Just evil enough: Subversive marketing strategies for startups | Alistair Croll (author, advisor, entrepreneur)
Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career
Lenny Rachitsky
5 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 3 November 2024
⏱️ 75 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Alistair Croll is the co-author of the best-selling book Lean Analytics and a longtime product manager, entrepreneur, and startup advisor. He was also instrumental in my starting a company, funding it, and helping us exit to Airbnb as part of his Year One Labs incubator. He’s chaired notable events such as O’Reilly’s Strata and UBM’s Cloud Connect and founded FWD50. In our conversation, we focus on lessons from an upcoming book by Alistair and his co-author, Emily Ross, Just Evil Enough, which is set for release in late 2024. We cover:
• The importance of subversive marketing strategies in most startups’ growth
• 11 specific subversive tactics that successful companies have used
• Examples of companies like Netflix, Airbnb, and Tesla that used clever tactics early on
• A framework for scanning your market for opportunities
• The importance of finding your “zero-day marketing exploit”
• How to apply these tactics ethically without actually being evil
• Much more
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Find the transcript and show notes at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/just-evil-enough-alistair-croll
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Where to find Alistair Croll:
• X: https://x.com/acroll
• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@alistairish
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alistaircroll/
• Website: https://justevilenough.com/
• Substack: https://acroll.substack.com/
• Just Evil Enough on X: https://x.com/evilenough
• Just Evil Enough on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/just-evil-enough/
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Where to find Lenny:
• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
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In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Alistair’s background
(02:00) The story behind Alistair and Emily’s book Just Evil Enough
(06:17) Examples of subversive tactics
(07:43) The importance of unfair advantage
(10:36) The origin of the title “Just Evil Enough”
(14:24) System awareness and novelty
(19:16) How to use this thinking successfully
(22:37) Normalizing disagreeable thinking
(25:49) Recon canvas and market scanning
(32:43) 11 tactics for subversive marketing
(57:01) Implementing subversive strategies
(01:05:01) Ethical considerations in marketing
(01:08:19) Lightning round
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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.
Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | People overlook this often. Sometimes people are not buying your product because it's only half of the solution. |
| 0:04.6 | David Ricketts, who's a Harvard professor of innovation, uses the example of mac and cheese. |
| 0:08.9 | Kraft, macaroni and cheese dinner. So Kraft had figured out powdered cheese to support the war effort, |
| 0:13.6 | but you can't really sell powdered cheese on its own. And then they found the sales guy who was putting the powdered cheese and a box of macaroni together with an elastic, literally combining |
| 0:21.4 | them and now you'd buy it because it was ready to make dinner. I think a lot of us don't look at our |
| 0:25.1 | product and say, how is it being used? Today, my guest is Alistair Kroll. Alistair is the author |
| 0:34.6 | of Lean Analytics, which was one of the most influential early books on |
| 0:38.3 | how to use data and helping you build your startup. He's also a multi-time founder, |
| 0:42.6 | runs conferences all over the world on data, AI, and technology, and government. And most |
| 0:47.7 | importantly to me, convinced me to leave a nice cushy job to start a company over a decade ago, |
| 0:55.5 | then help me build that startup and eventually sell it to Airbnb, and in many ways was one of the most central figures |
| 1:00.0 | in my life that led me to doing what I do now. And lucky for us, Alistair is about to release |
| 1:05.7 | a new book that I am very excited about. It's called Just Evil Enough. And essentially, it's a study of loopholes and how to get people to pay attention to what |
| 1:15.7 | you've built, which increasingly is the hardest part of launching a startup. |
| 1:20.9 | Alistair shares 11 specific strategies for finding subversive ideas to get your ideas out, |
| 1:26.2 | how to shift your mindset to think more |
| 1:28.3 | subversively, why it's so essential for startups and founders to think this way these days, |
| 1:33.5 | plus dozens of examples and stories that make this advice very real. This episode is for anyone |
| 1:39.7 | having trouble getting anyone to pay attention to your product, or anyone thinking about starting |
| 1:44.4 | a company to get your mind starting to think this way. |
| 1:47.5 | If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting |
| 1:50.9 | app or YouTube. |
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