3 builders who never spoke to each other
Make the launch artefact the shareable thing
Build something people would pass along whether or not they buy, then put the product underneath it: a recognisable format taken to an absurd extreme, a before and after screenshot designed to be posted, commissioned illustrations of the core ideas. Something merely competent does not survive a feed, so strangeness is doing real work.
The method
- 01
Build the shareable artefact itself on a formula people recognise, then push it to the point of absurdity.
- 02
Wrap the thing you are selling inside something natively shareable and put the actual link underneath, rather than posting the link alone.
- 03
Make something strange enough to stand out in your community's feed, rather than something merely competent.
- 04
Build the tool that frees a user's data out of the incumbent, and design the before-and-after screenshot to be the thing they post.
- 05
Commission illustrations of your key concepts, because images travel on social in ways text does not.
What it returned
- 2018
Three straight years of sausage-roll parodies of famous songs: We Built This City in 2018, I Love Rock 'n' Roll in 2019, Don't Stop Believin' in 2020
- 2018
The track was released paired with a dancing cowboy clip in December 2018 and the video went viral.
Macklemore and Ryan Lewis owed much of their commercial success to off-the-wall videos that felt like a break from the rest of hip hop.
Years of accumulated ChatGPT memory has no clean export path, and the viral surface is named as the post about switching away in ten minutes. Granola transcripts and Operator histories are equally stuck.
Sources
- Your second biggest problemJustin Jackson · justinjackson.ca · 10 things you can do · undated
- How LadBaby started a movementHarry Dry · Marketing Examples · 2/ Make something shareable · undated
- The marketing genius of Lil Nas XHarry Dry · Marketing Examples · Part 1 · undated
- How Adii Piennar used Authority to publish his own bookNathan Barry · nathanbarry.com · 4. Having the recipe decreases friction · 2013-07-31
- Personal AI Agents: Skill Marketplaces, Compliance Wedge, Open Weights - Trends.vcDru Riley · trends.vc · ☁️ Opportunities · 2026-05-28
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.
More in social
- Concentrate on one platform until it works11 unconnected · contested
- Gather the audience before there is a product6 unconnected · contested
- Fire the launch into the audience you already have6 unconnected · contested
- Post the numbers, not the commentary5 unconnected · contested
- Republish the winners with a new hook5 unconnected
- Cut one long piece into weeks of social posts5 unconnected