Chris Evans is the co-founder of incident.io, an incident management platform built for modern reliability teams. He started the company in 2021 with two former Monzo engineers, and they’ve raised $62M, passed $10M+ ARR, and landed customers like Linear, Vercel, and Intercom.
In this episode, Chris breaks down how they built trust with technical buyers, why the co-founders chose to stay sales-led (even with developer customers), and what’s really working in their GTM motion today.
He also shares the role founder content played in landing their first customers, how the team picks between SF and London, and what’s next as they scale toward enterprise.
Topics we cover in this episode:
- How incident.io validated their first product by building in-house at Monzo
- The early traction playbook: landing logos without a sales process or billing setup
- Why the team stayed in London—until Series B pulled them to San Francisco
- Selling to engineers vs. executives: how they handle messaging across personas
- Building a solutions engineering team instead of a self-serve motion
- Why they ditched spray-and-pray for signal-based outbound
- Their ACV ranges and why they haven’t hit a $1M deal (yet)
- Founder-led content: how early Twitter and now LinkedIn shaped pipeline
Perfect for:
- DevTool and SaaS founders targeting both ICs and execs
- Founders navigating early-stage traction without a formal sales team
- GTM leaders balancing sales-led and product-led growth
- Engineers building “tools that should exist” and want to productize it
Connect with Chris:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evnsio
- incident.io: https://incident.io/
Connect with me:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finnthormeier/
- Website: https://www.project33.io/
- Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/03CXzsZp7wdqIRVDcqPTFH
Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast for more insights from industry leaders in B2B SaaS and marketing!
Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/03CXzsZp7wdqIRVDcqPTFH
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finnthormeier/
Website: https://www.project33.io/
Chapters
00:00 From Monzo Bank to Co-Founding incident.io
01:20 Culture Shock: Scaling from London to San Francisco
04:15 Why They Delayed Building a US Office
06:17 How the Founders Chose Their Roles
08:43 Chris on Titles, Solutions Engineering & Field CTO
10:56 Building the MVP Inside Monzo (and Burning It Down Later)
12:44 The First Inbound Deals—Powered by Twitter, Not LinkedIn
14:21 Selling Without a Product, Billing, or Order Forms
16:18 Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Sales in Developer Tools
18:12 How They Balance Messaging Across Personas
20:20 Why They Prioritize the Buyer, Not the Exec
21:26 From 100% Inbound to Targeted Outbound
23:41 Using Signal-Based Outreach to Win High-Intent Accounts
25:08 ACVs, Self-Serve, and Moving Upmarket
27:08 How Etsy Pushed Them to Build an Enterprise-Ready Product
29:02 Advice on When to Go After Big Deals
31:17 “Be Loud on the Internet” – Founder-Led Brand at incident.io
33:14 Why LinkedIn Still Works for Technical Audiences
35:14 Founders Chris Looks Up To & His Own LinkedIn Strategy
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