founder-marketing

name	founder-marketing
description	Help a founder do marketing with little time, no team, and ~no budget — zero-to-one, founder-led growth. Use for "I'm a founder, where do I start with marketing", "no marketing team/budget", "how do I get my first customers", "build in public", "founder brand", or early-stage / pre-PMF GTM.
compatibility	Designed for Vellum personal assistants — part of the marketing-expert plugin
metadata	{"emoji":"🌱","vellum":{"category":"marketing","display-name":"Founder Marketing","activation-hints":["I have a startup and need help with marketing","I don't know where to start with marketing","early-stage, pre-launch, or pre-PMF marketing","no marketing team or budget","how do I get my first customers / first users","build in public, founder brand, founder-led growth"]}}

Help a founder market with the constraints they actually have: almost no time, no team, little budget, and often pre-product-market-fit. The rules are different from team-stage marketing — so don't hand a founder a 12-channel plan. Two truths drive everything:

1. The founder is the highest-leverage channel. Early on, your credibility, story, and direct presence beat any campaign.
2. Focus beats breadth. One channel done consistently wins; five done occasionally fails.

Tailor to high-leverage, low-time moves. If a request is really team-stage (funnel/budget allocation, board reporting), route to demand-plan / board-report instead.

Step graph

Step 1: Diagnose the founder's reality

Establish: stage (pre-PMF vs. early traction), hours/week the founder can spend on marketing (assume few), any existing audience, budget (assume ~$0), and whether it's a founder-led sales motion. Everything downstream must fit this budget of time and money.

Step 2: Nail the one-liner first

Founders are too close to the product to explain it simply. Before any channel, lock a crisp "we help [who] do [what], unlike [alternative]" in one sentence. Use positioning_brief (or run positioning-sprint). You cannot market what you can't say in one breath.

Step 3: Pick ONE primary channel that fits the founder

Choose by where the buyer already is × what this founder can sustain. Weight toward whatever fits the business and audience — common high-leverage options:

• Founder-led content on the platform the buyer actually uses (X, LinkedIn, TikTok/Instagram, YouTube, relevant communities) — sharing real expertise and the journey.
• Build in public — ship updates, metrics, and learnings; let people watch the story.
• Direct outreach / founder sales — personally reach the exact ICP; do it by hand.
• Community participation — be genuinely useful where buyers hang out (Reddit, Slack/Discord, forums).
• Launch moments — Product Hunt, Hacker News (Show HN), relevant subreddits.
• Partnerships / integrations — borrow another product's audience.

Pick one (maybe a primary + a supporting). Say no to the rest for now.

Step 4: Make the founder a sustainable channel

If content/build-in-public: define 2–3 content pillars from the founder's real expertise and the company's journey, set a cadence the founder can actually keep (e.g. 3 posts/week beats a daily plan they'll drop), and engage — reply, don't just broadcast. Authenticity and specifics win; founders lose when they sound like a brand account. Repurpose one idea across formats. (Once this is humming, content-engine and geo scale it.)

Step 5: Do things that don't scale to get the first 10–50 customers

Get early customers by hand: direct, personalized outreach to ICP; founder-run demos; white-glove onboarding; hang where they hang. Turn the first happy users into references, testimonials, and case studies — early proof is your best marketing asset. For a launch, run launch-playbook scoped to a Show HN / Product Hunt moment.

Step 6: Tiny operating rhythm + when to hand off

Set a weekly time-box and 1–2 metrics that matter (e.g. qualified conversations, signups from the channel — not vanity follower counts). Define the trigger for the first marketing hire: usually once a channel clearly works and the founder is the bottleneck — and the first hire is a hands-on generalist (content/growth), not a VP. Until then, the founder stays the channel.

End with: the one-liner, the single channel chosen and why, a cadence the founder can keep, and the 3 things to do this week.