Who is Hashgraph (formerly Swirlds Labs)

Hashgraph (formerly Swirlds Labs) is a rapidly growing software company comprising world-renowned leaders and builders in web3, including Dr. Leemon Baird, the inventor of the hashgraph consensus algorithm and Hedera co-founder Mance Harmon.

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With a global presence spanning 20 countries and employing 140 professionals, Hashgraph spearheads Hedera’s marketing, product innovation, and technical development. Committed to accelerating application deployment, Hashgraph introduces pioneering products and services that bridge web2 and web3.

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What was the problem?
Upon joining Swirlds Labs, Matt had to prioritize driving product awareness and adoption quickly. Getting caught up in the tactical weeds was easy, and he knew he needed a more strategic approach.

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The team produced great content and did good work around awareness building and enablement, but an overarching plan or strategy was missing. Sometimes, it is easy for DevRel professionals to get caught up in “busy work” and plate spinning without a clear understanding of the bigger picture and how their work connects to the company's goals.

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Matt knew there were friction points in their Developer Experience and Developer Education, but he also recognized he was bringing a lot of assumptions and insider knowledge to the problem.

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Matt was clear—if he expected developers to adopt Swirlds Labs technologies, he really needed to see the experience through the eyes of someone who had never touched this technology. He craved objectivity.

 

Why Choose DevRel.Agency?
In Matt’s words,

 “I always want to achieve the best possible outcome in anything I'm doing. I will do a lot of self-learning, find direction, understand what that best version looks like, and then apply it to the circumstances and context in which I'm operating. In this instance, I’d taken on board the lessons from your book, and felt I should be working directly with the experts who wrote the book!”

 

What did DevRel.Agency Deliver?

Matt said,

“I wanted objective input. I only know what I know, and I want to ensure I'm coming into this with open eyes and open ears. As uncomfortable as it may feel when I read it, I want to know what's not going to work, because, ultimately, that's going to impact every element of the developer experience.”

 

What was the impact?
Our Developer Experience Audit provided numerous actionable insights for Swirlds Labs. The audit surfaced points of friction that the team was completely unaware of, to the realization point they were leaving many developers dead in the water before they had gotten them to where they needed to be on their developer journey.

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Matt enthused, 

“My first impression of the report was it was gold dust. I was going through it and thinking, how have we missed this? Every page turn revealed something new and something that I hadn't considered for our developer journey.”

 

The Developer Relations team reports to the Marketing organization, so their initial work was to implement marketing-related changes and improvements to address the issues raised in the report.

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Next, they deep-dived into the critical issues that were slowing or blocking product adoption. They agreed on what they wanted to do about each issue, brainstormed the ideal version of each issue, and what it would take to get them there. Then they took this work to other departments across the organization, simultaneously working it top down and bottom up to prirotize the suggested changes.

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They found that many of the issues highlighted in the Developer Experience Audit resonated with the engineering and product teams, and having the independent audit gave them the proof to push those changes through quickly.

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When negotiating with senior management, an independent and objective report immediately removes any agenda, subjectivity, or personal preference from the conversation, helping unlock additional resources.