Why doesn’t “build it and they will come” work any more?
You’ve built the product and maybe raised a seed round. The instinct is: a good enough product will find its people. Those days are gone. We live in an era of abundance — too many options for everything, and busy people. Nobody wanders onto your website by accident. I’ve tested it.
Should an early-stage startup run ads?
Marketing, yes. Ads, not yet. Getting hooked on paid ads early is a bad habit: investors gave you money to build a company, not to hand it to Google and Meta.
With a small team and little time, follow the 80/20 rule: do the few things that deliver most of the results for the least effort. Here are five.
1. Say what you do in plain language
Visitors won’t scroll through your landing page. Tell them straight what you do. Skip “revolutionising” and “ecosystem”. If you can’t explain it to a five-year-old, you don’t understand it well enough yet.
Tip: watch founders get their websites critiqued in public — the same mistakes come up again and again, and they’re easy to fix.
2. Go where your customers already are
Study competitors, talk to customers (do things that don’t scale) and pick one or two channels. You can’t run every platform.
- Gamers: Discord.
- People in corporates: LinkedIn.
- Startup people: X.
- A general audience: Instagram, TikTok or YouTube.
3. Show the founder
You’re busy, you hate being on camera — I get it. But people connect with people, not logos. They love a zero-to-hero story and a bit of behind-the-scenes drama. Even the biggest founders do it.
- Write a post about how you got started.
- Repost a funny meme to show you’re not a bot.
- Film a day-in-the-life or behind-the-scenes video.
- Make a short TikTok introducing yourself and what you’re building.
4. Demo the product
It sounds obvious, but many skip it. Don’t assume your UX is self-explanatory. Record a demo (I use Loom) that shows how the product works and why it matters. For consumer products, do the same on TikTok in that platform’s style.
Every video is a lottery ticket: one viral clip can bring thousands of customers.
5. Do a guerrilla stunt
You’re a startup, not a corporation — don’t take yourself too seriously. Do something fun, film it and post it.
- One team hand-delivered pizza in quirky boxes to people active on X in Silicon Valley. Unexpected, funny and shareable — millions of views for a few hundred dollars and one afternoon.
- When we launched phygital T-shirts for Thanatos.club, I had a robot carry them around the city and filmed it. Outside Silicon Valley that isn’t normal, so it reached local news — reach we couldn’t have bought with ads.
- The cheapest version: some founders printed ads on a home printer, hung them up, photographed them and went semi-viral on X. Zero cost, about 158K views.
It’s not about the stunt. It’s about how well the photo or video plays on social media.
How do I choose?
You won’t do all five at once. Pick the one or two you believe will return the most for the least effort, run them for a month, and keep what works. If you want a second pair of eyes, get in touch.
Quick answers
What is the 80/20 rule in startup marketing?
Focus on the few activities that produce most of your results — usually clear messaging, one good channel, founder-led content, product demos and low-cost stunts — instead of spreading thin.
Should early-stage startups run paid ads?
Rarely at the start. Early money is better spent on building the product; organic content, demos and stunts are cheaper ways to find your first users.
Which social platform should a startup choose?
The one where your customers already spend time: Discord for gamers, LinkedIn for corporate audiences, X for startup people, Instagram/TikTok/YouTube for broad consumer audiences.
