The developer tools market is exploding. Here's my thesis on where the opportunities are.
Ten years ago, developer tools were an afterthought. You used what your company provided or what was free and open source. The idea of paying for productivity tools seemed absurd to many developers.
That's changed dramatically. GitHub sold for $7.5 billion. Figma for $20 billion. Vercel, Stripe, Datadog—the list of developer-focused unicorns keeps growing.
Why now?
1. Software is eating everything. More developers means a bigger market.
2. Developer time is expensive. Tools that save hours per week easily justify their cost.
3. Bottoms-up adoption works. Developers choose their tools, then convince their companies to pay.
Where I see opportunity:
- AI-assisted development (beyond autocomplete) - Security tools that don't slow developers down - Collaboration tools for distributed teams - Infrastructure that abstracts away complexity - Analytics for developer experience
The best developer tools feel like superpowers. They take tedious tasks and make them invisible. That's what I'm building toward.