80/20 early-stage startup marketing

So, you finished YC, got seed funding, and now you’re building your dream startup. (Congrats, BTW!)

Maybe you’re thinking, “If I build a good enough product, people will come.” Hate to break it to you, but those days are long gone. We’re living in an era of abundance. There are way too many options for literally everything. People are busy, and no one is going to stumble onto your website just by wandering around the web. Trust me, I’ve tested that.

Alright, so maybe marketing is the answer — run some ads, right? Well, marketing, yes. Ads? Not so fast. It’s not a great habit to get hooked on ads early. After all, your investors gave you money to build a startup, not to hand it all over to Google and Meta.

So, what kind of marketing then? This is where I can help as a marketer/growth hacker with 6+ years of experience.

Clear communication

People don’t have time to scroll through your landing page, so tell them straight up what you do. No fluff, no jargon like “revolutionizing” or “ecosystem.” Someone once said, if you can’t explain it to a 5-year-old, you don’t really understand it yourself. Keep it simple and clear. (Here’s a video of YC folks roasting websites that might help: https://youtu.be/uIYujpFmvo8)

Go where your customers are

Analyze your competition, talk to your customers (yes, do things that don’t scale), and figure out which channels to focus on. You don’t have time to manage every social media platform. If your customers are gamers, try Discord. If they work in corporates, hit LinkedIn. If they’re in startups, X is the spot. And if you’re targeting a general audience, go for Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube.

Founder story

I get it — you don’t have time, you hate being on camera, blah blah. But honestly, showing yourself a little is super beneficial for your startup. People want to connect with people, not logos. They love stories of going from zero to hero; they love office drama (The Office, anyone?). Even the big founders do it — Elon shitposting on X, Sam Altman’s lowercase vibes, Jason Calacanis virtue-signaling ;)

• Write a post about how you got started
• Spot a funny meme? Repost it — show you’re not a bot
• Vlog a day in your life or some behind-the-scenes action (Check Daniel Dalen YouTube POV video series: https://www.youtube.com/@danieldalen)
• Make a TikTok introducing yourself and what you’re building (@jayhoovy on Tiktok is a great example: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGddR34br/)

Product

This might sound obvious, but not everyone does it. You might think your UX is so intuitive that everyone will instantly get it. Nope. Go record a demo video, walk people through how to use your product and why it’s valuable (PS I use Loom to record my demos). If you’ve got a consumer product, hop on TikTok and do the same, but tweak it for the platform’s vibe. You’re literally one viral TikTok away from blowing up and getting thousands of customers — each video is a lottery ticket.

Guerrilla stunts

You’re a startup, not a corporate giant — don’t take yourself too seriously. Do something fun, record it, and post it.

• One team hand-delivered pizza in quirky boxes to people active on X in Silicon Valley. No one expected free pizza in the middle of the day, the box was funny, and the whole thing was so out-of-the-box that people started posting about it. It got them millions of views and cost just a few hundred bucks and one afternoon.
• Here’s one I did myself: When launching my phygital t-shirts, I had a robot carry them around the city and made videos. Since this wasn’t Silicon Valley, where that’s kind of normal, the stunt grabbed attention and even made it into local news. We couldn’t have afforded that kind of reach with ads, so we got creative.

• And the easiest one: Some guys printed ads on their home printer, hung them up, took a photo, and went semi-viral on X. Zero effort but totally on-brand for a startup. It’s not about the stunt itself (I know you’re a startup founder, not Mr. Beast); it’s about how well the photo or video of the stunt plays on social media.

You probably don’t have much time for marketing anyway, so follow the 80/20 rule: just focus on what you think will get you the most results with the least effort. The 80/20 rule (aka Pareto Principle) says that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. Translation: instead of trying to do everything, find the few things that work and double down. Maybe it’s your founder story posts, maybe it’s those guerrilla stunts, or maybe it’s one key social platform. Figure out the 20% that moves the needle and let go of the rest—your time is too valuable to be wasted on things that don’t drive results.

Good luck!

And hey, if you ever need help, don’t hesitate to reach out. Always happy to help a fellow founder!