This is probably one of the most debated topics in the startup world: Should you build an audience before you launch, or is it better to launch first and grow your audience afterward? I ve seen both approaches work, but each comes with its own set of challenges and rewards. - Building an audience first means you're creating buzz, validating your idea, and nurturing a community of early adopters who are invested in your success. But it takes time, patience, and a lot of effort to keep the momentum going before you even have a product to show. - Launching first lets you hit the ground running, gather real-world feedback, and iterate quickly. But without an existing audience, you might struggle to get those initial users and traction. So, indulge me: Which approach did you take or are you considering taking (those who haven't launched yet)? - Did you build an audience before launching your product, or did you launch and then focus on growth? - What worked (or didn't work) for you? - If you could go back, would you do it differently? Share your story with us so we can all learn from each other. There's someone here who could benefit from your experience. ----- P.S: If you're a growth-stage founder struggling with churn or stagnant customer acquisition (usually because of poor positioning and messaging), I'd love to help. I specialize in crafting impactful marketing strategies tailored specifically to your product so you can start seeing the results you deserve. Connect with me on LinkedIn today. Can't wait to hear from you!

For many small companies, things start to unravel not because the idea is bad, but because the operations can t scale. How can you tell? Well, it s like that dream where the harder you swim, the further you end up from shore; you just can t keep up. You ve been caught in a riptide. It s at this point that it s worth pausing for a minute and sorting out your operations. By operations, I mean the processes, systems, and tools that not only keep your head above water but get you moving forward once again. The obvious problem with focusing on operations is that many founders find it boring or even a distraction from their top concern with product and sales. It s more fun to build the product, tinker with the UX, and keep shipping new features. But just like high school English class, boring doesn t mean you should skip it. In fact, I believe you need to start thinking about systems from day one. That s because one of the things I ve noticed in my nearly 20 years of running companies is that many early-stage founders have a great idea. What they don t have is a system to validate whether this idea can turn into a business. Ops only gets trickier as you transition from starting a company to growing it. That s where things almost unraveled for my last company, Cheetah Technologies, an e-commerce and logistics-tech company catering to independent restaurants. We were fortunate to get a lot of product-market fit early on, and within a year of launching, we d raised >$6 million in venture funding. Within 3 years of launching, we were serving thousands of independent restaurants across multiple geographies. That meant a lot of processes needed to be built: hiring, onboarding, retaining and promoting talent, evaluating performance, motivating people, communicating internally, communicating with investors, and solving myriad challenges as they came up. There s a lot. And, I think, we did it really well. But there was one operational challenge we didn t have locked down, which ended up hurting us. Post-Covid, we were going to accelerate our revenue growth by acquiring a few smaller competitors, and we created systems to hire M&A professionals. The process was extensive, including interviews and validation exercises. But after the contract was signed, we took a step back, assuming the people we hired would get us there with little oversight. We didn t have the right processes in place for monitoring the performance of these new hires. The post-M&A integration was a disaster, and, as a result, we lost millions of dollars; it was a huge setback for the company. I don t want other startup founders to be unable to scale because they didn t get their operations right. Ops Doesn t Have to Be Onerous Right now, many people are using no-code platforms to spin up software. What if you could use a no-ops platform to plug into systems, tools, and frameworks to help you build, grow, and lead your company without hiring an operations person too early? That s what we re building at Waya: from an executive summary generator tool that uses Retrieval Augmented Generation to make sure your idea is sound and fundable, to frameworks for managing and evaluating team performance so you can scale. But I m just a startup founder, too, looking to validate that what I think is a great idea will actually work. So I m offering 1 hour of free startup consultation for every 1 hour of user testing. You can ask me anything about fundraising, investor relations, go-to-market, building and scaling teams, etc. In return, I will give you a sneak peek into our brand-new product and let you take it for a test drive. Sign up here: https://wayaframes.com/promotion... And I d love to get in touch on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/naam...