Social media isn't the only route to early customers, Disrupt speakers say

What happened

Getting your first customers can be one of the most gruelling challenges in business, TechCrunch reports, and early interest is no guarantee those customers will stick around. At TechCrunch Disrupt, Elia Wallen, founder and chief executive of the travel startup Engine, and Grant Lee, founder and chief executive of Gamma, described how they did it.

Gamma sells AI-powered presentation software. It scaled with a social media strategy built on influencers, through its Ambassadors programme, and adopted the plan before influencer marketing was a tried-and-true approach for smaller companies. TechCrunch reports that Gamma eventually reached a multibillion-dollar valuation.

Lee said that handing influencers a platform does not automatically turn into sales. He said founders sometimes treat creator marketing as a set-it-and-forget-it task. "I think you're better served by really spending a lot of time with these creators, because if they're not able to understand how to articulate the value of your product, it doesn't matter how much money you spend, it's just going to fall flat," he said.

Wallen described a very different route. Engine manages lodging and travel bookings for midsize businesses, and it bootstrapped its way to $150 million in bookings before taking on any outside funding, with no visible social media strategy at all. "We did events and we smiled and dialed," Wallen said, adding: "The phone still works." He also mentioned hiring a magician named David to perform tricks for prospective clients at events and encourage them to visit the company's booth.

What it means for you

One reading of the talk is not that social media is bad or that phone sales are good. It is that the right channel depends on what you sell and who buys it, as TechCrunch notes. Lee's advice is about creators, but the same logic may hold elsewhere: if the person doing the talking cannot explain the value of your product, extra spend is unlikely to fix that.

Two practical questions follow. Who exactly is your early customer, and where do they already look for new tools? Lee noted that a product serving many segments or use cases may want creators who can target each one. And which channels can you actually run yourself right now? Engine relied on events and phone calls, and reached $150 million in bookings before outside funding.

For a solo founder or a small team, Engine's example suggests a large online following is not the only way to start.

Whatever you do next, the point from the talk applies: people need to understand the value of what you have built.

Where LaunchBeam fits

LaunchBeam is one place to give a new product a public listing. A free LaunchBeam launch is reviewed and listed within 14 days, with a verified dofollow badge link back to your site. That link and the listing page are something you can point to in your own outreach, whether you are emailing early prospects or following up after an event.

We make no promises about how many people will visit or sign up. Treat the listing as one useful page about your product, and pair it with the personal channels that suit your market, as the speakers above suggest. Write the listing as you would explain the product to a stranger on a call: what it does, who it is for and why it matters to them.