LinkedIn Commenting Outperforms Original Posts
A new operator's playbook claims that commenting on others' LinkedIn posts can generate three times more inbound leads than publishing original content. The strategy involves consistently adding value to comment threads on posts already receiving high engagement. This builds visibility and credibility, often prompting prospective users to initiate contact directly.
- YC Partner Michael Seibel advises against scalable advertising for the first 10 customers, instead advocating for recruiting users you know who have the problem you are solving. He suggests charging customers from the beginning, not for revenue, but as a method to qualify their need; if a potential user is unwilling to pay anything, they may not be experiencing the problem intensely enough. - For finding users outside of your personal network, YC founders and partners recommend searching niche online communities where target users are already discussing their problems, such as specific subreddits, Discord or Slack groups, and industry forums. The key is to engage authentically and provide value before mentioning your product. - When conducting cold outreach, YC Group Partner Aaron Epstein advises writing emails as if you're talking to a friend and personalizing the content by researching the individual and their company. Successful founders suggest warming up email domains for 2-3 weeks before sending, avoiding URLs in the initial email to improve deliverability, and using tools like Hunter.io or Apollo.io to find correct email addresses. - YC Group Partner Gustaf Alströmer recommends that in initial user interviews, founders should not introduce their product idea until the end of the conversation, if at all. The primary role is to listen and ask open-ended follow-up questions to understand the user's problems deeply, which prevents biasing their answers. - YC Managing Director Dalton Caldwell states that for early-stage startups, focusing on growth hacking and analytics is a waste of time. Instead, founders should ignore what successful large companies are doing now and focus on what they did in their early days to get their first customers. - Rather than just a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), YC General Partner Ankit Gupta suggests building a "Minimum Evolvable Product"—one designed to adapt quickly based on feedback from the first handful of users. These early adopters will steer the product's evolution. - A structured approach for discovery calls involves starting with a "menu of pain," where you present the top three pain points your target users typically face. This allows the potential user to select their biggest challenge, establishing your credibility and getting to the root of their problem faster than open-ended questions. - User research expert Mellinger, who has worked with early-stage founders, advocates for a "mini research sprint" approach, starting with just 5-6 people. This helps avoid conflicting feedback from interviewing too many different types of people with disparate needs.
