How do you build traction without burning cash? In this episode of Below the Fold, we sit down with serial founder and Founder Connects creator Rony Hage to unpack zero-budget marketing strategies that actually work for early-stage startups. Drawing from over a decade of experience in both the U.S. and UAE startup scenes, Rony breaks down the most common mistakes first-time founders make with ads, growth, and customer targeting—and shares the lean tactics that move the needle without spending a dime.
🎯 Topics covered:
💡 Whether you're a first-time founder or a growth marketer, this episode is packed with real talk, tactical playbooks, and startup wisdom from someone who's been in the trenches.
[00:00:00] Welcome to the number one advertising and a marketing podcast in MENA. Here we celebrate industry giants, but also shine a light on hidden talents that deserve to be heard. Together. We uncover insights and ideas that often go unnoticed, but drive real impact. Whether you are a seasoned pro or just starting out, this space is for you.
[00:00:28] Tap that follow button. Your support keeps us up and running. Don't forget to share your feedback in the common section. Or join us on our social channels. Now, sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.
[00:00:49] Rony Hage, welcome to Below the Fold, Ibrahim. Thank you for having me. You're welcome.
[00:00:54] We,~ uh,~ we go way back, right? Yeah, yeah. Way back. It's always amazing to like 15 years what? 15 years? 15 years. 15 years. How? I think more, I think more maybe 20 years. I would say 20 years. 20 years? Yeah. Probably between 15 and 20 Maybe. Let's just leave it at dot. ~Uh, ~for the listeners and viewers who are listening or watching, me and Ronnie were friends in university.
[00:01:15] Mm-hmm. We used to bump into each other. Yeah. At parties at outings. Had a good time. Yeah, we had a great time. Was a good time. It was a good time. It was a good time. ~Uh, ~but now we're both working. Mm-hmm. And, and Ronnie is here specifically today to talk about. How startups. Startups employ marketing. Yep.
[00:01:38] Right. Yep. And there's one thing that you told me,~ uh,~ earlier that, ~um. ~Caught my attention was zero based. Yeah. Marketing, which is, which I'm, I'm, I'm interested to hear about, and I think it, it does make kind of sense for startups who may not have Yeah, definitely. You know, massive, massive budgets, of course.
[00:01:54] But before we get into that, how about you give the listeners of viewers a bit of an intro about yourself, your background. What are you doing today? Yeah, yeah, definitely. So, ~uh, ~today I'm the founder of a community called Founder Connects. ~Uh, ~it's basically a community that,~ uh,~ helps all founders in the UE to come together to tackle challenges together.
[00:02:14] ~Um, ~and at the same time we do for them a lot of introductions, so the founders. So hopefully, you know, hopefully we can. Spark some kind of collaboration between them. ~Um, ~and previously I had a startup in the us ~uh, ~and ~uh, ~I have another,~ uh,~ startup, which is a program for university students where we teach them basically how to launch their own tech startups within a month, basically.
[00:02:34] ~Uh, ~that's including an MVP building, an MVP. And luckily because of AI today, we're able to do it in a month. Yeah. Previously we, we weren't able to do this. ~Uh, ~but yeah, this is what I do. I was raised here in Dubai. Okay. ~Uh, ~and, you know, my first startup gave me definitely a lot of experience,~ uh,~ you know, to, to understand how, how to handle the startup world.
[00:02:53] I've been in the startup world for a very long time now. Maybe more than I would say, maybe 10 years, something like that. Yeah. Yeah. ~Uh, ~that's a learnings over there. Oh my god. Yeah. It's like starting from the US and plus the US is, is so quick and fast when it comes to the startup world 10 years ago.
[00:03:08] Okay. ~Um, ~if I wanna compare it to Dubai and. Dubai is, you know, became quite mature right now when it comes to the tech,~ uh,~ you know, to the tech scene. Yeah. ~Uh, ~so yeah, that's,~ uh,~ currently, you know what I'm, if I wanna summarize it, I'm trying to, you know, help and empower,~ uh,~ UAE founders Right. ~Uh, ~to do better.
