What founders, investors and authors say works — summarised in plain words, linked to
the source, and tried on the businesses we run. When enough of them have tried it, we say whether it worked.
121 classics · all free0 being tested0 with a verdict5 businesses before a verdict
Ben Thompson: Writes Stratechery, a widely read newsletter on the strategy of tech companies.
“This has fundamentally changed the plane of competition: no longer do distributors compete based upon exclusive supplier relationships, with consumers/users an afterthought.”
Once the internet made distribution almost free, the winners became the companies that own the relationship with users by giving them the best experience. Suppliers then line up to reach those users, which improves the experience further and strengthens the winner in a self-reinforcing loop.
When it applies: Your product sits between many interchangeable suppliers and many users, and the thing that used to give suppliers their edge (shelf space, physical distribution) has gone digital.
Can't test here
The advantage comes from gathering very large numbers of users and suppliers, which a small business cannot reach within weeks or months.
Obviously Awesome: position against the real alternative
April Dunford: Former tech marketing executive; now a positioning consultant to startups; wrote Obviously Awesome.
Positioning is the context that makes a product's value obvious to the right buyers. Work it out in order: what customers would use if you did not exist, what you have that those alternatives lack, the value that difference creates, which customers care most about that value, and which market category frames it best.
When it applies: Prospects misunderstand what your product is, compare it with the wrong competitors, or cannot see why it is better.
Not tried yet
None of our businesses has tried it yet.
Positioning: own one clear place in the customer's mind
Al Ries: Advertising executive who, with Jack Trout, made 'positioning' a marketing staple.
Jack Trout: Marketing strategist and co-author of Positioning, a classic of advertising.
Buyers are flooded with messages and sort products in their heads by category and rank. Rather than listing benefits, a company should find a simple position it can own relative to competitors, ideally by being first in a category or by defining a narrower category where it can be first.
When it applies: Your market is noisy, competitors sound alike, and buyers cannot say in a few words what you stand for.
Not tried yet
None of our businesses has tried it yet.
Bullseye framework: test channels in parallel, then focus on one
Gabriel Weinberg: Founded DuckDuckGo, the privacy-focused search engine.
There are roughly nineteen distinct ways to win customers, and which one will work best for a given business is hard to guess beforehand. List ideas for every channel, rank them, run small cheap tests on the top few at the same time, then put nearly all effort into the one that wins, and repeat the process when it stops growing.
When it applies: A business has something to sell but no dependable source of customers yet, or its main channel has started to flatten out.
Not tried yet
None of our businesses has tried it yet.
The Four Fits: market, product, channel and model must line up
Brian Balfour: Founded Reforge, which trains tech professionals; earlier ran growth at HubSpot.
“There are four essential fits: Market Product Fit, Product Channel Fit, Channel Model Fit, Model Market Fit.”
A product people want is not enough to grow. The market, the product, the way customers are reached and the way money is made all limit each other (a cheap self-serve product cannot pay for a salesperson-led channel, for example), so changing one of them usually means revisiting the other three.
When it applies: A business has some happy customers but growth has stalled, or it is choosing its price point and acquisition channel at the same time.
Brian Balfour: Founded Reforge, which trains tech professionals; earlier ran growth at HubSpot.
Andrew Chen: Led rider growth at Uber; now a partner at venture firm Andreessen Horowitz.
“The fastest-growing products are better represented as a system of loops, not funnels.”
Rather than picturing growth as a one-way funnel that must be refilled with bought traffic, model it as closed cycles in which what current users do (inviting, sharing, publishing content that gets found, or revenue reinvested in ads) brings in the next users. Cycles compound over time; a funnel only returns what is poured in.
When it applies: Using the product naturally produces something non-users see: shared output, public pages, invitations, or profit that can be put back into acquisition.
Sean Ellis: Ran early growth at Dropbox, LogMeIn and Eventbrite; coined the term 'growth hacker'.
“A growth hacker is a person whose true north is growth.”
Once a product has real demand and a working path to sign up, the person running marketing should be judged only on finding growth that can be repeated and scaled, not on the usual marketing checklist of brand, positioning and team building. Every activity is weighed by its likely effect on growth.
When it applies: The product already has clear demand and a working signup or purchase path, and the business needs a repeatable way to add customers.
Contested. 'Growth hacking' later became linked with spammy or rule-breaking tactics (scraped contact lists, automatic invites, platform terms violations, fake urgency); chasing short-term numbers can damage brand, email deliverability and legal standing under anti-spam and consumer-protection rules. The original post argues for focus, not for those tactics.
Not tried yet
None of our businesses has tried it yet.
Promotional link on every message users send (Hotmail)
Tim Draper: Venture capitalist who backed Hotmail, Skype, Baidu and Tesla early.
“Well, it turned out that the little message you could click on and sign up for Hotmail triggered huge growth.”
When a free product's ordinary use sends something to other people, attach a short clickable invitation to it. Each user then advertises the product to their own contacts at no cost; Draper credits this with Hotmail reaching about 11 million users in 18 months.
