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Ask HN: I am the software guy and marketing is hell for me
53 points by egesabanci 9 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 42 comments
I am a software engineer with experience in multiple startups, both as a salaried employee and as a co-founder.

In the software/startups that I develop on my own, I am very lacking in marketing and lead hunting. My projects usually have a good growth potential, but I fail in the non-technical parts.

Of course, I have tried to get another co-founder to work on the non-technical side before, but I don't know how to find a good non-technical co-founder.

What would you suggest?




Suggestion: Rethink the "co-founder" concept.

This implies equity of some sort in your company. And I doubt you are really prepared to deal with all that this implies unless you know the "co-founder" really, really well --- and even then it can be dicey.

Instead, look and advertise for people seeking "business opportunities". Start by offering a $0 startup to others looking to start their own business built around a product they will source from you.

These other individuals/"partners" will be responsible for setting up their own company, doing their own marketing and billing and first line support.

Establish a clean line of separation by charging these partners a fixed "wholesale" rate and providing them with an "opportunity" to make money by re-selling/marketing your product. They will have total control over their own destiny as you will have over yours. The more they sell, the more they make --- and the more you will make.

Once you have "successful" partners, you can leverage that "success" to actually start charging others a significant upfront fee to become part of this successful enterprise.

The key to making money is offering others the opportunity to do the same.


What’s one example of this working in the last 10 years?

This sounds like the equivalent of “get rich dropshipping”.


It works great for the people selling "get rich dropshipping" courses?


Great insights, thanks alot.


May I ask, what business segment is your product targeted toward?


Sure. I asked the question based on my past experiences, I don't have a project that I am actively working on at the moment, but I have a few ideas that I am in the planning stage and waiting for the right moment.

At this point I organize my ideas according to my own skills and technical development load. I have pure R&D projects that require technically intensive development. I have a few other ideas in the field of financial technologies (the company I currently work for also works in this field, so I have experience and ideas in fintech) that I am still in the planning stage.

In addition to these, I have a software studio in 50/50 partnership with a close software developer friend of mine, where we develop in-house mobile apps. Occasionally we take outsourced work from different companies. We don't have an established strategy here for now, but this is something to think about.

By the way, you can find my e-mail address in my profile. Can you send me an email to stay in touch? I would love to exchange ideas


Sorry, there is no such thing as "I will code and someone else will sell" when it is just you or even a couple of you. You have to sell/market as well. You know your product and market the best. At least you have to believe that.

There is no magic wand. You know who you are building this product for (hopefully). Find 10-15 of those people manually. Reach out using email/linkedin etc. Tell them what you are working on and if they will be interest in testing it.

Start creating content around the product. A blog post no matter how crappy you think it is.

Do all of that yourself first and may be you will attract a co-founder who knows this better than you but unless you are well connected or with a previous track record, no one will join you for sweat equity. You are in this all by yourself, at least in the early days.

Source: a Technical founder who does a lot of sales/marketing. I have to.


Funnny, I am the other side of this coin. I am a founder specializing in product and marketing but I don’t write code.

Having now scaled up from zero customers to 100+ I can tell you the main things I see people get wrong:

-talking too much about what the product can do, rather than the result the person will get.

-focusing on features, which users don’t care about, rather than outcomes which they do.

-forgetting that the people you’re writing copy to are people - write to them normally and not in some weird voice.

-being overly focused on comparison to competitors. I never mention my competitors once, and no one cares.

-copying ideas from very large companies (Apple, Google, Microsoft, series D startups). Those companies can afford to burn millions on ads that might not do much. You can’t. If you copy what the big players do you just look lame and unoriginal.

-not being creative enough. No one likes boring ads. Not even boring people with boring jobs like boring ads. Average American sees 10k ads in a day. Be unique.

-Leading with something other than the main thing that your customer cares about. My company does real estate data, we used to have a headline about real estate data and market analysis. No one cared. Then we changed to taking about what investors care about, which is increasing their investment returns. Suddenly, conversions.

-tell a story about your product and plant it in your customers mind. I always say it’s like inception - they won’t remember exactly the story you told or where they saw it but I gets engrained in your mind. It’s really quite strange.

-not investing enough in marketing. Advertising done well is incredible leverage.

-don’t be afraid to write things that are long. Long headlines, long landing pages. There’s this prevailing advice to make things short, and while I do also do that, I have found that it’s not the length that’s the problem, it’s the content. If something is really good valuable and interesting, people will read things that are super long.

-provide value. The person on the other end of your landing page likely has a job to do and a boss to answer to. Help them solve their problems and they will buy from you.

-the single biggest thing that moves the needle is telling a better story about your product.

-don’t a/b test too much. It’s good to follow data, and do look at and compare performance. But you can’t a/b test your way out of bad positioning. Get it right the first time as much as you can, then iterate.


This post is 100% spot on. I'm a programmer who likes to eat, so went into marketing to sell my wares. I've made (lots of) mistakes, and learned what works, and the above post is absolute gold.

