
Why You Should Start Marketing the Day You Start Coding - khingebjerg
http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2010/10/14/startup-marketing-part-6-why-you-should-start-marketing-the-day-you-start-coding/
======
kloncks
I absolutely hate hearing these things:

 _Remember, ideas are worth nothing. And these days, even your code is worth
very little._

Alright, so creativity and idea-making worth _nothing_. Technical expertise to
make it? _nothing_.

Honestly, what's left? The business side of things?

Maybe this article just bothered me because I was getting similar vibes to
"you can just have an idea and hire some programming monkey to create it for
you."

Or as he said it: _You and I could get together and clone almost any popular
web application in a month. Or for that matter, we could simply buy a clone
script. Twitter, Facebook, eBay, Groupon, Digg, and about 50 others are
available for around $100 each._

~~~
jonpaul
That's exactly right. Ideas aren't worth much. I like Siver's article on ideas
as multipliers. Execution and the 'business side of things' as you stated are
what matters. If Zuckerberg didn't execute like he did with Facebook, Facebook
would've still have been a cute little toy project at Harvard. The idea of
Facebook itself is pretty simplistic.

~~~
zeemonkee
He was also lucky, in the right place and time, and savvy enough to exploit
his luck. Plus, the value of Facebook (and other sites mentioned) is the
community and mindshare. You can't just buy a Facebook clone and expect
overnight success.

~~~
dasil003
This attitude bugs me a lot. There is probably a path for every single person
in this country to make a million dollars in the next year if they were just
"savvy enough" to take advantage of it. It seems everyone wants to diminish
Zuck's success by ascribing luck to it, but let me tell you something. Zuck
executed the shit out of Facebook. Did the community and mindshare just come
out of thin air?

There's no good reason to believe that Zuckerberg is lucky at all. Saying he
was in the right place at the right time has this tacit assumption that if he
were somewhere else at the wrong time he would have tried the same thing and
fell flat on his face.

It seems because Facebook is an outlier, people feel safe talking about the
luck factor, but that's meaningless because we all exist with individual
circumstances, and by that measure everything every one of us does is based on
luck. Instead, I prefer to ascribe luck to things that the individual actually
had no control over, such as winning the lottery.

~~~
zeemonkee
I'm not saying his success was due purely to luck, but that luck was a major
factor.

Being the right place and right time is a huge part of it. He was the right
age, in the right environment, when the right technology reached the right
tipping point and critical mass.

I'm not disparaging Zuckerberg's ability or hard work. However many with
greater ability and who have worked harder have failed because of
circumstances beyond their control.

~~~
dasil003
But isn't it just a platitude you tell yourself to feel better that you will
never be that successful? How can you be sure Zuck isn't better than those who
failed? And how can you be sure those who failed didn't do something wrong?
You see how pointless this is?

~~~
ecaradec
Luck plays a role in building a billion dollars company, otherwise billg,
stevej, would be building billion dollars company every 10 years which is not
happening.

Building a million dollars company is hard work (I mean 10 million at least ),
but still billion dollars company are mostly about being lucky and exploiting
it. I doubt that billionnaire entrepreneurs seriously worked much more, or
much smarter than millionnaires. Billionaire companies landed there because
they exploited ideas inherently more monopolistic, more able to spread.

If you take the sivers multiplier <http://sivers.org/multiply>, ideas still
have some potential : a x20 multiplier is a huge boost.

~~~
dasil003
_sigh_ thank you for totally missing the point. This is all mental
masturbation. You're just using luck as a synonym for circumstance, which is
not a good attitude for an aspiring entrepreneur to take.

------
wccrawford
Reason #3: The boy who cried vaporware. If you end up with a history of
advertising vaporware, nobody will listen when you finally get it right.

If you are super amazing and you can get your first product to market, this
obviously doesn't apply. But most people aren't. And most of those who do,
they're just lucky.

Reason #4: Duke Nukem Forever will be out any day now. If you take too long to
get it to market, your product will be a joke and people will lose interest.

~~~
patio11
Can anyone recall the names of the two products I announced on my blog and
then abandoned for various reasons? Was anyone here even aware that happened
at all?

