[Archipelagia]

This might sound a bit assholish, but I'm writing this to hopefully help others spot a crucial mistake:

Did you have anyone on your team with actual skill in sales or marketing?

Because from your post it seems you tried the same channels that everyone else does (writing blog, engaging on Twitter, setting up ProductHunt launch) without any specific strategy for how to succeed.

And this stuff is hard! There's a reason why good salespeople and marketers are paid so well!

You definitely can learn that, it's a skillset like any other. But treating it like a secondary concern is a death trap for your business.

If you are a tech founder, it's absolutely crucial you figure out a strategy for customer acquisition – find a sales co-founder, hire some good salespeople, get someone who can teach you how to do it – just do not treat it as something less important than tech, because then you are just counting on being lucky. And if you decide to sell yourself, expect that to be a difficult, time consuming job – don't be surprised if you spend more time chasing business rather than coding.

[thealchemistdev]

I 100% agree. I've been hacking away at my project for about 5 years, and it went absolutely nowhere until I found my co-founder. In a span of 4 months, she quadrupled the eyes on our product in comparison to what I was able to before our meeting.

Sales & Marketing is just as complex as the tech stack. Yes, we techs can learn that side of the fence, but it takes a bit of humility to recognize that it'll come at a cost.

[moneywoes]

What levers did she implement?

[kyleyeats]

I think it's hard way before that. YC phrases it as "Build something people want" but all the words in that sentence are way harder to understand than it first seems.

[wakana]

In retrospect, I also feel that lack of experience in sales was a major issue wrt my skillset. How would you recommend someone like me (with a mostly technical and academia-oriented background) to approach learning sales from scratch?

[Juliate]

Partner with someone who already has a leg or very obvious affinity in it. Don’t do everything by yourself.

That’s rule number 1 in life, in general, for everything: invite guests to bring something they like/manage to the table.

[sanderjd]

This is the realization that turned me off of very early stage entrepreneurship. That stuff is so boring, and also pretty much the only thing that matters in the very early stage of a startup.

[silent_cal]

Maybe a dumb question, but where do you find people who are skilled in sales/marketing like this? I'm learning this lesson the hard way right now.

[gofreddygo]

Someone skilled at selling your product for a commission, would be stellar at selling their most valuable product - themselves.

Sales and marketing is about reach and incentives. Outright lying works against you. Choosing to only tell the truth keeps you right where you are, on the slippery slope of sunk cost.

Folks in the sales and marketing domain come across real crafty; its a side-effect. Cz you deal with people (i.e. emotions, psychology and incentives). People who get played, know somethings up. Once you figure out how the sales game works, then its about trial and error to find a suitable market, using well known techniques and experimenting with new tools, growing that network. It is an art, learned slowly, with expensive mistakes.

There's also that steep cost attached to even play around with serious tools, effective strategies are not scalable, consume labor and time, require frequent pivots without much evidence, effects are only visible at a high macro level without much granularity. A lot of it works against an engineering mindset. And for a malicious actor, sales is a good breeding ground.

I recall the exact moment where the doors to this rabbit hole opened up for me - a comment from a friend of mine, "Its amazing how Gordon Ramsey has people lining up at his restaurant on opening day"