It’s Issue number THREE, folks!

The topic of the issue?

How your startup - yes, yours! - can go about getting your perfect customers.

No magic here, every single startup is (on some level) a business, and there’s a vast library of successful businesses to learn from. So we’re going to break down five main types of businesses and how they got their start, with examples, and dig in to what was done and why it worked.

I outlined what I’m covering in this post, but here’s a recap of the companies and strategies:

Liquid Death (viral/retail marketing)
Yelp (community/platform value marketing)
IntentPost (direct sales, social, preorders)
Marvel Gaming (esp. SNAP, the free-to-play model)
Valve corporation (e-commerce marketplace)

Each one represents a specific type of customer “need,” a specific kind of product, and a significant test case of the how/what/why.

Now each model is for getting customers, but the ideas will also work for beta testers of course, as just the most engaged customer base. The ideas can also be used - before, or after - to make your case to investors as well.

The biggest advantage of 4/5 of these methods is they’re highly public, so you can easily demonstrate public traction/growth, which is self-reinforcing both for getting users/customers, and for pitching yourself to investors.

It’s also important to note that most companies use a combination of strategies. Sometimes varied by business stage, target market, or for specific individual features - so certainly don’t limit yourself to just one pipeline!

I’ll be covering each in a lean, efficient way, but this is still going to be a very dense issue. Brace yourself and let’s dive right in!

WHAT - Liquid Death’s marketing strategy is all about spectacle. The product is a physical thing that makes people stop and look at it.

The company built a brand to fit in with heavy metal, rock bands, concerts, the X-games, etc. It’s tough, it’s bold, AND it’s healthy (because real insiders know hydration and vitamins are the secret sauce behind great rock shows!)

The founder, Mike Cessario, actually found out through touring band connections that most Monster Energy sponsored artists actually drank water out of pre-emptied cans. No one wants to drink energy drinks all day (yes I mean you, put it down!) and Mike was shocked there wasn’t a healthy alternative angling for the same sponsorship niche.

HOW - By having something physical that sits on a shelf, you have a lasting brand presence everywhere from billboards to recycling centers. A raccoon knocking over a recycling bin on a high-traffic street could be doing a similar level of brand-awareness as a YouTube spot. It’s a test-case in having your product and brand scream “UNIQUE!” from the rooftops.

This of course automatically both appeals to, and benefits from, viral social media marketing because it’s YouTube and Instagram (image-hungry platform) candy. It’s eye-catching, it has a bold name, it’s style overload. That’s branding currency that benefits the creators and influencers you partner with just as much as you.

It also works for organic marketing too. A strong brand is something that individual consumers can make a part of their personal brand, playing off of the same intensity, style, or (in this case) shock value of the product and making themselves stand out - while acting as a walking advertisement for your product.

Yelp’s (who we’ll be talking about more soon) branded swag is another excellent example of this method.

…AND YOU “CAN” TOO! - Physical merch is nothing new. A hat with a QR code on it, a really memorable aesthetic (hello PostHog!) that also feeds in to the specific artistic style of your company. This approach is all about getting people to stop and listen long enough to actually hear or see your company pitch, long enough to consider your product.

A first impression and a brand iconography so strong that it compounds (viewers remember the first impression when they see it successive times).

Ok, so Liquid Death did it. Anyone else? Well, if you’ve seen an insurance ad recently, surely “LiMu Emu” and Allstate’s “Mayhem” ring a bell. After all, what’s more boring than a water in a can… ?

Back to the influencer and creator piece, if you’re partnering with someone whose entire business model is on getting views and online attention, giving them something attention-getting, associated with your brand, is a marketing strategy all by itself.

Everyone gives branded pens - but what about a 3D printed hat in bright colors? A customized steel helmet? A promotional microphone?

DOWNSIDES?

For starters, you need a STRONG brand. Really strong.

And, you need that brand before you actually start anything. Which means either having the strong idea out of the gate, or moving very, very fast. Design, planning, production - and it has to feed back to a funnel that’s centered on your goal. Do you want to reach investors, or just make sure people have heard of you? Do you need paying SaaS customers, or advertisers?

It’s expensive, so it better work, and the less you know your own audience, the harder it’s going to be to predict that. And, it makes it significantly harder to pivot or rebrand.

What’s brilliant about Liquid Death’s approach is that their most exciting marketing material IS their product. All they have to do to make it eye-catching is give someone with a YouTube channel and a camera their actual product.