Just failing isn't nearly enough to get people to remember you. You have to be
truly epic to be remembered for that. ( _How_ many enterprise deployments go
years late for every Slashdot joke about Duke Nukem again?)

~~~
Poiesis
Only one I remember is Kalzumeus, which I think was a rental property
management webapp for targeted for single-family residences as opposed to
apartment buildings and the like. Was going to have awesome integration with
Paypal. I could be wrong, that's from memory and I could be confusing you with
someone else.

------
KirinDave
I'm ambivalent about this. Having been through a few different startups with
various degrees of marketing, it seems like the issue is really sensitive to
your product and your schedule.

Mog.com started out with minimal hype despite a lot of effort by its CEO, and
had an very (almost disastrously) slow startup phase. When we ran into
implementation difficulties we compounded this slow-start problem even more.
Mog managed to pull through this because of prudent financials and
perseverance, but it was a near thing.

Powerset had the opposite problem, we had so much hype we didn't know what to
do with it. What Powerset delivered was pretty impressive, but much less than
what people expected. Cries of "Deeply Disappointed!" rained down on us like
drops of acid, and we were powerless to do anything but deliver on what we
could and say the rest was either too expensive or too difficult for the
moment. But we _did_ have a lot of users and interest, so we had a huge
launch.

Now I'm at BankSimple, which is somewhere in between these other plans.
BankSimple is aggressively talking to people and getting their message out, so
there is some pent-up demand. We're also very diligent about responding to
people as people, we do a bit of research before replying to (almost every)
email. This means that we get some impatient tweets and messages (“Who cares
what you look like? Where is your service?!”) asking for unreasonably fast
development time, but it also means we get a lot of insightful feedback and
commentary.

Our biggest obstacle seems to be controlling the hype. It's very easy for
people to build up what we promised into veiled hints some kind of complete
reform of the US financial system, which is probably an unreasonable launch
goal. ;)

~~~
zacharycohn
As someone who signed up for BankSimple around the time the first wave of
press was going out, I can say that I probably check your blog once a week,
and have sent your site to countless of my friends. (I'm trying to be patient,
but it's hard. :)) I think it's a great example of why marketing early (with
the right message) can be super useful.

One thing that the article didn't go into was getting people familiar with
you. Even if someone doesn't sign up (or if you don't have a way for them to
give you their email address for some reason), if someone stumbles across your
site/product a few times before it launches, they're likely to start to
remember it and be more interested when it launches.

(KirinDave- Keep up the good work! I'm excited to hear back from you guys and
start using whatever you guys give us.)

------
nihilocrat
After reading Zed Shaw's post yesterday about how "Long Beards" are getting
marginalized by "Product Guys" I cringe when I hear bullshit like this:

 _Ideas (and in most cases even the code itself) is worth little. It’s
marketing that makes the startup._

(Mind you, ideas _are_ worth little, but the rest... yeah)

~~~
j_baker
Don't take this the wrong way, but why did it take a Zed rant to see through
this? Usually "department x is more important than anyone else" arguments are
flawed to begin with.

~~~
nihilocrat
You're right; it didn't take Zed to convince me, I just thought it was odd
that I read two articles arguing about the same thing on vastly different ends
of the spectrum.

------
mattm
A reason not to start marketing right away:

\- You may pick the wrong people to market to and they convince you to abandon
your project

While this may save you some time, the people may just have convinced you to
stop work on a valuable product.

Even though I've done a couple projects that haven't gone anywhere, the fact
that I have completed them in a working and useful state has greatly helped me
get interviews and led to higher paying work.

~~~
rwalling
Isn't that like saying "Don't try to find any potential customers for your
idea because they may not like it and you may give up?"

~~~
bqn
I guess the customers might think different when they actually see the
product.

------
grammaton
"No, these days even technical execution is mostly trivial (with a few
exceptions for apps built around unique algorithms). Far more important is
marketing execution."

Can someone please smack this idiot?

~~~
hopeless
I think in the context of "which is harder, building the product or building
the market?" most programmers will admit that the coding is (almost) trivially
easy compared to actually getting users. Perhaps trivial is too harsh a word
but I understand what he means.

~~~
jdp23
agreed. "trivial" is an overstatement but the essence of what he's saying is
completely right.

------
nlavezzo
Another reason you may want to delay pre-launch marketing is that if you plan
on patenting your product you can invalidate your ability to do so in certain
juristictions (including most of the EU) simply by "disclosing" your
invention.

If your landing page could be construed as an "offer for sale", and goes up
more than one year in advance of your patent application, you've lost your
ability to patent protect the idea in the US as well.

Of course most startups these days (the ones reading HN at least) are working
on web apps and patents are not as commmonly employed. If you ARE working on a
patentable idea though, you should do some research and consult with an IP
lawyer before you go and put up any public marketing material before you have
applications in to the jurisdictions where you want protection.

------
TomK32
Yeah I should have started marketing two years ago, or at least show my idea
to other people. I started that only after the first year, with a survey to
find out if my idea is right (and it was). The thing about marketing, or
anything that involves people from outside, is that you can easily motivate
yourself by dropping details no one wants (saving time ftw) or add new ones if
you see there's someone who's interested in this or that little extra.

------
boundlessdreamz
Disagree: Technical and design execution matters a lot. Facebook was brilliant
in both. While myspace pages were a mess and friendster was having trouble
keeping the server up, facebook out executed both.

If you don't have a good product marketing can't help you. Marketing can give
you an edge over other equally good products but cannot guarantee success.

