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

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?

Apr 6 at 9:36pmWeb
Show threadPaulHoule5d ago

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.

Show threadImustaskforhelp5d ago
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.
Show threadPaulHoule4d ago
B2B with a high level of customization. Sales would have been very high touch and not all on the run ads, sleep, repeat model you see in B2C.
Show threadcodingdave5d ago

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.

Show threadcollin1284d ago

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).

Show threadericd4d ago
How do you usually find the people you interview?
Show threadreassess_blind4d ago

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.

Show threadkeithnz4d ago
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.
Show threadjason_zig4d ago

I solo founded a business and it just crossed 100K MRR (still solo). The trick is:

1. Don't give up after the first month of no traction, if you can get at least 1 customer at this stage that is a good sign.

2. Make contact with every customer you acquire, find out why they installed your product and what they want from it. Build any feature that they say is missing and offer the best customer support possible

3. Repeat this for a period of time. Once you have more customers the circumstances will change but this how you go from 0 -> 1 and get some runway IMO