Strategy guides

Go-to-market plans, channel scorecards and marketing on no budget, written for founders doing it alone.

8 guides

Strategy

Free Marketing Tools for Startups: The $0 Stack

A $0 marketing stack for solo founders covering research, content, email, social proof and analytics, plus a verified table of exactly where each free tier stops.

Aug 27, 202612 min read

A solo founder standing at a glowing amber planning wall running a single 90-day marketing plan laid out as a three-phase Gantt chart of horizontal amber bars labeled 1-30, 31-60, and 61-90 — foundation blocks and a rising article stack accumulating over the first phase, a review star, a testimonial card, and a backlink chain accumulating over the second, and a launch rocket lifting off a finished base over the third as a crowd of other founders arrives — with amber threads connecting the founder to that network of peers and feeding help into every phase, illustrating that a solo founder's quarter runs foundations first, then authority, then the launch spike, powered throughout by favors traded with other founders.

Strategy

90-Day Startup Marketing Plan: A Template for Founders

A 90-day startup marketing plan built for one person with no budget — a week-by-week schedule you can actually run, with every task linked to its full playbook.

Jul 30, 202611 min read

A solo founder standing at a glowing amber fork in the road deciding whether to run paid ads — on one side a coin-fed ad meter burning through a small budget into a crowd of strangers who scatter the moment the meter stops, with nothing left behind, and on the other side the same founder trading hours with a network of peers along amber threads that harden into permanent assets: a review card, a backlink, a testimonial, and a search listing that keeps standing after the spend ends — with a small decision-tree diagram floating between the two paths, illustrating that for a bootstrapped startup before product-market fit, rented attention resets to zero while traded effort compounds.

Strategy

Paid Ads for Bootstrapped Startups: Do They Work?

Do paid ads work for bootstrapped startups? Rarely before product-market fit. The auction math, the honest exceptions, and a decision tree to settle it.

Jul 29, 202610 min read

Strategy

Marketing Channels for Indie Hackers: The 2026 Scorecard

The full marketing-channel menu ranked for a one-person team — by effort, time-to-payoff, and whether it compounds. A scorecard, not another list of 7 tips.

Jul 24, 202611 min read

A solo founder standing at the center of four glowing amber lanes labeled Content, Community, Reciprocity, and Founder-as-product, connected by amber threads to a network of other founders — illustrating the four modes of founder-led marketing.

Strategy

Founder-Led Marketing Explained: A Guide for Solo Founders

Founder-led marketing is using your own voice and credibility as the channel. Here's the clean definition, the four modes, a maturity ladder, and how to do it with no personal brand.

Jun 23, 20269 min read

A solo founder choosing between two glowing paths — a compounding amber tree growing from content, reviews, and backlinks on one side, and a fading spark of paid ads and one-off posts on the other — connected by amber threads to other founders trading favors.

Strategy

SaaS Marketing on No Budget: The Honest Playbook

Marketing a SaaS on no budget isn't a money problem — it's a time problem. Here's which free channels compound, which evaporate, and how to turn effort into growth.

Jun 17, 202610 min read

Strategy

GTM Strategy for Solo Founders: A Go-To-Market Plan Built for One

Every go-to-market framework assumes a team, a budget, and an audience. Here's the version rewritten for solo founders with none of those — built around the one asset you actually have: other founders.

Jun 16, 202610 min read

A circle of diverse startup founders linked by glowing amber threads, representing the Favors.dev marketing co-op where founders trade verified marketing favors to launch their SaaS.

Strategy

Introducing Favors.dev: The Founder Marketing Co-op Where Favors Launch Your SaaS

Why SaaS launch marketing fails for solo founders — and how trading verified marketing favors with other founders (shares, feedback, testimonials, backlinks) becomes a repeatable channel for early users.

Jun 12, 202611 min read