Growth above all Else
The New Moat is The Old Moat
Perfectionism is the biggest problem in the startups I work with. So many startups keep the product under wraps until it’s too late, when they have spent so many cycles on development that they are either out of momentum, money or both by the time they launch. They keep building features, telling themselves they are just one away from perfection.
Ideally, you sell the product before it’s built, but many aren't comfortable doing so. So you can at least build trust with an audience over time by delivering value and familiarity.
They either completely ignore distribution, view it as beneath them, or consider it something they can get to later. Constantly getting sucked back into the product and supposed important tasks that they don’t like. This is somewhere to start. It’s a surprising battle, but they don’t know how much effort it’s going to take. So many conversations I have with founders go like this
Me: Hey Founder, how is your project building?
Founder: Great, yep, we’re just wrapping up the last few features, and we’ll be ready to bring it to market soon.
A few months later…
Me: Hey, how did that launch go?
Founder: Oh, we’re almost done. We just need to fix a few more things, and we’ll be ready.
This was a problem in the corporate world, too. “Done” was seen as code complete by devs. The unglamorous work of getting the code out into the world was thankless. There appears to be a disconnect between producing the work and someone actually using it. Most technical people are heavily focused on the former, but that’s meaningless if the latter never happens.
Building distribution is its own beast. I’ve been working on it for over two years, and I can say it’s a slow burn because it’s valuable. It means that people are actually interested in what you have to offer. It always surprises me how much of an afterthought it is to people that they need to build an audience. Fear and misinformation are the root cause of this. They are astoundingly far away from the level of consistent value they need to provide to build enough trust for a purchase.
This is all very well when you’ve got a successful product that is already meeting customers’ needs. But what do you do when you’re far before that time? Well, people always value information that is relevant to them. So start creating content that speaks to their needs. Once your product is ready, you can position it as a CTA at the end, knowing that
Enough relevant people are reading it
They’re reading it consistently(open data)
The astounding thing for most founders is that, when it works, the solution is how simple it is once they’re plugged into what an audience is trying to accomplish. This is something I have learned too. What people actually want is to meet their basic human needs. Any product that doesn’t help with that is automatically uninteresting.
Even if it is interesting, they may not be in the market for that solution right now. So we need to create as many touchpoints as possible to get our product in front of people without spamming or overwhelming them, giving us the best chance of success.
Thanks for reading. What have you learned lately about audience building that you wish you knew when you started?
The “almost done” loop is usually fear wearing a productivity costume. Polishing the product feels like progress because it’s the work we already know how to do, it enables avoidance of the hard thing and keeps us “feeling” safe. Distribution is its own art and skill, which is exactly why it pays.