
Press and Viral aren't the only two marketing and distribution strategies - immad
http://www.immadsnewworld.com/2008/08/press-and-viral-arent-only-two.html
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rokhayakebe
This is one major problem 90% of startups/businesses face. Most entrepreneurs
are usually skilled individuals who build products. But what they fail to
realize is that now they have to place their product in front of your
customers. That is the hard part.

Most startups launch will not be covered by TC, Mashable, RWW....Even when
your startup does you cannot guarantee the audience will come back. Why would
they? So what does an entrepreneur do?

A few startup entrepreneurs believe they do not need a "business guy" in their
team. Well, save the case in which you are building a Google Killer or a super
viral app, you do. While you are busy responding to those 50 hard core users
and not the 5k who signed up and never came back, the business guy is supposed
to be busy creating and/or attracting business.

That one guy should be the one selling your product, looking for distributions
deals and spend his time emailing/calling (harassing works too) established
players who may be able to take advantage of your product/service. Sales prove
your product is worth something. Distribution is another important part of
your business. You cannot easily acquire 1 million users, but you can add a
tiny value to someone else's 1 million users (Facebook applications). In this
case you are usually generating revenue as well. Once you sign one decent deal
(and make sure they announce it publicly) other players will follow. "Monkey
see , Monkey do".

Hackers can certainly learn to be great negotiators and great business
development managers, but usually they do not want anything to do with
bureaucracy.

If you are a team of 2 hackers, having a third co-founder or early part time
employee as your VP of sales and Business Development will only benefit your
company.

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sachinag
Does YC require all founders to hack or can one be the business guy you
describe? I can't code - I have enough trouble with SQL SELECT statements -
but I do think I'm not too shabby at the partnership/sales stuff.

~~~
fallentimes
I can barely code. I know a tiny bit of python and some basic html & css and
suck at them. That's it - mostly because I've never put in the time like I
should have.

I plan on writing on this very topic (how to market without TC - parent
thread) as soon as I have some free time.

Edit: For those who don't know I'm in YC (ticketstumbler.com). So yes they
accept business types. My cofounder, Tom, is a superb hacker though.

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webwright
I think SEO is one of the best options for product builders to market their
products, but it's really only a HUGE win if you have a huge body of content
(and a means for that to keep growing). User-generated content + SEO really a
viral loop: 100 pages get indexed, which generates X views per day.
Eventually, a user creates some new content. Now 101 pages get indexed,
increasing the views per day. Rinse repeat, wait for glory. :-)

Of course, for a lot of startups (like RescueTime unfortunately) SEO isn't a
huge/viral win (though we still give it a lot of love).

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akd
This article reminded me to go buy some Google ads. I just allocated $20 for
them and we'll see how it turns out.

~~~
rms
Unfortunately the price of Google ads is driven up by people that don't
measure or don't care about their ROI's.

~~~
immad
In your experience; is that always true or only for certain keywords?

Sounds like it would be amazingly good for Google if it was true but not
sustainable.

~~~
fallentimes
It's 100% true. If you're just "experimenting" use some back alley place like
Microsoft Adcenter. You can find coupon codes for $75 in free ad words with
them. Until you know what you're doing, don't use Google Adwords.

