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How AI Is Changing DevTool Demand Gen (From Outreach to Activation)

How AI Is Changing DevTool Demand Gen (From Outreach to Activation)

Season 3
Episode
2
32 mins
Rodolfo Yu Profile PictureDisha Agarwal Profile Picture
Rodolfo Yiu
|
Ex-Head of Demand Generation at AnyScale
Disha Agarwal
|
Head of Marketing at Reo.Dev
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AI is transforming how DevTool companies drive demand but most teams are still figuring out what works and what’s hype.

In this episode of Modern DevTool GTM Brew, we unpack what happens between building top-of-funnel traction and turning it into scalable revenue for Dev-first products. From how AI is changing content, outreach, and pipeline building to aligning sales and marketing for developer buyers, this episode gets into the real GTM decisions behind modern DevTool growth.

We discuss:

  • The new role of AI in content, SEO, outreach, and campaign execution
  • How Demand Gen for DevTools differs from traditional SaaS
  • Frameworks Rodolfo uses: DAISY for ownership clarity, BANT for pipeline qualification
  • Why community and product-led GTM still drive the highest ROI
  • Building AI-driven marketing workflows (what works today)
  • How to align sales and marketing for DevTool sales cycles

Chapters:

1:40 - Anyscale and Its Positioning

3:12 - Challenges of Monetizing Open Source

5:52 - Gtm Strategies for Open Source Success

10:24 - Differences in Devtool Demand Gen vs Traditional SaaS

15:51 - AI’s Impact in Demand Generation

19:04 - Future of Devtool Discovery

21:07 - Hiring for Demand Generation

25:33 - Navigating Sales Cycle in Devtools

27:21 - Key Advice for Scaling Demand Generation

28:18 - Rapid Fire Round

If you’re building Demand Gen in the age of AI, or scaling a Dev-first GTM motion, this is a must-listen episode.

Key Takeaways & Show Notes

  • [00:08:04] The Superpower of DevTool Marketing: Rodolfo's core belief: the true superpower in this space is leveraging and nurturing the open-source community.
  • [00:10:04] The Two-Pronged GTM Approach: Learn how Anyscale balances a bottoms-up, community-led motion with a targeted, value-add commercial strategy for enterprise users.
  • [00:13:00] DevTool GTM vs. Traditional SaaS: Discover the key differences, from the death of the traditional SDR cold call to the critical importance of reaching the "Aha!" moment during activation.
  • [00:16:32] How Marketing is Evolving with AI: A look at how AI is shifting marketing from hands-on execution to strategic thinking, automating tasks like SEO keyword research and content creation.
  • [00:20:04] AI Tools in the Modern Marketer's Stack: Rodolfo shares his go-to tools, including foundation models like OpenAI's Claude for content and Clay for connecting data points and creating hyper-personalized outreach.
  • [02:22:14] The Biggest Shift in Marketing: The move from hands-on execution to strategic thinking and prompt engineering. Marketers are becoming the editors and curators of AI-generated work.
  • [02:29:30] One Piece of Advice for Scaling Demand Gen: Know your user. Deeply understand their journey, their mindset, and how they discover new tools.

Full Episode Transcript

Host: Disha Agarwal

Guest: Rodolfo Yiu

(Teaser and Intro Music: 00:00:00 - 00:02:11)

[00:02:12] Disha Agarwal: Welcome back to another episode of the Modern DevGTM Brew. I'm Disha, your host. And today's episode is one that you definitely don't want to miss. Our guest today is Rodolfo Yiu. Rodolfo has spent years in leading DemandGen and GTM for some of the biggest names in AI and cloud infrastructure, including AnyScale, Okta, and Recharge. He has helped scale DevTool adoption, built data-driven marketing engines, and knows exactly what it takes to turn top-of-funnel traction into real business impact.

[00:02:44] Disha Agarwal: In this episode, we'll unpack what works, what doesn't, in DevTool GTM, how to scale in a competitive market, and how AI is reshaping GTM strategies today. Welcome to our podcast, Rodolfo. We are thrilled to have you.

[00:02:59] Rodolfo Yiu: Thank you for having me and thank you for the intro.

