GitHub is one of the few places where you can watch a company struggle with the exact problem you fix, in public, with dates on it. An issue open for eight months. A repository with no tests. A README that says "contributions welcome" and no release in a year. It is also a place with strict rules about contacting people, so the trick is to use what you see without breaking them.

Who this works for

It works if you sell to teams that build software: developers, devops and security contractors, technical writers, designers who do developer tools, and agencies that build apps. It does not work if your buyer is a dentist. If you are unsure, read how to find clients on Hacker News, which covers the same audience from another angle.

The rule you must read first

GitHub's Acceptable Use Policies say you may not use information from the service "for spamming purposes, including for the purposes of sending unsolicited emails to users." That means no scraping commit emails, no exporting contributor lists, and no sending a note to everyone who starred a repository. Treat GitHub as a place to find companies and problems, then reach the people through their company website, their own contact page or a business address they publish for that purpose.

Four places buyers show up

  • Open issues with a company logo behind them. A startup's public repository with a stale "performance" or "docs" issue tells you what they have not had time for.
  • Discussions and Q&A tabs. Answer a question well, in public, and your profile gets visited by the person who asked.
  • Sponsor lists. Companies that sponsor open source care about the stack. If you work in that stack, their names are a warm list.
  • Job and hiring files. Some repositories list open roles. A team hiring its first security engineer might hire a contractor first.

Make your profile the pitch

A visitor from an issue thread lands on your profile and decides in ten seconds. Pin two repositories that show your work, write one sentence at the top ("I help small SaaS teams cut cloud bills. Email below.") and put a contact address in the bio field. Do not rely on a commit email you never meant to publish.

A message that stays on the right side of the line

Say you have found that a company's public repository has a failing continuous integration job for three months. You find the company's site and write to the address they list for the team, from your own domain. A fictional example, from Mara Lindqvist, who fixes build pipelines:

Subject: Your CI job on the billing repo

Hi, I was reading your public billing-sdk repository and saw the test job has been red since August. I fix build pipelines for teams your size, usually in a week. If it is useful I can send a two line note on what I think is breaking. No charge for the note.

Mara Lindqvist, mara@lindqvist.example
200 Pine St, Portland, OR 97204. Reply "stop" and I won't write again.

It names a specific thing, offers a small free step and has the name, mailing address and opt-out line that US commercial email needs under the FTC's CAN-SPAM rules, which give you 10 business days to honor a stop request. Send two follow-ups at most. See the follow-up sequence for spacing.

A worked example, start to finish

Take the CI example again. On Monday you search for public repositories in your stack with a red build badge and a company behind them, and write down eight. On Tuesday you read each repository's recent issues and note one concrete thing per company. On Wednesday you find each company's contact page and a named person (an engineering lead or the founder). On Thursday you send the first five messages. On the following Tuesday you send one short follow-up to anyone who has not replied, and stop there if they do not. In a month that is around 30 messages, which is enough to learn whether the idea works without turning you into a nuisance.

What gets you reported

  • Commenting "I can help, DM me" under unrelated issues.
  • Opening an issue or pull request only to advertise.
  • Emailing everyone in a contributor list.

Count it after a month

Spend three hours a week for a month: ten useful answers, one public write-up, and five careful emails to teams you found. Count replies. If you have a reply rate of zero, your buyers are not here, and Indie Hackers may fit better.

Finding the companies and the right person at each is the slow part. Rocketship does it from a plain description of who you want, emails them from your own Gmail and follows up. Try it for 7 days, card required to begin.