When you have a compelling product, sometimes you can do a pull, not push GTM strategy.

· Bits and Bobs 2/18/25
  • When you have a compelling product, sometimes you can do a pull, not push GTM strategy.
    • If you push a product out into the market that isn't yet good enough, you risk burning out parts of your market.
      • They try it, have a bad experience, and will never try it again.
    • This push model is necessary for most products because users don't really care enough about your thing to pull it out of your hands.
    • But if you're in a push model, you have to be really sure that it's good enough for users, or it will be game over.
    • Sometimes you have a product that you know will be special and in demand:
      • 1) Solves a common user need nothing else solves
      • 2) Is charismatic and fun to use: it demos well.
      • 3) It's implemented in a differentiated way.
    • In these cases, you can follow a pull model.
    • Instead of trying to get as much usage as possible, you temper it with a check metric: minimizing the number of users who use it and have such a bad experience they'll never use it again.
    • One way to minimize that downside is to make sure it's really really good before you launch it.
    • Another way is to make sure that the users who use it first are a self-selected set who are more motivated and thus resilient than the normal population.
      • Sometimes there's a natural "gauntlet" that is hard to navigate, but the users who make it through have proven they are more resilient.
      • For example, you could bury the feature deep in the product, without many affordances.
    • Then, you watch how those users who make it through like it.
    • The more that those users like it, the more you can reduce the amount of gauntlet others have to go through, because you have more confidence the feature is viable.
    • As you see how real users use it, you will learn more about what's resonating and can adapt and lean into that to make it better and better.
      • By the time you get to mass adoption, the product will be way better than it was before.
      • Just be sure to know where you want the product to go, so you don't blindly follow the "weird" requests of early adopters and iterate into a dead end.
      • You want to surf the energy in front of you not with the steepest gradient, but that best aligns with where you want to go.
    • You will have minimized the downside at each step, while still leaving open the upside; if it's received way better than you thought it would be, you can simply put your foot on the gas.
    • I wrote up this pattern in The Doorbell In the Jungle.[zq]

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