#52 — Cold Take: 'No marketing' isn't a badge of honor
April 9, 2025•3 min read
Why early-stage founders need to rethink their approach to customer acquisition
Early-stage founders are increasingly pitching their startups with a curious badge of honor: "We've gained hundreds of users with zero marketing."
Why it matters: This seemingly impressive claim actually signals a critical gap in understanding how sustainable growth works and reveals a concerning lack of customer knowledge. In a landscape where 70% of startups fail due to premature scaling, misunderstanding customer acquisition is a dangerous liability.
The big picture: Customer acquisition isn't something you simply "turn on" when you're ready to scale. It requires deep understanding, continuous learning, and deliberate strategy from day one.
What they're saying
When founders proudly claim "no marketing," they're unintentionally communicating:
- "I don't really know who my customer is yet"
- "I have no idea how to find them"
- "I don't really understand my value proposition"
- "But trust me, when we do start marketing everything will be awesome"
Reality check
Marketing isn't just promotion—it's learning. It's about genuinely understanding your customers and their pain points, reaching them through multiple channels, and building relationships that demonstrate you understand their needs.
Between the lines: Those random early signups provide minimal actionable insights. Without deliberate outreach, you don't know their motivations, demographics, or patterns that could guide your growth strategy. A ProductHunt launch might bring 1,000 signups, but without understanding who those users are and why they signed up, you can't replicate that success.
The bottom line
Startups take off because founders make them take off, not because they magically grow by themselves. Customer acquisition requires trial and error, continuous testing, and long-term investment in channels like content marketing and outbound sales.
By the numbers:
- 42% of startups fail because they build products nobody wants
- CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) typically increases by 30-50% when scaling without proper channel testing
- Startups with strong PMF (Product-Market Fit) and proven acquisition channels raise 2.5x more funding
What's next
For pre-seed founders:
- Start with manual outreach to 100 potential customers before building
- Track every conversation in a CRM to identify patterns in early adopters
- Test at least 3 acquisition channels with small budgets ($500-1000 each)
- Measure CAC, conversion rates, and qualitative feedback for each channel
For seed-stage companies:
- Identify your CAC:LTV ratio for each acquisition channel
- Double down on channels with positive unit economics
- Build a growth flywheel that leverages your existing users
- Develop a content strategy aligned with your ICP's (Ideal Customer Profile) pain points
Go deeper: As Paul Graham notes, doing things that don't scale—like personally recruiting users—is often necessary at the start. The separate and laborious process of getting the engine going is what eventually enables sustainable momentum.
Keep reading
#53 — Scalable pricing for SaaS
Scalable pricing allows capturing more of the revenue that your customers are willing to pay, without putting off smaller customers that are not able to pay high prices.
#54 — Structuring B2B Marketplaces
Choosing your B2B marketplace structure—internal unit, spinoff, or startup—is a critical early decision impacting everything.
#55 — Finding B2B product-market fit (Part II)
B2B PMF is a survival game. Master its 5 levels—from problem validation to paying customers.