Is there a way to build demand before the product even exists?
Yes, and Rocketlane is the cleanest Indian example. Srikrishnan Ganesan started a community and a podcast for his buyers nine months before the product shipped, ran more than a hundred customer conversations, and timed the funding announcement with the launch so the noise compounded. By the time there was something to sell, there was already an audience who knew the problem and trusted the founder. The rule underneath it: build an audience around the problem, not around your product, because the problem exists before you do. This only works if you genuinely give more than you take for those first months, so treat it as a year of work rather than a launch tactic.
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3 resources, 1 India-specific, 3 link-checked.
🎧 Podcast
✓ Link checkedIndiaFreeIntermediate
The best Indian example of building demand before a product exists: a community launched nine months ahead, a podcast for the same buyers, 100 plus customer conversations, then a launch timed with the funding news. Concrete on the demand gen channels that followed too.
A rare account of the specific moments a GTM changed shape, from narrowing to cold email agencies, to reversing the demo, to layering enterprise on top of self-serve. Best-in-class practice described as decisions rather than principles.
It orders the seven ways early customers actually arrive (network, cold outbound, investors, community, content, press, launch) by how much trust each one starts with, which is the missing map for a first-time seller. Built from interviews with founders at Figma, Notion, Databricks and Slack rather than theory.
