5 Takeaways From Our VibeScaling x Factory Event in SF on 11/5

Last week, my firm, VibeScaling, and our friends at Factory threw a private GTM event at their HQ on Townsend Street in SF, talking all things selling to developers.

Something different we do @ VibeScaling, as an advisory, investing, media, and recruiting firm working with AI-natives: we throw monthly private events in SF/NYC with our portfolio companies.

Factory has been an incredible partner for us, and we’ve placed a couple of folks on their GTM team, so we knew we had to throw this with them since they are smack dab in the middle of this AI code gen space - arguably the hottest use case right now from an ROI/traction perspective.

This event was focused on all things related to selling to developers/technical audiences. We had a star-studded executive panel, including:

• Andy Codner, VP of Sales @ Factory

• June-June Shih, VP of Sales @ LiveKit

• Bardia Shahali, VP of Sales @ Fireworks

• Justin Dignelli, VP of Sales @ Modal

It was an awesome turnout (~100) with a mix of some of the best AI-natives here in NYC - a talent-dense room from the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic, Vercel, Baseten, Fireworks, Grafana, LiveKit, Retool, Lambda, Exa, Dust, Mistral, Modal, ElevenLabs, Persona, Parallel, CodeRabbit, Together, Groq, Fal, and others in attendance.

I wanted to document 5 takeaways from the panel, conversations I had with folks there, and feedback for future events.

1. Texting developers works (sometimes better than calls)

This one surprised me tbh.

The MongoDB alum on the panel said they’re still seeing cold calls work with technical buyers.

We all feel devs don’t answer the phones, but many confirmed it's a misnomer and probably an excuse for those who don’t want to cold-call.

One note: texting is becoming the dark-horse channel.

Multiple sellers in the room said texting feels less intrusive than calling for developers.

Makes sense when you think about it: devs are in flow state most of the day, a call yanks them out. A text? They can read it between commits.

2. The best tool for dev GTM doesn't exist yet

A gap that kept coming up in conversations: there aren't any good tools connecting dev-specific signals (like GitHub activity, Stack Overflow presence, tech stack changes) to actionable GTM motions/messaging.

Everyone's stitching together Clay, LinkedIn Sales Nav, and manual GitHub stalking. It's messy.

CommonRoom gives you these signals but its’s hard to bring in CRM data and also confidently automate/augment messaging.

Some folks mentioned tools like Unify, but they aren’t focused on dev-focused signals like GitHub.

Curious if anyone will crack this.

The company that builds "Unify but for technical GTM" will print money for these AI-natives getting a lot of traction/inbound/product usage.

3. Reduce friction = your main job

Justin from Modal mentioned "the best sellers reduce friction between company and customer."

In dev tools, this is 10x more important than traditional SaaS. Developers have zero patience for:

• Long security reviews

• Contracts that require legal

• Implementations that need hand-holding

• Products that don't have good docs

The companies winning are making it stupid easy to get started, get value, and scale up. If your sales process adds friction, you've already lost.

4. Swarming is back (and critical)

What's old is new again.

The competitive landscape in AI dev tools is insane right now. Which means the multi-threaded, account-based plays that worked in enterprise SaaS are crucial again.

But here's what's different: you need to swarm earlier. Bardia from Fireworks put it perfectly - "lean into your network to break into your most important deals... no one's using an AI SDR in those key accounts."

I also heard from a few folks at Baseten that they need to do this more than ever because people are choosing infrastructure so quickly.

The best GTM teams are activating their networks, going direct, and building real relationships across multiple stakeholders before competitors can.

5. Pick your company wisely: sales needs to be first-class

This one came up in the networking conversations afterward.

Too many founders at developer-first companies treat sales as a necessary evil. They're product-obsessed (fair) but don't give GTM the respect, resources, or seat at the table it deserves.

The advice from multiple VPs: join companies where sales is a first-class citizen. Look for:

• Founders who have sold before or deeply respect GTM

• Actual TAM (not just hype)

• Enterprise adoption potential beyond open source

• Clear path from PLG - sales-assisted - enterprise

Andy from Factory said it best: "Sales is f*cking hard. But consistency compounds."

You want to be at a company that gets this and supports you through the grind.

Thanks for being a reader/subscriber of GTMBA.

For those who are new, my name is Chris Balestras, and I’m a partner @ VibeScaling - we work with seed through series C AI-natives to help with GTM advisory, recruiting their early teams, media, and investing.

Where to find VibeScaling:

• ⁠Website⁠

• ⁠LinkedIn Company Page⁠

• ⁠YouTube⁠

• ⁠Newsletter - GTMBA

• Spotify

• Apple Podcasts

See you next time 🫡,

Chris