Picks and Shovels: Marketing to Developers During the AI Gold Rush

by Prashant Sridharan

Overview

Master the art of developer marketing and make it big in the AI Gold Rush.

During the California Gold Rush, it wasn't the miners who struck it rich-it was the merchants selling them picks and shovels. Today's AI Gold Rush is no different. The real winners are the ones building tools for developers, and it takes special skills to stand out and successfully market to people who hate being marketed to.

Picks and Shovels is the definitive guide to developer marketing, built from Prashant Sridharan's thirty years of experience helming developer programs at Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Twitter, and numerous startups. To connect with the most discerning audience in tech, you'll learn how to:

• • Craft honest, effective messaging that resonates with developers.
  • Build programs that build trust and turn skeptics into champions.
  • Run unforgettable events that drive real adoption and impact.
  • Build audacious content that developers love.
  • Align product, marketing, and sales teams around a shared vision.
  • Measure what matters-and cut the fluff.

Whether you're launching a business or running an established organization in BigTech, Picks and Shovels is the essential resource for marketing technical products.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798999111104
Publisher:	Strategic Nerds Press
Publication date:	09/23/2025
Pages:	494
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Prashant Sridharan has more than thirty years of experience running marketing, product, and business development teams for some of the largest and fastest-growing developer platforms in the industry, including Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Meta, Twitter, Timescale, Tinybird, and Supabase. He is an advisor to several seed and Series A developer tools and platforms startups. He lives in Lisbon, Portugal, and San Francisco, California.