Why MCP Is the 100x Leap for AI Dev Tools: A Conversation with Tadata
This week on Vermilion Cliff Notes, I sat down with CEO and Co-founder of Tadata Tori Seindenstein to talk about how the AI dev tools stack is evolving, why MCP represents a step-change in connectivity, and what new go-to-market playbooks are working in a crowded, noisy market. Tori’s current role has her deep in the shift from LLM experimentation to production adoption, and that vantage point made this conversation especially valuable.
Tori didn’t come into this space from the sidelines. She’s been building and scaling technical products for years, navigating both the open source community and enterprise buyers. That background gives her a sharp perspective on how developer adoption really happens and where the opportunities are emerging for teams trying to stay relevant in the AI wave.
She’s got one of the clearest views I’ve heard on what MCP unlocks, how open source translates to enterprise traction, and why community-driven GTM is outpacing traditional playbooks in dev tools.
Below are a few highlights from the episode. Full interview below:
MCP is the 100x improvement everyone was waiting for
The connective tissue of the AI stack is shifting fast. Tori described how quickly it became obvious that the real unlock wasn’t just in the models themselves, but in how they connect to the rest of the ecosystem.
“It became super clear to us that LLMs have become so powerful and the value to be unlocked over the next 10 years is at that connectivity layer… we immediately recognized MCP was going to be a 100x improvement over what had been out there before.”
That kind of leap matters. Early teams who adopted APIs like Stripe or Twilio gained compounding advantages because they bet on the right connective layer. MCP looks to be the same in AI. For founders deciding where to place bets, the apps that win will be the ones that plug into this new layer first, and best.
Executives are feeling the chaos
From boardrooms to product strategy sessions, leaders are staring down the AI shift with urgency. Many know they need to move, but aren’t sure exactly how.
“The first thing that we hear is that it is very chaotic and overwhelming… On the product strategy side, the main question for them is, how do I keep my product relevant in the new AI world? Either I offer some AI expression of my product, perhaps via MCP, or else I risk being leapfrogged.”
This is the reality in 2025: executives don’t have the luxury of waiting to see where AI lands. Their teams, boards, and customers are all asking the same question, where’s the AI in your product? For founders, that urgency can create an opening. Show a clear AI path forward and you’re not just relevant, you’re necessary.
Open source is the new enterprise wedge
Open source isn’t just a grassroots channel anymore. Tori pointed out how it’s increasingly the front door to some of the largest companies in the world.
“It’s been amazing having this open source community… one of the biggest surprises is that 12% of the stars on the repo are from organizations of 10,000 person plus. That gave us confidence there’s huge monetization opportunity, even with massive companies.”
In other words, those GitHub stars aren’t just vanity metrics, they’re signals. When Fortune 500 developers are starring your repo, you’ve already landed inside their walls. Sales cycles can still be long, but the wedge is in place. For early-stage dev tools, that kind of organic pull is more powerful than any outbound sequence.
Reddit over billboards
We’ve always known that developers lean heavily on recommendations from what their peers are using and talking about. In today’s noisy online space, the audience is explicitly seeking authentic social validation.
“We’ve really started taking off digitally… a ton of developers began posting about our repo before we ever met them. That generated a lot of transitive trust across the community. And Reddit has been huge — hundreds of thousands of views because developers always want to stay relevant.”
This is the new GTM reality for dev tools: transitive trust beats top-down marketing. A single authentic Reddit thread can generate more pipeline than a six-figure campaign. The job of founders and GTM teams isn’t to manufacture hype, it’s to put fuel on the sparks that developers are already creating.
Final Thoughts
The through-line here is connectivity, community, and credibility are the new foundations of building in AI dev tools.
MCP changes how products plug into the ecosystem. Open source unlocks reach into enterprises before a sales rep ever makes contact. And modern GTM is less about buying attention and more about earning it in the places where developers already gather.
For anyone building in this space, these shifts aren’t optional. They’re the new baseline.