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From Open Source Project to AI Infrastructure Leader: Inside Weaviate’s Developer-First Growth Strategy

Developer tools rarely capture mainstream attention, but when they do, it’s usually because they’ve tapped into a transformative technological wave. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Weaviate founder Bob van Luijt revealed how his company rode the AI revolution from an open-source project to a leading vector database, by focusing on one core principle: helping developers succeed.

The story begins in 2015, well before AI was trending. Bob was working with early language models that produced vector embeddings – mathematical representations of words in space. “For example, if you take the two words Eiffel Tower and you combine them together, then the distance between the word Paris was smaller than, for example, London,” Bob explains. This simple observation would eventually lead to a crucial insight about the future of search and recommendation systems.

The turning point came at Google I/O 2016. When Sundar Pichai announced Google’s shift from “mobile-first to AI-first,” Bob had an epiphany. “I got it immediately,” he recalls. “I’m going to start a project that is going to be a search engine that focuses on doing that not at the scale of Google, but doing that for any developer, at any company, at any scale that wants to build with machine learning.”

But being early to market wasn’t always advantageous. Bob spent years evangelizing the concept, traveling across the US, Europe, and Japan, demonstrating the potential of machine learning in search. “AI now is very hot,” he notes, “but I can tell you it was not in 2016.”

The transition from open-source project to company wasn’t planned. It emerged organically as the project gained traction and Bob’s ambitions evolved from consulting to product development. “I wanted to have a product business rather than a pure consulting business,” he explains. “When the project started to grow, I was like, this is it. This is the opportunity.”

Weaviate’s marketing strategy reflects this developer-first mindset. The company structures its marketing efforts across three specialized teams:

• Developer Growth: Focuses on winning new users
• Developer Relations: Handles documentation and technical content
• Product Marketing: Manages traditional marketing activities

Their content strategy follows what Bob calls the “three H model” – Hero, Hub, and Hygiene content. Hero content, like their podcast, builds broad awareness. Hub content demonstrates specific solutions, while Hygiene content serves developers already committed to the product.

What’s particularly noteworthy is Bob’s perspective on measuring marketing ROI, especially for top-of-funnel activities. “If a dollar comes in and somebody was like, ‘Oh yeah, four months ago I saw this social media post, or I listened to this podcast and you came on my radar, and now therefore I’m buying right now’ – that’s not how it works,” he explains. Instead, they focus on engagement metrics like shares and Slack channel signups for early-stage awareness.

The company’s growth accelerated significantly after launching their serverless offering in April 2023, perfectly timed with the surge of interest following ChatGPT’s release. But rather than chase trends, Weaviate maintains its focus on infrastructure. “AI will not only be something that’s sprinkled over products that you and I use today,” Bob predicts. “It will be at the heart of these products.”

For founders building developer tools, Bob offers this crucial advice: “Help people be successful in what they want to build. Don’t push your technology. Help them be successful using your technology.” This principle guides everything from content creation to sales conversations at Weaviate.

Looking ahead, Bob envisions Weaviate evolving beyond its vector database roots into a comprehensive AI-native platform. “We want to grow into this AI native platform where we enable developers. Doesn’t matter what size company you work for, it doesn’t matter where you’re coming from. If you’re a developer that wants to build AI native applications, we want to be here to help from the infrastructure level.”

Weaviate’s journey offers valuable lessons for technical founders: start with a clear technical insight, maintain unwavering focus on developer success, and build marketing systems that reflect the way developers actually make decisions. In a world increasingly shaped by AI, this approach might just be the playbook for the next generation of developer tools.