Deon Nicholas

tl;dr: Not every ad channel is going to deliver results. Don’t be afraid to cut the cord on the underperformers before they drain your budget. Ever invested in a channel that just didn’t work out? If you’re a dev marketer, your answer’s most likely yes. At ScraperAPI, Google Ads was a total bust. We tried. We spent. We waited for results that never came. Outside of branded searches, it was a total disaster. It was a stark reminder that not every channel — no matter how popular — is always worth the spend. While I’m a big believer in the idea that growth doesn’t happen overnight, you need to know when it’s time to jump ship before you drain your whole ad budget. Our problem at ScraperAPI was that we were building a product that devs didn’t quite know to even search for yet. Hindsight's 20/20, but I wish we’d poured all that AdWords spend into channels that *actually* helped devs understand our product — like Quora, Reddit, and other dev communities — instead of holding out for a payoff that simply wasn’t coming. tl;dr: Not every ad channel is going to deliver results. Don’t be afraid to cut the cord on the underperformers before they drain your budget.

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Just built one of the most scalable sequences using Sendspark's Dynamic Video feature. You see there's Account Based Sequencing (ABS) when talking in terms of top of funnel... And then there's Executive Multi-threading 🎯 I built a sequence that I could use to come on top of my reps outreach and level set with their executive team. The best part? I am using video in 4 of the email templates and they will be leveraging AI to... 👉🏻 Show my prospects company website and scroll on it (seems super personalized at first glance) 👉🏻 Say each executives name at the beginning of the video (even more personalized when they click into it) I usually get 12-16% click rates on these types of emails and the best part is I can personalize these videos with AI to a little as 10 or as many at 10,000 execs. Stay tuned for updates on this one! 🤠 #Outbound #Video #Sendspark #SoftwareCowboy #Warmly

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Some tools I'm using in many of my consulting engagements right now (steal my tech stack—"Good artists copy, great artists steal": (For context, the type of engagements I'm doing include: automated PLG workflows, inbound automation, scoring, micro-campaigns, and automated warm outbound/signal-based selling). ~~In alphabetical order~~ [CRM] Attio (a new one in the mix) HubSpot Salesforce [Data] Apollo.io Clay (a spreadsheet with APIs into 80+ data providers and LLMs) Sumble ZoomInfo [Miscellaneous] Chili Piper (Lead routing) Default (next-gen lead routing) HeyReach (LinkedIn automation) Ocean.io (Lookalikes) [Signals] Apollo.io Champify Common Room Koala Orchestra Pocus RB2B UserGems 💎 ZoomInfo ••• The alpha is not in the technology. It's in the strategy. Remember, avoid catching "GAS" (gear acquisition syndrome). The tools used to execute the strategy is merely a means to an end.

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tl;dr: Devs notice every detail. Take your cues from Stripe and GitHub, and keep your design clean and functional to drive adoption that sticks. Design ALWAYS matters. But it matters even more when you’re building a product for devs (speaking from experience here). Whether you’re a developer yourself or just dev-adjacent, you know that nothing gets past these folks. In their eyes, the devil’s in the details, and they’re constantly on the lookout for even the slightest sign to validate their inherent skepticism. Animations, subtle fade-ins and fade-outs, iconography, typography — you name it. These aren't just aesthetics; they're the unspoken language of a tool’s usability. In that way, design is the ultimate double-edged sword. Done right, these kinds of features have the power to oh-so-subtly tell the developer, “Look at how seamless I am to use.” Done wrong, they can create a frustration so powerful it leaves them running for the hills. So, how do you get it right? What I’ve learned from building both ScraperAPI and TLDR is that the easiest way to nail your design strategy is to follow the lead of the best examples. My two personal favorites? Stripe and​​ Github. When they hit the market over a decade ago, they set a new standard for the type of design developers have come to expect. For Stripe, the real showstopper wasn’t just the clean and intuitive dashboard we all know and love. It was things like clear, readable docs and all the little micro-interactions (think button and form field hover effects) that made the interface feel responsive and interactive. For Github, it was also a series of subtle features that made the developer experience smoother — like color-coded syntax highlighting or how merging a pull request would trigger a satisfying (yet not distracting) animation to emphasize the action. And while those are still the gold standard, there’s a whole new generation of companies on the cutting edge of dev design: - Resend - Vercel - Linear - Replicate - render.com So if you’re still in the early stages (or in a re-design phase), don’t be afraid to poke around the market to see which kinds of features are sticking and which aren’t. While us devs are particular, we’re also quite predictable in terms of what we do and don’t like (Hint: save your GIFs and confetti animations for another audience 😉).

