I won a few social media lotteries before, including the Top Voice Badge by LinkedIn but none of those matter if that’s not where your targeted customers hang out. Read here why we are all drowned in the social media world that may not get us anywhere.
If founders stopped wasting time and they just find (1) simple solutions (2) to overlooked problems (3) that actually need to be solved, and (4) deliver them as informally as possible, (5) starting with a very crude version 1, then (6) iterating rapidly, then going viral would be a side effect
Exactly, it is a side. If one can consistently goes viral, that's a whole different valid distribution channels. However, it costs a lot of money and often only late staged companies can afford it.
"Going viral" is a hope dressed up as a strategy - the real work is finding the 30 people with the exact problem and earning their trust before you ask for anything.
I won a few social media lotteries before, including the Top Voice Badge by LinkedIn but none of those matter if that’s not where your targeted customers hang out. Read here why we are all drowned in the social media world that may not get us anywhere.
You can get a big moment online and still have very little to show for it if the wrong people turned up.
A viral post full of people who’ll never buy is just a very noisy distraction.
I've lived it many times to know better... but the viral rush is pure dopamine.
Please say it louder for all of the ignorant CMOs in the room! Great piece and breakdown 💪
Thank you.
More reach can be a trap. If the message is wrong, you’ve just paid to be ignored by more people.
"demand comes from going narrow" 👌
it's counter intuitive but it's very effective in the early stage!
That’s the bit that feels backwards at first.
Going narrow feels smaller, but it’s usually where the first real pull comes from.
I'm finally adapting to this now with Millennial Masters too.
If founders stopped wasting time and they just find (1) simple solutions (2) to overlooked problems (3) that actually need to be solved, and (4) deliver them as informally as possible, (5) starting with a very crude version 1, then (6) iterating rapidly, then going viral would be a side effect
Exactly, it is a side. If one can consistently goes viral, that's a whole different valid distribution channels. However, it costs a lot of money and often only late staged companies can afford it.
That's the dreaded bit because it sounds too simple.
Find a real pain, build the roughest useful version, get it in front of the right people.
Then do that enough times without getting distracted by the internet clapping in the wrong room.
Great article, gentlemen.
"Going viral" is a hope dressed up as a strategy - the real work is finding the 30 people with the exact problem and earning their trust before you ask for anything.
Hope dressed up as a strategy, nice one! What a great quote.
That “hope dressed up as a strategy” line is painfully true.
Viral sounds like a plan until someone asks who the first customers are and why they’d actually care.
Great reminder that distribution can be a product in itself.
And engineers are already good at it...they just have to try it
💯 That’s where you can waste a lot of time.
If you treat getting seen as a separate job for later, the product was never built with any natural way to spread.