[00:03:24] Right. Simple as that. And so you bring them together, they connect. Yeah. ~Uh, ~founders find their co-founders. Right? Yeah. So basically the way it happens inside the community, as soon as you join the community,~ uh,~ what happens is we basically match you with a group of 10 other founders. Actually, nine, you're the 10th.
[00:03:41] Okay? ~Uh, ~and you tend to meet once a month virtually for 90 minutes to just share your month's challenge. So some people might come in, they go like, all right, you know what, how, how, how do I tackle the SEO part? How do I tackle the marketing part? How do I tackle, you know, finding a co-founder? Whatever challenge you're going through, imagine having nine other founders that have, you know, or went through the journey that you're currently going through.
[00:04:07] Yeah. And instantly giving you these, these,~ um, uh, ~recommendations or feedback. So imagine the,~ uh,~ the time that you can save. All right? Because you have nine other brains. Yeah. ~Uh, ~giving you that,~ uh,~ that kind of,~ uh, uh, ~advice and the customer mistakes that you can save, right? 'cause I've went most first time founders, they go through a lot of customer mistakes.
[00:04:26] Are you one of these 10? ~Uh, ~usually I join. Yeah. Sometimes. Yeah. No, no. I join, I, so we call them,~ uh,~ founder squads. Yeah. And I, and I loved, I don't moderate them. I have moderators. Yeah. ~Uh, ~but I love joining, you know, their side, the founder's,~ uh,~ side. Cool. Because sometimes even as serial entrepreneurs, you, you always have new things that you're facing too.
[00:04:45] Doesn't mean that, you know, I've went through that journey. That's it. I know it all. ~Uh, ~so. It's interesting knowing, you know, ~uh, ~other perspectives,~ uh,~ new perspectives sometimes, so right, you can tackle whatever you have to tackle. So how do I join? Do I need to pay a membership or, so Yeah, it's a subscription based,~ uh,~ community and you just, as soon as you join, you don't have to do anything directly.
[00:05:05] Our head of community,~ uh,~ starts matching you with the correct group because that group needs to be relevant for you. Okay? So let's say for example, if you're pre-seed,~ uh,~ you'll get matched with. Other pre-seed or a bit of seed founders. Okay. As long as you know, they have good knowledge to share with you.
[00:05:21] And it ha it's, it's, you know, it's the same thing for you. Like you have to share your knowledge with them too. Mm-hmm. ~Um, ~and every single Monday,~ uh,~ in the morning you get an email like, Hey, you know, we believe you're a good match with this founder and these matchmaking Monday emails. We don't match you only with people that are part of the community.
[00:05:41] We match you with founders outside the community too. So we hope, you know, and we do this stuff because we hope to kind of spark some kind of collaboration, right? So it's not necessarily people who have,~ uh,~ subscribed this, this can be one off. ~Uh, ~founders, people who have gone through maybe the entire process Yes.
[00:06:00] That have gained the knowledge, et cetera. Yes. So you might be pre-seed, for example. Yeah. And you may be sitting one day with someone who's series B, maybe for example, or series B, not in most of the cases, because Series A people will probably sit with Series A people. All right. ~Uh, ~but pre-seed they might be sitting with seed.
[00:06:17] ~Uh, ~okay. Founders. Yeah. ~Uh, ~it's, it's much more. ~Uh, ~impactful for them because you need to make it relevant, right? Yeah, exactly. It's more relevant, it's more relevant for them. ~Uh, ~so, so yeah, we try to make it as relevant as possible. Okay. As long as you have, you know, enough experience because you, you can't just pay and access the community.
[00:06:34] You have to be qualified. Yeah. Okay. And that's, that's one step,~ uh,~ that we have to do in order to maintain the quality of the people inside the community. Makes sense. So, ~uh, ~and you mentioned that you, ~uh. ~So you also help these founders with marketing? Yeah. So it's not, it's not, we help them. Right. But because we had a lot of conversations between us.
[00:06:54] Right, right. ~Uh, ~so we have many founder squads, 10 founders each and ~uh, ~and basically I've seen so many conversations flowing. Yeah. And first time founders. What they don't understand is like. Look, don't get me wrong, it's not about just first time founders making mistakes. Yeah. Even serial entrepreneurs making mistakes.
