Ask HN: How to hustle like the best of them? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to hustle like the best of them?

7 pointsceeK8 comments

In a past product I made the common mistake of not marketing (enough) my product.

I don't want to make the same mistake this time, and hear a lot of how startup founders hustle their way to people, making deals etc.

What's the key? Are their any Hustle 101 bibles?

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Hustling is not a scalable activity for your company. You should ask yourself why you have to hustle your way to the right people. Is it because the decision makers that buy the kinds of products you sell are hard to get a hold of, or is it because they just don’t want your product? The latter is a far more common reason for failure than not marketing “enough”. If your product is truly something they need and want, then you will find a sales model by iterating – but only if that’s the case, otherwise, you should spend your time iterating the product – and not scaling customer acquisition efforts until you have a model that is profitable.

Check out these readings: - Steve Blank. “The Startup Owners Manual”. Also available as a lecture series on Udacity. - Eric Ries. “The Lean Startup”. - http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html (numbers 3 and 10 might be especially relevant, and I suspect 16 answers your original question specifically) - http://www.paulgraham.com/13sentences.html (numbers 4 and 5 might be especially relevant)

Some interesting points in Paul Graham's post for sure, some especially relevant.

In reply to your first point, I am speaking to the right people at the moment. However, I am not sure about how to proceed after. Closing the deal so to speak. I have been winging it so far, but some solid advice would be ideal.

Secondly, I suppose, there are actual users. Paul Graham's point of not wanting to get your hands dirty is probably my downfall here. In the most ideal situation someone would come along and love doing all the marketing, copy, emailing clients and maintaining PR. Is the real solution to simply 'brute force' the matter? Spread the word where ever possible? How do I not come across as spammy in such a scenario?

This is going to sound out there - but watch this video =>http://teamcoco.com/video/serious-jibber-jabber-04-jack-whit...

Jack White talks about what it's like to hustle from a garage band playing at a local bar to becoming an international rock star.

A great deal of what I've read about marketing (doing it enough) is in this video.

Thanks for posting this - have it on in the background right now and loving it so far.

Welcome - found it the other day and thought it was terrific.

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Thanks for this, seems very useful indeed! Props for putting this up. I've sub'd to your mailing list =)

You should read Scott Britton's blog life-longlearner.com. Its the best out there. It covers everything from cold emailing to how to do partnerships.

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