When it applies: Users routinely send the product's output (emails, documents, images, links, pages) to people who are not users yet.
Not tried yet
None of our businesses has tried it yet.
Two-sided referral reward paid in product (Dropbox)
Drew Houston: Co-founded Dropbox in 2007 and led it as CEO for nearly two decades.
When paid search cost Dropbox far more per customer than its product earned, it switched to giving both the inviter and the invited friend extra free storage. Houston reported this lifted signups by about 60% for good, with roughly a third of daily signups coming through referrals.
When it applies: Existing users already like the product, extra product is worth a lot to them but costs the business little, and paid acquisition is too expensive.
Not tried yet
None of our businesses has tried it yet.
Product-led growth: let the product do the selling
Blake Bartlett: Coined the term 'product-led growth' in 2016 as an investor at venture firm OpenView.
“a go-to-market strategy that relies on the product itself as the primary driver of customer acquisition, conversion, and expansion”
Let people discover, try and start paying for the product on their own (free plan or trial, self-serve signup and checkout), so that using the product, rather than talking to a salesperson, is what wins, converts and upgrades customers. Human sales, if any, comes later for accounts already using it.
When it applies: The product can show its value to a single user quickly without setup help, and the price is low enough to buy without a formal purchasing process.
Tomasz Tunguz: Venture investor and widely read data blogger on business software; founded Theory Ventures.
“Instead they frame their growth in three parts, familiar to SaaS operators everywhere: land + expand + retain.”
In business software, start with a small, easy-to-approve purchase by one team, then grow that same customer's spend through more seats, more teams or higher tiers, and keep them from leaving. Track new customers, expansion and retention as three separate engines, because in mature subscription businesses renewals and expansion can come to outweigh new sales.
When it applies: A B2B product is priced per seat, per use or by tier, so one customer can naturally pay more as use spreads inside their organisation.
Not tried yet
None of our businesses has tried it yet.
Predictable Revenue: a dedicated outbound prospecting team
Aaron Ross: Built the outbound sales team credited with adding $100 million to Salesforce's revenue.
Split selling into specialised jobs (people who only prospect new accounts through targeted outreach, people who only qualify incoming leads, people who only close) so that new sales opportunities arrive at a steady, forecastable rate. The authors credit this system, which relied on outreach rather than cold calling, with adding about $100M of recurring revenue at Salesforce.com.
When it applies: A B2B business earns enough per customer to pay for outreach and can name the types of companies and job titles that buy.
Contested. Unsolicited commercial email is regulated (CAN-SPAM in the US; GDPR, ePrivacy and PECR rules in the EU and UK are stricter); high volumes damage sending-domain reputation and deliverability; many recipients see cold outreach as spam, which can hurt the brand. Needs honest sender identity, a working opt-out and modest volumes.
Patrick McKenzie: Software entrepreneur and writer, known online as patio11; spent six years at Stripe.
“As long as you have a well-designed site architecture and sufficient trust, every marginal topic you cover on your website generates marginal traffic.”
Build a system (templates plus a content tool) that turns cheap inputs or structured data into many pages, each answering one specific long-tail search. If a page costs less to make than the sales it brings in, keep adding pages; McKenzie paid a freelancer a few dollars per topic page for his bingo-card software, and many of those pages kept producing sales for years.
When it applies: There is a large set of similar, specific searches (one per topic, city, template, integration or item) and the business has real data or a real tool to put on each page.
Contested. Google's spam policies prohibit 'scaled content abuse': many pages generated mainly to rank, explicitly including AI-generated pages that add little value; sites can be demoted or removed. Thin near-duplicate pages also mislead users. The essay's 2010 view that SEO gains are kept for good predates later algorithm changes.
Not tried yet
None of our businesses has tried it yet.
Build in public: share real numbers and decisions openly
Joel Gascoigne: Co-founded Buffer, the social-media tool known for publishing its salaries openly.
“This trust extends to customers, readers of our blog and anyone who interacts with us on any level.”
Publishing a company's real figures and the reasoning behind its choices (revenue, pricing, salaries, plans) builds trust with customers and readers, draws much more outside feedback, and turns the company's own story into a steady source of attention.
When it applies: The owners are willing to share real figures, and likely customers are the kind who follow a company's progress (makers, small businesses, tech-savvy buyers).
Not tried yet
None of our businesses has tried it yet.
The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs: every channel decays
Andrew Chen: Led rider growth at Uber; now a partner at venture firm Andreessen Horowitz.
“Over time, all marketing strategies result in shitty clickthrough rates.”
Any marketing channel or message that works will perform worse over time: novelty wears off and people learn to ignore it, competitors copy it, and scaling it reaches less interested people. Lasting advantage comes from getting to new, uncrowded channels early and from marketing that is genuinely useful.
When it applies: A channel or ad that worked is being scaled up, or results from a once-strong channel are sliding.
Not tried yet
None of our businesses has tried it yet.