No new production line, no one-off promotional product, it’s all the same physical thing that gets views online, makes great billboards, and that will stop people on store shelves.

WHAT - A brick & mortar review platform. Yelp built up very strong “Yelper” communities around a combination of low-key peer pressure from really active users, a drive to support local businesses, and a genuinely useful tool.

Nearly everyone looks up reviews for places before eating at a new restaurant or shopping at a new store now (right?)

Why does it work? Because one of the strongest forms of driving adoption is user enthusiasm, and there are few drivers as strong, lasting, and fast-growing as a genuine community. Bonus points if it’s free!

HOW - Community/social marketing, especially physical event based.

This method is FAR more complicated, but incredibly powerful/self-sustaining if you pull it off.

What Yelp did is recruit local reviewers, encourage them to post reviews longer than a certain length, more often than a minimum frequency, and encouraged them to do things like have profile images, post pictures, and interact with other “Yelpers.”

They also built a free business platform, that allowed platform users to add their favorite businesses easily, and then gave businesses the option to “Claim” those pages officially. That meant adding menus, promotions, engaging directly with reviewers, putting up curated photos and accurate information.

Finally, they connected the two through the Yelp Elite program.

If you met the activity threshold of posting, commenting, engaging (etc) on the platform, you could apply for Elite status for the year. Elites were a limited number of slots, approved by-hand by a local Community Manager (who also led by example, IN that metro/region).

Community Managers recruited local businesses to host, and then advertised Elite Events, as promotional events to showcase their business to the most vocal and engaged shoppers in their immediate area.

These events are:

Yelp launched exclusively in a dense urban community, San Francisco, and hosted local events at local businesses, which brought in early users (mostly out of simple curiosity), and gave Yelp a foundation to build on.

Starting small in one physical location, or one tightly interconnected group, was critical to make it "busy" enough to build excitement with even a small percentage of the total group, and gain momentum.

Yelp discovered that most people (including non-users*) read reviews, far fewer wrote them, and a tiny sliver of people wrote most of them - AND were the most interactive on Yelp.

Yelp started giving that most-engaged subgroup resources, letting them start hosting their own events and recruiting more "Yelpers" both on and off the platform.

More people talked about the platform
So more people used the platform, and so on!

Eventually some especially strong advocates became the first Community Managers, who led on-platform users by example.

Social engagement on the platform helped keep people involved and active in between the regular events - so aspiring Elites, or those who couldn't make it to all events - were still on some level having fun.

Yelp really emphasized fun at these events - marketing displays by the host business, photo booths (with props) and free-flowing Yelp Swag that then became post-event marketing.

…AND YOU “CAN” TOO! - In simple terms, here are the steps:

This is a highly social approach (duh), which social media platforms all use, on some level - but adding the physical in-person element was a huge competitive advantage, that tied in that the platform is essentially about in-person businesses

That part REALLY took off once people traveling had Yelp Elite communities in the places they traveled to as well, and could readily plug-in with the local community. That global interactivity between Yelp communities is a lightning-in-a-bottle moment very, very few other companies have even come close to (!)

DOWNSIDES?

An active community, in fundamental ways, becomes your brand. There’s a significant level of branding/behavior wrangling that goes in to this, which can mostly be organic, but needs to have:

Yelp’s example remains a masterclass on how to do this, and one I will reference frequently when advising startups.

There’s another massive, massive caveat to be discussed another time too - Yelp’s model is expensive, how does it make money?

That’s a question you need to answer right out of the gate before pursuing this acquisition model.

WHAT - IntentPost! Or, the direct-sales approach (with the modern twists of social media and pre-orders)

This method is the bog-standard, classic door-to-door sales process that's worked since businesses were businesses. It's classic because it works, and we know it works.

While it might be classic, it does look different than it once did, especially for startups.

Here's the breakdown:

1. Customer discovery to find and hone-in on "the problem,"

2. Build a product that solves the problem

3. Go back to the first group of customers, off your solution, and then repeat.

Ideally, get people to pre-order so you have customers before you have a product (or at least before it's complete) to fund your development.

4. Refine, reiterate, sell, repeat

This process is nearly always founder-led, and is the heart and soul of building in public, because it's a live conversation between builder and (hopefully) customers.

