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CHABOT.DEV — A FIELD JOURNAL — VOLUME I, NO. 4

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DevRel Agencies and Consultancies.

A small but durable category. Several firms have built businesses around providing DevRel strategy, agency-style execution, or both, to companies that don't yet have full internal teams or that need outside perspective.

ENTRY · 3 MIN · 688 WORDS

A small but durable category. Several firms have built businesses around providing DevRel strategy, agency-style execution, or both, to companies that don’t yet have full internal teams or that need outside perspective.

Strategic consultancies

Persea Consulting

Mary Thengvall’s consulting practice, focusing on DevRel strategy, measurement, and team building. Author of The Business Value of Developer Relations.

Hoopy

Matthew Revell’s agency and the operator of DevRelCon. Provides DevRel strategy, execution support, and developer marketing. Founded 2016.

Persea, DevRel.Agency, and similar boutique strategy practices

Several similar-scale firms operating as senior-led advisory practices.

DevRel Strategic Nerds (strategicnerds.com)

Strategy-focused consultancy.

Jono Bacon Consulting

Jono Bacon’s community-strategy consulting practice, drawing on his Ubuntu/Canonical and broader community-management background.

Camilla Velasquez and similar individual consultants

A number of senior practitioners operate independent strategy consulting alongside other work.

Full-service agencies

Catchpoint, Drift, Sigstr, etc. (not DevRel-specific but operate in adjacent spaces)

Some marketing agencies have built developer-specific practices.

Code Story / specialist agencies

Smaller agencies focused on developer-content production (technical writing, video, blog production) at scale.

Agencies focused on developer-content-syndication.

Research and analyst firms

SlashData

The primary analyst firm focused on developer populations and developer marketing/relations. Twice-yearly State of the Developer Nation and State of Developer Relations reports. Operates the Developer Marketing Alliance / Developer Relations Alliance certifications and DevRelX Podcast.

RedMonk

Industry analyst firm focused on developers. Founders Stephen O’Grady and James Governor. The thesis-defining analyst voice in the space.

Gartner / Forrester / IDC

Traditional analyst firms; cover developer-product market segments but not DevRel as a specialty.

Bessemer State of the Cloud, a16z, Sequoia, similar VC research

VC research with substantial developer-product coverage; useful market context.

Production and creative agencies

Adjacent to DevRel proper but used heavily by DevRel teams:

  • Video production agencies specialising in technical content.
  • Conference-event production agencies (often hired by companies running flagship events).
  • Technical-writing agencies and freelance pools.
  • Translation and localisation agencies for global developer content.

Freelance and contract talent

A large fraction of the working DevRel population operates as independent contractors at any given time. Common forms:

  • Freelance technical writers.
  • Conference-speaker-for-hire arrangements (smaller and more nuanced than they sound — most senior speakers do not operate purely as paid speakers).
  • Community-moderation contractors.
  • Video and podcast production contractors.
  • Developer-content writers with byline placement at multiple publications.

Why companies hire externally

Three common situations:

  1. Pre-team companies. A pre–Series-B startup with no internal DevRel function may engage an agency or consultant to bootstrap strategy and a small program before hiring a full-time team.
  2. Specialist needs. Even a mature DevRel team may bring in a consultant for a specific workstream (developer-marketing strategy refresh, ambassador-program design, measurement-system implementation).
  3. Surge capacity. Major launches, conference event production, or content-volume spikes are sometimes augmented by agency contractors.

Caveats

The DevRel agency category is small and the quality range is wide. Several patterns to be aware of:

  • Brand of the agency vs. brand of the specific senior consultant. Always interview the person, not the agency.
  • Generalist marketing agencies attempting DevRel. Often produces output that misses the developer-credibility bar.
  • Consultants without recent operating experience. A consultant who has not operated a DevRel program in the past several years may be selling outdated playbooks.
  • Outsourcing the function vs. outsourcing tasks. Effective: outsourcing specific tasks (video production, copy editing, event ops). Risky: outsourcing the strategic function itself.

How to choose

A short checklist for engaging external help:

  1. Define what you want from the engagement. Strategy? Execution? Both?
  2. Define the scope and outcome. A six-week strategy review is different from a year-long program build.
  3. Check operating history. Has this consultant or agency recently operated a comparable program at a comparable company?
  4. Talk to recent clients. References matter more than testimonials.
  5. Set expectations around documentation and handoff. External work should leave the company with durable artefacts.

See also