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Atticus Li

Marketing for developers · Free field guide

You Built the Product.
Now Find Users Who Pay.

You do not need to become a full time marketer. You need the next useful move between code and revenue.

Start before you build →Pick your current problem ↓

Before the code

Validate before you build

A compliment is not demand. A payment is.

Turn an idea into an offer one real customer can accept this week.

Do this next

  1. Write the outcome you will deliver. Leave the feature list out of it.
  2. Offer to do the work manually for ten people who already have the problem.
  3. Build software only after payment or repeated customer behavior gives you evidence.
From Services to SaaS

How a paid manual service produced evidence before Jobsolv became software.

Build What You Use

Why using your own product can shorten the learning loop without replacing research.

Before scale

Find the first people who care

Posting everywhere is not distribution.

Choose one group, one painful moment, and one place where both already exist.

Do this next

  1. Name the user narrowly enough that you can list twenty of them.
  2. Spend one week in the community, search result, or workflow where they seek help.
  3. Help five people personally and write down the words they use for the problem.
Jobsolv at 35K Users

What a zero current ad spend snapshot really says about organic distribution.

How Marc Lou Built a Distribution Loop

A sourced field note on products that helped distribute the next product.

Before more traffic

Turn interest into payment

Traffic cannot rescue a confusing offer.

Make the problem, promise, proof, and next step obvious on one screen.

Do this next

  1. Open with the painful job your user wants finished, not your product category.
  2. Show the cost of leaving the problem alone and the proof you can honestly defend.
  3. Ask for the purchase, trial, or conversation before adding another page section.
The CTA Diagnostic Most Teams Ignore

Separate attention from intent so clicks do not masquerade as demand.

How Many Calls to Action Is Too Many?

A practical way to decide which first screen actions help and which compete.

After the first win

Build distribution that keeps working

A launch is an event. It is not a growth system.

Repeat one useful acquisition loop until you understand why it works.

Do this next

  1. Pick one channel that matches how your buyer already discovers products.
  2. Record which message, source, and action produced each qualified user.
  3. Repeat the useful work weekly before you automate it or add another channel.
The Solo Founder's Playbook

A weekly operating cadence for founders with limited time, traffic, and budget.

How Postiz Turned Open Source Into Distribution

A sourced field note on connecting a product, a community, and paying customers.

Why I wrote this

I learned marketing because building was not enough.

Before Jobsolv became software, I sold the outcome as a manual service. That first cohort produced about $58K in founder reported revenue. The software later reached 35,000 users. Different stages, different evidence, same lesson: revenue starts with a real problem and a real person.

About Atticus and the evidence →