The real magic here is that, just like customer success, it's all about relationship building. Customers and founder/builder are actively involved in conversation every step of the way, day-in and day-out.

Everyone involved gets live feedback, to see the product grow and evolve, and test out new use cases, together. It's, in many ways, like customers and/or consultants being an active part of the company.

That level of relationship showcases the strengths and values of the founder, the potential of the product, and naturally builds a strong advocacy network of early adopters, who often become the most loyal recurring customers too.

All of that also is THE "early traction" that investors want to see from startups and companies.

This strategy is stronger than ever now because social networks (especially LinkedIn) both encourage, and reward, doing this process in-public.

Not only does that bring others in to the building-to-trust relationship who otherwise wouldn't have known about it (more quickly than cold-calling) but it also actively recruits talent, investors, news outlets, (etc) to you as you build.

It's one of my favorite approaches, because I get to see it happen real-time, which has been an absolute delight!

Last week was especially interesting on this. Shout-out to Faiz Imran for launching a tangent product and doing a 48 hour hiring blitz, which was both possible at all and MUCH easier to pull off because he had already built an existing audience watching IntentPost's growth.

HOW - Talk to your customers. BEFORE you build - and that’s really… it.

This is the core process for launching anything, especially a startup, and many founders get bogged down in process and theory, when the most important thing is to engage with your customers as early as possible.

That way you know what to build, others know what you’re building, and this can (should) lead to your first few users, customers, and pre-orders.

…AND YOU “CAN” TOO! - Since this is the approach most founders take, that you can too goes without saying ;)

But! This is a great moment to talk up the importance of a good co-founder, IF you want to take that approach.

Any businesses step that’s founder-led is a ton of work, and a nasty mix of thankless and lonely. It can make all the difference in the world to have someone with you who can amplify your strengths and/or really fill in the areas you struggle with the most.

Barring that, or even with it, just talk to someone.

Seriously - if you’re a founder having a tough time, drop me a message. I’m always happy to chat and give an encouraging word!

DOWNSIDES?

It's a LOT of work, usually manual, and can be quite slow.

All that visibility is also a risk if anything doesn't mesh with your ICP, or when (not if) you hit a snag and have to acknowledge it publicly.

Also, someone can come and steal your idea from under you. Which, is proof of the model, and if you’re up for the challenge, can be amazing visibility (see the Colin vs. Collin rivalry on LinkedIn)

If you can make this approach sing, there's no stronger foundation for launching from, fast and early!

WHAT - Marvel Gaming - or, giving it away for free (!)

Marvel SNAP is a mobile game, based in the Marvel universe. You download it, collect cards, compete against other players, complete quests, and get free stuff. SNAP is particularly high-profile

The last example was one of the most standard approaches, this time we're going for a weird one in Marvel SNAP.

I should also point out that this is the platform approach for Facebook, Google, Canva, Yelp, and - oh, I don't know... LinkedIn!

So why am I skipping them to focus on a mobile game?

Spider-Man 🕸️

No, but seriously, because Marvel SNAP and other mobile games have nailed both customer acquisition and monetization, while other free-to-use platforms have all struggled (more on that later).

So! The key to the method here is letting people use the tool for free. Not a trial period, not a limited-access tier, the whole core product completely free.

HOW - Why does it work?

What this does is build the largest possible audience, quickly. It's a different kind of building in public, this time letting the public user base actually experience what you're making as you build it.

Publicity, hype, user feedback, and people are a lot more likely to share things that their friends can pick up for free!

Once you get users, that's when things get tricky.

You need to keep the lights on, in a way that both appeases your investors, but doesn't drive away tons of users in the process.

Facebook, Yelp, Google all have ads (that gain value from the broad user base and are... great), Canva and LinkedIn have Premium subscription tiers (which we're all routinely badgered by, and lock key features away from most users).

Marvel SNAP and a free-to-play model give you the opportunity to earn, win, collect, or otherwise get everything for free (!) and you can play indefinitely without spending a dime. No ads, or premium features.

What they do is actually very similar to what Lovable and other vibe coding platforms have done with limited credits. They give you things you want to spend money on.

New releases? Alternative card art? Faster progression in the Battle Pass?

More credits for your vibe-coded app project?

