Essay · 15 min read

If you build it, they won't come, unless…

Jason Cohen · A Smart Bear Free Beginner

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.

  • 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'.
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The question it answers

  1. We are bootstrapped with no money for marketing. What does GTM look like without a budget?

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