STOP Building Your Audience (Do THIS Instead)

Why It Matters

Founders should reallocate scarce time from broad social growth to cultivating a targeted network that yields faster feedback, sales, and promotional leverage — improving product-market fit and go-to-market efficiency. Pursuing follower counts risks wasted effort and false productivity compared with relationship-driven customer acquisition.

Summary

Founder Rob argues that obsessively building a large public audience is often a costly distraction — the “curse of the audience” — because many followers won’t be target customers and won’t convert. Instead, he recommends deliberately building a network of industry-specific contacts who can provide candid feedback, early customers, and influencer amplification. He illustrates how a focused network helped his startup Drip find product-market fit and how founders should prioritize direct marketing, sales, and product work over chasing social metrics. He concedes audiences can work for information products but says most B2B SaaS builders get far better returns from targeted networking and outreach.

Original Description

If you want to build an amazing SaaS product, building an audience is almost never the best use of your time. Rob shares what to do instead, giving practical tips on how to build a network and the benefits that it can provide your business.

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