Are you stuck on your default path?
Change when you want to rather than when you are forced to
It’s not that new ideas are hard to come but old ideas are hard to go.
I have been thinking about this as I reflect on the way I build and market products (but it also applies to life).
I was “brought up” at Buffer where marketing meant delivering value, specifically writing helpful long-form content and giving them away for free. That was how it built a strong brand among marketers, solopreneurs, and small businesses.
So, when we started working on Pebblely, my first instinct was to create helpful long-form content in the same style I had honed at Buffer. I did a mix of blog posts, YouTube videos, and SEO pages. What I had seen and learned at Buffer was the only way I knew how to build a brand.
But I quickly realized that wasn’t going to work for an early startup. Actually, to be precise, it was still only a product. We didn’t even know if people wanted to use or pay for Pebblely. What worked for Buffer wouldn’t work for Pebblely. In fact, when Buffer first started in 2013, cofounder Leo wrote hundreds of short articles and guest posts, not the long-form content we were known for later. New startups need to explore new ways of marketing themselves. The tried-and-proven paths for later-stage startups likely wouldn’t work for early-stage startups.
Seeing how short videos were going viral on TikTok, I pivoted to creating short videos every day. And it worked (for a while). About a month in, I had my first viral video of 1 million views (now 1.5 million!) and our revenue chart bent up several degrees.
But ultimately, I couldn’t turn our early success into a strong brand. I suspect it is because once short videos worked well and the product demand was validated, I wasn’t fast enough to figure out the next step for our branding. (Of course, reality is much more complicated than this and marketing is just a part of it. But I feel responsible for our branding.)
This is something I have been noodling on for a while, especially as we work on our latest product, Dewlop. Since Pebblely’s little success, I have a system that I repeat for new consumer products, briefly:
Build a beautiful landing page
Launch to my existing audiences across platforms
Create short videos to extend our reach
DM potential ideal customers and chat with existing customers
Use insights from those conversations to create more content
But, to be honest, I’m not sure reusing that template all the time is the best approach. I have also been eager to try out new ways of marketing. A quick brain dump:
It’s not that long-form content will definitely not work for any early-stage startup. But how you write it matters. Linear writes many articles that are nothing like traditional marketing content, and that seems to be doing well for them. (Of course, they also have a great product people love.) Their content also reinforces their brand’s emphasis on craftsmanship.
Similarly, there are many ways to leverage short videos. Besides creating and posting videos ourselves, more and more brands are using creators to create UGC content. Cluely’s UGC program is apparently generating an average of 1 million views a day. It’s still early to tell if this is a successful approach but it’s definitely on-brand for them. Anthropic is also working with influencers to create a brand that feels different from OpenAI.
The Browser Company launched a unique website and crafted an exclusive invite experience for their Arc brower. They just launched their AI browser Dia with a similar waitlist approach—and a likely very expensive launch video. Similarly, Yutori launched with a production-grade parody video on April’s Fool. So did Cluely. I can’t wrap my head around such launches because of how expensive they are but that is what builds their brand and helps them stand out. (I also think there are probably even more companies that tried a similar approach and didn’t make it. Survivorship bias.)
The cofounders at Stan used a “build-in-public” approach on LinkedIn to launch their AI agent for LinkedIn posts. Since companies like Buffer pioneered the transparent way of building, many people have followed. But not many seem to have done well. There are many entrepreneurs posting about their journey on Twitter to little avail. Stan cofounders seemed to have succeeded perhaps because it aligns well with their business. They are showing how they create a business on LinkedIn to creators on LinkedIn who want to build their own businesses.
In my opinion, Cursor and Windsurf have largely similar products based on their features but their brands feel wildly different. Developers on Twitter love Cursor and hate Windsurf, even though Team Windsurf is as active on Twitter as Team Cursor. Subjectively, the reason seems to be that Windsurf’s approach feels marketing-heavy, which developers hate. Cursor is at $500 million in ARR—half a billion!—while Windsurf is at $40 million.
PropertyLimBrothers started producing home tour videos in 2016 when most realtors in Singapore were using static photos. That launched their realtor business, and they eventually even created a media arm. It took them two years to hit 5,000 YouTube subscribers but their Signature Home Tours have since been driving their brand.
If you are paying attention, you might have noticed a common theme above is branding. I’m starting to suspect it is less about what you do but how you do them.
I’m still pondering about this. If you have any thoughts, let me know. I’d love to chat more about this.
Even though I was mostly talking about marketing above, thinking and doing things differently applies to many aspects of life, too.
What we do in a relationship, how we parent, how we spend our time, and so on.
Often, we get stuck on our default path even if it isn’t the best—until something shocks us out of that auto-pilot mode. Near-death experience, cancer, breakup, layoff.
It’s better to constantly reflect on whether we should do things differently and then change when we want to rather than when we are forced to.
Warmly