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TollBit just landed $24M in Series A funding, and this is the kind of deal that doesn’t just raise eyebrows—it rewrites the playbook. Lightspeed led the charge, but they weren’t rolling solo. Heavyweights like Section 32, Sunflower Capital, AIX Ventures, and more piled in to back this rocket ship. Massive congrats to Olivia Joslin and Toshit Panigrahi for pulling off what every AI startup dreams of: solving a huge problem and locking down the resources to scale it like nobody’s business. Now let’s talk impact. AI companies have been cruising through the internet, gobbling up content like a buffet, while publishers have been left holding the bill. TollBit is here to fix that. They’ve built a platform that tracks AI bot traffic, charges for every content use, and does it all automatically. For publishers, it’s not just a payday—it’s getting paid on time without the hassle of chasing down AI companies. And for AI businesses? They finally get a legitimate, scalable solution for content licensing—without stepping into legal quicksand. That’s a win-win. But that $24M isn’t just for show. It’s getting funneled straight into infrastructure. We’re talking faster payment protocols, even smoother integrations, and the muscle to handle the tidal wave of new publishers and AI companies jumping into the mix. And with Time Inc., Penske Media Corporation, and ADWEEK already signed up, this isn’t just a proof-of-concept. TollBit is the real deal, sitting at the intersection of AI innovation and media monetization. Olivia Joslin doesn’t mince words: “This market’s moving at light speed, and neither publishers nor AI companies can afford to be bogged down by manual deals. We’ve made it frictionless for both sides to come out on top.” Toshit Panigrahi sees the bigger picture: “What we’re building isn’t just a platform. We’re creating a future where publishers get paid for the content that powers AI, and AI companies keep innovating without stepping on any toes.” Here’s the real takeaway: TollBit just carved out their place as the go-to for AI content licensing. They’ve figured out how to make sure the creators behind the content get their fair share while helping AI companies keep the innovation engine running. This $24M Series A? It’s just the beginning. Everyone else in the space? Better start taking notes. #Content #Publishing #Publishers #ContentLicensing #Technology #Innovation #AI #MediaMonetization #Technology #Innovation #ContentPayment #AIInnovation

MVP. MDP. MVE. SLC. SMURF. What else might you call your minimum viable product? More importantly, does it matter? Ok folks — I'm trying to do more of this *video thing* so bear with me as I get better at recording and editing and find a place to talk to you that doesn't include ✈️ noises. I've seen quite a few posts lately talking about how the MVP isn't what we as entrepreneurs should be pursuing these days. Instead, we should focus on building a [𝘧𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘪𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘧𝘢𝘷𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘔𝘝𝘗 𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘮 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦] instead. The question got me thinking and led me down a bit of a rabbit hole. Before I share my thoughts, though, I'd like to hear yours. What's your take on the MVP? Do you focus on an MVP or something else...like a SMURF? Does it even matter, or are we all just drinking too much of our own kool-aid? Share your thoughts in the comments and check out a link to my recent post on the subject while you're there. #minimumviableproduct #leanstartup #leanmethodology #entrepreneur