[00:07:14] Yeah. But obviously this is, you know, the, the second or the third time founder knows how to maybe reduce these mistakes and even manage these mistakes much better. So, but first time founders, the problem is what I've seen right? Through, through, you know, all their brains. So what they think is, all right, great.
[00:07:30] You know what our MVP is ready? Let's launch it. And let's do some ads. Yeah. And then what happens is they don't see any return on investment. They go like, ah, you know what? Ads don't work. Yeah. Meta is, is shit for us. You know? Or TikTok is not good for us. Yeah. And it's, and it's the wrong way. I. No. On the country, these platforms are actually good.
[00:07:50] Alright. But you just, you know, the strategy that you took was so wrong. Yeah. So first of all, once, once I always call this phase burning money. Yeah. Because you're just trying to spend on ads without knowing who's your, you know, ~uh, ~your,~ uh,~ your user or your profile. We call them ICP. Yeah. Okay. ~Which stands for, so, uh, so basically it stands for.~
[00:08:09] ~I forgot the exact, yeah, the exact, uh, terminologies, uh, it's been, uh, 10 years. I'm using it as icp. Right? Yeah, fair enough. So ICP. Yeah. Okay. I ccp. Yeah. Uh,~ so basically,~ uh,~ what happens is once you find your own I ccp, this is where you,~ um,~ you understand. All right. So these are the people that are actually mostly interested in my,~ um,~ my product.
[00:08:19] Yeah. Okay. And sometimes one keyword can make it or break it for you. One keyword wouldn't you know your landing pitch that before. Before running ads though. Like I audience, so this is what I, your audience, so this is what I always tell people. So you think you know your audience, maybe you don't, you think you know your audience.
[00:08:35] Okay. Everything is an assumption at this stage, right? In precede everything is an assumption. Yeah. Even your MVP, your whole MVP is an assumption. Yeah. Right? So. Once you understand who your audience, who's, who are these 10 or a hundred people that are willing to come and pay you? Yeah. That's what you need to figure out before you go out there and start spending on ads because this is when you know your audience is when you're gonna seeing summary to our investment, right?
[00:09:03] And that's what most first time founders. Tend to blame these,~ uh,~ platforms because they're not doing any return on investment. But then you go, you ask them, okay, who's your audience? ~Uh, ~we're still unsure. We have like one person that, you know, buys and that's, that's how this person looks, like the avatar, right.
[00:09:23] Of that person. And then we have a way, a whole different avatar of another type of audience that actually bought from us. Like, okay, but like, who are you then, who are you targeting on, on Meta, TikTok and Snap, and like who are you targeting? Yeah. We're just, you know, being generic at this point. Right, okay.
[00:09:41] So that's why you're not making a return. Yeah. At the end of the day. Yeah. So that's where comes in, you know, the zero budgets or advertisements. Yeah. ~Uh, ~let's, let's, let's take,~ uh,~ talk about those zero based. Yeah. Tactics. Yeah. Okay. Which are important. 0, 0, 0 budget based marketing tactics. Yeah. ~Um, ~and I'm, and I'm sure there's more than one, right?
[00:10:04] Yeah. There's a,~ uh,~ so one of them is know your audience. Mm-hmm. Right? You have to know your audience. You have to know your audience, and. Obviously you, you'll need to run, run the, your product against a group of people. Mm-hmm. Right? So that you know who's converting, who's really sticking, who's sticking to your, to your product, and that, that you should use that as a way to know your audience.
[00:10:32] Not, not necessarily run ads, right? Yeah, yeah. Am I, am I getting it right? That's very true. ~Uh, ~would you say maybe also that some,~ uh,~ startups, they go and throw money on ads? I. But don't work perhaps on their, on their website or on their, on their app is not converting well enough. Is that a, is that an issue as well?
[00:10:53] Would, would, would working on a proper high conversion rate? ~Uh, ~highly converting website and app, also a form of zero,~ uh,~ zero budget marketing. Look, the problem is. It's not just about going immediately and spending on ads if you had a million dollars. Yeah. Okay. And you had a goal to really figure out who's your audience within a week.
