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first, you should read the post where this quote was taken from [http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/02/marketing.html http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/02/marketing.html].

first, you should read the post where this quote was taken from [http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/02/marketing.html http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/02/marketing.html]. i specifically addressed the zynga situation. second, zynga didn't start by buying users. they got their first 10mm users (or something like that) from free distribution on the facebook platform before facebook starting clamping down on that

il 16y ago
Thanks, that post provides a bit more context. I guess the debate is basically "At what point do you start spending on customer acquisition?". The early days of any platform are a somewhat unique perfect storm of opportunity. Much like the launch of the App Store, that was a unique, transformative event that Zynga capitalized on. I don't think it's fair to extrapolate from that to an axiom. I think it's a matter of different perspectives, and maybe a little confirmation bias. As a VC, by definition you're seeing startups that already have some traction, very possibly without having done any marketing, and are looking for growth capital. This is not the case for the vast majority of startups. If an early stage startup needs to pivot and iterate in response to what users want, then it makes sense to get your product in front of users as quickly as possible. The quickest, most reliable way to do that is to to spend a little money on traffic to test your assumptions and get initial metrics of conversion rate, LTV, etc. Not tweeting to the same early adopters that will try any new startup and move on to the next thing on Techcrunch a few minutes later. "how did you start a company before Twitter?" seems like a pretty ridiculous question for anyone to ask. It's pretty easy to empirically demonstrate that the "I'll build something, tweet about it, and then it will go viral" plan fails 99.9% of the time.

il 16y ago

Thanks, that post provides a bit more context. I guess the debate is basically "At what point do you start spending on customer acquisition?". The early days of any platform are a somewhat unique perfect storm of opportunity. Much like the launch of the App Store, that was a unique, transformative event that Zynga capitalized on. I don't think it's fair to extrapolate from that to an axiom. I think it's a matter of different perspectives, and maybe a little confirmation bias. As a VC, by definition you're seeing startups that already have some traction, very possibly without having done any marketing, and are looking for growth capital. This is not the case for the vast majority of startups. If an early stage startup needs to pivot and iterate in response to what users want, then it makes sense to get your product in front of users as quickly as possible. The quickest, most reliable way to do that is to to spend a little money on traffic to test your assumptions and get initial metrics of conversion rate, LTV, etc. Not tweeting to the same early adopters that will try any new startup and move on to the next thing on Techcrunch a few minutes later. "how did you start a company before Twitter?" seems like a pretty ridiculous question for anyone to ask. It's pretty easy to empirically demonstrate that the "I'll build something, tweet about it, and then it will go viral" plan fails 99.9% of the time.