How to sell to CTOs at Developer tools companies in France
CTOs in developer tools companies in France are primarily measured on system uptime and the speed of feature deployments. They respond to outreach that demonstrates a clear understanding of their current CI/CD pipeline challenges, especially if you can highlight specific improvements in observability tools that lead to faster troubleshooting and reduced downtime.
Written and maintained by the SoloRiff team, who build outbound software and run outbound with it. The figures below are our own: we measured 587 developer tools company domains over public DNS on 2026-09-03. Last updated 2026-09-03.
What actually hurts
- slow feature deployment
- frequent system downtimes
- inefficient troubleshooting
- lack of real-time observability
The playbook
- 01
Identify recent CI/CD tool changes
Search for announcements or news articles about companies that have recently switched CI/CD tools. Use platforms like TechCrunch or LinkedIn to identify these changes. This indicates a potential pain point where your solution could fit.
- 02
Research observability pain points
Look for discussions on forums like Stack Overflow or GitHub issues where developers express frustrations about observability in their current tools. This helps you understand specific challenges CTOs might be facing, allowing you to tailor your outreach.
- 03
Craft outreach around feature deployment speed
In your email, reference how your solution can help improve feature deployment speed by reducing bottlenecks in their current CI/CD process. Use specific examples from similar companies to illustrate your point.
- 04
Address common objections upfront
Anticipate objections such as 'we're under contract with our current vendor' or 'we don't have budget right now'. Acknowledge these in your outreach, suggesting a potential pilot program that requires minimal commitment to overcome resistance.
- 05
Follow up after major product launches
Schedule your follow-ups around major product launches or updates within their company. If they’ve recently deployed a new feature, reach out to discuss how your solution can support ongoing improvements and address any post-launch issues.
Can developer tools companies even receive your mail?
We measured the DNS of 587 developer tools companies, sampled evenly across company sizes, to see how many authenticate their own email. It matters in both directions: a domain that does not authenticate is a domain whose team is used to mail going missing — and if your own domain is in the gap, yours is the mail going missing.
Publishes a DMARC policy of quarantine or reject — the domain actually asks receivers to act on failures.
The gap is the finding: 27.4% of 1–10-person companies against 94.9% of the largest — 68 points apart. Small companies are where the unauthenticated domains are, and small companies are who most cold outreach is aimed at.
Where does your domain sit?
Same three lookups, run live against your domain. Nothing is stored and nothing is emailed to you.
How this was measured
Company domains were sampled within employee-count bands, then queried over public DNS for SPF (TXT at the apex), DMARC (TXT at _dmarc.) and MX. One domain per company, deduplicated. Anyone can reproduce any single row of this with dig.
DKIM is deliberately absent. A DKIM key lives under a selector that cannot be enumerated from outside the domain, so a company with flawless DKIM under a name we did not guess would be counted as having none. That would measure our guess list, not the industry.
Domains with no MX record are excluded rather than counted as failures — parked and redirect-only domains would otherwise drag every figure down and make the result an artefact of the sample.
Sampled within bands, so this describes the population of companies, not of employees: a 10-person company counts once, as does a 10,000-person one. Each band is at least 60 domains; bands below that are not published. Figures are percentages of the sample, not of the whole industry, and we publish no company names — only counts.
Measured 2026-09-03. Re-measured monthly.
The full census across every industry — sortable, with sample sizes, free to reuse under CC BY 4.0.
Subject lines that fit
- Improving your CI/CD efficiency
- Observability challenges in development
- Enhancing uptime for your tools
Questions
- Why do CTOs in developer tools ignore cold outreach?
- CTOs often receive numerous outreach attempts that fail to address their specific pain points or demonstrate an understanding of their technical challenges. If the outreach is generic and lacks personalization, it is likely to be overlooked.
- What key metrics do CTOs focus on?
- CTOs typically focus on metrics such as system uptime, deployment frequency, and mean time to recovery. These metrics are critical in assessing the effectiveness of their development processes and tools.
- How can I get a CTO's attention?
- To capture a CTO's attention, tailor your message to highlight solutions that directly address their specific challenges, such as improving deployment speed or enhancing system observability. Use relevant industry examples to bolster your credibility.
- What common tools do CTOs in developer tools companies use?
- CTOs in developer tools often utilize CI/CD platforms such as Jenkins, CircleCI, and GitLab, as well as observability tools like Datadog or New Relic. Understanding these tools can help in framing your outreach effectively.
Or have it run itself
SoloRiff does every step above on its own — finds the companies, finds the people, writes each of them individually, and handles the replies. Drop your URL and watch it work before you sign up for anything.
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