It used to be obvious
When we started building companies about 30 years ago, our main worry and focus was actually marketing and sales. Yeah! It took us way longer to build products and to get them to market, but nobody ever thought it's possible without distribution, aka marketing and sales, efforts.
We knew we can deliver the product or service because otherwise we wouldn’t be offering it and we also knew other people can (and will) offer the same thing eventually. Maybe they do not have the same quality, but maybe they're even better, who knows.
We felt (we didn't know it back then) that we have to differentiate somehow and tell everyone what we're doing. 🖖 It was much harder to do back then - no internet, no email (it was still rare), no FB, no YT. Just IRL events, printed stuff, magazines, culture clubs, trade shows, referrals, hand-shakes 🤝 (yes, those too) 😃
I don’t know what changed in those 30 years that people started to think that with coding & technical skills you just hack something nice or ugly together and they will come?
That users are so smart and affectionate about exactly your "thing" that they will find you and market evangelisation and differentiation efforts marketing & sales does are not necessary 🤔
Where have we lost it
I strongly believe that this is deeply rooted in the education and the fucked up views many professor at technical universities hold about business. I have no data to support it. Anecdotal evidence at best.
But it blows my mind that founders and builders are often surprised when I mention a simple fact - that ordinary early-adopter needs to "see" your product at least 3-5 times before acting on it. This number goes up in early-majority and every subsequent group and can be easily as high as 7-15 times. The important thing is that "seeing" means registering information and connecting it with some unmet need. So it's not just seeing your logo or rant on the timeline. 🗣
As I mentioned before, it would never cross my, or my friends', mind to build a product without telling people about it and that was 30 years ago. Tooling has changed, business logic and fundamentals didn't. Let people know what you're working on and think through that go-to-market strategy!
If you build something great which could help people but they don't know about it - it's not only wasted time and effort but you are failing all of your potential customers whose problem you have solved. 😥
Don't be that guy or gal!
I hope you found something interesting in today's post. If you like it - share it with your friends - they may love it as well! I
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Also, let's connect - find me as BFG (aka BrightFutureGuy)
- on Farcaster: https://warpcast.com/bfg
- on X: https://twitter.com/aka_BFG
And join the FC channel to meet other builders who want to do it better: https://warpcast.com/~/channel/buildbetter
And definitely check out my PODCASTs - Web3 Daily (aka Moxie) and Web3 Magic
1/ Just started a Web3 Daily podcasting experiment - it's a video podcast focused on Moxie protocol and developments around it. 5-12mins of daily wisdom and news 😉
You can find all daily videos and links here:
- Farcaster channel: https://warpcast.com/~/moxiedaily
- YouTube channel: Web3 Daily playlist
2/ Web3 Magic is a weekly podcast with builders of novel blockchain solutions!
- Web3 Magic is onchain on Pods - https://pods.media/web3-magic/
- Web3 Magic Podcast on Paragraph - https://web3magic.xyz
- Listen & Watch on YouTube - http://tinyurl.com/w3m-youtube
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- Listen on Spotify - http://tinyurl.com/w3m-spotify
or find it in a podcasting app of your choice.
