was days away from shutting down a fintech startup.
Then he noticed something: the internal tools they had hacked together… all looked the same.
Tables. Forms. Dropdowns. Boilerplate. Again and again.
So he built a prototype. Launched it at Demo Day.
Landed a $1.5M pilot.
And the real work started.
Here’s what I love about the Retool story:
1. Outbound with intent
Forget spray-and-pray. David ran a structured campaign:
→ 10,000 companies filtered in Crunchbase
→ 40,000 leads scraped via Upwork
→ 2,400 replies from a cold list
→ Dozens of early adopters before day zero
2. Early GTM = pure ops
David’s team didn’t wait for feedback. They built a loop around it:
→ Real-time alerts when big accounts were active
→ Slack pings when an error fired
→ Shared channels to jump in instantly and debug with users
That’s not hustle. That’s design.
3. When traction hits, process wins
After a Hacker News post exploded, Retool didn’t drown in leads.
They built their own GTM stack (with internal tools) to:
→ Triage MQLs
→ Surface ICP matches
→ Auto-personalize demos with mock data per industry
4. The pivot wasn’t product. It was message.
Their first launch failed. Why? Because they pitched “excel-like primitives.”
No one cared.
A year later, same product. New narrative:
→ Internal tools
→ Low code
→ Fast builds for devs
That hit.
5. PMF is more than usage.
It’s when people try your product… and don’t bounce.
It’s when they hit bugs… and still ask for more.
It’s when the only thing left to fix… is how you tell the story.
Final Thoughts
Startups rarely fail in a loud, dramatic way.
They erode quietly; through tiny delays, soft signals, and avoided calls.
At the core, both stories reveal the same truth:
→ Clarity doesn’t just help you go faster. It keeps you from drifting.
→ Ops isn’t about polish. It’s how you protect momentum.
→ And growth isn’t just what you build. It’s what you’re willing to decide: early, and sharply.
Fix late, and you’re in damage control.
Decide early, and you stay in control.
That’s how you stay sharp.
That’s how you scale.
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.