{"slug": "building-a-startup-marketing-engine-when-you-have-nothing", "title": "Building a startup marketing engine when you have nothing", "summary": "The article argues that early-stage marketing must begin with identifying a clear \"enemy\"—such as an outdated model or misconception—rather than waiting for funding or a marketing hire. It advises founders to create a manifesto as their first marketing asset, define a new category to avoid being misunderstood, and treat launching as a repeated habit rather than a one-time event. The author emphasizes that founders themselves must lead this narrative work, as only they have the direct customer insight and credibility to drive the story.", "body_md": "I think lots of founders misunderstand what early-stage marketing is. You don’t start when you get funding, or when you’re ready, or even when you hire your first marketing person – you start when you decide who you want to be in the world but more importantly: who you need to beat.\nWhen I cofounded Paid, we had:\n- (sizeable) funding\n- a big problem to solve\n- just me on marketing\n- no brand\n- and more importantly, no categories that described what we were doing\nIt was therefore my task to:\n- define the story\n- build the brand\n- choose a category\n- find the enemy\n- make noise\n- attract customers\n- run a launch\n- and keep launching, again and again\nLaunching is a beating drum – you need to keep beating it and you need to keep creating noise.\nHere’s the playbook I wish someone had given me back then:\nChoose your enemy first\nThis is the part that lots of people avoid because it feels confrontational (even more-so in Europe).\nProduct people (myself included) really love talking about features – what the product does, “value prop”, and occasionally you also get some positioning but if you don’t choose an enemy, the market will assume you’re boring.\nYour enemy can be:\n- an outdated model\n- a way of working\n- a misconception\n- a category that no longer fits\n- or a belief held by your buyers\nAt Paid, our enemy wasn’t a competitor, but the the seat-based SaaS mindset that made no sense for AI Agents.\nYour job, if you choose to accept it, is to find the thing your buyers secretly hate but don’t know how to articulate.\nIf you don’t name the enemy, your messaging will be a mush of things that no one remembers.\nName your enemy, repeat it, build around it.\nStart with a manifesto\nWhen you have no marketing team, no brand, no audience, and no strategy, there’s one thing that forces you to think about stuff and have clarity – a manifesto of some sort.\nThis doesn’t need to be an actual manifesto, but something that binds everyone around it.\nThat’s not the same as a vision statement or a pitch deck.\nYou need to lay down something like:\n- a rant\n- a truth\n- something you believe in\n- a line not to cross\nYou do this so that you can first and foremost align your team and attract the right believers.\nAdditionally, you reject the wrong ones – and you save time later 😉\nA manifesto is your first marketing asset.\nEverything else (e.g., website, tagline, ads and events) is so much easier if you have this.\nYou HAVE to create a category\nIf you’re building anything revolutionary, you have to name a category.\nIf you don’t, here’s what happens:\n- You get assigned to the wrong bucket (say, on G2)\n- Investors misunderstand you\n- Competitors set the narrative\n- Your GTM becomes reactive instead of offensive. Here, you’ve already lost…\nNaming a category is not the same as saying “we invented something new”, but a container with which others will remember you by.\nLaunching is a muscle\nMany first-time founders think their launch is like announcing a wedding. You have one big day with huge pressure, massive expectations, and then you just go and deliver on things.\nNo, no no no no.. No…\nLaunches are not one-time stunts.\nThey’re a cadence. A habit. Something you repeat.\nYou need momentum, and that momentum comes from repeated launches – and they can be simpler, easy launches.\nA launch can be any of these:\n- a feature\n- a story\n- a new version of your manifesto\n- a customer outcome\n- a teardown of something happening in the market\n- a trend you explain\n- a NEW villain you expose\n- a small event\nGreat marketing cultures don’t do one launch, but many.\nFounders have to be the first marketers\nThis one is pretty easy. Only founders have direct access to customers and feel the problem viscerally\nI also believe only founders can find the right villain and have enough credibility to push a story into the world.\nThe worst thing a founder can do is outsource early narrative work.\nYou can perhaps outsource some of the execution, but not your own truth.\nYour story is your job.\nBuild a mini marketing operating system\nWhen you have no team, you need a system that tells the team what to publish, creates consistency, and prevents chaos.\nIt could also help you scale once you DO hire.\nYour initial marketing operating system should be very very simple:\nThat’s it, add more as you grow.\nAnything more fractures attention at your initial stage.\nCreate your own luck\nThe highest-leverage thing you can do is create luck. How? With high intent!\nYour pipeline won’t be consistent if you just let things come to you.\nSo build an audience and create high-intent events for them:\n- roundtables\n- dinners\n- workshops\n- talks\n- customer spotlights\nThese high-intent events do things that paid ads and content struggles with:\n- building trust\n- creating advocates for your market position\n- get you into rooms you couldn’t buy your way into\n- speed up sales cycles\n- spark more authentic word-of-mouth\nA mini-framework to steal\nCopy this into your ChatGPT or whatever, with your relevant context, and go from there!\nStep 1: Pick your enemy\nThe old model, belief, system, or mindset you exist to destroy.\nStep 2: Write your manifesto or truth\nYour truth, your view of the world, your line in the sand.\nStep 3: Name your category\nPeople must know what you are in one sentence, and it must group you with the right products.\nStep 4: Set your cadences and messaging houses\nStart with a weekly founder post, weekly company insight, monthly “big moment”\nStep 5: Launch relentlessly\nA launch every 2–3 weeks. Small, lightweight, consistent. Something that won’t tire you out.\nStep 6: Build early rituals\nDinners, roundtables, small intimate events. These create trust and word-of-mouth.\nStep 7: System > team, at least at first\nYou can hire later. But first, build the operations and cadences. It’ll be easier.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/building-a-startup-marketing-engine-when-you-have-nothing", "canonical_source": "https://arnon.dk/building-a-startup-marketing-engine-when-you-literally-have-nothing/", "published_at": "2025-12-09 12:19:56+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-05-22 16:14:23.292281+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["startups", "venture-capital", "products", "enterprise-software"], "entities": ["Paid"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/building-a-startup-marketing-engine-when-you-have-nothing", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/building-a-startup-marketing-engine-when-you-have-nothing.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/building-a-startup-marketing-engine-when-you-have-nothing.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/building-a-startup-marketing-engine-when-you-have-nothing.jsonld"}}