[00:11:15] You have the money to just go and burn money. Alright. Yeah. Yeah. In order to figure out your audience within a week, because even these zero, you know, dollar budgets, it takes a bit of time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. That, that's a disadvantage of that. Yeah. 'cause they're not as scalable as, you know, spending on us.
[00:11:31] Of course. And startups obviously don't have a million dollars. And of course startups, they don't have millions. Millions, yeah. Especially pre-seed, like you said. Exactly. Exactly. Now you might have, you might. See one or two. Alright. Yeah. These are, but that's, they don't represent, you know, all the pre-seed startups.
[00:11:46] Yeah. ~Uh, ~so that's why, you know, it's like, alright. Let, let's go through that journey together. Yeah. Alright. You have a specific idea? The first thing that you do is you build your own landing page,~ uh,~ or your own MVP. Correct. And a lot of people, which is a very good thing by the way,~ uh,~ building the landing page and,~ uh,~ trying to,~ uh,~ see if there's, there's excitement or even potential just through a simple signup process.
[00:12:12] Yeah. Like, am I getting a wait list or not? Yeah. Okay. Pre-order. Pre-orders. All right, so, ~uh, ~but once you're building your landing page, there's obviously, you know, the content of the landing page, the header and all these stuff. How can I know that this header is making sense? 'cause so far you're in the mindset of assumptions at this stage, right?
[00:12:32] Yeah. So how can I know? Is it making sense or not? So that's where I use, you know, these. You know, $0 budgets. Alright. In order to try to optimize everything that I see on the landing page, including finding my avatar. Yeah. Who's my audience? Yeah. Okay. So once I've, I've, you know, optimized everything on the landing page and I've optimized the product as well.
[00:12:57] And I found my audience, this is where you're gonna start seeing a lot more better results or when you start spending on ads, right? How would you know then what is working but you need without at least driving some, some traffic. You talk to them, you talk to your users. Right. You just speak with them.
[00:13:14] But first you have to bring the users, right? You have to bring them. So how do you bring them? Okay, so you, you want to get into the $0? Yes. Or maybe there's one to $2. I don't know. Okay. Alright. Alright. So you have to look, it's, but in my head, you need to at least spend a little bit of money in order to drive some traffic, unless.
[00:13:32] You're referring to your friends and family,~ uh,~ and people that you know, that you invite to visit your website based on that? No. This is, you know, the low hanging fruits, obviously the, but, but sometimes, most of the time it's not the wrong,~ uh,~ it's not the right way to do it because sometimes your family is not the audience and then they start giving you feedback that might derail your thoughts.
[00:13:53] Yeah. I don't like this for, for instance. Yeah. But you're not the audience, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So I prefer speaking with your assumed audience Okay. To start with. And so therefore you need to find your assumed audience. ~Uh, ~and there's plenty of ways to find them, whether it's in Facebook groups or, you know, ~uh, ~online forums or ~uh, ~WhatsApp groups.
[00:14:11] Yeah. ~Um, ~and there is a better way to find it. Alright. Is through LinkedIn. Yeah, so let's say for, for instance, I am targeting founders. It's so easy to find founders on LinkedIn through the,~ uh,~ filters. Yeah, right. So I just go and filter who, you know, slide into their dms, gets me. So this is one way. Yeah.
[00:14:30] Alright. I slide into their dms. So assuming I have a limitation of a hundred dms per week on LinkedIn, so I reached out to 150, might answer. Out of these 50 10 might jump on board. Alright. In order to give my platform a try. Yeah. And 10 is, is already good enough as a start. Yeah. So imagine speaking with 10 people that are, that matches your assumed target.
[00:14:54] Okay? So therefore, having proper feedback. So they might tell you, yeah, but you know what, this is not what I'm looking for. Okay, great. What are you looking for? Yeah. And then that's where you start learning from them and you start optimizing. ~Uh, ~and, and by the way, when we launched the community, it was very different than than what we've, I.
[00:15:13] Achieving now. Yeah. So basically when we launched the community, it was, I just wanted to keep it open for everyone because I kind of knew the drill. I, I knew the equation. I was like, okay, let me open it for everyone and then start analyzing who is it gonna fit for. Yeah. Okay. And then analyzing it through these, you know, these strategies basically.