I will add that if you're a programmer first, and marketeer second, then you have to be deliberate in finding time for the marketing. It's more fun to put that off and write one-more-thing. Set aside a specific time for marketing, and be disciplined to stick to it.


I'm a backend and data engineer that loves working in both. I have the same issue as OP. I don't really have any passion of a business I'd like to start. I just like using my skills to build and enable. Been hoping to pick up some contract work here and there. Think you may have some use for my skillets or know someone who may?


I really appreciate what you wrote, and especially this:

> -don’t be afraid to write things that are long. Long headlines, long landing pages. There’s this prevailing advice to make things short, and while I do also do that, I have found that it’s not the length that’s the problem, it’s the content. If something is really good valuable and interesting, people will read things that are super long.

I have a tendency to want to write less so that I look "cool" and forget that I as well love to read a lot if I like what the person is saying. I also tend to either forget and/or roll my eyes at the super salesy sites that have soooo much copy and yet often those are the people who are quite good at selling.

In summary, I think I often try to be the cool kid and forget that being warm can develop a deeper, more genuine relationship.

Thank you!


I have been in the same situation as you for many years. 5 years ago I tried a different approach. I created a POC, some slides about the tech and recorded my screen while giving a demo of the software. I sent it out to about 20 people in my network and asked them if they knew someone who was willing to partner up with me for the sales/marketing part. Some people contacted me, 1 was interesting for me. After weeks of talking he paid me €10k and put 10k in the company. I gave him 50% of the stocks and made him CEO. Best choice of my life.


That sounds cool, how is the product doing now? Is this approach sustainable or this kind of "good fit" partnership is mostly luck?


We needed about 1 year to rebuild the tech and find the right spot in sales. It was a process we both went through. The year after it was a stable growth. This year its a rocket. We are now considering to take a step back and integrate another management layer. I think it is sustainable. It probably sounds kinda weird, but we both did a personality test. We are total different persons. He has qualities I do not have and vice versa. That's our superpower now. I trust him 100% and looking back on all our mistakes, I regret nothing.

This 10k that he paid me; People told me it was too less, it did not value the product good enough. They were right, but I was not looking for the jackpot. I was looking for a sustainable income. Mission accomplished.


Perfect. I think I have things to learn from you guys. Can we stay in touch? You can see my email in my bio. I would love to hear about this story in detail.


Disclaimer: I am also technical, just starting, and haven't proven these ideas yet.

But what I do is find marketing channels that leverage my technical strengths.

I write a technical blog, have for years. Some people now know my name.

I am starting a podcast with no ads except "Supported by <my business>" at the end. This idea is from Oxide Computing and their Bare Metal(?) podcast.

There are other ways I'm sure. Maybe attend a local Linux user group?

I will say that a lot of these methods take time. I have been publishing blogs for 11 years, 6 on the current one.


Sales and marketing are fairly different IMO. Marketing can lead to sales. For instance, creating marketing content of any kind can bring in a lead, which then turns into a sales opportunity.

Plenty of people are terrible at selling, either because they lack some skills or it's really just something they aren't interested in doing (which is why they aren't in sales).

I don't really have advice on the co-founder question but I would suggest when developing a startup that you portion out time for the not fun part of sales. There are many services that you can use to find leads in any kind of vertical you want and there are a lot of CRMs where you can email these people.

It's a combination of a lot of grunt work with perhaps disappointment, but that's how you find growth. Couple that with some of the obvious things like posting to HN, Product Hunt, etc. and having an online presence will make things happen if your product is something people want.

It's not easy and you're not alone in this dilemna.


I can offer a reading list. Hope this helps.

1. The Mom test - Rob Fitzpatrick

2. Never eat alone - Keith Ferrazzi

3. The Tim Ferriss podcast - Episode #717 with Noah Kagan

4. Crossing the chasm - Geoffrey Moore

5. Competing Against Luck - Clayton M. Christensen


I think crossing the chasm resonates more for a later stage, rather than just for getting started. I read it and felt like it really applied a lot more to my experience at a multi-hundred person company trying to become sustainable and public.


It’s very relevant to enterprise go to market motions in startups regardless of company size


You need to understand why you are "lacking" in marketing or sales.

I know a lot of engineers who internally just despise ads, promoting, outreaching, pitching, etc, but they will say they "suck" at marketing. Most of the time it's not a skill issue, it's the personality and mindset.


It's definitely personality-related. I know people who can sell a potato as the most amazing food ever, and they seem genuine about it. I can't do that with feeling like I am cheating the other person in one way or another. I can only sell what I sell, I can't promise it will change your life, because I know nothing can guarantee that.


Yeah, you are right. I feel a little bit more like that.


You might need to reframe things a bit. Marketing isn't just sales and making the world feel like a Ryanair checkout experience. A lot of it is just about bringing up something people want at the time when they need it.