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Andddd.. another prediction post! This week we did our first "Zoom" podcast for our 2025 predictions ASOM Pod! Here's what we rant about: Bryan MacDonald's hot predictions: - Tik Tok Creators will increase their prices - Subscription Co's will see 15% Y-O-Y decline or more - SaaS Companies willfold - Meta is still King - Companies that relay on China will struggle. Amer Grozdanic's hot predictions: - More brands will have subscription programs - Mergers and consolidation in tech - Social commerce will become the new DTC competitor - Tik Tok Ban will lead to acquisition - Value based shopping trends John Roman's hot predictions: - Crypto keeps running + SaaS/Brands figure out how - Live Shopping will succeed, finally - Meta will continue to be king - Consumer spending loosens up in 2H - Lots of brands to die/close And my hot predictions: - Creators to create more software and brands - Google becomes less relevant - AI and AGI change team structures - ASOM pod will be #1 DTC pod Lots of hot takes and predictions, tune in for our very first digital pod for episode #27! Join 17.6k Subscribers on YouTube to watch our latest drop today! Just type in ASOM pod in the search on your favorite streaming platform to enjoy! Have an ASOM day!

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I recently shared that one of my favorite parts about working at Amplitude is the fact that despite being a public company, it still feels like a startup. And I think one of the key reasons for that is the high sense of ownership that everyone here has. Ownership is one of our core company values, and I love being able to see it in action every day. I share more below:

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5 things we're betting on to beat giants Like Bright Data & Oxylabs (and they can help you too): 1) Focus beats everything We cut all services except residential proxies. Sounds crazy, right? We left tens of thousands on the table. But focus is our secret weapon. If you’re not all in, you’re out. 2) Speed is a superpower In business, unlike chess, you can change the rules. While our competitors are playing on multiple boards, trying to be everything to everyone.... We’re putting all our energy into one. 3) Play to your strengths Stop trying to do everything. We doubled down on what we do best—residential proxies. Now we offer the lowest price in the industry... guaranteed! 4) Price wins in the end We decided to be the Costco of proxies. Bottom line... nobody can beat us on price. $6,000 for 1TB with competitors? We offer 1TB for FREE right now. We figure its worth it to get people to try us while building a relationship with them. Then it's $500 for 1TB on Geonode. ♻️ We're playing the volume game! ♻️ 5) Reinvent the Game In chess, the rules are fixed. In business, they aren’t. You have the power to change how you compete, where you focus, and how you win. Shoutout to Adam Robinson for inspiring me to start posting on here. #ProxySolutions #ResidentialProxies #WebScraping

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Perplexity is reportedly looking to fundraise at an $8B valuation. AI search engine Perplexity is in fundraising talks and hopes to raise around $500 million at an $8 billion valuation, according to The Wall Street Journal. If a deal happens with those terms, it would more than double Perplexity’s valuation from its $3 billion valuation when it raised from SoftBank Investment Advisers over the summer. The WSJ reports that the company currently receives about 15 million queries a day and brings in around $50 million in annualized revenue. Perplexity uses AI to help people search the web in a chatbot-style interface. Some news publishers have accused the company of unauthorized web scraping and plagiarism, and The New York Times has even sent Perplexity a cease-and-desist letter, but CEO Aravind Srinivas said he wants to work with publishers and has “no interest in being anyone’s antagonist here.” #perplexity #ai #genai #startups #fundraise #tech https://lnkd.in/gPu5HG56

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tl;dr: Finding external advocates for your product is one of the most foolproof ways to build developer trust. If you’re generous enough with your incentives, loyal customers don’t just become endorsers — they become revenue-generating machines. Your biggest fans could be generating 10% of your revenue. At ScraperAPI, our affiliate program did just that by converting loyal users into top salespeople. Here’s how we spotted the opportunity: We realized that a lot of our customers would outsource web scraping tasks to freelance software engineers who would use the same tool over and over again for different companies. That left us with a great opportunity to build relationships with those freelancers who had the potential to bring us more and more new customers over time. Here’s how we did it in practice: It’s super simple. We offered killer incentives to everyone involved: -25% recurring commissions for affiliates -10% first-month discount for the new customers they referred Because our product was well-designed and easy to use, freelancers were happy to recommend us over and over again.

