groundcover
groundcover is an eBPF-based observability platform that lets engineering teams monitor production without code changes, competing head-on with Datadog and New Relic. Its founder, who had never sold before, closed early customers at deep discounts from a published per-host list price, and the company has reportedly grown to eight-figure ARR with more than 250 customers.
Co-founders came from cybersecurity and bet on eBPF to monitor production without changing customer code, offering a alternative to incumbent observability tools that were priced per host and required SDK instrumentation.
- •Founder-led selling at near-any price in the first dozen deals built the reference logos and security/legal review experience that made later deals closeable.
- •Publishing a per-host list price anchored mid-market negotiations in the company's favor, even though the discounts went as deep as 70 percent.
- •Treating early sales calls as feedback sessions lowered prospect resistance and let the founder convert advisory conversations into purchases.
- •Choosing eBPF, a technology the cybersecurity-trained founders could safely ship, created a technical moat that SDK-based incumbents struggled to copy.
- •Customers kept Datadog running after buying, which exposed a migration gap and led the company to build a post-sale replacement motion.
- 1.Accept your first deals at almost any price to gather reference logos and learn how to get through security and legal reviews.
- 2.Publish a per-host or per-unit list price so buyers negotiate from a visible anchor, then discount selectively.
- 3.Open early sales conversations as offers to show what you are building, positioning prospects as advisors rather than buyers.
- 4.Build a prospect list from your own network first, then add a steady daily volume of personalized LinkedIn outreach (roughly 10 to 15 messages a day).
- 5.Hire early sales staff into an existing team rather than alone and remote, and pick a technical approach your team can actually ship.
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