[00:03:03] Disha Agarwal: Great. So, Rodolfo, before we dive into the playbooks and the strategies, let's start with your journey. So, you've worked with some of the biggest cloud and AI infrastructure companies. What first drew you to the DevTool GTM space?

[00:03:16] Rodolfo Yiu: Yeah, I have all throughout my career, I have been in demand gen for the longest time, from like series A company, first marketer. And then throughout different chapters, I've always sold to developers. So like after Recharge and then now AnyScale. Um, and I just find it fascinating on like the intersection between technology and marketing. And I live in San Francisco, right? So that's kind of like the best place to be in like working in software, selling to developers.

[00:03:45] Disha Agarwal: Very interesting. For those who aren't really familiar with AnyScale, how would you describe it?

[00:03:51] Rodolfo Yiu: Yeah, so AnyScale is an AI platform. We are the commercial solutions for the open-source Ray framework, and Ray provides a distributed workflow for training, tuning, servings, and many others for machine learning. And so if you think about, we're very similar to like Databricks, as an example, where they had like the Apache Spark framework, and then Databricks building on top of it. So we are in a very similar vein in terms of like go-to-market, selling to like engineers.

[00:04:23] Disha Agarwal: Understood. So AI infrastructure is a very crowded space. How did you, you know, position AnyScale to stand out?

[00:04:31] Rodolfo Yiu: Yeah, I think it's really, um, positioning Ray as our like core competitive advantage. Ray is open source, so like anyone can use it. We have like 30, almost like 40,000 GitHub stars right now. Um, so we are pretty well known in on, very early on distributed. The founders always joked that when they started it, maybe only like Google, Meta had that level amount of data that needs to be distributed. But right now, fast forward a few years, like almost every company needed that, right? And so I think we are lucky or fortunate to have that first mover and open source adoptions there.

[00:05:14] Disha Agarwal: Understood. How was AnyScale able to bring so much adoption in the open-source space? And then how has that shaped your GTM strategies?

[00:05:23] Rodolfo Yiu: Yeah, I think the company has invested a lot of energy in early on, especially the first few years of the, um, funding company. And so like the first few years is like, there's no, no revenue, no, no sales team. It's purely like a developer building community in terms of marketing. I joined like after that chapter.

[00:05:48] Disha Agarwal: Understood. I think, um, and I think while scaling DevTool adoption in an open source is in itself a challenge. But one of the biggest challenge begins when you try and monetize an open-source community. Did you feel that, you know, AnyScale also felt that challenge or was it like a smooth sailing?

[00:06:07] Rodolfo Yiu: Yeah, it's definitely challenging. Right? I think, challenging in different means, right? Like, on one hand, developers, especially people who use open source, doesn't want to be sold to. Like, that is exactly why they're using open source, right? On the other hand, it's like the challenge for us on trying to make money is like, how do we convince and add value, right?

[00:06:31] Rodolfo Yiu: So I think there is the psychology of kind of the audience and the targeting. And then I think the second part is like on the product side, like if you can do everything in open source, like why do I need to buy commercial? What is the value prop of commercial? How much more value or optimizations we can get, right?

[00:06:52] Disha Agarwal: Got it. But how do you still stay true to the community? Right? How do you make sure that whatever value open source is giving, it's still a value add and everything is not just enterprise.

[00:07:03] Rodolfo Yiu: Yeah. So the way that we, I mean, it's very similar to like any other open-source company, right? Like if you think about, "Hey, you can do a standard set of functionality with open source, but on the commercial side," like, obviously, the team that we build a framework have guide through a lot of implementations, the technical challenges for similar use cases, especially in AI, the tech stack on like the layering on the infrastructure, the integration with other tools, the compliance, the regulations, etc. And so those are the value add that we can add. And obviously, ultimately, we still want to make sure the commercial solution is more performant in terms of optimization, saving time and costs. So those are like the metrics that we drive or the value that we drive for our customers.

[00:07:54] Disha Agarwal: Interesting. So, Rodolfo, once AnyScale decided to commercialize, what was their GTM playbook and then how did you sort of contribute to that?

[00:08:04] Rodolfo Yiu: I think the superpower in marketing is definitely on the open-source community. Right? So on one hand, it's like, how do we continue to engage the community? One that they can get, continue to get value from the community and an open source product at the same time, how do we talk to them to see where are still their pain points using open source in like, where are the ways that we can try to start a commercial relationship? On top of the open-source relationship.

