Why Most Marketing Advice Is Wrong for Bootstrapped Founders

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Your Pricing IS Your Marketing — A Founder Lesson

I learned something counterintuitive about pricing: it speaks louder than any ad campaign. The £699 Problem Dragon NaturallySpeaking charged £699/year for voice dictation. For 20 years, that told the market: voice AI is premium. Enterprise only. Not for regular people. Then they got discontinued. Millions of users — especially people with RSI and accessibility needs — were stranded. The £40 Statement When we priced Genie 007 at £40 one-time, it was not just a business decision. It was a statement: accessibility should not be a luxury. Voice AI should be for everyone. That price communicates more than any marketing copy: we are for real people, not enterprise budgets. What Founders Get Wrong Most founders price based on what competitors charge. That is backwards. Price based on who you want to serve. If you want to serve students, freelancers, and people with disabilities — price for them. The volume play wins long-term. 1,000 customers at £40 beats 50 customers at £699 — and those 1...
Read more

The LinkedIn Outreach Template That Gets 40% Reply Rates

I've sent over 2,000 LinkedIn messages in the past year, and after relentless testing, I've found the template that consistently delivers 40% reply rates — roughly 8x the industry average. Most LinkedIn outreach fails for a simple reason: it's transparently self-serving. The recipient can smell the pitch from the first sentence. But there's a formula that flips the dynamic entirely — one that leads with genuine value and makes replying feel natural rather than obligatory. Here's exactly how it works. Why 95% of LinkedIn Messages Get Ignored Before I share the template, you need to understand why conventional approaches fail. The typical LinkedIn message follows a predictable pattern: flattery, vague connection, pivot to pitch. "Hi [Name], I love what you're doing at [Company]! I noticed we're both in [industry]. I'd love to show you how our platform can..." Delete. The recipient has seen this exact structure hundreds of times. It triggers a...
Read more