Thread by @mijustin

When you’re in a strong market, and it’s a good fit for you as a founder, finding good distribution channels shouldn’t be a mystery.

If you know something about the market, you should have a pretty good idea on how you’ll reach people!

I get questions like this all the time: “What are the best marketing channels I can use to reach my market?”

How should I know!? It’s *your* market. You should be the expert! (That’s the point).

What works in my market likely won’t work for you.

If don’t have any ideas on how you’re going to reach people, that’s a bad sign. (You probably don’t belong in that market)

What kinds of tweets do they like?
What podcasts do they listen to?
What search terms do they use?
What newsletters do they read?
What events do they go to?

The biggest marketing question you should be asking is:

“How are people already finding and buying similar items?”

Often:

Bad markets = bad market channels

If people are willing to pay, but there’s no efficient way to reach them, that’s a bad market!

The best markets have so much demand that people just *show up* without you doing any marketing.

If you have a new take on an established category, you’ll often discover pent-up demand:

“Thanks goodness you started something! I’ve been waiting for someone to come and shake things up.”

(Examples: Stripe, @TransistorFM, Square, @mightycal_, Slack, @tuple, @wpengine)

Before @stripe, I might not have explicitly told you I needed a new credit card processing service, but I was sure happy when they showed up!