Rory Wilding has led Supabase’s growth team since its early days (founded in 2020). Rory hosted an AMA session on Product Hunt early 2023 to share his insights and lessons learned on product-led growth, open-source, meme marketing, launch weeks, community building, remote work… Below are my key takeaways.

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key takeways

  • It starts with a great product
  • Talk to as many users as possible
  • Write helpful content
  • Run launch weeks to maximize the compound effect
  • Engage with your community

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growing Supabase to 50K+ stars

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it starts with a great product

Above all, one quote really struck me when Rory talks about growth at Supabase:
Without a solid product that solves a need for people, it’s pretty hard to grow anything. — Rory Wilding, Head of Growth, Supabase
Growth starts with a great product that solves a real pain point. Before running any tactics or “hacks,” start building a product people want. Then talk to users.

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talk to (many) users

Rory explained that Paul Copplestone and Ant Wilson, Supabase’s co-founders, played a significant role in discovering what developers wanted by engaging with them. The objective? To have a deep understanding of users’ needs.
In the early days, there’s no substitute for speaking to as many users as possible. — Rory Wilding, Head of Growth, Supabase
As a fun fact, Rory shared that he spent a weekend going through over 3,000 developer profiles on GitHub after a sign-up spike, reaching out to as many as possible to chat with them about their Supabase’s likes and dislikes. Do things that don’t scale, right? Build something people really want and talk to as many users as possible to help you set the foundations of solid, steady growth, and so you’re ready to skyrocket.

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setting up the launchpad

From the AMA session, I’d summarize Supabase’s growth strategy into a mix of three main channels (spoiler alert: no paid ads):
  • content marketing,
  • viral marketing, and
  • community building.

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write helpful content

Developers have different jobs-to-be-done, and Supabase can solve many problems. Solid fundamentals are key here. Case studies, code examples, and documentation help developers learn about the product and achieve their objectives.
If a developer can clearly see how your developer experience can help their workflow then using your product becomes an obvious choice. — Rory Wilding, Head of Growth, Supabase
In short, give developers helpful, educative content. For further inspiration, read this:

Introduction to the DEV Content Framework

Level up your developer-led content strategy

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run launch weeks

Supabase has set a “launch week” strategy: Once every 3-4 months, the team spends a week shipping a new feature every day. Rory breaks down this strategy into 4 main steps:
1

Set up the priorities

Early on, Ant and Paul, Supabase’s co-founders, set the priorities with one key principle: fixed timeline, flexible scope.
2

Build

The product teams figure out the challenges and solutions by themselves.
3

Review on-going projects

Few weeks before the launch week, the team reviews how shippable on-going projects are — including docs
4

Reflect

Post-launch week, the team reflects on what worked and what could be improved.
Launch weeks have been great for both aligning the team and getting traction within the community. — Rory Wilding, Head of Growth, Supabase. Repost this
There’s more. If such a shipping cadence may sound impressive, it doesn’t stop here. Supabase keeps shipping things every month, so the team doesn’t necessarily hold features back for launch week. It “just” ships and shouts as much as possible.

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keep the momentum going

Post-launch week, the Supabase team keeps momentum by engaging and supporting its community, amplifying community-generated content in monthly email campaigns.
The monthly community email newsletter has strong engagement and showcases all the big monthly updates from the team and the community. — Rory Wilding, Head of Growth, Supabase

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wrapping up

During this AMA session, Supabase’s Head of Growth, Rory Wilding, insisted on:
  1. building a great product
  2. talking to as many users as possible
I’d summarize Supabase’s growth strategy into a mix of three main channels:
  • content marketing: write helpful content that educates your users;
  • viral marketing: set a “launch week” strategy to maximize compound effect;
  • community building: engage with your community to keep the momentum going.
And that’s it! I hope you enjoyed reading these key takeaways and found some insights to help grow your developer-first product. Over to you!