That's dipping in to monetization strategy, but there's a feedback loop here:

1.) Free product builds a big audience, with a ton of organic sharing and traffic (YouTube reviews, newsletter shout-outs, blog breakdowns)

2.) The large audience captures the people who have the money to spend on the cool, optional pieces (often a LOT of it, if your cool stuff is cool enough)

3.) Visible premium/purchased content is shown to other users, potentially adding some extra cool factor to their free to play experience

4.) Seeing other users' premium content is a driver for every user to spend at least something, encourages exploration and time on the platform, which loops back to 1!

The diabolical brilliance here is that the monetization strategy is both technically not intrusive (NOT "Someone viewed your profile! Want to know who... ?"), and also actually drives user adoption/repeated use, because there's a constant flow of cool new stuff to see in the platform (I see you beehiiv!)

There's another point here that psychologically people feel more invested in a platform if they're literally invested in it.

They're also more likely to pay a one-off cost than a recurring one.

And, there's a trick in our brains that we're less likely to buy one-offs if we know we're going to be paying something later (re: a recurring subscription), but more likely to buy more one-offs, at a higher total value, if there isn't an impending renewal bill.

What looks like a trust-fall to finance folks used to the consistency of recurring revenue actually earns a good bit more money, faster, AND builds customer engagement by not bugging them about renewals, and showing off locked features.

…AND YOU “CAN” TOO! - This is extremely effective for something like Marvel SNAP, where you’re using the same pieces or tools a lot, and build a personal attachment to them.

Plus, extreme global brand recognition - which helps, of course, but also puts a TON of pressure on the team to know their stuff and get it right, or, backlash.

In SNAP’s case, the monetized product is literally cosmetics. Different visual skins you can put on your cards and showcase your unique style.

If you want to consider this approach, early on in the design process you’ll want to build out need-to-have stuff. The core product, the tools, the real value and exciting stuff.

Then, you need to find nice-to-have stuff that can be an optional purchase. This is a long-standing spot for physical merchandise, but digital products open up a whole new arena to explore purchasable content without the hassle of supply chains/manufacturing/distribution.

The limited credits model of Lovable and Claude are both excellent examples - you get almost everything anyway. But you can pay for more! Custom Domains, additional integrations - I can dive in, in detail, to where I think this is over-monetized right now, but it’s a learning process for all of us.

I’ve personally been very impressed with how effective this monetization strategy has been, which is why I’m digging in to it so much.

DOWNSIDES?

If you don’t monetize the right things, successfully, or at a sustainable price point, this is a very expensive route to go down - because it is a risk giving up the subscription model.

That said, the subscription model has those exact downsides, because it paywalls your entire user base in the first place, and is a massive barrier to general adoption and organic growth. Even locking in only the most premium features will keep many users from picking it up at all, and people really don’t react well to being constantly prompted to pay to upgrade.

The single biggest downside is you need to make sure the platform holds on to long-term value, compounding use, growing audiences. Otherwise this pricing model dries up, and the teams dedicated to making more optional for-purchase content get unsustainable.

…but again, that’s true of traditional premium subscriptions models too, without the benefits!

WHAT - Don’t!

Just don’t get any customers.

That's an oversimplification, but it makes the point - Steam is a marketplace consolidation approach. More than selling a product, Steam connect sellers to buyers.

Steam sells video games as direct-downloads to consumers, completely virtually.

HOW - As the platform (or other kind of marketplace), you do still need to recruit both buyers and sellers. But there's a tipping point where you become the default destination, and your sellers and buyers take on the bulk of the work selling for you.

Before Steam, games were sold almost exclusively as physical copies, in-store. It was expensive, demanding on supply chains, and cost both sales and customers simply because of ease of access to the product.

Steam, like eBay, Etsy, Amazon (etc.) in their respective ways, put everything, from everywhere (or, as close as possible) right in to consumer's hands. And, like Steam, they also revolutionized product delivery in their own ways.

That was meeting a delivery need/solving a pain point that was shared by every seller and buyer, encouraging user adoption on both sides.

Where Steam stands out:

1.) They are a seller themselves, being owned by the developer/publisher Valve, of Half-Life fame.

2.) They offer products from other developers, including indie (independent) teams, and their direct competitors (!)

3.) Their platform works. Fast, smooth, intuitive. It has always - always - focused on being a great product, first.

4.) It's social. Shared platforms where you can interact with your friends and peers, build your user base by becoming the shared meeting place. Product wishlists, voice and text chats, features to see what your friends bought/are using.

All four of those are key to this growth method.

