johann - to be liked or to win?

Author

johann sathianathen
June 22, 2025

I bootstrap companies. No boss, no investors, no money to burn.

Just my own money, focused on early profitability.

I have to think outside the box for growth.

Here’s something I did this week

Reddit $0 Marketing

Free Marketing 🙂 

I’d never spend $16k on a video

I just needed to stand out and drive traffic to my new SaaS, Outbrand.

Which it did→

  • 316 website visitors

  • 82 sign-ups(At our current conversion, that’s +$1,500 in MRR)

It also pissed some people off. (Guess they were mad they got click-baited)

But like Marc Andreessen says →

“Do you want to be liked, or do you want to win?”

I choose to win, every time.

If you’re building something → stop thinking what people will like.

We live in the attention economy, with shorter attention spans than ever.

You have to hook your target audience and earn their focus.

Then, find ways to drive that focus where you want it.

$0 Growth Playbook (Social Media Version)

Every company I start, I think of this:

  1. Who is my target audience?

    If you don’t know this, you’re playing to lose

  2. What social platforms are they on?

    Everyone’s online, but where does your target audience spend most time?

  3. What type of content stands out?

    You have to engage your audience. Earn their attention, then funnel it to your business.


Here’s the Guatemala office - then off to New York next week to speak at a conference. Sharing more about that later.

Just keep shipping

Thanks for reading this.

Seriously, if you got this far it means a lot.

Makes me happy I didn’t waste time writing this with bad posture on a couch.

Send a reply and let me know anything - I read & reply to every one.

→ Johann Sathianathen

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