In the world of complex developer tools, where performance and reliability are non-negotiable, traditional marketing falls flat. You can’t advertise your way into a developer’s toolkit. Trust must be earned through technical credibility and genuine understanding.

This is the core belief that drives Bryntum, a leader in high-performance JavaScript components for complex business applications. Their mission is to help development teams build powerful, data-rich UIs without reinventing the wheel, offering robust tools like their Data Grid, Scheduler, Gantt chart, and Calendar.

But how does a company that builds tools for engineers, by engineers effectively reach its audience? For Bryntum, the answer lies not in broad campaigns, but in strategic, high-touch partnerships with the developer community itself. This dialogue with Mats Brynts, CEO and Founder of Bryntum, explores their successful collaboration with GitNation and other tech events, a partnership built on a shared commitment to the people behind the code.

Valentin: Mats, great to have you. Bryntum makes sophisticated JavaScript components for professional developers. In an age of digital ads and content marketing, why is it still essential for a company like yours to participate in physical tech events?

Mats: Thanks for having me, Valentin. It comes down to one thing: trust. Developers are our core audience, and they are famously skeptical of marketing. You can't build trust with a banner ad. A tech event is the one place where we can have a genuine, technical conversation. We can put our product in their hands, have our engineers answer their toughest questions, and prove we're not just a vendor, but a team of builders who understand their pain. That's something you can't replicate online.

Valentin: You mention "genuine conversation." Beyond just brand awareness, what specific value do you get from these face-to-face interactions that you can't get elsewhere?

Mats: Two things are absolutely priceless. First, the qualitative feedback. For example, at an event in Paris, a customer came to our booth with a very specific problem customizing the travel time in our Scheduler. They walked us through the scenario at the booth, and it became clear that the behavior needed to be more flexible. We adjusted the implementation during the conference, and made the travel time rendering fully customizable. That one conversation at the booth led to a permanent product improvement for our user. You don't get that kind of direct, actionable insight from a support ticket.

The second is meeting our existing customers. Conferences are one of the only times we get to shake hands with the teams already relying on our components. Hearing how they use our tools in real-world projects, what challenges they’ve overcome, and where they're pushing the limits is invaluable for our product roadmap. It strengthens our relationship and turns a transactional license into a true partnership.

Valentin: So it's as much about learning as it is about promoting?

Mats: Absolutely. If you go into a sponsorship just to promote, you'll fail. You have to go in with a mindset of learning. We treat our booth not as a billboard, but as a research and development outpost. The developers who stop by are our most candid focus group. They tell us what works, what doesn't, and what they need next. This feedback loop is crucial for staying relevant and building products that developers actually want to use.

Valentin: For a CEO looking at the budget, how do you justify the ROI? What metrics prove that sponsoring an event is worth the investment?

Mats: We track the obvious things: leads, a spike in trial sign-ups, and traffic to our website and documentation. We often use unique discount codes for each event to track direct conversions. But the real ROI isn't just in those immediate numbers. It's in the long-term brand equity. It's in the team lead who, after a 30-minute technical deep-dive at our booth, goes back to their company and becomes a champion for Bryntum. It's the reduction in pre-sales cycles because the developer already trusts us from a conference. We measure the compounded trust, and that pays dividends for years.

Valentin: Finally, what's your one piece of advice for another developer tools company considering their first event sponsorship?

Mats: My advice is simple: don't send your marketers, send your engineers. Developers can spot a sales pitch from a mile away. But they respect a peer who can speak their language. Bring the people who build your product, arm them with demos, and empower them to have honest, technical conversations. Be transparent about your product's strengths and its limitations. Focus on building relationships, not just collecting Linkedin profiles. Developer trust is your most valuable currency, and there is no faster way to earn it than by showing up, in person, ready to code.

For the past 10 years, GitNation has been at the forefront of organizing developer conferences focused on React & JavaScript, the languages dominating web development. Interested in sponsoring our events? Contact us: [email protected]