Blacksmith GTM brain

category

market profile

• text: GitHub Actions users can replace hosted or self-managed runner infrastructure while keeping their existing workflow system.
• text: Growing build and test workloads create both direct CI compute costs and developer wait time.

personas

• title: Platform engineering or developer productivity lead
  pains:

  • Slow runners delay pull requests and developer feedback
  • Self-hosted runner fleets require maintenance and reliability work
  • Flaky jobs are difficult to diagnose across logs
• title: VP Engineering or CTO
  pains:

  • CI costs rise with engineering headcount and build volume
  • Slow testing limits deployment frequency and team throughput
• title: Software engineer
  pains:

  • Waits on builds before merging a pull request
  • Repeated Docker builds and cache downloads slow everyday iteration

icp

• text: Software companies already using GitHub Actions, from startups to enterprises, with meaningful build and test volume.
• text: Teams operating self-hosted GitHub runners or container-heavy builds and seeking to reduce infrastructure management.

message pillars

• text: Switch GitHub Actions compute without a complete CI migration.
• text: Use faster bare-metal compute to shorten build feedback cycles.
• text: Reduce the lag from cache and Docker layer transfers.

objections

• objection: Migrating CI will disrupt the team.
  response: Pilot a small workflow using the drop-in GitHub runner approach and compare timings before scaling.
• objection: Self-hosting is cheaper than paying another vendor.
  response: Compare compute, operational ownership, cache performance and developer wait time on representative jobs.
• objection: Advertised savings will not match our workload.
  response: Measure actual runtime and per-minute charges in a representative pilot; the published estimates assume faster runs.

competitors

• name: GitHub Actions
  why: GitHub-hosted runners are the incumbent compute option for the same workflows.
• name: Depot
  why: Provides CI runner and build acceleration alternatives.
• name: Ubicloud
  why: Offers alternative GitHub Actions runners.
• name: CircleCI
  why: A broader CI/CD platform competing for build and test workflows.

keywords

• faster GitHub Actions runners
• GitHub Actions cost savings
• managed CI runners
• Docker build caching
• GitHub Actions observability
• self hosted runner alternative

voice

• Direct and technical
• Confident and playful
• Benchmark-driven

signals

• text: Engineering hiring or an increase in GitHub activity increases CI load and wait time.
• text: A team complains about expensive GitHub Actions minutes or self-hosted runner maintenance.

stack

• GitHub Actions
• Docker

hiring

• Startups Lead

pricing

motion

channels

• SEO
• developer documentation
• LinkedIn
• customer case studies
• press

confidence

Founders

• name: Aditya (JP) Jayaprakash
  title: Founder
  role: Founder
  bio: Co-founder and CEO of Blacksmith. Aditya was previously an engineer at Faire (YC W17) where he worked on search infra and ads. As a founding member of the ads team, he led retrieval and targeting and helped grow ads from 0 -> $X M. Aditya graduated from the University of Waterloo with a degree in Computer Science and a Master's degree from the University of Alberta, where he did research in Theoretical Computer Science.
• name: Aditya Maru
  title: Founder
  role: Founder
  bio: Aditya Maru is the co-founder & co-CTO of Blacksmith. Before starting Blacksmith, Aditya worked at Cockroach Labs. At Cockroach he was a senior engineer on a core database team responsible for implementing disaster recovery solutions. This was where he gained his deep systems knowledge. Aditya graduated from the University of Waterloo with a degree in Computer Science.
• name: Aayush Shah
  title: Founder
  role: Founder
  bio: Aayush is the cofounder and CTO of Blacksmith. Prior to this, Aayush was a systems engineer on the replication team at CockroachDB. Aayush was awarded the Spartan Award at Cockroach Labs for being critical in bringing home the biggest deal in the company's history. Aayush graduated from the University of Waterloo with a degree in Computer Science, which is where he met his co-founders.