[00:15:34] So I started with this LinkedIn strategy,~ um,~ and you can automate all these stuff, by the way, there are tools out there. You can, you don't have to do it manually. Yeah. Reaching, you do like an email marketing change. So that's the second thing. Yeah. Alright. But you can actually send dms All right. Through, there's plenty of tools that you can use.
[00:15:50] Yeah. ~Uh, ~for automations,~ uh,~ and. And the beautiful part is you can get even more personal with these people now, with these automation tools. Like, alright, the first thing I want you to do is like a post on this person. And then this person realize, Hmm, who's this person that actually liked my post? And then send a connection.
[00:16:06] And then once the connection is approved, you know, you send a dm. So you kind of, these tools are becoming way better at, at, at ~uh, ~getting much better results. ~Uh, ~but again, it's not scalable. That's the problem. But right now we're not thinking of scalability. Yeah. Right now we're thinking of, you know, optimization and what is the, you know, who's the best audience that will fit for my,~ uh,~ product in order to later on go ahead and start spending on ads so I can scale.
[00:16:34] Okay. So that's one way on LinkedIn. The other way alright, is obviously,~ um,~ cold email outreach. Alright? Now a lot of people, they say cold email is dead, is not. It's not at all. You just have to know how to use it. Yeah. Okay. So first of all, it is scalable. Not as much as doing ads, but you can reach out to thousands of people per day.
[00:16:57] Yeah, but what, where, what database are you targeting? Or, or do you mean like, so that's where you, Gmail or, yeah. Yeah. So it's not about Gmail or ~uh. ~Like every single person has their own,~ uh,~ email service,~ uh,~ provided that they're using. It's just you need to figure out how to get these emails from that specific assumed audience, whether it's via like an exhibition or a convention, maybe in any way.
[00:17:20] Or in any way. Okay. There's, there's plenty of ways online, right? Yeah. Okay. There's plenty of ways online that you can actually get, you know, ~uh, ~your database, whether through a signup form, whether through, you know, ~um, ~look,~ uh,~ startups tend to scrape a lot. Let's, let's be real here. Yeah. Or startups tend to scrape a lot.
[00:17:38] And,~ uh,~ that's one way, you know, to get a lot of,~ uh,~ emails. Yeah. This is where you go into the cold email outreach. Now the thing is, if you scrap an audience that doesn't really care about your,~ uh,~ your product, probably you're gonna, you're gonna see them backfiring at you. Mm-hmm. Okay. Especially if you scrape that, that kind of audience.
[00:17:59] But if you really relevant, you're gonna see a lot of success. Mm-hmm. Out of that. Specific audience that you got their emails from. So that's where you try to be as relevant as possible throughout the process. Yeah, that's, that's when you see a lot of success. So first of all, is my audience as relevant as possible?
[00:18:20] The second stage, all right, is basically, is the body of my email as well relevant? Yeah. Because a lot of people, they tend to use very generic. You know, templates, which obviously stopped working. Yeah. Okay. And then they come back to you. Yeah. But cold email outreach doesn't work. Yeah. Obviously like what's your setup?
[00:18:41] Right. So now with AI you can personalize this outreach. I. You can really personalize it. Alright. You can personalize the body of the email. ~Uh, ~we deploy tools in order to scrape the website of this person first to understand what this person does and if it's relevant, if it's relevant, then we tell our AI or a generate a small introduction or a two liner, right?
[00:19:09] ~Uh, ~so we can include it in the email of the,~ uh,~ in the body of the email. Yeah. Okay. And that's how you become a lot more personalized and relevant. Yeah. So once you, you know, you, you were able to achieve this and imagine you being able to do it on thousands of people per day, then you're gonna see a lot of success out of that.
[00:19:28] Yeah. Maybe there's a perception out there that,~ uh, um. ~No one opens their emails or no one opens an email from a person they don't know, or I'm sure you, you also receive a lot of emails from companies. It's part of the game offers, et cetera. That true, true you don't, that you don't, that you don't open, don't.
[00:19:46] But the reality is today. That. Yes, there's a lot of, there are a lot of emails that we don't open. Well, there are also a lot of ads that we don't click on. Yeah. And ads are still effective. Yeah. And actually, from what I know, from my personal experience,~ uh,~ the click through rate on emails is way higher than ads on Yeah.