[00:08:31] Rodolfo Yiu: So one way that we do is like annually, we have like an open source user conference called the Ray Summit. Last year, we had the CPO of OpenAI came and talked to us about his experience on AI and his view. We have a lot of community members who speak at the conference to kind of share their journey with Ray and how they adopt Ray within their company. And like over time, like we see, hey, even though you are using Ray, there's certain optimizations that we can still do it on the proprietary level. We can leverage our professional services, and we can also like do multi-cloud as well as like, uh, on-prem depending on what accelerator or cloud you use for that combination.

[00:09:18] Rodolfo Yiu: And so I think it's like really top users, then you have a list of like top users, top companies to like moderate users. And then you kind of see like, because we ultimately look at like GPU usage, like the high usage that you have, the more custom or complex environments that you probably would have. Um, and so those are the ways that we kind of pick companies and prioritize our resources to, to start a commercial solution.

[00:09:42] Disha Agarwal: So apart from, you know, your open source users, was there any other GTM strategies that you employed? And were there any other channels that you sort of employed?

[00:09:52] Rodolfo Yiu: Yeah. So besides events, we obviously have the developer advocates. So I think the developer advocates team continue to like engage and see. I think the way that we think about it says two journeys, right? Um, one is like, "Hey, you have been very successful using open source. Like how do we build on top of that?" Or is there a way like, "Hey, you are exploring using open source because you already have that need for distributed computing?" Can we jump over the hoops to like, "Hey, let's engage on you on commercial. We'll help you to kind of augment open source and like what are the value adds?" And and that's how we help a lot of like up-and-coming digital native companies to kind of like fast to market essentially.

[00:10:37] Rodolfo Yiu: We talk about events, we talk about developer advocates. Like we obviously have the, the, a free trial, like a PLG motion. And then we also have like the long tail of digital marketing channels. So I was thinking about content, website, ads. Um, those are the channels that we do deploy out to making sure like everyone knows about Ray in AnyScale.

[00:10:59] Disha Agarwal: Understood. Quite a comprehensive strategy then, Rodolfo.

[00:11:03] Rodolfo Yiu: Yeah.

[00:11:04] Disha Agarwal: Yeah. So I think you mentioned, you know, events and conferences, and I see a lot of DevTool companies using either, you know, their own conferences or, you know, participating in a lot of other conferences. What has been your experience and how important do you feel these offline events and connects are for DevTool GTM?

[0alotof:11:25] Rodolfo Yiu: Yeah, I think community-led, I think community-led like go-to-market, it's like very applicable to like, especially early days open source or like dev tools because I think ultimately you need kind of need the face time or convince like how people try your dev tool, especially if your dev tool is like very in a crowded space. And and events is always a good way to making sure like people spend time with you.

[00:11:54] Rodolfo Yiu: And the way that we look at events is like we have our user conference, we have our own events. We do some of the trade shows. And when we do a lot of like developer events, like meetup in San Francisco because that's where the community are. And so I think the more time that the founders or the engineering team spend time with the developers, like that's how you can grow with the customers or grow with the community that you might have.

[00:12:19] Disha Agarwal: Understood. So you said that, you know, developers are people who would really want to try before sort of buying a product. And that, and that we've seen that, you know, DevTool demand gen is quite different from traditional SaaS. What are some of the biggest differences that you have seen in your journey?

[00:12:35] Rodolfo Yiu: Yeah, I think the biggest difference is like, think about like the security, right? Off the bat, it's very clear like top-down selling, right? Like the company deploys the HR system or like a SSO provider, everyone in a company needs to use it. Alright, versus developers, like there's a lot of bottoms-up motions on PLG because they want to try it, they want to test it out. They might try...

[00:12:59] Rodolfo Yiu: Like to me, the most difference is, compared to traditional, it's like kind of like the SDR motion. Um, so like, you know, top-down SDRs is like, "Hey, the SDR is kind of calling and trying to get you a meeting. Like I give you like an elevator pitch. Can I get like 10, 15 minutes for it for it to understand?" right? If you have like exactly looking for like similar things or like the pinpoint that you're trying to have. I think on developer, it doesn't work that way, right? Like no one cold calls a developer or like a CTO that just doesn't really work that way for them. It's like, why do we waste my time?

