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independence3 unconnected · 1 more author in those circles
applies to

b2b, no audience needed

confidence

high

evidence

12 claims · 7 articles · 4 receipts

window

2017-11-07 → 2026-06-18

3 builders who never spoke to each other

Pick an idea whose channel you can actually work

Score the available routes to market against each other and commit to one before the product is locked, because a business that lives on search rankings will grind down someone who hates writing. Where two products are equally good, whoever acquires buyers more cheaply wins, which makes the channel part of the idea rather than a later decision.

The method

  1. 01

    Pick an idea whose natural acquisition channel matches what you are actually good at, because a product that lives on SEO will grind down someone who hates writing.

  2. 02

    Choose the product by how much marketing it will need, if your time is limited and marketing is not your strength.

  3. 03

    Before picking marketing tactics, run the bullseye exercise from the book Traction across its nineteen traction channels and rank which single channel to commit to first.

  4. 04

    Match the channel to where that specific audience already gathers: a community plus a newsletter for teachers, video tutorials for engineers, an interview podcast for founders.

  5. 05

    Choose your distribution from a short list of concrete options: blogging, direct email, showing up in the forums and Facebook groups your audience already sits in, ranking for a search term, or paying to appear in a newsletter your buyers read.

What it returned

  • 19

    Zue scored all 19 channels in a spreadsheet and picked SEO as his number one channel for a printable place card site.

  • Shopify was chosen partly because its app marketplace was itself the answer to the acquisition question, on top of an ecommerce market measured in trillions of dollars.

  • Posting daily on the platform his products were built for grew MRR steadily with the products only linked from his bio.

  • The example given is how bootstrappers and solopreneurs congregate on Indie Hackers.

Sources

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click, and the address is used for this and nothing else.

More in other

all other plays

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

963 corroborated plays to draw from · 3 a week

One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click, and the address is used for this and nothing else.