Vercel: developer marketing at scale, with an HGP co-founder as interim CMO

At a glance

• Client: Vercel (Developer Tools)
• Engagement: Began in 2021
• HGP advisors: Martin Gontovnikas: Interim CMO (then an HGP partner; now alumni); Rex Gelb: Paid acquisition
• Focus areas: Interim CMO, Developer marketing, Outbound, Paid acquisition

Vercel in numbers (company-reported)

• 3x enterprise customers in the six months to June 2021 (Vercel, Series C announcement)
• ~100,000 sign-ups a month from the freemium model (Morgane Palomares, via SaaStr, 2024)
• 15 outbound SDRs hired in six months for the enterprise push (SaaStr, 2024)

The situation

Vercel, which created the Next.js framework, runs a frontend cloud platform. When it raised its $102M Series C in June 2021, it said it had tripled its enterprise customer base over the previous six months and grown Next.js npm downloads from 4.1M to 6.2M.

According to SaaStr, when VP of Marketing Morgane Palomares joined, every salesperson was hitting quota on inbound leads alone. As quotas grew, Vercel built a team of technical "product advocates" instead of inbound SDRs, moved upmarket and hired 15 outbound SDRs in six months, then found that the new team did not know how to go outbound to developers.

What HyperGrowth Partners did

• Interim CMO: Gonto, HGP co-founder and then its GP, served as Vercel's interim CMO; an April 2024 interview says he "currently runs marketing at Vercel". Vercel appointed its first Chief Marketing Officer, Keith Messick, in June 2025.
• A developer marketing funnel: HGP's playbook lays out "the developer marketing funnel we used at companies like Vercel, Airbyte, and Humanitec to grow developer adoption and advocacy to the hundreds of thousands".
• Technical reps for a technical buyer: Vercel's product advocates are technical reps, hired out of coding bootcamps, who can answer developers' questions and know the product. HGP's playbook on technical SDRs, co-written by Gonto and Hank Taylor, explains how to build that function.
• Outbound developers welcome: HGP's developer-led outbound playbook includes a play "inspired by Vercel's successful tactic of measuring page load times and offering performance-boosting solutions": value in the first message, not a pitch.
• Paid acquisition: Rex Gelb, who built HubSpot's paid ads program, advised Vercel on paid.

Results

Vercel's VP of Marketing describes the value of an advisory "who sat on the same seats, dealt with the same problems" (quote below).

For context, SaaStr reports that Vercel moved to an automated outbound model sending tens of thousands of emails a week, passing responders to a smaller SDR team, which let it shrink the team, be more effective and lower customer acquisition costs. These are Vercel's results as reported publicly; HGP does not claim them.

Frequently asked questions

Who was Vercel's interim CMO?

HGP co-founder Martin "Gonto" Gontovnikas, then also its GP, was described as Vercel's interim CMO in 2024 interviews (20VC, Calyx). Vercel named Keith Messick its first Chief Marketing Officer in June 2025.

What are Vercel's product advocates?

Technical reps, hired out of coding bootcamps, who answer developers' technical questions; Vercel built this team instead of a traditional inbound SDR team (SaaStr, 2024).

Did HyperGrowth Partners work with Vercel?

Yes. HGP co-founder Gonto served as Vercel's interim CMO, HGP partner Rex Gelb advised on paid acquisition, and Vercel's VP of Marketing, Morgane Palomares, has endorsed HGP.

Sources

• Growth for developer products, with Martin Gontovnikas, Interim CMO at Vercel (Calyx, Apr 2024)
• Gonto, Interim CMO @Vercel, on 20VC (Feb 2024)
• Keith Messick joins Vercel as CMO (Vercel, Jun 2025)
• $102M to continue building the next web (Vercel, Jun 2021)
• Low-cost SaaS marketing (SaaStr, 2024)
• The Developer Marketing Funnel (HGP Playbooks)
• Why Technical SDRs are the Future of DevTools (HGP Playbooks)
• Mastering Developer-Led Outbound (HGP Playbooks)
• HGP client record: Vercel (advisors, start year)
• HGP partner profile: Rex Gelb