a founder paid us nothing and taught us our most expensive lesson (i will not promote)

a founder came to us wanting help marketing their product, blogs, tutorials, positioning. product was already in pilot, they just wanted our eyes on it so we dug in and it became pretty clear the marketing wasn’t the problem and they had one side of a marketplace built out but basically no demand on the other side. you can’t market your way out of “nobody’s actually looking for this yet” the thing they asked us to promote wasn’t the thing holding them back and we told them the honest version. mapped out wha