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growthperclickHacker Playbooks.

Niche · Before · After

Community, then product

Gather people around a scene. Listen for the software they still duct-tape. The community is the moat; the product is how you charge for a job the scene repeats.

Communities give you language, distribution, and a reason to exist between launches. Products without a scene have to buy every visitor.

How to run it

  1. 01Host a room (newsletter, Discord, salon) with a sharp who and a sharp why.
  2. 02Be useful for months before a SKU.
  3. 03When a workflow is mentioned weekly, offer to own it.
  4. 04Keep the community valuable even for people who never buy.

In the wild

Indie Hackers was a media/community that became a company. Late Checkout studies scenes, then spins products. Small Bets is the community as the product.

Used by · 3

Arvid Kahl

@arvidkahl

Embedded · audience-first

Audience-first SaaS inside a community you already belong to

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

Small bets · audience

Leaving the big-company script for a portfolio of small, public bets

Greg Isenberg

@gregisenberg

Scene-first · community

Spotting scenes early and building community-led products inside them