To overcome developer apathy towards security (which feels like boring insurance), Snyk created entertaining talks showing live hacks of popular libraries. This made the threat feel visceral and personal, motivating developers to check their own code far more effectively than a standard risk pitch.
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To foster genuine AI adoption, introduce it through play. Instead of starting with a hackathon focused on business problems, the speaker built an AI-powered scavenger hunt for her team's off-site. This "dogfooding through play" approach created a positive first interaction, demystified the technology, and set a culture of experimentation.
In a domain dominated by fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD), Wiz intentionally avoids it. They believe customers connect better with empowerment and humor. Instead of scaring clients about potential breaches, they frame their product as a tool that enables teams to build securely and confidently, fostering a healthier partnership.
To maximize the impact of community engagement, Wiz offers tangible, status-enhancing rewards. After completing a difficult hacking challenge, users receive a custom-made certificate of excellence. This praises their skill and gives them a professionally valuable artifact to share, turning a single engagement into widespread, user-driven promotion.
Snyk saw low adoption when asking developers to add checks to their build process. The breakthrough was a GitHub app that not only flagged new vulnerabilities but proactively opened pull requests with the fix. This reframed the tool from a potential blocker to an indispensable, helpful assistant.
Traditional content like tutorials and blog posts often fails to engage a technical audience. A more effective marketing strategy is to use the tool to build interesting, ambitious projects in public. This showcases the tool's power and attracts a builder audience by sharing the process, including the unresolved challenges.
Snyk achieved developer adoption but failed to monetize until they addressed the needs of the actual buyer—the security team. They had to add governance and reporting features, realizing that user love doesn't automatically translate to sales when the user and buyer are different people.
To keep non-technical stakeholders engaged, don't show code or API responses. Instead, have team members role-play a customer scenario (e.g., a customer service call) to demonstrate the 'before' and 'after' impact of a new platform service. This makes abstract technical progress tangible and exciting.
Snyk combined bottom-up adoption with top-down sales in a 'pincer movement.' They leveraged existing developer usage within an organization as a powerful entry point for their outbound sales team to engage security leaders, turning user love into a compelling conversation with the economic buyer.