Just because we can measure it doesn’t mean it works.

I found a fascinating pattern while preparing for my talk last week at the CIC (Cambridge Innovation Center)/Venture Café Cambridge. 

I asked four AIs (Claude, Grok, ChatCPT, Gemini) to find me two measures on ways people find out about startups: 

1. How easy each channel is to measure 

2. How much each influences decision making

And this pattern showed up. The greater the influence on decision making, the harder that channel is to measure. And vice-versa. 

So many founders I've worked with spend so much time studying and maximizing results for channels that mostly have small effects on market traction. 

Good marketing is expanded word-of-mouth. 

The further we move from there, the smaller the influence of the message. We know it from our own lives. Are you more likely to check a brand you heard about from a friend? Or from a sponsored link on Google? 

Of course there are better and worse messages in every medium. The best ones work by generating word of mouth. The power of the message brings it from the screen to the personal. 

The brands that win are those that start with a core of enthusiasts and grow out from a strong center.