From GitHub Stars to Customers
Step-by-step guide to turn stargazers into high intent leads
GitHub stargazers are some of the best leads you’ll find. They’ve signaled interest in tools like yours, making them higher-quality prospects than cold outbound. The problem is that GitHub makes it painful to actually use that signal.
GitHub’s webhooks only fire on your own repos and don’t give you historical data. Here’s how we worked around it to turn stars into leads:
1. Track new stargazers for any repo
Problem: No simple way to detect “new” stars because GitHub’s stargazers API lists results oldest → newest (with no starred_at sorting).
Solution:
Store the last stargazer count
When the count increases, calculate which page contains new users
Fetch the last page of results
Poll every X minutes
→ Stargazers Alert Template
2. Enrich GitHub usernames into contacts
Problem: A GitHub handle alone isn't enough for outreach.
Solution:
Extract emails: Search the user’s recent commits (last 30 days) or commits from repos they own to find their email - this is publicly available data
Add company data: Use Clay's enrichment to find their employer and role
Identify power users: Flag developers with repos > 50 stars
→ Enrich Stargazers Template
3. Get enriched stargazer list
You can also pull historical stargazers and enrich them. Just don’t go back too far - stars older than 3–6 months rarely convert. Developers usually move on. Focus on recent activity while the interest is still fresh.
→ Backfill Stargazers Template
4. Turn interest into action
Once you have enriched data, you can:
Send personalized outreach referencing their OSS work
Auto-trigger trial credits when competitors' users star your repo
Route VIP leads (maintainers of popular projects) directly to founders
Despite GitHub's API quirks, it's a goldmine for outbound. These developers already showed intent - reach them while they’re still excited about your space!