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AI-first fatigue is overwhelming us as Mitch Grothaus points out here: https://lnkd.in/g5ryKVq4. It's time we helped buyers understand how products use AI and GenAI. Does a company train its own LLMs or develop its own RAG models or does it just provide a thin veneer over APIs provided by LLM vendors? Would a framework that anyone can use to evaluate vendor claims help? A similar effort in the IT services industry (https://lnkd.in/gf-633dq) years ago helped IT departments understand the capabilities of IT service vendors, morphed into an ISO standard and ultimately created a larger market for IT services. Look for a follow up post that proposes a similar framework for GenAI applications! #AI #GenAI

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Hat's off to our client Twos ✌️ today! Parker Klein ✌️and Twos Joe ✌️and team pulled off an incredible feat to get from #CategoryDesign in July to full product roll out of Personal Active Lists (PALs) in just 4.5 months! This product is incredible. We all keep lists, right? Todos, shopping lists, people to call, etc. We've tried productivity tools before, but never seem to stick with one method. Personally, I used a text editor (old school software engineer), sent emails to myself, text myself, you name it. And it's still just an item on a list. I still need to act on it. Sprinkle in a little AI and you've got Twos. I was just working out and remembered I finished my bag of macadamia nuts. So I said "hey siri, add something to a list." Siri prompted "what do you wan to add?" I said "macadamia nuts." She said "to what list?" I said, "Shopping." Done. You say, ok, so it's on a list now, big deal!? But no..there's more. When I finally look at my list, there it is "macadamia nuts" with a little AI star burst next to it. I click, and there's an amazon link, a walmart link etc. I click on the amazon link, and I'm right there with the macadamia nut page on amazon. Buy Now. Now I'm done. (I'll put screen shots in comments) There are tons of integrations like that. Opentable, Ticketmaster, etc. Download it and give it a run. I promise you won't be let down! #productivity #todos #AIapps

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"Nobody goes there any more it's too crowded" - sums up the current state of cold outbound. Everyone is complaining about decreasing efficiency and how ineffective cold outbound is as a channel. Inboxes are full of messages that say "Hi! I saw you were also in the Computer & Electronics industry..." While at the same time some people are having more success than ever with hyper targeted messaging. Here's a great example from Jen Allen-Knuth that is one of the better detailed examples I have seen on how to stand out. https://lnkd.in/eAHMZsi3 Is cold outbound working for you right now?

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The Power of NOT being perceived as a threat 😎 When Andreas Bischoff and I spoke about Lisa Moskotova and I doing a panel on traffic monetization via API, I didn’t think much of it other than being excited because I was going to be sharing the stage with someone whose knowledge complements mine and that loves tech as much as I do, which would make it a good session no matter what. But it turned out to be so much more than that… This is one of my favorite subjects and I speak about it very often, as per usual the audience was 95% male online marketers with different levels of experience on the subject. But this time it was so different and it left me thinking of what made it so!? 1) Lisa Moskotova and I have been friends for at least 10 years and know each others areas of expertise relatively well. 2) From the get go we set out to add as much value and knowledge as we could, given that we both dislike sessions that are disguised sales pitches. 3) We had fun with it. We understand that is a complex and complicated subject but also understand that there is power behind making something complicated seem simple and putting your audience at ease. 4) We are both extremely passionate about what we do and that translates to a great deal of positive energy in the room. 5) Like it or not the fact that it was just two women up there made it so unthreatening for the audience that by the second half of the session it became so interactive that we ended up running out of time. People opened up about their own experiences, their doubts, their fears, their challenges and because we were so nurturing and non judgmental: ALL FILTERS WERE OFF. It might have been one of my favorite sessions ever and if you have been following for a while you know I have a crazy amount of speaking engagements a year, so I decided to stop and try to come up with the answer to what made it different so I could share some takeaways to help us all: 1) Speak about stuff you are both, passionate and knowledgeable about. 2) Make the complex seem simple by not over complicating your explanations. 3) Try to gauge the level of knowledge of your audience so that you can adapt the complexity of your content to keep them engaged. 4) Do your best to add value to the attendees. 5) Understand the power of not being perceived as a threat and have sooo much FUN with it. Good vibes are contagious! #publicspeaking #onlinemarketing #affiliatemarketing #ceolife