Dropbox / Tweetie (before it stagnated) / Minecraft etc succeeded because the
product was good. Not because of marketing

~~~
kranner
I don't think there is any mention of marketing at the cost of technical
execution in the article.

If your market does not know your product exists, it won't matter how good it
is anyway. I'm reminded of Hugh MacLeod's brilliant cartoon "Welcome to Nobody
Cares": <http://www.gapingvoid.com/11444661477.jpg>

edit: I stand corrected. "technical execution is mostly trivial"? No thank
you. I did not become an engineer to write wedding planner software.

------
MortenK
Marketing is hard as hell, especially so for developers.

As with many other articles like it, the advice given is too vague. We know
that we need to market our product but how? Make a landing page, and get 600
subscribers out of the blue? Just blog it all up in the twittersphere and get
1000 likes, no problem?

Anyone who has tried that without a thorough understanding of marketing, and
no real budget for it, will know it doesn't work like that.

When I read these marketing articles, it feels like they are explaining how to
model my abstraction layers, when I haven't even written Hello world yet.

------
damoncali
_Once this is setup the major task is driving traffic, which is far beyond the
scope of this article._

Yes, and it's the hardest part of the process. Saying "start early" doesn't
help much if you punt on "start what?" Glossing over that 650 strong list is
skipping the meat of the subject. How much did they cost, where did they come
from, and how long did they take to get? Those are the questions worth
answering. You need to answer (or guess at) those questions before you decide
when to start your marketing.

~~~
rwalling
First off, the article is "Why" to do this, not "how to market a startup." I
named it this way for a reason; marketing is a huge topic. I devote an entire
chapter to it in my book, and am tossing around the idea of writing an entire
book on the subject.

So offering the how and why in a blog post is a bit more than you should
expect.

And there is value in saying "start early." Most devs I know don't do this and
it costs them when they launch. If you've heard it and already know this
that's fine, but many others have not.

With that said, here are quick answers to your questions:

>>How much did they cost

Typically nothing.

>>Where did they come from

It depends on your niche, but typically from being involved in that niche's
community, publishing blog posts that get mentioned on Twitter, being
interviewed on podcasts, and generally getting in front of the audience who
will buy your application.

At a 50% conversion rate you only need 1300 uniques for a 650 person list.

>>How long did they take to get?

Most often 4-6 months. Most first-time startup founders can drive 1300
targeted uniques to a landing page in 4-6 months.

For more on this topic keep your eyes on the blog; I'll be posting more about
this kind of stuff over the next few months.

------
yan
I think this is awful from the standpoint of morale (coming from personal
experience). If you start marketing, and start getting positive feedback way
too early, you end up cashing in the rewards a bit too early. Early positive
feedback from friends killed many personal projects since I got the praise
before I did anything and lost motivation to actually finish them.

YMMV, but this is how I react.

------
SabrinaDent
I'm not sure why we require 1,500 words to convey the very basic idea that you
shouldn't build a product in a vacuum. This entire article could fit in a
tweet:

 _Show it to the people you want to sell it to as you build it, and start
building a mailing list before launch._

------
punnned
"Ideas are worth nothing" - it's a big statement and quite a prevalent view
these days.

I think it's true to an extent - a successful startup doesn't need an entirely
new, innovative idea but at the same time a new, innovative idea doesn't
necessarily result in a successful startup. I think what's more important is
not the idea itself, but the angle you take to market your idea. And that is
why the blog post has some sound advice.

For example, facebook wasn't the first social network but the way it marketed
itself (ie exclusively to college students ) etc was quite effective. Google
wasn't the first search engine but its 'clean, simple' branding was quite
unique.

Your marketing strategy/approach shapes the design and the features of your
product.

------
8ren
For every 1000 people who has the idea, one actually does it.

I think the really big differentiator is not _how well_ you execute (in code
or in marketing), but _whether you do it_ at all.

If you're prepared to stumble-and-ratchet (ie. explore; try-fail-try-again;
"pivot"; experiment), ahead of everyone else, you win.

The only exception is if someone is massively more
skilled/knowledgeable/resourced/intelligent/determined than you. But a funny
thing is... that for a new market-product fit, _you_ are the expert, and the
most skilled, because the only way to get the knowledge and skill is to
stumble-and-ratchet. You are also most well-known in the market. It's really
_hard_ for someone to catch up.

------
jonpaul
You can build an email list cheaply, just use Google Forms:
<http://www.google.com/google-d-s/forms/>

~~~
klous
Or you can have a fully managed list for free up to 1000 subscribers at
mailchimp.

------
auston
1\. I think everyone here is missing the point of the article... Market now,
not later.

2\. There is a lot of "code above all" because we are programmers. The sad
reality: All aspects of a business are valuable; the ideas, code (IP),
marketing, user interface design, customer service, strategy & processes! If
you want to be successful, all aspects of your business need to be properly
nurtured, provided for & grown.

------
atlei
Idea x Execution x Marketing x Persistence x Luck = Success

Based on Sivers Multiplier idea:

\- <http://sivers.org/multiply>

------
tsmith
Why not start a few days (at least) before you start coding?

"Sell before you build" is my new mantra.

