Amanda Tran

Coda's developer platform had 8K API users growing at 5% month-over-month. The developer docs had good traffic (200K visits/mo) but conversion to active API user was only 2.1%. No budget for a dev rel team.

Built a template marketplace where existing power users could publish and share Coda automations. Each template included a "fork this" button that required API key creation. Added template leaderboards and monthly creator spotlights. Seeded the marketplace with 50 high-quality templates using Claude to generate documentation.

API user base grew from 8K to 45K in 18 months (25% MoM). Template marketplace drives 38% of new API activations. Top template creators became unpaid evangelists, generating 120+ community tutorials. CAC for developer acquisition dropped from $180 to $12.

Only 15% of developers who created an API key made their first successful API call within 7 days.

Designed a 5-email onboarding sequence triggered by API key creation. Each email included a working code snippet for a common use case, progressively increasing in complexity.

7-day activation rate improved from 15% to 42%. Developers who completed the email sequence had 3.5x higher 90-day retention.