[00:20:09] Websites, for example, banner ads. ~Um, ~so because it's more personal, it's more personal, and,~ uh,~ when it's personal, it's even higher. Yes. Yeah. ~Uh, ~and it's effective. Yeah. It's, it's definitely, it's definitely effective. So even if 1% of the audience that has received your emails, only 1% opens the email. That's still way higher than a banner ad.
[00:20:33] ~Um. ~Yeah, could be. But look, the only problem is scalability. Mm-hmm. Like we cannot reach millions of people through email. Yeah. Alright. But it's a great way to kick off things to understand who's your target audience. To understood. To be able to optimize your, your landing page, to be able to figure out, you know, what are the things that are working and, and what are the things that you assumed Yeah.
[00:20:56] Or it should work, but are, but are not. ~Uh, ~so without spending a lot of money. Yeah. Right. So, and that's why email marketing, if you know how to do it. Is very, very efficient and effective. Yeah, and we've been finding a lot of success in my whole, you know, I. Years of, of being, you know, part of startups. Yeah.
[00:21:18] Email was a major strategy that we had. Yeah. And it's just, it's not just one email sent. Right. Like a It's not, it's not, it, it's a chain. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it is in terms of the thread of the email to one specific person. Yeah. Like you send an email, one, one email, they don't respond. And then in after few days, so in the second email, by the way, the second email, you send something else.
[00:21:39] So we don't just do a regular follow up or we tell, we tell that specific person like, Hey, you know what? I have that free thing for you, which I believe could be, you know, could be interesting for you. So why don't you check it out? Yeah. With a very small follow up, very small follow up, but the main,~ uh,~ body of the emails about that freebie that we're trying to give out in order to start building trust.
[00:22:05] Alright. Right. Do you really offer freebie or Yes. Yeah. Yes we do. There's this, like we, this we do a lot of strategies in terms of all. What are the things that we can actually give out for free? Yeah. Alright. Because these are the things that we can use in order to stop building trust. Right? Alright, so we give out these freebies, alright?
[00:22:25] And,~ uh,~ in these follow-up emails and the first follow-up email has a specific, you know, ~uh, ~free thing that we're giving out. In the second follow up email, we have another free thing that we're giving out. Mm-hmm. It could be a list of, you know, investors. In my case, because it's all about the startup world.
[00:22:42] Yeah. It could be a,~ um,~ a PDF on growth hacking, for instance. Yeah. That you've sat a month, a month and a half to really, you know, ~uh, ~build a proper strategy. Yeah. You just give it out for free. Yeah. Because you need, you need to make sure whatever you're giving out for free is actually has a lot of value.
[00:22:59] Yeah. Otherwise, you, you lose the, the, of course, the, the trust that you're trying to build. Yeah. Yeah. ~Uh, ~so yes, it works perfectly. It's amazing. Okay. And as long as you're doing it right. So the people that are actually, you know. That are, so there's plenty of things to, to take into consideration. Yes.
[00:23:18] There's,~ uh,~ there are the people that would say, you know, a cold email, email,~ uh,~ doesn't work. Let's divide this into these. There are the people that don't know how to use cold email outreach, and there are the people that called email outreach does not fit for their audience. Hmm. Okay. Because it depends on your audience too.
[00:23:39] Like, if you're trying to target,~ uh,~ if you're a B2C company and you're trying to target, for instance,~ uh,~ you know, someone, if, if your app is about note taking, that's gonna be very difficult. I. Why, who's, who's my audience? Who's gonna come and take notes, right. And use my, my app. Yeah. Unlike if my audience is clearer or right.
[00:24:01] Like in terms of like, okay, my audience are founders. I know where to find these founders. My audience are gamers. I know where to find these gamers on Discord, for instance. Yeah. ~Uh, ~musicians, I know where to go. But if your app is, you know, a note taking app. Where'd you find this audience? Right. So that's another thing.
[00:24:21] That's another thing that, alright, you know, you can't blame these people because, you know, it's, it is very hard to find that, that specific audience. But that's where they can start testing out with buckets. Right? Okay. So they create five different buckets. ~Uh. ~Very different types of audience, very different types of audience, every single bucket.