[00:13:30] Disha Agarwal: I think...

[00:13:31] Rodolfo Yiu: I think the way that we think about is like, what are like some of the technical SDRs that we can add value when they try to use our product? Especially in the early days, right? So like in the onboarding steps, did they complete the onboarding step? Did they do the activation step that we wanted them to do? Did they actually have a question? So like a lot of that tool company that I would talk to is like, "Hey, let's just like try the SDR to be like their support persons for like the first couple of interactions and making sure like the SDR is technically enough to answer their questions, or at least have a way to like solve their problem first." And then once they pass the activation, like they need to see the magic moment, right? Like, which is like the "aha" moment on the activation. And I think that from now on, then you can continue to, like, "Hey, like I see you are using X, Y, and Z. Like, it seems like you have a real use case here. Like, is there someone to like connect with you with an SE or like an AE?" right? And that's like kind of the mindset that I would coach or like guide the team on.

[00:14:35] Rodolfo Yiu: And signups are easy. Like, sometimes in developer tools, because everyone just wants to try, activations oftentimes it's like a harder piece.

[00:14:43] Disha Agarwal: Um, and so regardless of what the activation metrics, like that should be like some of the alignment there. But I think that's kind of like a gray area, right? Because it's not as clear as just like for the top-down SDR, like just sourcing a meeting and then pass it on to the AE to sell, right? Like that's kind of the technical nuance, gray area that I would, uh, highlight.

[00:15:03] Disha Agarwal: Interesting. So what I'm understanding is that, you know, um, for an SDR selling a dev tool, getting the timing right, getting the messaging right, and actually reaching out to the right person is very important.

[00:15:15] Rodolfo Yiu: Yeah. It's probably not much of a selling motion because you just try and make sure like they are successful and they trust your product and finish free trial and like they put in their credit card at the end of it, right? Versus like, "Are you considering other tools just to better understand your use cases?" But like you sell all the way to the CTO, then you probably need, like, "Hey, I see you have multiple users signing up for this. Can we create a team account for your team so that you have better visibility with finance in terms of security, cross-team like selling can happen?" And so it relates to like my earlier point on like, "Hey, where are you in the spectrum in terms of selling?" Because there are ways that you can sell it basically wall to wall within the engineering team, or like, "Hey, you're just trying to get as many credit cards as you are on covering the number of logos that you want to do," right? Um, and so that would be like a maturity journey that I see.

[00:16:13] Disha Agarwal: Understood. Thanks, thanks for that deep dive, Rodolfo. So I wanted to understand you've worked at, you know, at DemandGen with for different companies right from Okta to AnyScale. How have you seen DemandGen evolve, you know, from your time when you were at Okta to now at AnyScale? How are things different?

[00:16:33] Rodolfo Yiu: Yeah, I think marketing always evolved with technology, right? When I started it, like, hey, yes, like ads are just ads. Like there's no B2B ads at that point when I just started. And so like the first way kind of like it had to... well, the way I frame is like throughout the technology, there's like getting more B2B focus, getting the targeting more right. But the fundamentals of marketing doesn't change, right? And the technology evolves, like now it's about AI. I think marketing are more creative ways to drive that efficiency and to be in front of our buyers, right? Versus sales, like sales doesn't have that much, like they... the only resource constraints for them is like time.

[00:17:17] Disha Agarwal: Yeah.

[00:17:17] Rodolfo Yiu: Because how many, how many times I can get in front of of our customers and calls. But just want to make sure, like for anyone who's working in marketing, just to kind of follow along the tech, be curious about the technologies that can be applied into the day to day, as well as like, how can you change about your programs or motions or techniques that you might have.

[00:17:39] Disha Agarwal: So, so what are some of the things that you were doing at Okta which, um, you know, evolved at your time at AnyScale or what were some of the initiatives at AnyScale which weren't existent when, you know, you were at Okta?

