Ask HN: Build it and they will come or 50% marketing?

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

You can spend countless hours making improvements but without a user base, you have no idea if they are needed or wanted. Build your MVP, and whilst you're building it, shout about it. Tell everyone. Nobody is going to steal your idea.

Marketing should start from day one and in my opinion be bigger than a 50% split. More like 70% marketing. This will let you streamline your development time and only build things that will benefit your users, and ultimately your revenue stream.

Good luck with your product :)

Product is NOT enough. However, you need to look at marketing holistically. In business school they teach the "4Ps of marketing." One is Promotion. Another, though, is product.

You need all of them (price and place are the other two Ps) to have a successful startup company.

A couple of thoughts (i) Some of the time spent tinkering with the website counts as marketing. Redesigning the home page to better explain what your service does is marketing, as is adding OAuth capabilities to simplify signup. (ii) Really, the amount of time you need to spend marketing probably depends heavily on whether it's aimed at mass market or an easy-to-reach niche, whether it's something people actively look for or something they need persuading might be a good idea, and whether you have competition. But regardless of those factors it's probably greater than 10%...

"Being a complete product nerd..." describes your dilemma. IMHO the barrier countless many people face is psychological - creating a product is the cool and geeky (read: intelligent) thing to do; marketing is for the less talented people. Well, I'm here to tell you this: the moment you decide to derive gain (and not necessarily financial gain alone) you switch hats from being simply a geek to being a businessman(woman).

Marketing is not an option - it is a NECESSITY.

Great marketing can propel a mediocre or second rate product to dominance over a demonstrably superior rival(s)- (microsoft, coke , kardashian kids, Im looking at you)... Alternatively, it can serve to unlock the potential of a truly valuable offering (Dyson,google,Star wars, I pad)

I would take your idea one step further: once you have your product up and running, ALL your time not spent on critical maintenance tasks should be spent on marketing until the product is entrenched.

Good question, I just launched an alpha site that is very rough looking. I did do some social media while I was developing it, but it was not enough. I second iqonik's quote about the tree. It sure felt that way when I launched. I think marketing should be at least 50% marketing. How else will you get users in this world filled with distractions and noise?

IMHO: In most cases, dedicating 50% of your time to marketing is a good idea. The notable exceptions would be:

* Your growth model relies on virality. (In which case, as long as you have some traffic, that should be enough to test your model and potentially start growing).

* Your growth model relies on SEO (in which case, you should spend time on that, not direct marketing)

* Your growth model relies on referrals. (Think of a contractor who does no marketing himself, he just incentivizes his clients to refer new clients)

* Your business model doesn't rely on user growth (hard to think of an example here, but I'm sure it exists).

But in most cases, you've got to market the product aggressively. Think of how many millions of sites exist (and are vying for your users' attention). Without some effort put into marketing, there's little reason to assume a user will visit your site at all.

That being said, you should do what you're good at. If you feel like the product needs to be marketed heavily (and you don't enjoy that kind of work), then maybe it's worth finding a co-founder who enjoys that part.

Slightly off topic but very relevant:

A lot of products fail because the entrepreneur built a product that noone wants.

You'd be better off validating your idea before you spend any time building.

Analyse any existing products in your space and contact your target market and ask them if they want your product and if not, why not. You'll learn so much more doing this than you will spending 90% of your time building. :-)

I'd also add that building a pre-launch presence is essential. The more people you can get to sign up to your email list/social media accounts, the bigger audience you will have to launch to.

The reality is that 70% is marketing and 20% is customer service and 10% is product. We could argue the actual percentages, but the majority is getting the word out, the next part is taking care of people and the least part is the actual product.

I have been part of products that were in all ways were superior to others but failed miserably either from a lack of marketing or a lack of taking care of the clients. But I have never been part of a product that had superior marketing and customer service that failed. Not that I think it is impossible, it is just that you get so much opportunity to succeed that it would take a serious effort to fail IMO.

Evidence for both exist in the wild. 'Build it and they will come' seems the more elusive, so in a generalist sense I would go with the 50% marketing. That said I'm a marketer so what can you expect!

In my sphere I've seen so many companies over focus on the product and be dismissive of marketing when It's clear they can grow there business cost effectively via advertising.

I've also seen business throw money down the drain trying to buy their way to success and unreasonably overcome the product weakness.

IMO the key is measurement of success/failure with marketing. And balance in product/marketing focus. I read a great book that covers some of this call 'In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters'.

Never waste your time to make the product perfect, Always follow the steps of lean startup. Launch MVP (minimum value product) first and that too don't launch directly. firstly beta launch it. there are many platforms which will provide you the beta testers and early adopters.

Trust me once you beta launch your product early adopters will give you many useful tips and most important the subscribe button and review of early adopters will give the idea that whether your product is needed in the market and upto what extent and what changes needs to be done

There review will help you to determine the direction of development and they can even help you to determine the reasonable cost of the product(if you ask them for it)

I have made this mistake so please never spent countless hours in development just because you think its needed in the market take the review and idea validation from experts.

You need to find the right balance for you. You need a solid product, but that alone is not enough.

Think of marketing in terms of trying to get the word out to people who would want to know. How do you find them? What do you need to communicate?

I don't think you should worry about the percent of time spent on X. Set some goals, find some useful metrics, see what you can make happen.

Just released a pod about Instabridge who grew from 0 to 1 million users without any marketing at all! Pretty impressive work. Some learnings for all of us trying to grow our businesses - http://blog.haaartland.com/podcast-instabridge-one-million-u...