How to Find Founders at VC-Backed Developer Tools Companies (2026)

Quick Answer: To find founders at VC-backed developer tools companies, combine Crunchbase funding alerts (filter by "developer tools" category + Series A/B rounds) with Origami to enrich those company lists with verified founder emails and phones. This approach surfaces founders at companies that just raised — the highest-intent window for outreach — and returns 2–3x more contacts than Apollo for non-YC devtools companies.

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Developer tools founders are one of the highest-value B2B segments in 2026 — well-funded, technically sophisticated, running fast, and constantly evaluating new tools for their stack. The challenge: finding the right founders (VC-backed, recent raise, actively building) rather than the entire universe of anyone who ever open-sourced a repo.

I run data and growth infrastructure at Origami. Here's the exact workflow we use when customers ask us to find devtools founders.

Why Developer Tools Founders Are Hard to Find Accurately

Three problems show up with every devtools founder search:

1. "Developer tools" is fuzzy. Crunchbase, Clearbit, and LinkedIn all define the category differently. You'll catch crypto infrastructure companies, internal tooling startups, and consumer dev products in the same query unless you're specific.

2. Founder ≠ CEO. Many devtools companies have a technical co-founder (CTO) who is actually the decision-maker for tooling and infrastructure purchases — but their title is "CTO" or "Co-founder," not "CEO." Standard "find me the CEO" searches miss them.

3. Post-raise vs. pre-raise timing matters. Founders who just closed a Series A are in buying mode. Founders who closed 18 months ago and are burning through their runway are in cost-cutting mode. You want the former.

The Funding Signal Approach (Most Effective)

The highest-signal trigger for devtools founder outreach is a recent funding round. Here's why: when a devtools company closes a Series A ($5–$15M), the founders spend the next 90 days hiring engineers, upgrading their stack, evaluating new tools, and generally saying yes to more conversations than they ever will again.

Step 1: Set up Crunchbase Pro funding alerts

• Category: "Developer Tools" OR "DevOps" OR "Infrastructure" OR "API"
• Round type: Series A, Series B
• Date: Last 90 days
• Geography: US + UK + Europe if relevant

Crunchbase Pro runs about $49/month and is worth it for this specific use case. The free tier doesn't support alerts.

Step 2: Enrich the company list with Origami Export your Crunchbase list (company name + website URL) and run it through Origami:

"For each company in this list, find the founders — CEO, CTO, or Co-founder titles — and return verified LinkedIn URLs, emails, and phone numbers. Flag any company that posted a backend engineering or platform engineering role in the last 30 days."

In a recent test, we enriched 78 devtools companies from a Crunchbase funding export. Origami returned confirmed founder contacts for 71 (91%), including CTOs who weren't listed on the company's public "About" page. Apollo returned contacts for 52 of the same 78, and 14 of those contacts were stale (email bounced or phone disconnected).

Step 3: Prioritize by hiring signal Founders actively hiring engineers are building — they're the ones who have budget and attention. Origami flags hiring activity automatically. Sort your list by "has active engineering job posting" first.

Finding Devtools Founders by Investor Portfolio

Every major devtools-focused VC (a16z, Bessemer, Lightspeed, Sequoia, Boldstart) publishes their portfolio online. These portfolios are pre-vetted lists of well-funded devtools companies.

The workflow:

1. Pull portfolio pages from 5–7 relevant devtools VCs
2. Filter for companies in your target stage (Seed through Series B)
3. Run the company list through Origami to find founders
4. Cross-reference with LinkedIn to confirm current roles

Key devtools VC portfolios to pull:

• Boldstart Ventures (pure devtools focus, early stage)
• Heavybit (developer-first companies)
• a16z (filters for Infrastructure and Developer Tools)
• Bessemer (lists by category including DevOps/Cloud)

One customer selling developer education tools told us: "We pulled Boldstart's portfolio — 40 companies — and ran them through Origami. Got 73 confirmed founder contacts in about 8 minutes. That's a solid week of prospecting done."

Using LinkedIn + GitHub Signals

For pre-funding devtools founders (seed stage, stealth), LinkedIn and GitHub are better sources than Crunchbase.

LinkedIn approach:

• Search for "Co-founder" OR "CTO" at companies with "developer tools" or "devtools" in company description
• Filter by company size: 2–50 employees
• Filter by "founded in last 2 years" (use LinkedIn Sales Navigator "company headcount growth" signal as a proxy)

GitHub approach: Active devtools founders are often visible on GitHub. Repos with:

• 100+ stars in the last 6 months
• Active commit history (multiple contributors, recent merges)
• README describing a tool or SDK (not a personal project)

...are often run by founders who are actively building and may be funded or fundraising. This surfaces companies before they announce publicly.

Origami can take a GitHub organization URL and return the founders' LinkedIn profiles and contact info — useful for stealth-mode companies that haven't announced yet.

Avoiding the Common Mistakes

Mistake 1: Searching by "developer tools" category alone This catches too many companies. Add modifiers: "infrastructure," "DevOps," "API platform," "CLI," "SDK" depending on your ICP. If you sell to backend infrastructure companies specifically, filter for "infrastructure" + "Series A/B" and you cut the list to a manageable 200–400 companies per quarter.

Mistake 2: Only targeting CEOs At devtools companies, the technical co-founder (CTO or Head of Engineering) is often the actual buyer for tooling, infrastructure, and developer-facing products. Your outreach should target both.

Mistake 3: Ignoring European devtools Some of the fastest-growing devtools companies in 2026 are based in London, Berlin, and Amsterdam — Supabase (post-Series C, global), Neon (Berlin-founded), Grafbase (Stockholm). European devtools founders are reachable and often underprospected by US-based sellers.

Putting It Together: Full Workflow

Here's the exact Origami prompt we use for devtools founder searches:

"Find founders (CEO, CTO, Co-founder) at developer tools companies that raised a Series A or Series B in the last 90 days. Focus on companies building APIs, developer infrastructure, CLI tools, or SDKs. Company size 5–100 employees. Include verified email, phone, and LinkedIn URL. Flag any company with an active job posting for backend or platform engineering."

Running this monthly gives you a rolling list of 40–80 high-intent devtools founders. Combined with a personalized first line referencing their funding announcement, this is one of the highest-performing cold outreach lists we've seen.

Comparison Table: Sources for Devtools Founder Contacts

Source	Coverage	Freshness	Contact Quality	Best For
Origami + Crunchbase	High	Real-time	Excellent	Scale prospecting
LinkedIn Sales Navigator	Medium	Real-time	Good	Individual research
Apollo	Medium	Moderate	Moderate	Tech ICPs broadly
VC portfolio pages	Low–Medium	Irregular	N/A (company only)	Validation
AngelList / Wellfound	Low	Seed-focused	Limited	Early-stage only

The Bottom Line

Finding VC-backed developer tools founders requires combining funding signals (Crunchbase), hiring signals (job postings), and enrichment (Origami) into a single workflow. The founders who just raised a round and are actively hiring are the ones in buying mode — prioritize them.

Static databases like Apollo miss a meaningful percentage of devtools founders because they rely on LinkedIn completeness, which lags behind actual fundraising and company formation. The combination of Crunchbase funding alerts + Origami enrichment returns more founders, with better contact quality, at a fraction of the cost of ZoomInfo.