[00:17:52] Rodolfo Yiu: Yeah. So, one thing it's like, as obvious is like, we don't have AI to write content, right? Um, and I think everyone is using AI to write content in different ways. In Okta, it's a very manual process, like we have like a cure for like content creation, essentially. Um, and the same for ads, like we kind of try to use like, um, AI to like, at least spark some ideas on what we can do. And then you can do very specific, right? Because like there's a character limit that's, there's certain words that you want to, to focus, like there's the intentions for the ad. And so like all these things, you can basically prompt the AI to kind of give you ideas and you kind of have to pick the ideas. Otherwise, you are the person or your team is kind of the one that generates many different options, right? So as simple as that can just like spark or help you to do your job better.

[00:18:47] Rodolfo Yiu: And no way that AI can replace the creative impressions, but it literally gives you the options to to decide, right?

[00:18:55] Disha Agarwal: Yeah. Understood. So, so what I'm what I'm hearing is that, you know, um, while the basic principles of marketing remain same, AI also significantly changed how you approach things at AnyScale while, you know, you're your stint at Okta.

[00:19:11] Rodolfo Yiu: Yeah, I think it's going to be interesting to see how AI continually evolves and actually do some of these workflows, right? Like I know companies like in SEO as an example, like you can build workflows or agents to kind of like do the keyword research for you to know like what is the biggest gap. And once you have done the keyword research and decided what are the keywords they want to try to target, then you kind of create the content or like what is the framework or outline for the. And then you kind of build, continue to build different workflows for like your SEO content creation essentially, right? Same with like outreaches or nurtures, like you can book meetings directly or you can do follow-up. Like that's kind of like how a lot of like AI SDRs, like the promise of the AI SDRs.

[00:19:56] Disha Agarwal: Understood. So what are some of the tools that, you know, if you had to recommend to someone which you use, what are some of those AI tools?

[00:20:04] Rodolfo Yiu: Yeah, I think, I think foundation model like OpenAI, Claude is still the number one tool that we use on, on AI on a lot of marketing. I still have dabbled in some of the image creation or generation tool. It's in quite the quality that we wanted yet. And so I think, and so I think, because no one actually asked for inputs yet. The input is like your previous content or your website, the style guide, CSS, the injects, then I can see the the image can be a little more high quality. But LLMs today are still like the number one tools. And then the second one I would say is probably Clay, like just kind of connecting all the pieces together as a connector. Um, like we we put OpenAI into Clay so that they can generate some prompts, so that we can get more personalized. So those are the two sets I would say like that.

[00:20:53] Rodolfo Yiu: It's definitely, it's going to be on top...

[00:20:56] Disha Agarwal: Understood. Um, you know, do you, with AI evolving, do you also see a shift in how developers are actually discovering, you know, DevTools and is that also shifting?

[00:21:07] Rodolfo Yiu: Um, I think yes, like everyone is using Cursor, they're using multiple tools. But I think that the discovery doesn't change that much. Like you think about like what people do every day, like they browse on social, they talk to their friends, they call to their co-workers. So like most of the places they hang out is like, which is like a lot of social medias and text message and Reddit and then Slack, which is like the primary like source of work interactions or collaborations. And like that's like how they know about like new tools, right? And then the last thing is like events, right? Like I talked about you live in San Francisco, you go to events or you see billboards. So from a discovery doesn't change that much.

[00:21:49] Disha Agarwal: Understood.

[00:21:50] Rodolfo Yiu: So exciting things, you know, and very excited to see how AI is sort of evolving and then, you know, what else it can do in the demand gen space.

[00:22:02] Disha Agarwal: How do you see, you know, AI changing the demand gen space? Is there any other, uh, AI tool that you wish existed but does not exist right now?

[00:22:12] Rodolfo Yiu: I think the biggest shift in terms of marketers will probably be less about hands-on execution, more about strategic thinking and prompt thinking. Um, and I think the people that you're trying to reach and the ways that you can reach them doesn't change that much. And I think that's like sometimes like that kind of like, when I interview candidates, like that's what I'm trying to nail down, because like taste is a lot harder to articulate versus, "Hey, as long as you understand the principle, then you can do your jobs."

[00:22:51] Disha Agarwal: So you mentioned that, you know, when you hire, um, these are some of the characteristics that you try and sort of assess. So you've built, you know, teams across different types of companies, right from startups to enterprises. Um, what do you look when you are hiring and what, what are some of the key ingredients to getting the demand gen right at different stages?