Having your own products to list both gives you a baseline offering so your store doesn't start empty.

Offering products from other companies gives you a broader audience, not playing favorites with their products vs. yours builds enormous trust from buyers and other potential sellers.

The platform just working is a massively underrated point.

Finally, and maybe most importantly, it's universal.

Steam doesn't require you to have specific hardware.
Doesn't require intrusive security checks (EA's Origin).
Doesn't demand a ton of network and system resources (Blizzard's Battle.net).
Doesn't exclusively sell their own products (Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, etc.).

Maybe most importantly, Steam doesn't wall people off - your friends list is your friends list, no matter which company made whatever you're playing.

All competitors (except Epic) before or since have built a Friends list that only allows you to interact if you're in their launcher, playing their games - which, just drives people to other platforms to interact (like Discord).

…AND YOU “CAN” TOO! - Steam, the ideal marketplace business model:

- Sells what people want
- Where they can get it
- At fair prices
- *Works*
- Connects buyers to each other in a shared product experience.

I keep a wishlist on Steam, where my friends and family can see it, and can put money in to Steam’s pocket anytime to buy me something they know I’ll like.

That’s a small thing, but significant in a marketplace model, and something that most marketplace platforms have struggled to implement, either because they’re too niche or not public enough to share that kind of thing.

DOWNSIDES?

Putting almost all of your sales in the hands of other buyers and sellers means a good bit of curating and infrastructure maintenance to make sure everything works, for everyone, and that all of the parties involved are behaving themselves.

This also is a challenge, because you have to balance your own branding as the platform, and also selling the sellers, plus keeping buyers engaged and coming back.

One extreme example is Amazon, which went SO hard on personal branding, that it’s gradually pushed a significant number of sellers off-platform, which has hurt both what’s available to sell, and the percentage of shoppers sticking exclusively to Amazon.

In that case, Amazon had runaway success and has gradually slid. You can’t say they haven’t been staggeringly successful, but they did lose sight of what made them the best in favor of over-aggressive competition.

Another extreme is Paramount+, which is a cautionary tale of taking this marketplace approach in a market that’s over-saturated (streaming services) and not doing enough to make yourself stand out against the leaders in the market.

So, pre-vet your market.
Make sure you don’t launch with an empty store.
Take care of your buyers and sellers.

This is one of the cooler approaches, but only works for some businesses/industries, and succeeds or fails by being a very popular dedicated niche (videogames, fashion resale) OR is big enough that you can realistically list almost everything!

Startup Spotlight

Now, I talk about Yelp a lot. A for-profit business that did incalculable good for local communities, food/business reviews, local businesses, travelers…

There were downsides too, but Yelp was both a runaway success in a place and in ways no one would have predicted. I’ll probably talk about that for the rest of my professional career.

Relate.me immediately stood out to me when I discovered it the other day, because of the very admirable mission of helping people find each other.

It’s on-theme with Brian’s Meet Near Me, but founder Miguel Coder (who, as I told him, has an AMAZING name for a technical founder) is taking a far more individual/informal approach.

Going for a walk? Pop open the app and let your neighbors know.

Need extras for pickup soccer? Let people see that.

Pop-up food cart event? Bam, the people nearby know.

It’s the communal aspects of Meetup, with the convenience of Uber, and an amazing tool for people in a new place looking for some shared activities.

Now, it’s very early stage, and there are obvious risks involved in the concept, but it’s a really cool concept, and jumped out right away as another idea to watch!

Rumbles around the World

Not only is it just the sweetest, most adorable sounding tech news - but UK-based Ilai Szpiezak’s Pretty Prompt is directly integrated in to Sweden’s vibe-coding platform, Lovable.

This is another move by European vibe-coding platforms to fill in user challenge gaps, and make these tools cleaner, faster and more powerful.

Pretty Prompt builds simple requests into detailed AI prompts that other platforms can then use to make more in-depth requests. It’s AI feeding AI, but where I’ve used it it’s taken my non-technical behind MUCH further in terms of making technically sound projects.

Plus, I’ve been learning how to prompt more effectively in the process!

This is a really, really cool extra tool that meets a new, is incredibly easy to use, and makes existing tools just work better.

Pretty Prompt doesn’t just work with Lovable, it’s “the Grammarly of AI prompts,” and has a plugin that can be used basically anywhere - but I immediately took it to Lovable, and haven’t looked back!

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See you next issue ;)