Israeli ex-spies just raised $20M to track developer buying signals. They monitor public forums to learn what tools devs are discussing, then use AI to identify which companies those commenters work with and who the decision makers there are. The company, Onfire, already drove over $50 million in closed deals for clients in their first year.
Here's what they figured out: Developers don't respond to cold outreach. They ask questions in public, compare notes with strangers, then buy in private. 72% of tech decision-makers use Reddit for peer reviews and 49% for product research. Meanwhile, sales teams are flying blind.
The market just validated this thesis. Reo.dev raised $4M and tracks developer activity signals. The developer tools market itself? Valued at $7.57 billion in 2025, expected to reach $29.63 billion by 2035.
But everyone's building half the solution. Onfire monitors forums. Reo tracks GitHub stars. Common Room watches Slack. Nobody's unified the entire developer journey from curiosity to contract.
That's the gap. Build the consent-first timing engine that sees everything: Reddit threads, package downloads, docs visits, budget cycles. One timeline per account. Sales and product teams finally looking at the same reality.
The Money Is Real
The numbers are there. Reo.dev drove 40% of pipeline and booked 20% more meetings for customers. One customer achieved 30% month-over-month increase in signups. These aren't incremental improvements. They're step-function changes.
Why? Because timing beats everything. CISOs, CTOs and engineering teams, traditionally considered "tough buyers," now have to filter out more noise than ever thanks to AI tools that enable mass outreach. The winner isn't who sends more emails. It's who shows up at the exact moment of need with the exact right context.
51% of decision-makers research new vendors when they have a business pain point their current technology cannot solve. Another 42% explore alternatives due to poor customer service. These triggers happen in public forums first. By the time they hit your website, three competitors already pitched them.
The kicker: 70% of B2B software buyers now use AI search tools, and one in four begin their search in an AI chatbot—with Reddit and G2 being among the most frequently cited sources. If you're not in those conversations, you don't exist.
Why Everyone Else Is Doing It Wrong
Current tools are built like surveillance systems. Track everything, alert on anything, hope sales figures out what matters. That's backwards.
Onfire gets closest but they're intelligence-first, not product-first. "What set us apart is we started as a data-first company, and then we added the AI engine on top of that," their CEO said. Smart for them. But business, at the end of the day, is human. Start with the developer experience.
Reo.dev has the technical signals locked down but tracks 625M+ developer activity signals including first-party data, package installs, code interactions without the crucial context of what developers are actually saying about those tools.
Common Room tries to do everything — capturing every signal, everywhere—from first-party signals like product usage and website visits to second-party signals like social and community interactions. Jack of all trades, master of none.
The winner will be whoever builds specifically for developer-first companies and treats privacy as a feature, not a bug.
Your Wedge: "HN-to-Pipeline" Service
Don't build software first. Start with a service.
Here's the play: Pick 50 niche devtools vendors. The ones with $2-5M ARR who can't afford Onfire's enterprise pricing. Monitor their keywords across Reddit, Hacker News, Stack Overflow. When someone asks about their category, you identify the company, find the decision maker, and book a qualified demo. Success fee only. 10% of first-year ACV.
Vault-only access.
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