How the best do it

Is there a way to build demand before the product even exists?

The short answer

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.

Go deeper, your way

3 hand-picked resources, 1 India-specific, 3 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.

🎧 Podcast
✓ Link checked India Free Intermediate

Why we picked it 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.

SaaS, Chennai, Acquisition By Freshworks and Building Rocketlane with Founder, Srikrishnan Ganesan

On The Neon Show by Siddhartha Ahluwalia with Srikrishnan Ganesan podcast episode

SaaS, Chennai, Acquisition By Freshworks and Building Rocketlane with Founder, Srikrishnan Ganesan
Watch on YouTube neon.fund →
📰 Newsletter
✓ Link checked Freemium Beginner

Why we picked it 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.

How to find and win your first 10 B2B customers

From Lenny's Newsletter by Lenny Rachitsky long read

Open lennysnewsletter.com →

The same ground, at another level

How inbound, content and demand gen reads from a different seat.

Everyone says do content. What does inbound actually mean for a startup with no audience? Inbound means someone with the problem finds you while they are looking for an answer, and leaves you a way to follow up. For a startup with no aud... Breaking into GTM 4 resources → How do I decide what to write about so it brings in buyers and not just traffic? Sort every topic idea by how close it sits to a purchase. Comparison pages, alternatives pages, integration pages and "how do I do X with Y" pages ... Doing the work 4 resources → How much of my pipeline should come from inbound versus outbound, and when do I add the second channel? Early on almost every B2B company grows through one dominant channel, so the wrong move is to run four at half strength. Name your primary channel,... Leading a GTM team 4 resources →

People also ask

Everyone says do content. What does inbound actually mean for a startup with no audience? Inbound means someone with the problem finds you while they are looking for an answer, and leaves you a way to follow up. For a startup with no aud... Breaking into GTM 4 resources → I write blog posts and nothing happens. What am I doing wrong? Usually one of three things. You are writing for a persona you invented instead of a real person you have spoken to, so the piece is generically co... Breaking into GTM 4 resources → How do I decide what to write about so it brings in buyers and not just traffic? Sort every topic idea by how close it sits to a purchase. Comparison pages, alternatives pages, integration pages and "how do I do X with Y" pages ... Doing the work 4 resources → Our product is self-serve. How do we get users without a sales team? Product-led companies get most of their new users from two places: organic search (about forty percent) and product virality (about sixteen percent... Doing the work 4 resources → How much of my pipeline should come from inbound versus outbound, and when do I add the second channel? Early on almost every B2B company grows through one dominant channel, so the wrong move is to run four at half strength. Name your primary channel,... Leading a GTM team 4 resources → I run demand gen for an Indian SaaS selling globally. Does the US content playbook work here? Partly. If you sell to the US and Europe, the standard playbook applies because you are competing in the same search results as everyone else, and ... Leading a GTM team 5 resources →

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Also in D2C

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