marketing Archives - Startup Economist

Fixing Startups’ TAM/SAM/SOM: Why Your Market Slide Sucks

Wednesday, 08 October 2025 by Paul O'Brien

Every pitch deck has it. Every investor rolls their eyes at it. It’s that pastel-colored inverted pyramid labeled TAM, SAM, SOM, stuffed with fake numbers you copied from a McKinsey PDF you didn’t read. If your “market slide” claims your startup is chasing a $300 billion opportunity, congratulations, you just told investors you don’t know

Published in Insights / Research, Startups

14 Comments

How Marketing Got Rewritten by the Ignorant and Why Startups are Paying the Price

Monday, 29 September 2025 by Paul O'Brien

Having sat through a few events and cohort launches this past week, I keep hearing people refer to Marketing as Advertising and Promotion. A little history explains how we got into this mess and why advertising and promotion are merely two things you might do when marketing determines that you should and how. Go back

customer discovery customers growth leads marketing sales

Published in Advertising, Insights / Research, Startups

26 Comments

Using Event Sites and Social Media to Grow Attendance and Registration

Monday, 08 September 2025 by Paul O'Brien

You’re hosting a startup event coming up, maybe a Founder Institute session or a local startup pitch night. You know it matters, you know it should be crowded, and you’ve sent out the obligatory newsletter to your mailing list. And now? Crickets. Here’s the reality of how the internet works: your audience didn’t even see

event marketing events marketing promotion startup events

Published in Social Media, Startup Ecosystems

6 Comments

Why and How a Venture Determines It Is “Uniquely Better”

Thursday, 14 August 2025 by Paul O'Brien

In business strategy and marketing, “Uniquely Better” is more than a slogan, it’s the distillation of why a venture deserves to exist. The term sits alongside other well-known ideas such as competitive advantage, differentiation, and “moat,” but with a crucial twist: it forces you to define why customers should choose you over all other options.

competitive advantage distinction marketing moat product sales unique

Published in Insights / Research, Startups

7 Comments

Why Startups and Cities Fail Without a Clear Narrative: ACES for Ventures and Ecosystems

Wednesday, 06 August 2025 by Paul O'Brien

Most of you don’t fail because they lack a great product, brilliant founders, or access to capital. You fail because you haven’t worked out how to tell your story. You fail because your narrative doesn’t build trust, urgency, or credibility; three things that must happen before you ever get to the sale. This isn’t just

economic development ecosystems marketing narrative storytelling validation

Published in Startup Ecosystems, Startups

15 Comments

Why Nobody Understands Startup Growth

Wednesday, 30 July 2025 by Paul O'Brien

Startups don’t grow like businesses. Not in the traditional sense. They don’t scale by adding headcount, expanding inventory, or renting more retail space. They grow by discovering, and then systematically proving, a revenue-generating system that works before it collapses. And yet, here we are, in 2025, with startup advisors, development organizations, investors, and even policymakers

flywheel growth marketing sales

Published in Insights / Research, Startup Ecosystems, Startups

34 Comments

Solutions to Overcome Ignorance

Monday, 28 July 2025 by Paul O'Brien

Startup Funding Isn’t Broken, It’s Behind Ready for a spicy topic likely to frustrate some friends in my criticism of good intentions? Let’s begin with a blunt but necessary truth: venture capital isn’t broken, most of it just doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing. The problem isn’t capital. It’s experience. And the startup ecosystem,

entrepreneurship funding marketing startups validation

Published in Startups

27 Comments