How to sell to Founders at Developer tools companies in France
Founders at developer tools companies in France are primarily measured on their product adoption rate. They respond positively to outreach that demonstrates a clear understanding of the challenges in scaling CI/CD processes and enhancing observability. Highlighting specific pain points and showing how your insights can lead to improved metrics will catch their attention.
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 deployment times
- poor visibility into system health
- high churn rates among developers
- integration issues with existing tools
The playbook
- 01
Identify teams launching new CI/CD features
Use GitHub or GitLab to filter repositories that have recent commits indicating new CI/CD feature releases. This shows active development and potential pain points in their deployment process. Targeting these teams can lead to more relevant conversations.
- 02
Analyze recent funding announcements
Check platforms like Crunchbase for developer tool startups in France that have recently secured funding. These companies are likely scaling quickly and may need help with observability solutions. Mentioning their recent funding in outreach can create a timely hook.
- 03
Research their API platform challenges
Look for developer forums or community discussions where developers mention issues with API integrations or performance. Tailor your outreach to address these specific challenges, showing you understand their day-to-day struggles in building robust developer tools.
- 04
Position your outreach around scaling issues
When reaching out, focus on how your insights can help them scale their product effectively. Founders are often pressed for time, so addressing common scaling bottlenecks in your messaging can resonate well and prompt a response.
- 05
Follow up with insights on observability
After your initial outreach, send a follow-up email that includes a brief analysis of observability trends in developer tools. Founders are interested in staying ahead of the curve, and providing valuable insights can encourage them to engage further.
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
- Scaling your CI/CD processes
- Improving observability in your tools
- Insights on developer churn
Questions
- Why do founders in developer tools ignore cold outreach?
- Founders often receive numerous outreach attempts daily, making it difficult for them to discern which messages are relevant. If your outreach doesn't immediately address their specific challenges, such as scaling issues or integration pain points, it may be overlooked.
- What timing is best for reaching out to tech founders?
- Tech founders are usually busy at the start of the week, so reaching out mid-week can yield better responses. Additionally, aligning your outreach with product launches or funding announcements can increase your chances of engagement.
- How can I make my outreach relevant to tech founders?
- To make your outreach relevant, focus on their current challenges, such as deployment bottlenecks or observability issues. Tailor your message to their specific situation and show how your insights can provide value in overcoming these obstacles.
- What common objections do founders have to cold outreach?
- Founders may object to cold outreach by citing a lack of time or relevance. They often prioritize messages that clearly demonstrate an understanding of their industry and immediate challenges, so ensuring your outreach is concise and targeted is crucial.
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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