[00:23:15] Rodolfo Yiu: Yeah, I think drive is probably more important. It's probably the other thing that I would look for. Um, in early stage, like companies, like that's how like you think about hustle, right? Like you work very quickly, like you get things done. And then when I say drive in bigger company is like, can you cut through the noise to drive the project forward through cross-functional collaborations, right? And very clear on like your responsibility. We often use a framework called DAIC to making sure like you have the skills to kind of get the projects to the finish line. Um, and I think that is like kind of the common theme regardless of like the size of a company.

[00:23:59] Disha Agarwal: Understood. What is this framework that you spoke about? Could you sort of elaborate a bit on that?

[00:24:03] Rodolfo Yiu: It's called DAIC. So like, it's a driver, approver, inform. Um, and so it's basically who is driving the project, who is ultimately approving the project from like, the people who will contribute to the project and then who's like inform as in like people need to know, like kind of keep updated on like where the project is. So that's kind of a very common, um, DAIC framework to make sure like the projects have clarity.

[00:24:32] Disha Agarwal: Understood. Understood. So while we discussed, you know, how is hiring different at different stages of a company. Do you also feel that demand and strategies are equally different, you know, if you're in a startup or if you're in a say $100 million ARR company?

[00:24:47] Rodolfo Yiu: Yes, it definitely difference. Um, but I think the principle doesn't change. The principle that we talk about, the problem solution, the audience kind of like generically think about efficiency. What change is kind of like the sizing of the investments of different channels as well as like the people, right? Um, and the sizing also changed the, and those two kind of, the third leg is like the systems. Um, and so like the system in a $10 million business versus like $100 million or like a billion dollar, like it's very different, right? And how do you succeed or improve the systems takes experience, whether you have seen great before, it takes agility on like adaptability and it takes drive, right, to like building and improving like the system.

[00:25:41] Disha Agarwal: Understood. Understood. What do you feel that, you know, in this evolving landscape, which is one marketing channel or playbook which is completely dead, you know, specifically for DevTools?

[00:25:51] Rodolfo Yiu: Um, I would say content syndication. So for those who don't know content syndication is basically you try to produce a piece of content, you publish it in third-party sites and then they distribute it and then they get their email addresses. Like that would be not my priority in terms of in a DevTool company.

[00:26:53] Disha Agarwal: So if you have to replace, you know, one channel, what, what do you feel is the most successful one right now?

[00:27:01] Rodolfo Yiu: Focus on community, focus on the product. Like that will always be true. Like, I think you do need to find where you excel at, find your niche and then you really win and then continue to grow your company by like tackling adjacent space. Um, because otherwise you will be like covering too broad.

[00:27:22] Disha Agarwal: Thanks. Um, thanks for sharing that, Rodolfo. For DevTools specifically, you know, the sales cycles can be very tricky. Um, so how, how do you see, you know, sales and marketing collaborating together to tackle that?

[00:27:39] Rodolfo Yiu: When you, I think, I think when you say tricky, it's probably a lot of that may contribute to like the lack of definitions. Like I've seen like people are not, things are not clear as an example of like what counts towards pipeline. Okay. Like where, to what point like it is like sales that's taking on the deals going forward, right? And so like, as an example, like we use a framework called BANT, like B-A-N-T, which is budget, authority, need, and timeline. Like as long as you check out like two out of four, then you should be able to carry this sales cycle forward.

[00:28:16] Disha Agarwal: So what I'm what I'm hearing is, you know, a lot of clarity and a lot of transparency so that everyone is aligned on what a particular term means, what our pipeline looks like, and then a reason as to why you should have a meeting with a particular, um, prospective required.

[00:28:33] Rodolfo Yiu: Yeah.

[00:28:34] Disha Agarwal: Understood. Um, Rodolfo, you've sort of worked across multiple companies and, you know, you've seen, um, demand gens sort of from different lenses in those companies. If you had to steal one growth playbook from another DevTool, whose would it be?

[00:28:49] Rodolfo Yiu: I think Vercel is great. Um, Vercel has one playbook which would be for the, I would say branding. Um, I think branding is one of those things that taste determines a big factor in it. And I think they have evolved their branding over time and everything is like leaning very heavily on their branding. And so I think that is one playbook.

