Jessica Livingston: Why Startups Need to Focus on Sales, Not Marketing

Jessica Livingston argues that early-stage startups should avoid broad marketing and instead work narrowly and deeply with a small group of users who are seriously interested. She says this approach helps both user acquisition and product definition, because early conversations also function as market research.

Reading notes

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• Sales and marketing sit on a continuum, and early-stage startups should stay at the narrow, deep end.
• For an early startup, outreach should be indistinguishable from sales: speak with a small number of users who are genuinely interested.
• Successful startups often begin narrow and deep, as Apple and Facebook did.
• Early users help define the product, so the conversation with them is also market research.
• Y Combinator advises startups to find a core group of early adopters and engage individual users directly.
• Airbnb grew by meeting hosts in person in New York, teaching them how to improve listings and asking for introductions to new hosts.
• Stripe signed up users manually at first, and the founders installed the service for people on the spot.
• Ben Silbermann said Pinterest users were recruited manually, including by asking people in Palo Alto cafes to try it.
• Broad “marketing” can hide product weakness because it avoids direct feedback from users.
• Individual outreach is hard and demoralizing, but it gives the harsh feedback founders need.
• Success should be measured by growth rate, not by absolute numbers at the start.
• Y Combinator’s advice is to make a very good product and get users manually, because both depend on talking to early adopters.