I know I need marketing help but giving equity to someone I met online feels like a huge risk. At the same time hiring a paid marketer when you have zero revenue feels just as scary. And I'm not dancing on TikTok, that's for sure.
Have any of you actually taken on a marketing co-founder? What made you say yes to that person specifically? Was it their track record, the way they pitched, a trial period first?
In business, selling is much much much more important than making because if you have money you can hire technical workers. But nobody will care nearly as much about survival as you.
And if you have a technical background you are much more likely to have technical people in your network. Good luck.
I seriously wonder if that can happen today. As a technical founder, I have tried to find a marketing partner for years. Every time it has failed miserably as each one proved unable to move the needle.
In my case, it could be the product, but I wonder who has seen success in this day and age.
Marketing comes later.
I tend to interview 30-50 people initially to find a gap in the market. If I'm into something (strong PMF), a good percentage of those people I interviewed will be future buyers.
I typically have cascading meetings for the following steps:
1 - is this 10X better than what currently exists
2 - does our prototype look 10X better
3 - does our v1 solve the gap we found
4 - what features do we need to build in order to get you to pay for it
5 - what features do we need to get you to refer us to 3 friends
A meeting for each of those goals typically leads to customers (again, if I've found PMF).
This significantly reduces bounce rate compared to a traditional landing page and I've had good success getting to the top of popular search terms after a few months/years.
I can build nearly any system to support nearly any idea, and I have done so many times. When it comes to outreach, marketing, the kind of network building, the audience building, and then the face-to-face aspects of promoting what you've built and selling (grifting) potential customers, it is a very different skill set.
I have almost always just allowed other people in my world that are far better than that to take the reins in those roles. I think having a complementary co-founder who operates naturally in that space is, in many cases, necessary.
Small anecdote: I had a quick call with a founder the other day, and when I mentioned to him the work I was doing for an organization he was familiar with, I mentioned having used my technical ability to help the organization secure a lucrative contract. I found it very surprising that his response was, "Well, why didn't you just go interact with the customer directly and take the job yourself?" I thought that that was a curious mentality– stuff like that doesn't cross my mind, because I don't have any, nor do I enjoy any, of the soft skills that are required to operate in that world. There are a wide variety of personalities, and the types of problems that engage different people are just as diverse.
PaulHoule•1h ago
I brought on a high-touch salesperson on spec years ago and it did not work out. He and I were really successful at getting audiences with people but we never made the sales we were looking for and, worse, he lost me small cheap jobs that I could have sold myself. He'd probably say it was a product problem and he might have been right but later on I found out I wasn't the only person who had the same experience with him.
For some products you need those kind of skills. I've met people like him who really are worth their weight in gold.
For other products you need somebody who can make an Adwords campaign, analyzes the analytics, refine it and repeat. That kind of person can be worth their weight in gold too.
For this conversation to be productive you have to have some idea if you need one or the other or a bit of both.
Imustaskforhelp•53m ago