Funnel teardown: Resend (Email API)
Founder(s): Zeno Rocha and team

Resend sells developer experience as the differentiator in a commodity category. The funnel reads like documentation.

TL;DR: Resend's funnel treats the homepage as a code sample and the docs as a sales page. By making the developer experience itself the differentiator in a category (transactional email) where the incumbent (SendGrid) is widely considered painful, Resend converts technical buyers in minutes. The lesson: developer experience is a marketing surface, and your docs are part of the funnel.

What they sell: A developer-first transactional email API with React Email integration, simple SDK, and a clean modern dashboard.
Who it's for: Developers and indie SaaS founders who want to send transactional email without the legacy-platform tax of SendGrid or Mailgun.
Pricing: Free tier for low volume. Paid tiers scale with send volume (verified 2026-05-17).

Hook pattern: Code as hero
The homepage shows code, not testimonials. A developer who can read the snippet has effectively completed a demo before scrolling. This is the equivalent of a SaaS landing page where the hero IS the product window.

Story pattern: Pain-of-the-incumbent narrative implied through ease
The story does not need to be told explicitly. The developer reader has used SendGrid and remembers the pain. Resend's clean dashboard screenshots and three-line code samples implicitly say 'remember how painful that was; this is the alternative' without naming the competitor.

Offer pattern: Free-tier-led plus React Email ecosystem
Free tier is generous enough that most indie SaaS can ship in production on it. React Email (open-source library for building emails) extends Resend's surface area into a free tool that converts independent of the paid product. The free tool IS the marketing.

What's working:
Code-first hero converts developer readers in seconds.|Clean modern design contrasts sharply with the dated UX of incumbents, doing positioning work without copy.|React Email open-source project is a top-of-funnel acquisition asset that funnels back to Resend.|Aggressive founder-led marketing on Twitter from Zeno Rocha builds entity recognition.|Documentation is treated as a first-class marketing surface, not an afterthought.|Status page and uptime transparency are linked from the marketing surface, addressing the reliability objection upfront.

What to adapt:
If your buyer is technical, lead the hero with the artifact they will actually evaluate (code, query, output) and not with marketing copy.|Build a free open-source tool adjacent to your paid product that pulls in your exact buyer.|Treat your documentation as part of the funnel. Bad docs are a leak.

What to avoid:
Do not lead with code if your buyer cannot read it. A code hero is illegible to a non-technical buyer and loses them.|Do not skip status page transparency in a category (infrastructure) where reliability is the table-stakes objection.

Brunson lens:
Hook: Vehicle-change hook: same outcome (transactional email) via a new vehicle (clean modern DX). Brunson 'better-mousetrap' done legitimately because the DX gap is real.
Story: Implied pain story aimed at developers who have already lived the incumbent's pain; the funnel does not need to retell it.
Offer: Front-end free tier plus React Email free tool, with paid send-volume tiers as the natural upgrade.
Value ladder tier: Front-end lead funnel (free tier and React Email) plus usage-based subscription core.