In many cases, you find your target market, find someone with that market as their audience, and partner up with them.

A few examples: a web dev partnering up with a designer whose clients always need websites and apps, a travel insurance company partnering with travel blogs, a health insurance company partnering up with relocation consultants.


FWIW I have spent a few years leading GTM strategy for startups, am consulting on marketing for startups, and thinking about getting back into a startup, so I'd be open to a conversation about what you're trying to do.

Fundamentally, marketing is about 2 things: awareness and engagement. Awareness is generally about socializing the problem, how current solutions fail, and what the gaps are, in a way that directly maps to your product. Each market is different enough that you have to appreciate the context: who has this problem? Do they know they have this problem? Have they budgeted for a solution (i.e. are they in-market or are you trying to convince them to spend money on it)? The classic b2b trap is everyone telling you it's a problem, but it not being enough of a priority that they actually spend time fixing it. That's often more indicative of a product problem than a marketing problem, but it shows up most in weak GTM. Validating that in your early GTM is key.

Similarly, engagement is context dependent, but I like to think of success as moving them to the next step of the funnel. Do they believe they have a problem? Are they looking for solutions? How are they going to make a decision about which to bring on board? What information can you offer to frame your offering in the best possible light vs. their other options (including no solution)? Build your collateral to that.


If you're open to opportunities besides OP's, stick an email in your bio?


Done, forgot I hadn't included it here. For simplicity, I can be reached at rob.lheureux.3@gmail.com.


I'm the marketing guy and I'll give you some suggestions:

1. Stop hating, despising and/or looking down on your customers. Most business owners do this and are not good at hiding it. Customers are not a nuisance, they pay your bills and they respect you as a professional by paying for your work.

2. A) Know exactly what you are offering and exactly what it costs. Even if you will make custom solutions for customers, you have to know what the basic or most common use case will be and what you will charge.

2. B) Communicate exactly what you are offering and exactly what it costs. Put it on your website and other marketing material, put as much information about it on your website as you can. Be precise on pricing and offer solutions/products that cover most use cases. Even if you would have offered a great price to a customer, they already closed your tab because 99% of businesses who do not print their price are scamming their customers. Even if the customer was looking for a custom solution, having your standard prices printed means they can get an idea of your rates.

3. Don't block a customer from purchasing your product. Why are you obstructing them from clicking the purchase button by putting your annoying cookie banners and sign-up letters and chatbots in front of their face? Why is your website slow to load and jumping around? Why is your text illegible?

Oh great, they actually clicked the purchase button! Now let me jerk around this customer by forcing them to load seven different pages to confirm their purchase. Better have them agree on receiving marketing e-mails and put some more pop-up windows with spam in front of their face before they can put in their details. Better annoy them in every way possible with adress requirement, force them to register an account and make a very specific password. Surely they are so desperate to buy my product that they will accept any humiliation and annoyance to complete their purchase?

That's the basics and takes you a long way without having to learn more about marketing. Not knowing anything more about your business.


Open to opportunities?


Sure, hit me up on the e-mail in my HN profile.


Its not about marketing. It's about people. Get comfortable showing and getting feedback on your work.


I'm a problem solver myself, but I, as well, am the worst person to market myself, let alone a product of mine or my skills.

My suggestion would be, find the best marketing person you can find and let it sell things for you.

If things go well, you can make him / her your "CFO".


I'd suggest to spend 50% of your time on base marketing - provide meaningful content to your target audience on the web and other channels if they make sense, e.g. LinkedIn for B2B and you will slowly start to get recognized. After that it should get easier. Avoid scammy tactics and spam.

If you really think you need a good non-tech co-founder it should be someone you have worked with under pressure and they have proven that they can deliver. Avoid people that produce strategies.

You should list some things you have built so that someone with marketing/sales experience could find it interesting and get in touch later. It's part of what I called "base" marketing and it's a long game, no shortcuts.


Same thing for me. I can write any software and make basic PCBs but I couldn’t sell water in a desert


Checkout 30X500


To clarify, this is referring to the 30x500 Academy: “What if I launch a product that nobody wants to buy?”

https://30x500.com/academy/


[flagged]


Why do you say this?


Go look at your average tiktok, where a woman is just standing around.

https://www.tiktok.com/@thefitnessmermaid13/video/7120057880...

33.6k likes, 418k views.

So yes, if you're looking to market _anything_ find a woman or a model, and put her in front of your product.


This thread seems like some kinda time warp. Unicorns don’t do this. Sure women get used as models, so do men. But not in the “sex sells” sort of way.


That can be arguable for unicorns. But in this thread I was talking about starter projects like OP. Not unicorns.


I assume they were making a remark that insinuated that people proficient in non-technical departments would be attracted to the other cofounder and work at your startup as a result of that attraction. Sorry if I misinterpreted the comment.


Tell me. Better yet, can anyone show me? Charlie's Angels (2000)




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