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When we first met Jon + Pål a year ago, they were deep in figuring out how to unlock the next phase of growth: building their outbound sales motions. With 500K+ devs using the platform, Sanity had built a strong PLG motion and they were looking to see if they could spot enterprise/upsell opps from all this activity. They took a bet on Koala — that they now call a gamechanger. I'm particularly proud of how we've iterated together – working with Jon to deliver quick early value during the POC and then working with both Jon and Pal to layer in lots of new data & use cases together. Two weeks in:  - Sellers now have self-serve access to website, docs, and product data.  - We’re already getting pinged with meeting highlights sourced with Koala! Fast-forward one year:  - Koala has become the go-to daily tool for sellers. - They integrated G2 intent and PLS data to further identify top accounts in-market.  - Outbound has become their main lead source! What’s next? (We're not done yet!) - Migrating from their legacy ABM platform — with Koala’s intent data, they’re unlocking use cases like ad retargeting, segmentation, and more. I think what made it all really click for me was when Michael, a top SDR @ Sanity shared how with Koala: 😍“Outbounding is fun again!!” 😍 For us, that’s what it’s all about: building a platform that sellers actually want to use, and we can’t wait to watch more magic happen at Sanity! Check out the case study here 👇 https://lnkd.in/gg-d_uW5

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You think it's a feature race but it's not. Here's the proof. It's what we did at Teesnap so well in an industry full of "...and what about this feature." Less is more. Focus over choice. You think you're one feature away from the 'breakthrough' or the 'take off' growth. You're not. The problem is the lack of understanding what your customer wants. And, the problem is: if you ask them, they probably don't know either. Consumers are fickle and finicky. You have to ask and interview a ton of people. No 'one' individual will give you the answer. You have to take that information and see the big picture. And, that's really, really hard. Very very very few people are good as this. Jobs did it. Musk does it. Hmmmm.... who else? #startups #founders #entrepreneurship

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Just doing some market research. So, we can pretty much run PLAiR at next-to-no cost if TTS isn't a primary function. Realistic TTS is expensive, even with Amanda's super clever caching. Drops the overall cost at scale to a few $ a month vs $$, though still definately a factor! So to list the basics! Super accurate full control of your listening experience via voice, including intuitive search and discovery of music, podcasts and audiobooks. You can literally ask for five different things at once and its very YOU as the DJ gets to know your style super well. All the additional bells and whistles you'd expect like news, weather, events and all the other elements one would get from their local radio station, though obviously customised specifically for you. Down to your neighbourhood pretty much. Learnt a BUCKLOAD from STOCKGPT for scraping / summarising on the fly! It's crazy cool, basically like having a one-on-one conversation with the radios DJs.. Hope to have an early beta out soon, though got much more polish to do, mostly user-account security, management, server-side, asynchronous programming stuff and the rest. Been a big learning curve! There's a big social component that we want to introduce, though time and resource will dictate how quickly we roll that out. Think HAM radio rolled into the mix! Anyhow. trying to work out what the Premium would look like cost wise. I like anyone am sick of subscriptions and at current you'd need a Spotify subscription to begin with. Don't want advertising. The version without TTS due to running on efficient LLMS could operate at next to nothing, which is kind of cool! Though with user adoption and scale, it will add up. Anyhow, just shooting ideas out! I'm currently sitting at about $5 bucks a months for the full DJ, PA, Assistant style version. Thoughts!

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