Almost every startup I’ve worked with made this same mistake

I’ve spent the last 9 years working on growth and community for AI, SaaS, and Web3 startups. Big ones, tiny ones, funded ones, scrappy ones

Here’s the pattern nobody liked admitting:
Most startups launched into a void... yep, no community, no audience, no pull

This loop shows up almost every time
- Teams build in private for 12 to 24 months
- Launch to silence
- Blame marketing, or realize it's necessary
- Hire a junior social media person
- Post content nobody asked for
- Burn 6 more months
- Run out of runway

By the time most founders think about growth, it’s already too late to fix cheaply...

The few teams that avoid this mess do some very unsexy things early:
- Adopt founder-led-growth; one of the founders becomes the face of the product on socials and in events
- Treat early users like distribution, not feedback machines... Every early user is asked to introduce 2–3 other people. They design referrals, invites, or waitlists into the product from day one
- Obsess over narrative and story before features
- Build community before product-market fit, not after. Slack/Discord/Telegram with 30–100 early users, weekly calls, public roadmap, feedback in the open, no pretending everything is polished
- Control sentiment during launches instead of reacting to it... Teasers, early supporters lined up, coordinated posts, DMs to warm leads, pre-commitments for testimonials, and upvotes

All this is operationally annoying and unglamorous

Anyway..... curious if other founders here have noticed the same pattern or if I’ve just had unusually bad luck with startups