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Cohen names the exact trap a broke founder falls into: running the same tactics as a million other companies and being invisible because of it. His five alternatives (radical honesty, virality built into the product, a story worth repeating, advertising treated as investment, borrowed credibility) are all things you can do with time instead of money.
If you build it, they won't come, unless…
From A Smart Bear by Jason Cohen 15 min read
- The usual list (A/B test ads, test landing pages, chase blog reviews) fails because every startup says it.
- Balsamiq's edge was radical transparency: publishing revenue figures and the marketing strategy itself.
- Share buttons do not make a product viral; the core action has to require another person.
- It took five years to learn to sell the why, not 'data-mining tools for version control'.
