Overview

Liquibase is the open source standard for automating database change, with more than 100 million downloads and a community that has been growing for over a decade. Teams adopt Liquibase Community to keep database schema changes in lockstep with fast-moving application releases, then graduate to Liquibase Secure when they need governance, compliance, and control at scale.

When Ryan McCurdy joined as VP of Marketing, Liquibase already had a massive community footprint and a commercial product purpose-built for regulated, high scale environments. What they did not have was a reliable, account-level view of who was actually using Liquibase Community and how to turn that adoption into a predictable, aligned go-to-market motion.

The Challenge

Before Liquibase, Ryan led marketing at Astronomer, where his charter was to restart growth around Apache Airflow. His first purchase there was Scarf. Using Scarf’s open source usage data as the backbone for an ICP model, the team built their entire go-to-market strategy around real adoption signals and moved the business off a growth plateau.

Liquibase faced a similar situation. Despite 100M plus downloads and thousands of GitHub stars, the company had only a partial picture of who was running Liquibase in production. They knew a handful of top contributors. They did not know the thousands of accounts actually standardizing on Liquibase. That made it impossible to:

  • Build a credible ICP grounded in real usage
  • Carve sales territories that reflected true opportunity
  • Market critical changes, like the split between community and commercial offerings, to the right accounts

Scarf had technically been brought in by a prior regime, but it was “sitting on a shelf.” Without accurate, account-level telemetry, any ICP model Ryan proposed would be hard to trust. As he put it, if you ship a bad model, “the company loses trust.” Sales ends up with low-quality accounts, and marketing gets blamed.

The Solution

Step one was to activate the data they already had. Ryan ran an initial analysis that matched Scarf-derived accounts to existing customers and overlaid all available technographics. The goal was simple: if Liquibase wanted to increase deal size, focusing on the right segments would be critical.

From that work, Liquibase built a tiered ICP model where being a Liquibase Community user is a core requirement for the top tiers. Community usage identified by Scarf is now the catalyst for the entire motion. When someone downloads Liquibase Community, that signal flows into their systems, the account is enriched, and qualified leads are routed into targeted programs such as:

  • Automated advertising and nurture
  • Territory assignments for sales
  • Coordinated ABM plays on high-fit, high-intent accounts
It is really feeding us the intelligence that is the backbone of our ICP and where we focus Ryan explained.

To support the next phase, Ryan brought in a new RevOps leader, with whom he originally developed this ICP methodology. Together, they are building a V2 ICP at Liquibase that layers even more signals on top of Scarf’s data so the model gets sharper over time.

Just as important as the software from Scarf has been the close partnership with Scarf’s team. Liquibase’s marketing stack was complex when Ryan arrived. Untangling it and getting Scarf live again required hands-on help. “We got a true partner,” Ryan shared, pointing to the support from the Scarf team as a key reason they were able to operationalize the technology instead of letting it collect dust.

Impact

Liquibase has gone from a company that was not effectively monetizing its community to one where community usage now fuels the business. Around 90 to 95 percent of new logo wins originate from Liquibase Community users. Over 90% of deals are marketing-driven, powered by the ICP model that starts with Scarf signals.

The majority of Liquibase’s forecastable pipeline now comes from community accounts. When the company announced important changes to how Liquibase Community and Liquibase Secure are packaged and distributed, Scarf made it possible to target those messages to the right users at the right companies, rather than broadcasting blindly.

Today, there is a clear, value-aligned path for teams: manual database change, then Liquibase Community for smaller projects, then Liquibase Secure when governance, compliance, and standardization at scale become critical. Community users already believe in automating database change. Liquibase’s commercial product layers on the control and visibility that high-velocity, regulated teams need.

“Now, community is what is fueling our business,” Ryan said.
Key Outcomes
  • Visibility into tens of thousands of companies using Liquibase across GitHub, package registries, container registries, and direct downloads
  • A tiered ICP model built on real community adoption that guides territory carving, ABM, and ad targeting
  • Community users now drive the vast majority of new logo growth and active pipeline
  • Marketing sourced over 90% of Liquibase’s new logo deals based on usage signals from Scarf
  • A clear graduation path from Liquibase Community to Liquibase Secure for scaling, regulated teams
  • Faster time to value from Scarf through hands-on implementation support that helped streamline a complex marketing stack