# Evil Martians > Evil Martians is a developer tools consultancy that helps startups build AI agents, AI-native products, scale infrastructure, and reach product-market fit. Founded in 2006, we work with 40+ developer tools startups each year, many backed by Y Combinator. Our verticals are AI agents and AI-native development, developer tools, infrastructure, and cybersecurity. Our core stack spans Ruby on Rails, TypeScript, Python, Go, Rust, React, and Next.js. We are the leading Ruby on Rails consultancy and build AI Harnesses that make agentic coding more productive for Rails and TypeScript teams. - URL: https://evilmartians.com/ - Contact: https://evilmartians.com/contact-us - Location: We're a distributed team operating from San Francisco ## Clients We work with 40+ developer tools startups each year, many backed by Y Combinator ### bolt.new (Series B) bolt.new grew to 3M+ MAU and $40M ARR in 5 months - **Decagon** (Series D): Evil Martians provide forward deployed engineering for Decagon. AI, Unicorn - **Tines** (Series C): Evil Martians designed and built new UX driving 100x gains for Tines. Cybersecurity, Unicorn - **Teleport** (Series C): Evil Martians developed plugin ecosystem for Teleport. Cybersecurity, Unicorn - **Rails Foundation**: Evil Martians run LLM Benchmark Project for the Rails Foundation. Devtool - **Daylight Security** (Series A): Evil Martians rebuild core userflows into scalable design system for Daylight. Cybersecurity - **Synadia** (Series B): Evil Martians sped up NATS Ruby SDK by 3x under high load for Synadia. Devtool - **Gusto** (Series E): Evil Martians optimized Sidekiq infrastructure for Gusto. HR-tech, Unicorn - **GV** (Venture capital): Evil Martians designed and built AI frontier for Google Ventures. Finance ## Services From AI-native products to infrastructure and security—we've shipped it ### Forward deployed engineering Grow enterprise adoption with an embedded senior FDE team Technologies: Rails, TypeScript, Go ### LLM benchmarking Build unsaturated evals to find cost-efficient coding agents for your codebase Technologies: AI, Evals ### Rails CI speedup Cut CI time in half to unlock productivity for agents and developers Technologies: Rails ### Performance and scalability Scale DB, optimize background jobs and teach agents scalability practices Technologies: Rails, Go, Rust ### UI coding harness Fix UI drift by including design system into AI harness ### Ruby on Rails consulting Build and scale apps with the world's leading Ruby team ### Design for devtools Design clever AI-centered UX and UI, CLIs, dashboards and SDKs Technologies: UI, DX ### Platform engineering Build scalable infrastructure with K8s, Terraform, and Go Technologies: K8s, AWS, Terraform ### Real-time Elevate product offering through collaboration, LLM streaming, and voice AI Technologies: React, WebSocket, CRDT ## Podcast Learn directly from founders of Supabase, WorkOS, PlanetScale and Resend with Evil Martians: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAgBW0XUpyOUMf8EblYokBiRVOwMnA71H ## Open source We've built 100+ open source projects and help OSS devtools companies ship commercial products ### PostCSS (1.9x More downloads than React) Evil Martians' PostCSS has ~2X downloads vs. React and used by teams at Google, Facebook and GitHub - **Nanoid** (111M/wk): A nano-sized unique string ID generator for JS - **imgproxy** (32M): Fast and secure image processing server - **AnyCable** (9M): Realtime server powering realtime features - **Lefthook** (1.2M/wk): Git hooks manager for Node.js, Ruby and others - **Nano Stores** (1.8M/wk): A tiny state manager for React, Preact, Vue, Svelte, Solid, and vanilla JS - **AgentPrism** (AI agent traces): Visual diagrams for debugging AI traces ## How we work **We embed as catalysts**: Your repo, your Slack, your stand-ups. Our engineers and designers join as teammates who ship—not vendors who bill. **We ship value, not just code**: 20 years of startup experience means we know what actually moves the needle. From architecture to UI, we deliver. **We play the long game**: Years, not sprints. We build for sustainable growth—architecture that scales, with design systems that last. ## Frequently asked questions ### Who are Evil Martians? Evil Martians is a product