When you build a company or a product, one of the things you have to decide is how to market yourself. This isn't just about getting people to know what your company does, it's also about the values you stand for.

Tuist builds on an open source foundation, which naturally influences how we share Tuist with the world. Yet, we continuously look at what other companies in our space do to see if there's anything we can learn from them. We're also budget mindful, which forces us to be creative. I'll share some examples of patterns we've observed and the approach we've chosen instead.

I've noticed companies often take the path of heavy advertising. They put their logo in every conference, newsletter, website, or billboard. I think this can definitely contribute to brand awareness, and for some companies it works well. But for me personally, when it's too much, it doesn't create a deep connection. It also depends on the engineer you're targeting. If the ads package an aspiration towards a lifestyle (like gyms typically do, pressing the right buttons), then sure, it might resonate deeper. But not every company can afford playing that game because it's not compatible with what they're selling. What lifestyle can I attach to making your developers more productive? Tricky, isn't it? I have to admit I've seen companies go a long distance with this approach and be effective at materializing it as contracts. It's a valid strategy, just not the one for us.

Sometimes this approach can shift focus toward doing things so you can talk about them in marketing materials, rather than focusing deeply on the problem or the solution itself. This can manifest in blog posts and case studies that stay high-level, skipping the technical details engineers would actually like to read about, and webinar after webinar with guest speakers. This approach works in many industries and for many companies. But as engineers, we're very logical people. We spend our days thinking logically, and we like to understand the why of things. Even when we're asked for money, we want to understand the value deeply because we're used to so much being free. Our Linux OS in which we run our NodeJS application is free. Our frameworks are free too. The programming language too. So we naturally ask more questions before committing.

If I had to define a camp in which Tuist sits, I'd put us with PlanetScale, Fly, Linear, and the companies whose members and founders have a deep passion for their craft and share it openly. The connection is made by sharing deep thinking about their problem spaces and their visions, not just surface-level features. Developers respond well to this. They like to be challenged. They like to be presented with new takes on problem and solution domains they haven't heard before. They like when the person talking to them speaks their same language and guides them through the logic behind a product. This is how most of us at Tuist build trust with products, and this is how we see users building trust in us.

The reason I'm bringing this up now is because the mobile development tooling space is evolving rapidly. Organizations are exploring different CI solutions, finding what works best for their specific needs. More companies are entering the Tuist space (welcome), the more the merrier. As this happens, I naturally pay attention to how different companies present themselves. I've noticed some taking the marketing-heavy approach I described above, focusing on feature announcements without diving into the technical depth. When I read those announcements, I find myself wanting more. More details about the state of the art of caching within the world of Xcode, the challenges, the opportunities, what we should expect long-term.

For us at Tuist, we've chosen a different path. We want to share not just what we build, but why we build it, the problems we're solving, and the thinking behind our solutions. It's the approach that resonates with us as engineers, and we believe it's the right way to build lasting trust with our community.