Netlify + AI, Planetscale layoffs, Statsig product demos

"Devtools Weekly" by Hypeburner tracks the business of developer tools. I'm your editor, Hashim Warren.

I'm proud to say that Hypeburner avoids covering AI wow-ware. But this week I did find a feature powered by AI that could be useful.

Let's get into it!

Hot Product Launch

Netlify launched the rare AI-powered feature that can actually help developers. This new feature uses AI to diagnose failed deploys.

And in a touch of tasteful restraint, the feature has no distinct or fancy name. It's just baked into the user flow. If a deploy fails, a button appears offering to diagnose the problem. There's a badge on the button that says "AI", but other than that it doesn't brag about the tech that powers it.

You click that button, wait a moment, and the AI writes the diagnosis.

This is how AI should be integrated into products. It should only appear at moments of friction, and solve problems magically. Most AI integrations have been nothing more than bolted on chat boxes that hallucinate and lie to you. Props to Netlify for once again leading the way in providing a beautiful developer experience.

Enterprise Watch

How do you sell to developers who traditionally do not like to sit through sales calls? You bring the product demo to them through informational, technical webinars.

That's the go-to-market play Statsig is running, and you should copy everything they're doing. Particularly these three elements:

The demo is live. Recorded demos do not convert prospects. A high conversion webinar is interactive and you cannot achieve that on a recording.

The demo is recurring. Statsig offers the webinar monthly, but I recommend a weekly cadence. Too often dev tools startups will run a live presentation that converts, then never do it again!

The demo covers product basics. I recommend a "product 101" webinar, and that's what Statsig is offering here. Focusing on marketing new features is a common misstep of developer tool teams. Prospects are often confused by what core, differentiated value your product promises. That's what your live and recurring demo should focus on.

For all of the reasons above, Statsig gets the "Enterprise Watch 🏆 Trophy" this week.

Front-End Products

✨ Database-as-a-service Planetscale cancelled its free tier and laid off staff. Planetscale no longer wants to be known as a serverless database that scales down to zero, and supports hobby apps.

This move is similar to the one Heroku made earlier this year, chopping off its free tier to focus on enterprise customers.

✨ In the opposite direction, serverless database Xata pivoted to fully become a serverless Postgres SaaS. This puts them in direct competition with Neon, Nile, and of course Supabase.

✨ Headless CMS Directus held a product launch week and rolled out many new features, including a plugin marketplace.

✨ Frontend meta-framework, Astro launched version 4.5. The major new feature is a "Dev Audit UI" which enables developers to "browse issues by category and click to see more details, all from inside your dev browser and visible in line with the actual UI elements on your page."

✨ Web app platform, Vercel now gives you the ability to manage feature flags from the dashboard. This looks like a fantastic integration with Optimizely, LaunchDarkly, Statsig, Split, Hypertune, ect.

✨ New startup Ubicloud stepped out of the shadows as an "open source alternative to AWS". The idea is that this product gives you the capabilities of AWS, while being sort of a wrapper for low level services, like AWS Baremetal.

What can you learn about growing users and revenue from this week's product launches?

I'm going live on Friday at 1PM ET/ 10AM PT to show what I would incorporate from these launches, and workshop how I would improve them.

See you on Friday!

Hashim Warren, Hypeburner