Should I bother with SEO if my whole customer base finds startups on LinkedIn and WhatsApp, not Google?
If your buyers genuinely discover and decide inside LinkedIn and WhatsApp groups, pouring months into Google SEO is the wrong bet, at least first. Meet people where they already gather and search. A starting point: watch how five real customers actually found their last vendor, and put your content effort wherever that turns out to be, not where a generic guide says.
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✍️ Essay
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This essay reframes the question you are actually asking. Chen argues that a startup needs two separate insights, one about the product and a distinct one about distribution (which channel actually reaches your buyers), and that defaulting to a channel because it is the obvious one is how most founders stall. It is the honest starting point for deciding whether Google is even your channel or just the assumed one.
Product-market fit and a distribution insight are two different problems, and having a good product does not automatically tell you where your customers are.
The best channels are usually specific and small at first, and often built into how the product spreads, not a generic default like search.
If your buyers already gather somewhere (a network, a community), that is your channel to earn, not a channel you have to invent from scratch.
If LinkedIn is genuinely where your buyers are, this is a concrete India-aware playbook for working it, not a follower-count vanity guide. It covers founder-led profiles, problem-first positioning, a simple weekly posting cadence, and turning comments and post engagement into sales conversations. Treat it as a starting checklist you adapt, not a script.
This is India's first and best-known SaaS-focused podcast, hosted by Sunil Neurgaonkar with over 100 Indian and global SaaS operators. The conversations get specific about go-to-market, first customers, and whether to sell into India or chase a US and global beachhead, which is exactly the debate this question sits in. You get working founders arguing the tradeoff from lived experience, not theory.
