Why things spread
Use this whenYou're about to publish something and can't say why anyone would pass it on.
People share what makes them feel seen, and good growth reuses its own output.
- connection
- loops over funnels
- five patterns
Growth isn't a funnel you pour into. It's a loop that feeds itself. And the creative that travels is the creative that says something true about the reader. Two ideas sit under everything downstream.
Engine 1 · connection
People share what makes them feel seen. A niche joke or an unspoken truth said out loud turns "them and me" into "us." The forward is automatic: "I have to send this to my team." Connection travels. Cleverness doesn't.
Engine 2 · loops over funnels
The best growth moves reinvest their own output. A giveaway's comments buy reach that finds new people who comment; a free tool's users generate the data for the next piece of content. Ask of every tactic: what does this produce that feeds the next turn?
Five patternsWhat the best growth teams share
Study the teams in §09 long enough and the same five patterns surface every time. Treat these as the design constraints for any campaign:
Make the product the marketing
A playable demo, a free tool, a live product test people can watch. The thing sells the thing.
Build characters and series, not ads
A recurring persona or format compounds; a one-off spot evaporates. People come back for the character.
Turn community into distribution
Certifications, clubs, ambassador armies, public Slacks - your best users become your sales team.
Make creative weird enough to share
Blank billboards, a wrecking ball, a coffee shop for one weekend. Strange gets screenshotted.
Pick a fight on purpose
A provocative position, a declared-dead category, a named rival. Loaded positioning makes people argue about you for free.
Do this first
- 01Take your last five posts or campaigns. For each one, write the sentence a reader would say about themselves after seeing it. If you can't write it, that piece was about you.
- 02Pick your biggest tactic and answer one question: what does it produce that feeds the next turn? If the answer is "nothing," it's a funnel.
- 03Score that tactic against the five patterns above. Ship one change this week that adds a missing pattern - usually "show the product" or "pick a fight."
If you'd rather not write the angle yourself:Positioning & messaging rewrite
Steal this · The share test
Before you publish, answer these. Any "no" means rewrite. 1. Who is the person sharing this, and what does sharing it say about them? 2. What exact sentence would they type above it? 3. Is there one specific detail only an insider would know? 4. Does the post feed the next one, or does it die on arrival? 5. Could a competitor post the same thing? If yes, it isn't yours.
You'll know it worked whenSomeone shares it with their own sentence on top, not just a repost.
Positioning & the wedge
Use this whenYour pitch could have a competitor's logo on it and still read fine.
Tactics only amplify positioning. Find the angle before you pick a channel.
- be the opposite
- declare the category dead
- hijack their audience
- take a position
- give it away
Tactics only amplify positioning. They can't create it. Before any campaign, find the wedge: the sharp, contrarian angle that makes distribution easy. Five reliable ways in.
01Do the opposite of what exhausts your audience
Find what tires people out in your category, then loudly be the opposite.
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Apple forced a macOS upgrade. Microsoft killed Windows 10 support. Same week. A "buy-once, own-forever" software company simply tweeted that it doesn't do that, and rode two billion-dollar reminders of why people hate subscriptions for free.
02Declare the old category dead
Instead of competing inside a category, end it.
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Torq published a downloadable "SOAR is Dead" manifesto - naming the legacy category their tool replaces - with branded merch. You're not a better X; you're the thing that comes after X.
03Hijack a competitor's audience directly
Neutralize their moat, buy their failure moments, and let positioning do the copywriting.
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- Kill their lock-in. A one-click "import from ChatGPT" button that moves history and memory over neutralizes a rival's strongest moat in a single feature.
- Buy their error messages. When code breaks, developers paste the error into Google - so bid ads on those exact searches. Spicier: bid on the errors your competitor's product throws.
- Two-word comparison ads. Search "Bolt AI," see "Lovable > Bolt." No copy, just positioning.
04Take a deliberately provocative position
A stance loaded enough that people fight about it does your reach for you.
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This is the sharpest knife in the drawer. Study it, deploy it carefully, and never on sensitive ground (§10). The point isn't to offend; it's to be un-ignorable about something you can defend.
05Give away what you could charge for
The cheapest growth for a bootstrapped company: hand over a premium tool or your internal data for free.
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It builds trust, generates content, and pulls in an audience without ad spend. Free tools become the top of a loop, not a cost center.
Do this first
- 01Write down the one thing that exhausts people in your category - the pricing model, the onboarding, the jargon. That sentence is your first wedge candidate.
- 02Run all five wedges against your product in 30 minutes. One line each. Keep the two you could defend in public without flinching.
- 03Publish the winner as a single post before you build anything around it. If nobody argues or forwards it, the wedge isn't sharp yet.
I also rewrite the angle, the hero and the About page in a week:Positioning & messaging rewrite
Steal this · Wedge statement
Fill this in. One sentence each, no adjectives. Everyone in [category] assumes: ______________ We think that's wrong because: ______________ So we do this instead: ______________ Which means [buyer] finally gets: ______________ The people who won't like this: ______________ Test: read the last line out loud. If nobody would object, the wedge is too safe.
You'll know it worked whenA stranger repeats your angle back to you after one read - and somebody disagrees with it.
Part of:Grow a company LinkedIn page,Launch a product (or Product Hunt),Fix positioning that sounds like everyone else,Outbound that actually gets replies