Backlinks were huge, but I had absolutely NO relationship whatsoever with Arrington, Jason or anyone else in Silcon Valley. I link to post that explains how we

Backlinks were huge, but I had absolutely NO relationship whatsoever with Arrington, Jason or anyone else in Silcon Valley. I link to post that explains how we got on TC. It's all perseverance and creativity. But I agree, that word of mouth and passionate users are absolutely essential. You can still get backlinks from these 'notable users' - they have blogs right? If you have a product with a viral coefficient approaching 1, you'll be all set. But for the rest of us, backlinks and organic traffic give us a steady base of users to test, iterate and get feedback from.