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Your first devops customers are already asking for help in a few Slack and Discord servers. They are SREs paged at 3am, platform engineers drowning in YAML, and solo DevOps hires at 30-person startups. Here is where to find them and how to be useful before you ever mention your tool.

All guidesFor founders of a devops tool

1. Kubernetes Slack (slack.k8s.io)

Join and sit in #kubernetes-users, #kubernetes-novice and the channels for your niche, like #helm-users or #argo-cd. Promotion is not allowed in most channels, so answer questions with real commands and config snippets. Only mention your tool when it directly solves the question, and say you built it: "I hit this exact Helm drift issue and wrote a small tool for it, happy to share if useful."

2. CNCF Slack (slack.cncf.io)

This hosts channels for projects like Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, Flux and Crossplane. Pick the two or three projects your tool touches and read a week of history to learn the recurring pain points. Keep a note of people who ask the same question you solve, then help them in-thread first.

3. DevOps Engineers and SRE community Slacks

Search for active ones like the Rands Leadership Slack #devops channel, Platform Engineering Slack (platformengineering.org) and the Hangops Slack. Read the pinned rules, since many ban vendor posts outside a #shameless-plug or #show-and-tell channel. Post there once, with a plain description and a question: "Built a CLI that diffs Terraform state across workspaces. What would make you trust it in prod?"

4. Tool-specific Discord servers

Many projects run their community on Discord, such as Pulumi, Dagger, Earthly, Coolify and several self-hosting servers. Use Discord search for phrases like "anyone know how to", "flaky", "slow pipeline" or "alert fatigue" plus your topic. Reply with a real fix, and DM only if someone asks for more.

5. Cloud provider and infra communities

The AWS Community Builders Slack, the HashiCorp Discuss forum and the r/devops Discord all have threads from people stuck on IAM, Terraform modules and cost spikes. Filter for posts from people with titles like "DevOps Engineer", "Head of Platform" or "first infra hire", because they choose tools without a procurement process. Answer the question as asked, then add one line about what you are building.

6. Turn helpful threads into conversations

After you have helped someone publicly, a short DM is fair: "Saw your Argo sync question last week, did the fix hold? I'm building something for that exact problem and looking for 5 teams to try it free and tell me what breaks." Keep a simple sheet of name, community, pain and date. Aim for 3 to 5 of these a day.

7. Let Hulby run the daily loop

Hulby, an AI cofounder, can watch these communities each day, flag threads that match your tool and draft replies for you to review and send.

Mistakes to skip

  • Dropping a link in #general on day one, which gets you banned and remembered.
  • Posting the same message across ten channels at once.
  • Cold-DMing people you have never talked to in public.
  • Pitching features instead of asking about their current setup and pain.

Want this done for your devops tool, every day?

Hulby finds the people asking for what you built, writes every reply and email, and keeps you on it until they pay. Free to start.

Find my first customers

Questions

How long before I can mention my tool?

After you have given a few genuinely useful answers, and only where it directly fits the question or in a channel meant for sharing.

Slack or Discord first?

Slack for most SRE and platform folks, Discord for newer open source tools and self-hosters. Start where your tool's ecosystem already lives.

Should I offer it free?

Free for a few early teams in exchange for feedback is fine. Ask for payment once it saves them real time.

What if a community bans all vendors?

Respect it. Help people there anyway, and let them find you through your profile or a link they ask for.