[00:29:21] Disha Agarwal: Interesting. And if you have to give like one piece of advice to someone who's trying to scale demand gen right now, what would that be?

[00:29:30] Rodolfo Yiu: Know your user. It's probably my number one advice. It's like, well, it's kind of like a common journey that they go through. When do they look for your solutions or your tool? Right? And try to understand their mindsets and how they get to discover your tool. The more insights you have, either you talk to the users directly, you talk to the sales team directly, you meet people directly. The more intuitions or experience you will get to like understand the personas that you sell to.

[00:30:11] Disha Agarwal: Understood. Thanks for that cool piece of advice, Rodolfo. So I think this has been a very insightful conversation. Thank you for sharing this with us. But before we wrap up, let's do a quick rapid-fire round. Does that work?

[00:30:25] Rodolfo Yiu: Yeah, that's great. Let's do it.

(Rapid Fire Round Intro Music: 00:30:27 - 00:30:30)

[00:30:30] Disha Agarwal: So what's one DevTool that you can't live without?

[00:30:33] Rodolfo Yiu: ChatGPT.

[00:30:34] Disha Agarwal: What's the best piece of marketing advice you have ever received?

[00:30:37] Rodolfo Yiu: Integrity is key.

[00:30:38] Disha Agarwal: What's the last thing that you googled?

[00:30:41] Rodolfo Yiu: Um, funding rounds of the company.

[00:30:45] Disha Agarwal: What's one demand gen, what's one demand gen metric that's very overrated?

[00:30:49] Rodolfo Yiu: MQL.

[00:30:50] Disha Agarwal: Okay. What's a common marketing best practice that actually doesn't work?

[00:30:56] Rodolfo Yiu: That's a tricky one. Um, over-optimizing on ads.

[00:31:02] Disha Agarwal: If you could go back five years, what's one career move you'd do differently?

[00:31:06] Rodolfo Yiu: I would spend more time looking for the right company.

[00:31:10] Disha Agarwal: Okay. Um, and if you could take a six-month break to learn any new skill, what would that be?

[00:31:15] Rodolfo Yiu: Vibe coding.

[00:31:17] Disha Agarwal: All right, the last question here. What's one piece of startup advice people should actually ignore?

[00:31:21] Rodolfo Yiu: I would ignore, ignore some of that, ignore more advice than you would think.

[00:31:26] Disha Agarwal: Oh, is it?

[00:31:27] Rodolfo Yiu: Yeah. So, I I think a lot of that, well, when I say that is because, the other way to frame that question is that just trust your instinct. Um, because a lot of people will give you a lot of opinions, but you know your business better, you know your role better, like trust your instinct on what is right.

[00:31:45] Disha Agarwal: Interesting. Cool, cool piece of advice again, Rodolfo. Um, thank you for your time. I think this has been incredible. I can't wait to see what you tackle next.

[00:31:57] Rodolfo Yiu: Thank you so much for having me and it has been a fun conversation.

[00:32:00] Disha Agarwal: Thank you, Rodolfo.

Speaker Spotlight

Rodolfo Yu Profile Picture
Rodolfo Yiu
Ex-Head of Demand Generation at AnyScale

Rodolfo is a marketing leader with 7+ years of experience building and scaling Demand Gen teams across post-IPO companies and high-growth startups. He has led GTM for some of the biggest names in AI and cloud infrastructure, including AnyScale, Okta, and Recharge. At AnyScale, he helped turn open source traction into a revenue engine driving Dev-first adoption, building AI-powered marketing workflows, and aligning sales and marketing around product-led growth.

Disha Agarwal Profile Picture
Disha Agarwal
Head of Marketing at Reo.Dev

Disha leads all marketing at Reo.Dev, where she’s building the playbooks and narratives for the next generation of DevTool GTM teams. Previously an AVP at Unacademy, one of India’s fastest-growing consumer edtech startups, she brings a rare mix of growth execution and strategic storytelling. At Reo.Dev, she’s immersed herself in the developer marketing ecosystem—studying leaders like GitLab, Confluent, Snyk, and Postman—to break down what really works. She’s also behind the upcoming DevGTM Academy: a dedicated resource hub for marketers selling to technical audiences.

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