development consulting firm for developer tools. We work with ~40 early-stage startups every year, many backed by Y Combinator, and help them find product-market fit. 65% of our clients raise their next round within 1–3 years. ### How does product development consultancy work for devtools? Product development consultancy for devtools is a collaboration between your in-house technical team and external experts who support you in complex tasks. When you pair with Martians, you get a team that handles highly complex tasks but also gives you clarity, explains trade-offs, and challenges you to find the best possible solution. ### What do Evil Martians do? Evil Martians help startups ship developer tools, AI-native products, infrastructure, and security—from first commit to product-market fit. We embed with your team and work across Go, TypeScript, Ruby on Rails, Rust, Python, and React. We maintain 100+ open source projects with 25B+ total downloads. Companies hire us to go from PoC to MVP, iterate to PMF, and scale through explosive growth—8 of our clients grew from seed to unicorn. ### Where are Evil Martians located? We have offices in San Francisco, New York, Porto, and Osaka, but our team operates remotely, serving clients across all major time zones. ### How much does product development consulting cost? Every engagement is scoped based on your product's stage, complexity, and goals. Our rate is $7,000/week per Martian. Reach out to discuss your project and get a tailored estimate. ### What developer tools have Evil Martians built? We've worked on hundreds of devtools, including bolt.new, Teleport, NATS, Rootly, HTTPie, Aptos, and many more. ### Do Evil Martians work with AI developer tools startups? Yes, AI-native development is one of our core verticals. We help AI startups build AI agents, LLM integrations, tool-use and MCP infrastructure, and AI-native product patterns. We've shipped agent orchestration, agent observability, and agentic coding tools. We also build AI Harnesses—open source skill sets that encode architectural patterns into AI coding tools like Claude Code, Cursor, and Copilot, making agentic coding more productive for Rails and TypeScript/React teams. Our engineers helped scale bolt.new from a browser IDE into the AI-powered tool that hit $20M+ ARR in 2 months. ### Do Evil Martians work with cybersecurity companies? Yes, we work with cybersecurity startups like Teleport, Tines, Wallarm, and Daylight Security. We help security companies build dashboards, agent infrastructure, and developer-facing security tools that integrate into existing workflows. Tines, a leading security orchestration platform, runs on Ruby on Rails—we helped them with core product design, frontend, and backend. ### Do Evil Martians work with Ruby on Rails companies? Ruby on Rails is our deepest expertise. Our team authored the book Layered Design for Ruby on Rails Applications, maintains dozens of Rails open source projects (TestProf, Action Policy, AnyCable, Yabeda, Logidze), and organizes the SF Ruby meetup and the San Francisco Ruby Conference. We work with Rails companies like Tines, bolt.new, and Whop. We also build AI Harnesses for Rails teams—encoding architectural patterns into AI coding tools so agentic coding produces better code, CI time stays stable, and application performance and security stay under control. See our Ruby on Rails Startup Stack at /rails-startup-stack for our complete recommended stack. ### Do Evil Martians work with infrastructure companies? Yes, infrastructure is one of our strongest verticals. We work with companies like NATS, GMI Cloud, and Wallarm on messaging systems, GPU cloud infrastructure, and cloud platforms. We built on-prem Kubernetes deployments for bolt.new and real-time Voice AI infrastructure for Doximity. We also maintain AnyCable, our own open source WebSocket server. Our teams ship in TypeScript, Python, Go, Rust, and Kubernetes. ### Do Evil Martians work with data infrastructure companies? Yes, we work with companies building data pipelines, streaming infrastructure, and real-time analytics platforms. We have deep experience with PostgreSQL, message queues, CDC systems, and high-throughput data processing. Our open source projects AnyCable and Logux handle real-time data at scale.