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Ask HN: How do you handle marketing as a solo technical founder?

Ask HN: How do you handle marketing as a solo technical founder? | Hacker News Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login Ask HN: How do you handle marketing as a solo technical founder? 20 points by lazarkap 2 hours ago | hide | past | favorite | 12 comments I've shipped multiple products over the past few years. Every single one followed the same pattern: build, post, get 12 likes from friends, a bit of organic traction, then nothing. Back to coding a new thing. I know I need marketing help but giving equity to someone I met online feels like a huge risk. At the same time hiring a paid marketer when you have zero revenue feels just as scary. And I'm not dancing on TikTok, that's for sure. Have any of you actually taken on a marketing co-founder? What made you say yes to that person specifically? Was it their track record, the way they pitched, a trial period first?   help keithnz 4 minutes ago | next [–] depending on product, I've been using Claude code to do market analysis. I'm quite surprised at how good it has been. I'm not sure how well it works in general, but for Agriculture (which we target) there is a LOT of information out there so analyzing market segments is pretty good. reply codingdave 1 hour ago | prev | next [–] You seem to have missed the key step. Talk to customers before you build. Build what they need. Then have them talk to you to adjust things until you really nailed down the product that solves their needs, and then have them talk to their friends about how much you rock. Marketing comes later. reply collin128 44 minutes ago | parent | next [–] Strong agree here. I'm a non-technical founder. I tend to interview 30-50 people initially to find a gap in the market. If I'm into something (strong PMF), a good percentage of those people I interviewed will be future buyers. I typically have cascading meetings for the following steps: 1 - is this 10X better than what currently exists 2 - does our prototype look 10X better 3 - does our v1 solve the gap we found 4 - what features do we need to build in order to get you to pay for it 5 - what features do we need to get you to refer us to 3 friends A meeting for each of those goals typically leads to customers (again, if I've found PMF). reply ericd 16 minutes ago | root | parent | next [–] How do you usually find the people you interview? reply reassess_blind 43 minutes ago | prev | next [–] I've always relied on Google Ads and eventually SEO for my SaaS products. For SEO, I've had good success with having the landing page be an unauthenticated version of the app itself (modified to include SEO friendly text), allowing the users to immediately start using a limited version of the app which eventually prompts for signup. After signup, any data from the landing page shell gets pushed into their account. This significantly reduces bounce rate compared to a traditional landing page and I've had good success getting to the top of popular search terms after a few months/years. reply PaulHoule 2 hours ago | prev | next [–] Marketing can be a lot of different things. I brought on a high-touch salesperson on spec years ago and it did not work out. He and I were really successful at getting audiences with people but we never made the sales we were looking for and, worse, he lost me small cheap jobs that I could have sold myself. He'd probably say it was a product problem and he might have been right but later on I found out I wasn't the only person who had the same experience with him. For some products you need those kind of skills. I've met people like him who really are worth their weight in gold. For other products you need somebody who can make an Adwords campaign, analyzes the analytics, refine it and repeat. That kind of person can be worth their weight in gold too. For this conversation to be productive you have to have some idea if you need one or the other or a bit of both. reply Imustaskforhelp 1 hour ago | parent | next [–] If I may ask, was the product B2B or B2C and do you feel any particular advice which can be different for the two (B2B/B2C), I would love to hear your opinions on it. reply didgetmaster 1 hour ago | prev | next [–] Jobs and Wozniak proved (at least in the 70s) that a great technical founder could team up with a brilliant marketer and build a huge company from next to nothing. I seriously wonder if that can happen today. As a technical founder, I have tried to find a marketing partner for years. Every time it has failed miserably as each one proved unable to move the needle. In my case, it could be the product, but I wonder who has seen success in this day and age. reply iterateoften 1 hour ago | parent | next [–] Jobs was a marketer, a product visionary and a ruthless businessman. You need more than just marketing. reply hungryhobbit 28 minutes ago | root | parent | next [–] Asshole. The word you're looking for is asshole. I once knew a guy who was disabled and walked on crutches. Jobs got mad at him for being late to a meeting, and the guy replied "well someone parked in the handicapped parking spot, and it took me awhile to walk from a normal parking spot. No joke, Jobs looks him (a disabled person) directly in the eye, and says "oh, that was me; I think the country built an excess of disabled parking spaces after WW2." To the disabled guy!!! reply brudgers 1 hour ago | prev | next [–] You take off your solo technical founder pants and put on your solo marketing founder hat. In business, selling is much much much more important than making because if you have money you can hire technical workers. But nobody will care nearly as much about survival as you. And if you have a technical background you are much more likely to have technical people in your network. Good luck. reply FpUser 45 minutes ago | prev | next [–] On one particular project I started by "spamming" relevant interest based forums. Luckily I was a member of said forums for quite a while before I have released my first version. It was about 13 years ago. Strategy had worked and then I got CEO as a partner along with some investment so I no longer had to do it reply Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact Search: