I think lots of founders misunderstand what early-stage marketing is. You don’t start when you get funding, or when you’re ready, or even when you hire your first marketing person – you start when you decide who you want to be in the world but more importantly: who you need to beat.
When I cofounded Paid, we had:
- (sizeable) funding
- a big problem to solve
- just me on marketing
- no brand
- and more importantly, no categories that described what we were doing
It was therefore my task to:
- define the story
- build the brand
- choose a category
- find the enemy
- make noise
- attract customers
- run a launch
- and keep launching, again and again
Launching is a beating drum – you need to keep beating it and you need to keep creating noise.
Here’s the playbook I wish someone had given me back then:
Choose your enemy first
This is the part that lots of people avoid because it feels confrontational (even more-so in Europe).
Product people (myself included) really love talking about features – what the product does, “value prop”, and occasionally you also get some positioning but if you don’t choose an enemy, the market will assume you’re boring.
Your enemy can be:
- an outdated model
- a way of working
- a misconception
- a category that no longer fits
- or a belief held by your buyers
At Paid, our enemy wasn’t a competitor, but the the seat-based SaaS mindset that made no sense for AI Agents.
Your job, if you choose to accept it, is to find the thing your buyers secretly hate but don’t know how to articulate.
If you don’t name the enemy, your messaging will be a mush of things that no one remembers.
Name your enemy, repeat it, build around it.
Start with a manifesto
When you have no marketing team, no brand, no audience, and no strategy, there’s one thing that forces you to think about stuff and have clarity – a manifesto of some sort.
This doesn’t need to be an actual manifesto, but something that binds everyone around it.
That’s not the same as a vision statement or a pitch deck.
You need to lay down something like:
- a rant
- a truth
- something you believe in
- a line not to cross
You do this so that you can first and foremost align your team and attract the right believers.
Additionally, you reject the wrong ones – and you save time later 😉
A manifesto is your first marketing asset.
Everything else (e.g., website, tagline, ads and events) is so much easier if you have this.
You HAVE to create a category
If you’re building anything revolutionary, you have to name a category.
If you don’t, here’s what happens:
- You get assigned to the wrong bucket (say, on G2)
- Investors misunderstand you
- Competitors set the narrative
- Your GTM becomes reactive instead of offensive. Here, you’ve already lost…
Naming a category is not the same as saying “we invented something new”, but a container with which others will remember you by.
Launching is a muscle
Many first-time founders think their launch is like announcing a wedding. You have one big day with huge pressure, massive expectations, and then you just go and deliver on things.
No, no no no no.. No…
Launches are not one-time stunts.
They’re a cadence. A habit. Something you repeat.
You need momentum, and that momentum comes from repeated launches – and they can be simpler, easy launches.
A launch can be any of these:
- a feature
- a story
- a new version of your manifesto
- a customer outcome
- a teardown of something happening in the market
- a trend you explain
- a NEW villain you expose
- a small event
Great marketing cultures don’t do one launch, but many.
Founders have to be the first marketers
This one is pretty easy. Only founders have direct access to customers and feel the problem viscerally
I also believe only founders can find the right villain and have enough credibility to push a story into the world.
The worst thing a founder can do is outsource early narrative work.
You can perhaps outsource some of the execution, but not your own truth.
Your story is your job.
Build a mini marketing operating system
When you have no team, you need a system that tells the team what to publish, creates consistency, and prevents chaos.
It could also help you scale once you DO hire.
Your initial marketing operating system should be very very simple:
| Messaging houses | Cadences | Channels |
For example:
| Your cadences should include things like:
| Here you should have about 3 channels to start with:
|
That’s it, add more as you grow.
Anything more fractures attention at your initial stage.
Create your own luck
The highest-leverage thing you can do is create luck. How? With high intent!
Your pipeline won’t be consistent if you just let things come to you.
So build an audience and create high-intent events for them:
- roundtables
- dinners
- workshops
- talks
- customer spotlights
These high-intent events do things that paid ads and content struggles with:
- building trust
- creating advocates for your market position
- get you into rooms you couldn’t buy your way into
- speed up sales cycles
- spark more authentic word-of-mouth
A mini-framework to steal
Copy this into your ChatGPT or whatever, with your relevant context, and go from there!
Step 1: Pick your enemy
The old model, belief, system, or mindset you exist to destroy.
Step 2: Write your manifesto or truth
Your truth, your view of the world, your line in the sand.
Step 3: Name your category
People must know what you are in one sentence, and it must group you with the right products.
Step 4: Set your cadences and messaging houses
Start with a weekly founder post, weekly company insight, monthly “big moment”
Step 5: Launch relentlessly
A launch every 2–3 weeks. Small, lightweight, consistent. Something that won’t tire you out.
Step 6: Build early rituals
Dinners, roundtables, small intimate events. These create trust and word-of-mouth.
Step 7: System > team, at least at first
You can hire later. But first, build the operations and cadences. It’ll be easier.
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