[00:24:38] And then they test it out because in one of these buckets, you might know where to find this audience. So let's say for example, as a note taking app. Let's say the first audience is a CTO. The second audience is a,~ uh,~ sales executive, right? ~Uh, ~in the media industry. ~Uh, ~and the third one. Is a lawyer.
[00:24:56] Alright? Yeah. Very different types of,~ uh,~ different types of audiences. So now if I want to target the bucket one, which includes CTOs, at least I know where to find CTOs. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. So you kind of segment it and then once you segment it, this is where you, you. You know, have more clarity on where to find these types of audiences.
[00:25:16] Okay. And audience maybe is resonating more with exactly your product. I then you start, you know, implementing the same strategy that I'm sharing right now, whether it's LinkedIn or email,~ uh,~ called email outreach. And then you see which audience or Right. Kind of clicked. More with you. Yeah. You know, when you said,~ uh,~ zero based marketing, in my head I was thinking,~ uh,~ like just ads with, with $0 budgets.
[00:25:37] No, no. I was thinking things like,~ um,~ gorilla marketing. Yeah. You know, yeah. That's another thing. But like, like getting, getting some attention. ~Uh, ~from the press by doing something completely crazy. That's another thing, you know, like maybe jumping off a building, but that's safe time with, with like, while you're carrying a banner, for example, you know about your product or your brand.
[00:25:57] Yeah. That will get people's attention. You might earn to yourself some, some free media. Yeah. But the thing is, look, right now my concern is not just to earn free media right now, my concern as a pre-seed startup is to understand who's my audience. Mm-hmm. Okay. You earned that free media and then what are you gonna do with it?
[00:26:13] Right? Yeah. It just probably adds some brand equity. Yeah. But then it doesn't really help you in terms of, okay, how can I optimize? What, what should I optimize? ~Uh, ~but I think these, you know, ~uh, ~these strategies that you're talking about are usually done after,~ uh,~ you understand who your audience is. Yeah.
[00:26:30] ~Uh, ~because you know everything right now at this stage. And then you just wanna, you know, ~uh, ~increase your brand equity. Yeah, then these strategies come into play, right? Yeah. Okay. But there are plenty of other growth hacking strategies. And don't jump, don't, don't jump off buildings. Yeah. Don't jump off the building.
[00:26:45] Just fire at this stage. Even at later stages. Don't do it. All right. Never. ~Uh, ~so, ~uh, ~but you know, there's this plenty of strategies, but the easiest way because even these strategies that you're talking about,~ uh,~ these guerrilla marketing or growth hacking strategies. Most of the time they don't work.
[00:27:02] Yeah. Because most of the time we're trying to trigger that virality. Mm-hmm. We're triggering something. And most of the cases they don't work. And right now you don't have the luxury to just,~ uh,~ basically try something that might not work in two, three months down the line. And that's why a lot of,~ uh,~ pre-seed startup, they, they tend to lose a lot of time and you don't have the luxury of time at pre-seed stage.
[00:27:27] You need to know what to do right now. You need the, right now, you need to achieve a single KPIA single result, right? So right now, my result or my KPI is to understand who's my audience, usability? Who's my audience? Who's gonna stick? Who's gonna pay me? Yeah. This is what I need to know right now. Right? So these are the strategies later on.
[00:27:49] Yeah, there's plenty of other strategies. Growth hacking, by the way, is a world by itself. Yeah. And I love it. For one simple reason is because you always tend to try to think outside the box. I. In order to try. So you have like 10 outside the box ideas, and there's no one, one way that works for all. It's one idea that might work for you.
[00:28:12] Yeah. These, these,~ um, uh, ~that person jumping off the, jumping off the building, by the way, these words unprofessionally, you know, just you don't do it. ~Uh, ~so skydive. Yeah. If another startup does exactly the same thing, it might not work. It will not work. Yeah. But maybe it worked for these people because it was new.
[00:28:29] No one did it before. You know, there's a lot of factors into it. Yeah. So it doesn't mean replicating what worked will work for you too. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why you come up with like 10 different creative strategies,~ uh,~ outside the box ideas. Alright, let's try the first three now. That they don't work.
