In the software/startups that I develop on my own, I am very lacking in marketing and lead hunting. My projects usually have a good growth potential, but I fail in the non-technical parts.
Of course, I have tried to get another co-founder to work on the non-technical side before, but I don't know how to find a good non-technical co-founder.
What would you suggest?
This implies equity of some sort in your company. And I doubt you are really prepared to deal with all that this implies unless you know the "co-founder" really, really well --- and even then it can be dicey.
Instead, look and advertise for people seeking "business opportunities". Start by offering a $0 startup to others looking to start their own business built around a product they will source from you.
These other individuals/"partners" will be responsible for setting up their own company, doing their own marketing and billing and first line support.
Establish a clean line of separation by charging these partners a fixed "wholesale" rate and providing them with an "opportunity" to make money by re-selling/marketing your product. They will have total control over their own destiny as you will have over yours. The more they sell, the more they make --- and the more you will make.
Once you have "successful" partners, you can leverage that "success" to actually start charging others a significant upfront fee to become part of this successful enterprise.
The key to making money is offering others the opportunity to do the same.
There is no magic wand. You know who you are building this product for (hopefully). Find 10-15 of those people manually. Reach out using email/linkedin etc. Tell them what you are working on and if they will be interest in testing it.
Start creating content around the product. A blog post no matter how crappy you think it is.
Do all of that yourself first and may be you will attract a co-founder who knows this better than you but unless you are well connected or with a previous track record, no one will join you for sweat equity. You are in this all by yourself, at least in the early days.
Source: a Technical founder who does a lot of sales/marketing. I have to.
Having now scaled up from zero customers to 100+ I can tell you the main things I see people get wrong:
-talking too much about what the product can do, rather than the result the person will get.
-focusing on features, which users don’t care about, rather than outcomes which they do.
-forgetting that the people you’re writing copy to are people - write to them normally and not in some weird voice.
-being overly focused on comparison to competitors. I never mention my competitors once, and no one cares.
-copying ideas from very large companies (Apple, Google, Microsoft, series D startups). Those companies can afford to burn millions on ads that might not do much. You can’t. If you copy what the big players do you just look lame and unoriginal.
-not being creative enough. No one likes boring ads. Not even boring people with boring jobs like boring ads. Average American sees 10k ads in a day. Be unique.
-Leading with something other than the main thing that your customer cares about. My company does real estate data, we used to have a headline about real estate data and market analysis. No one cared. Then we changed to taking about what investors care about, which is increasing their investment returns. Suddenly, conversions.
-tell a story about your product and plant it in your customers mind. I always say it’s like inception - they won’t remember exactly the story you told or where they saw it but I gets engrained in your mind. It’s really quite strange.
-not investing enough in marketing. Advertising done well is incredible leverage.
-don’t be afraid to write things that are long. Long headlines, long landing pages. There’s this prevailing advice to make things short, and while I do also do that, I have found that it’s not the length that’s the problem, it’s the content. If something is really good valuable and interesting, people will read things that are super long.
-provide value. The person on the other end of your landing page likely has a job to do and a boss to answer to. Help them solve their problems and they will buy from you.
-the single biggest thing that moves the needle is telling a better story about your product.
-don’t a/b test too much. It’s good to follow data, and do look at and compare performance. But you can’t a/b test your way out of bad positioning. Get it right the first time as much as you can, then iterate.
But what I do is find marketing channels that leverage my technical strengths.
I write a technical blog, have for years. Some people now know my name.
I am starting a podcast with no ads except "Supported by There are other ways I'm sure. Maybe attend a local Linux user group? I will say that a lot of these methods take time. I have been publishing blogs for 11 years, 6 on the current one.
Plenty of people are terrible at selling, either because they lack some skills or it's really just something they aren't interested in doing (which is why they aren't in sales).
I don't really have advice on the co-founder question but I would suggest when developing a startup that you portion out time for the not fun part of sales. There are many services that you can use to find leads in any kind of vertical you want and there are a lot of CRMs where you can email these people.
It's a combination of a lot of grunt work with perhaps disappointment, but that's how you find growth. Couple that with some of the obvious things like posting to HN, Product Hunt, etc. and having an online presence will make things happen if your product is something people want.
It's not easy and you're not alone in this dilemna.
1. The Mom test - Rob Fitzpatrick
2. Never eat alone - Keith Ferrazzi
3. The Tim Ferriss podcast - Episode #717 with Noah Kagan
4. Crossing the chasm - Geoffrey Moore
5. Competing Against Luck - Clayton M. Christensen
I know a lot of engineers who internally just despise ads, promoting, outreaching, pitching, etc, but they will say they "suck" at marketing. Most of the time it's not a skill issue, it's the personality and mindset.
Fundamentally, marketing is about 2 things: awareness and engagement. Awareness is generally about socializing the problem, how current solutions fail, and what the gaps are, in a way that directly maps to your product. Each market is different enough that you have to appreciate the context: who has this problem? Do they know they have this problem? Have they budgeted for a solution (i.e. are they in-market or are you trying to convince them to spend money on it)? The classic b2b trap is everyone telling you it's a problem, but it not being enough of a priority that they actually spend time fixing it. That's often more indicative of a product problem than a marketing problem, but it shows up most in weak GTM. Validating that in your early GTM is key.
Similarly, engagement is context dependent, but I like to think of success as moving them to the next step of the funnel. Do they believe they have a problem? Are they looking for solutions? How are they going to make a decision about which to bring on board? What information can you offer to frame your offering in the best possible light vs. their other options (including no solution)? Build your collateral to that.
1. Stop hating, despising and/or looking down on your customers. Most business owners do this and are not good at hiding it. Customers are not a nuisance, they pay your bills and they respect you as a professional by paying for your work.
2. A) Know exactly what you are offering and exactly what it costs. Even if you will make custom solutions for customers, you have to know what the basic or most common use case will be and what you will charge.
2. B) Communicate exactly what you are offering and exactly what it costs. Put it on your website and other marketing material, put as much information about it on your website as you can. Be precise on pricing and offer solutions/products that cover most use cases. Even if you would have offered a great price to a customer, they already closed your tab because 99% of businesses who do not print their price are scamming their customers. Even if the customer was looking for a custom solution, having your standard prices printed means they can get an idea of your rates.
3. Don't block a customer from purchasing your product. Why are you obstructing them from clicking the purchase button by putting your annoying cookie banners and sign-up letters and chatbots in front of their face? Why is your website slow to load and jumping around? Why is your text illegible?
Oh great, they actually clicked the purchase button! Now let me jerk around this customer by forcing them to load seven different pages to confirm their purchase. Better have them agree on receiving marketing e-mails and put some more pop-up windows with spam in front of their face before they can put in their details. Better annoy them in every way possible with adress requirement, force them to register an account and make a very specific password. Surely they are so desperate to buy my product that they will accept any humiliation and annoyance to complete their purchase?
That's the basics and takes you a long way without having to learn more about marketing. Not knowing anything more about your business.
My suggestion would be, find the best marketing person you can find and let it sell things for you.
If things go well, you can make him / her your "CFO".
If you really think you need a good non-tech co-founder it should be someone you have worked with under pressure and they have proven that they can deliver. Avoid people that produce strategies.
You should list some things you have built so that someone with marketing/sales experience could find it interesting and get in touch later. It's part of what I called "base" marketing and it's a long game, no shortcuts.