#GlueCon 2014 Notes: How, Why and When to R&D — Adam DuVander, SendGrid Labs

Keynote: How, Why and When to R&D — Adam DuVander, SendGrid Labs

• Hackathons as performed by a hardware manufacturer: “Bring your ideas.. some wood, we’ll provide the hammers and coffee. Then you will have your 48 hour house”
• Hackathons have their place, but API providers need to rethink their approach by looking at 5 key areas
• 1. Business Development
  • Seek out great partners (AccuWeather.com)
• 2. Sales
  • Twilio had complete self-service, yet offered a full service sales team
• 3. Marketing
  • Look at what you have and find things that are interesting and how to solve problems
  • Complete and accurate documentation slightly above one with good uptime
  • Docs = tutorials, sample apps, client libraries
  • Developer marketing isn’t like traditional marketing – it requires community
• 4. Community
  • Online: StackOverflow, etc.
  • Offline: Meetup, conferences, hackathons (only 1/5th of your strategy, if that)
• 5. Open Source
  • Contribute to what you use
• 6. Create a service that is popular – Done! Nothing else to do!