[00:28:46] Alright, great. Let's try the next three. But now we are at a stage where you have the luxury of, I wouldn't say a lot of time, but at least you know, you have revenue coming in, you know, things are running. Now you just need to figure out, you know, what would take me from,~ uh,~ the second place to 10 really quick, but is now, would now be then a good time to start introducing ~uh, ~ads.
[00:29:08] Yes. Yeah. Yes. That's, that's another good time. Start introducing employee. And I always tell people whenever you start with as start really small. Alright. Because even if you start with ads, you're always gonna have the assumptions. And, and when, when it comes to ads, it's no longer the assumption of your audience.
[00:29:25] Now it's the assumptions of your creatives. Yeah. Right. Are my creatives going,~ uh,~ doing well? Are they going to perform? I think they're gonna perform. You know, so start really? No, you, you just tapped into a whole new world, right? Creative. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think we have the time to, to,~ uh,~ to dig into this, to talk about creative.
[00:29:42] Yeah. But yeah. Man creatives is, is, is a. Totally different thing, totally different strategy. But start small, you know, have a couple of creatives, you know, on the table so you can test which one will work out. And you, you're always gonna have to have so many new creatives coming in. 'cause testing is so important.
[00:29:58] And startup is all about testing. Yeah. People think like. I have this great idea, I'm gonna launch it. I'm gonna become a millionaire. It doesn't work like that. Yeah. At all. You're gonna, you're gonna test and fail, test and fail. It's gonna, a lot of times it's be, it's a journey of testing. Yeah. It's a journey of testing.
[00:30:15] And the people that actually succeed, or the people that you know, know how to test really well, they, they know what to do when it comes to, you know, ~um, ~what do I do with these results? I. You know, that, you know, that came out of this,~ uh,~ test. Yeah, yeah. That, that, that know how to analyze and make use of, analyze and make use of it and all this stuff.
[00:30:35] Yeah. Data. So, yeah. It's not,~ uh,~ it's not an, it's not an easy thing, man. Yeah. First time founder day is a very hard journey. Very hard journey. ~Uh, ~very rewarding though, you know? Yeah. Once, once it, it cracks,~ uh,~ with you. Yeah. ~Uh, ~not, not, it's not a journey for everyone. Okay. A lot of people, they tend to give up way earlier than they should.
[00:30:56] ~Uh, ~but I understand them because it's just simply not, it's not for everyone. It's as simple as that. Good stuff. ~Uh, ~Ronia. ~Uh, ~how about we wrap up with where can people find you? Yeah. So, ~uh, ~obviously on, on LinkedIn, Ron Hush,~ uh,~ and,~ um,~ our community, I'm very, very active. It's not, I, it's not like I'm only founding this community and I'm trying to work on strategies behind the, the curtains.
[00:31:17] No, I'm, I'm very active with our community members. Yeah. So it's Founder Connects. Yeah. ~Um. ~The S is on connect. Yeah. A lot of people, they,~ uh,~ they make the mistake of,~ uh,~ calling it Founders Connect. Yeah, it makes sense. I just couldn't find the URL back then. Yeah. ~Uh, ~but yeah,~ uh,~ it's founder connects.com.
[00:31:33] ~Uh, ~and ~uh, ~definitely, you know, being part of the community, it's all about moving your needle at the end of the day. No one, no one. Don't get into, you know, places that,~ uh,~ guarantee success. Yeah. No one will be able to do this. I've seen a lot of these accelerators, by the way, especially these virtual ones.
[00:31:49] Yeah. ~Um, uh, ~I felt long time ago I felt, you know, for one of these virtual accelerators. Yeah. ~Uh, ~it was a very big one by the way, in the us It like when they felt it made news. Yeah. Alright. ~Uh, ~so don't get into,~ um,~ accelerators, communities, whatever you wanna call them. Alright. That guarantees success.
[00:32:05] Yeah. You know, we just try to move the needle for you. Cool. That's it. Good stuff. Thanks so much. Thank you Ron. And thanks for having me. I, it was great connecting with you after like decades. Yeah, exactly. Decades. 15 years. Yeah. Yeah. And it was great to see you. Good to see you too.
[00:32:21]