Steve Jobs during the 'Think Different' campaign launch (1997).
Menlo and its products & research are getting 200,000+ views each month. Jan, the desktop app for using AI, gets an average of 7K downloads daily. We gather 200+ people in-person in Singapore each month, and 150+ people join our community each week. And we've never spent a penny on marketing.
Whenever I talk about high‑level marketing, I quote Steve Jobs: "Marketing is about values."
From both an anthropological and a business perspective, it's correct and he also admitted that it's a complicated, noisy world. So everyone has an opinion on marketing and loves to give advice, yet one truth remains: there's no single winning formula for every business. And so it goes with marketing formulas. Each one works until it doesn't, and then everyone pretends they never believed in it anyway.
In our handbook, I lay out how we at Menlo approach the craft. I believe every startup starts with founding-marketing approach, but as it grows, it needs solid marketing hygiene.
Marketing hygiene begins with purpose, the fundamental reason behind every activity. Next comes a framework, the blueprint that organizes those efforts. Only then should we dive into the details: what to do, how to do it, and how to delegate it. Most conversations jump straight to tactics and plans, but those are secondary.
It's worth noting that I'm skipping the purpose section here. Purpose is ultimately about the future you want to create, how your work will change a specific arena in ways people value.
I believe marketing looks like art, but it must be managed like math. Much like the Bistromathics that power improbability drives, our marketing runs on the equally improbable principle that quality content actually matters more than how many times you interrupt someone's cat video.
So this Big Yes list drives Menlo's marketing:
- Growing together with others
- Playing our game in the highest level
- Listening selectively
- Adding value to what we're working on
- Repurposing content
- Being opinionated about the differentiation and why we're doing
- Understanding the technical aspects at a level that explains a child
- Being aware of the target audience and the messaging
and of course the Big No's:
- Throwing out marketing activities to see what sticks
- Burning money at Ads
- Random posts
- Copying what others do
- Actions without planning or goals
- Prioritizing paid activities over organic
- Jumping on hypes over strategy
See our marketing approach in the marketing piece in our handbook.
I believe Menlo is handled the first section of the growing phase, building 0 to 1, what I call founding marketing. It's time to play a bigger game.