👥 Trends #0067 — Audience-First Products

Why it matters

An audience-first approach can help you validate products, build distribution, and stay accountable.

Problem

You don't know what to build or how to reach customers.

Solution

Build trust before products.

Players

Atomic Habits was published after James Clear published posts twice a week for years.
TinySeed came after Rob Walling wrote books, essays, launched MicroConf, started Startups for the Rest of Us, built and sold Drip.
Userlist came after Jane Portman launched the UI Breakfast podcast, wrote a book, and many blog posts.
The Embedded Entrepreneur came after Arvid Kahl sold FeedbackPanda, launched The Bootstrapped Founder, and wrote Zero to Sold.
Petite Fashion Weekly came after Lwany built a following on YouTube.
Transistor.fm runs alongside Justin Jackson's blog, community, course, and podcast.

Predictions

One-person media companies will continue to grow. Creation and distribution tools democratize leverage. Johnny Harris left Vox to build a YouTube channel with 1.5M+ subscribers. Barstool, The Verge, and Fortune are seeing similar exoduses.
Brands will opt for equity over selling attention. Rihanna built a cosmetics company instead of promoting one.
Commoditized backends will help smaller firms sell physical products. Printful lowers execution risk and marginal costs. Turning physical products into digital products, from the creator's perspective.

Opportunities

Teach as you learn. Nat Eliason's blog posts led to launching an agency, app, courses, and affiliate income. Maria Popova and James Clear have similar stories.
Show your work. Damon Chen, Zoe Chew, and KP inspire others and promote their products by building in public. Stay top of mind.
Use a freemium model. William Candillon monetizes free YouTube videos on React Native with a paid membership.
Connect your audience to each other with a community. Trends Pro connects thoughtful entrepreneurs. Makerpad and 100 Days of No Code connect no coders.
Embed yourself in communities. 100 Days of No Code paired a Twitter challenge with a private community. See Arvid's book on embedded entrepreneurship.
Compound by committing to a schedule. Release a newsletter, video, or podcast on a regular basis. See Trends.vc and Bad Unicorn.

Key lessons

Audience = Optionality. Building trust is hard. Monetizing trust is easy. We've seen audience-first agencies, digital products, SaaS companies, platforms, funds, and more.
Proprietary distribution gives you pricing power and control over unit economics. Bidding on paid ads leads to unpredictable customer acquisition costs.
Build an audience to increase your luck. Once we know your goals, we can conspire to help you out.

Haters

"Audience-building is slow."\
Paid channels are faster but less defensible. There's no free lunch.

"Where doesn't this make sense?"\
If you're not serving a tribal audience or have a small set of stakeholders.

"What if my validation efforts lead to false positives?"\
We saw this with Level and Beme. Your supporters don't want to let you down. So they may lie. The Mom Test helps you validate in biased environments.

"What if I give away my secrets?"\
We don't care about 100% of your business. Share the good parts. You can build public without sharing revenue numbers, key distribution channels, and algorithms.

Related reports

Audience-First Products: The first version of this report.
Paid Communities: Go from one-to-many to many-to-many bonds.
Paid Newsletters: The audience-first approach is native to media models.
NFTs: Non-fungible goods bring "art economics" to the creator economy.
Social Tokens: On aligning audiences and brands.
Internet Challenges: Challenges bridge audience-building and accountability.
Million-Dollar, One-Person Businesses: Most highly leveraged individuals take an audience-first approach.\