Short excerpt from a YouTube video by Lenny Rachitsky arguing that product success is largely predetermined by market receptivity—analogized to drug binding receptors—and that marketing cannot create fundamental demand. The speaker advises founders to treat product launches as experiments to discover whether demand exists rather than relying on post-launch marketing to force success.
Chapters
Nobody at Genentech thinks they can market their way to better performance inside your body. The binding receptors for that drug they exist or they don't and when they build their product their goal is to find out whether the binding receptors exist. But fate already has decided the outcome. This is absolutely true. Very software product you build fate has already decided the outcome. The market's either going to latch onto your product and run with it or it's not. Do not ship the product, find a lack of success and then try to market your way through that because the binding receptors likely don't exist if you recognize that the market is immune. No amount of tweeting, LinkedIn posting advertising is going to change whether the market wants your product. It might raise awareness about your product but it's not going to change whether somebody wants it. Then you take a different mindset. You have to view your startup as running an experiment in the universe to see what you get in return.