Doing What Doesn't Scale

How early stage founders can solve the cold start problem and find a growth strategy worth scaling

Every founder wants to find the right marketing channel and scale it fast. The problem is that scaling requires a pattern — and when you're early stage, you don't have one yet. You have a product nobody knows about, a website nobody is visiting, and a growth strategy that doesn't exist. That's the cold start problem. And the only way through it is to do things that don't scale.

This isn't a consolation prize. It's a strategy. The founders who grow fastest aren't the ones who identified the perfect channel on day one — they're the ones who ran smart experiments, learned quickly, and scaled what actually worked.

The cold start problem every early stage startup faces

Early stage founders are wired to recognize patterns so they can scale them. But you can't scale what doesn't exist yet. Before you have data, you have to generate it. Before you have a repeatable growth motion, you have to find one.

There are three things I recommend founders do simultaneously to get there:

• Study your competition and market to identify potential growth strategies
• Understand which go-to-market (GTM) motions make sense for your product
• Run growth experiments with the explicit goal of learning — not scaling

What your competition and market can tell you about growth strategy

Learn from your competitors — without copying them

If there's a product in market that you'll compete with for market share, look closely at what they're doing. This isn't about stealing — it's about finding a shortcut you can adapt and make your own.

Look at a competitor and ask: What marketing channels are they using? What does their LinkedIn company page reveal about their team structure? How is their website structured? What does the founder talk about publicly?

You'll find things they're doing well that you can match — and things they're not doing at all, like founder thought leadership, where you can set yourself apart.

Let the market tell you what not to do

Many founders skip this step, and it's one of the most expensive mistakes you can make. The market can tell you what doesn't work — so you don't waste time on strategies that will never fit.

Take healthcare. If you're selling an expensive product that involves sensitive data to busy executives with IT gatekeepers, you are not generating leads through Instagram. Knowing that early saves you months of wasted effort.

Understanding go-to-market motions for early stage startups

GTM motions are the coordinated strategies used to generate and grow revenue: marketing-led, sales-led, product-led, community-led, partner-led, and ecosystem-led.

Here's the mistake founders make: they pick one and try to scale it immediately. Instead, evaluate each motion against your actual market. The goal at this stage isn't to scale a motion. It's to identify which ones are worth experimenting with.

How to run growth experiments that actually teach you something

A growth experiment is an activity you try with the goal of learning — not scaling. That distinction matters.

One experiment I run regularly with early stage clients: lead magnet panel webinars. Find a topic that resonates with your target audience. Host a panel with industry experts your prospects would recognize. Build a target list of accounts you want as customers. Include a clear CTA. Nurture attendees with a follow-up newsletter.

What you'll learn: which topics resonate, what their main pain points are, and patterns among the people who raise their hand for a demo. If nobody shows up, that's not failure — that's data.

Five principles for doing what doesn't scale

You don't need a perfect strategy. You need a first one. The biggest trap is waiting to identify the ideal approach before doing anything.

Every experiment has a success condition — even if it fails. Define what you're trying to learn before you run the experiment.

Your competition already did some of this work for you. Study what's working in your market before you invent from scratch.

The market will tell you what not to do. Eliminating bad-fit channels early is just as valuable as finding the right ones.

Scaling comes after learning — never before. Do the unscalable work first. Then scale what you've proven.

The real cost of waiting for the perfect growth strategy

The founders I worry about most aren't the ones who try things and fail. They're the ones who get so caught up in identifying the perfect, most optimal strategy that they end up doing nothing at all.

Inaction is the most expensive growth strategy of all. You won't know exactly what to do. But you have to try something. Pick one experiment, run it with intention, and learn from what happens. Then do it again. That's how you find what scales.