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Who wants to start a user-acquisition startup?
Essentially, every startup is a user-acquisition startup in its own domain, and it's hard to beat the good ones at their specialty.
I can think of quite a few startups that used a big bang launch with press with success. Off the top of my head - Instagram (MG's series of pieces on Techcrunch), Mailbox, Flipboard, Square, Path. I get where PG is coming from but press can help bootstrap a network effect if you have none.
The point the piece is making is the difference between the actual value of launch publicity (marginal) measured against the typical founder conception of the value of that publicity (enormous).
I've "launched" a bunch of stuff in my career and that part of Graham's piece rang especially true to me.
I can think of quite a few startups that used a big bang launch with press with success. Off the top of my head - Instagram (MG's series of pieces on Techcrunch), Mailbox, Flipboard, Square, Path. I get where PG is coming from but press can help bootstrap a network effect if you have none.
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I can think of quite a few startups that used a big bang launch with press with success. Off the top of my head - Instagram (MG's series of pieces on Techcrunch), Mailbox, Flipboard, Square, Path. I get where PG is coming from but press can help bootstrap a network effect if you have none.
Almost anything can help "bootstrap a network effect"; if you have a real network effect offering, every user you gain, no matter how laboriously and no matter how marginally, helps the snowball get bigger. The point the piece is making is the difference between the actual value of launch publicity (marginal) measured against the typical founder conception of the value of that publicity (enormous). I've "launched" a…
Here's an esoteric example (I have a few more of these) - Qik's founders believe many years later Scoble's coverage of them was the reason for their launch being successful. http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/03/qik-started-in-a-garage-dis...
Or the Warby Parker guys attributing their launch success to Vogue covering them (something I know they deeply believe to be true) http://mashable.com/2013/03/07/toasting-success-warby-parker...
I can think of quite a few startups that used a big bang launch with press with success. Off the top of my head - Instagram (MG's series of pieces on Techcrunch), Mailbox, Flipboard, Square, Path. I get where PG is coming from but press can help bootstrap a network effect if you have none.
One of the reasons I wrote "there may be a handful that just grew by themselves" is that every time I learn the story behind one of these apparent instant successes, it turns out it wasn't so instant. I don't know the stories of all these companies, but I do know that Instagram's launch was preceded by a lot of manual recruitment of influential users.
That said, I suspect that there are many founders who would be open to taking the show on the road. It's incredibly daunting to know what that looks like, or where to start. I feel like it's not laziness, just unknowable to people used to tech communities and test suites.
To that end, my friend Ted and I think we've figured out how to help these founders take the leap and get in front of real people. Those people might be clients, developers or community leaders.
If you're interested in what we're doing, let me know. I'm happy to answer any questions you have, here.
And if you need help with hard problems, you should definitely call Ted: http://usistwo.com/
I can think of quite a few startups that used a big bang launch with press with success. Off the top of my head - Instagram (MG's series of pieces on Techcrunch), Mailbox, Flipboard, Square, Path. I get where PG is coming from but press can help bootstrap a network effect if you have none.