#90: Hedgehog Concept & HashiCorp Way
July 13, 2025 – DevTools Brew #90
I’m Morgan Perry, co-founder of Qovery. Every week, I share the raw, often uncomfortable lessons from building and scaling a tech startup from 0 to 1 and beyond.
In today's edition:
The Hedgehog Concept
→ What we got wrong at Qovery about focus and how we’re fixing it.
The HashiCorp Way
→ What their product philosophy taught me about scale, depth, and staying power.
Let’s dive in.
The Hedgehog Concept
Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you should do it.
In the early stage, you follow what works.
You close deals. You ship fast. You stretch the product to fit more use cases.
And because you’re good at it, you keep doing more.
But over time, that strength becomes a trap:
→ You compete everywhere, but dominate nowhere
→ You unlock surface, but dilute depth
→ You grow… without sharpening your edge
That’s when the Hedgehog concept hit me.
(From Good to Great, a book I mostly ignored at first.)
“Great companies win by doing one thing better than anyone else, not everything well.”
So we asked the hard questions:
- What can we be the best at?
- What are we uniquely positioned to deliver?
- What drives real business outcomes for our users — not just technical satisfaction?
Here’s what I realized:
→ We’re not an infra tool
→ We’re not a CI/CD tool
→ We’re not a hosting platform
We’re a DevOps abstraction engine, purpose-built to let product-led teams deploy and scale on their own infra, without needing to grow a DevOps team.
That’s our “One Big Thing.”
And it changed everything.
We used to compete everywhere.
Now, we go deeper where we’re strongest.
Not because it’s easier — but because it compounds.
It shifted how we:
→ Prioritize the roadmap (outcomes > surface)
→ Structure the product (modules > monolith)
→ Train the team (clarity > optionality)
→ Talk to prospects (impact > infra)
We’re still in the early innings.
But having that Hedgehog filter helped us stop chasing everything we could do, and start focusing on what only we can do.
Here’s what that clarity taught me — in plain terms:
→ Don’t confuse being good at something with being best-in-class.
“Good” leads to scope creep. “Best” leads to clarity.
→ Your users don’t want your whole platform.
They want a wedge that solves something important. Fast.
→ Tech for the sake of tech is a trap.
Translate power into progress. That’s the job.
→ Your Hedgehog is not what you do.
It’s where your unique leverage lies… technically and commercially.
I’m still figuring it out. But at least now, we know where we’re heading.
🍿
The HashiCorp Way
Scaling trust before scaling revenue.
HashiCorp has always been one of the most fascinating DevTool companies to watch.
Product depth. UX quality. Community love.
They nailed the kind of consistency most of us only dream of.
Of course, opinions differ.
Especially after their shift in open source licensing which did blur part of their early ethos.
But that doesn’t take away from what they built:
A multi-product company with staying power, and a philosophy sharp enough to scale.
Key things I’ve learned and loved from them
→ They built around workflows, not technologies
HashiCorp didn’t build infra tools.
They built around outcomes: “What’s the job the user needs to get done?”
Everything starts from that.
The tool is secondary to the experience.
→ They layered products, they didn’t stack them
Each new product answered a distinct need.
Not a feature. Not a bundle.
A wedge into a new problem, solved just as deeply.
Vagrant. Packer. Terraform. Vault.
All started OSS. All became ecosystems.
→ They scaled trust before monetization
HashiCorp’s products were adopted long before they were sold.
That’s not a marketing trick. That’s belief in the long game.
Bottom-up adoption → then top-down sales.
→ They operated philosophy, not just values
Most companies write a culture doc.
HashiCorp lived it.
Their Tao, their Principles, their Operating Manual, all written, all referenced.
It showed up in how they shipped, who they hired, how they worked.
→ They didn’t rush product-market fit
They spent years working as ICs in other companies before even starting.
They observed. They wrote. They waited.
Then they built what they already knew was needed, because they’d lived it.
→ They proved that developer-first doesn’t mean product-only
Their GTM motion wasn’t one-dimensional.
They started with OSS, built community, then layered enterprise sales.
Rare. Hard. But incredibly powerful.
One thing I noticed too (and in reference to the The Hedgehog Concept mentioned before):
HashiCorp didn’t try to be everywhere.
They focused on one thing at a time, and nailed it with conviction.
And somehow, that created more space, not less.
Most startups drift because they confuse complexity with scale.
HashiCorp did the opposite.
They scaled clarity.
Their secret?
They weren’t chasing markets.
They were building around a belief system and executing it relentlessly.
If you haven’t already: read The Tao of HashiCorp - read it!
It’s a blueprint for intentionality.
And if you’re wondering what gives a company durability…
This might be a good place to start.
Final Thoughts
Clarity compounds.
Whether it’s deciding what not to build, or defining what only you can build —
The sharper your Hedgehog, the less noise you need to make.
HashiCorp didn’t scale by doing more.
They scaled by doing one thing deeply — then layering from there.
At Qovery, we’re trying to do the same.
Different journey, same challenge:
Find the edge. Stick to it. Let it compound.🍿
That’s it for me today! :)
Thanks for reading and Happy Sunday!
— Morgan
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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.