FILE 00 · THE FRAME · MARKETING SCIENCE FOR $0 → $1M
You love your startup. You haven't proven anybody else does.
Yet you're copying successful startups before yours is.
Best practices were written for companies that already made it. You're building one that's not there yet; the same medicine that keeps a grown company alive will kill a young one. This is the publication that says the part nobody else is willing to say out loud.
THE BASE RATE · 3 IN 4 VENTURE-BACKED COMPANIES NEVER RETURN A DOLLAR. MOST DIED OF SELF-INFLICTED MARKETING. WE PUBLISH THE AUTOPSIES.
LIVEVenture dollars poured into go-to-market before product-market fit, since you opened this page:$0▲est. · ≈8% of 2024 U.S. venture funding ($209B, KPMG Venture Pulse), annualized
Everyone in startup land worships “trust.” The peer-reviewed research says your earliest users are running on something far more combustible, and chasing the wrong thing can quietly kill you.
“Clicking sign-up on an unknown product isn't a purchase. It's a costume. It says: I'm the kind of person who's early.”
The era of marketing on gut instinct is over. What kills a young company isn't bad tactics; it's the cognitive and structural distortions that make a clear decision nearly impossible before you understand the science. This is the field manual.