Classic Audience First Companies

What not to do:
Build software, then find the community

What to do:
Start with the community, then build software

That small shift in mindset, is critical to product/community fit

— GREG ISENBERG (@gregisenberg) May 29, 2020

Two classic examples would be Nike and Apple

Steve Jobs got this very well. In his talk at Apple when announcing a new advertisement to the company, he stated the following.

One of the greatest jobs of marketing that the universe has ever seen is Nike. Remember, Nike sells a commodity. They sell shoes! And yet, when you think of Nike, you feel something different than a shoe company. In their ads, as you know, they don’t ever talk about the product. They don’t ever tell you about their air soles, and why they are better than Reebok’s air soles. What does Nike do in their advertising? They honor great athletes, and they honor great athletics. That’s who they are. That’s who they are about.

Then on Apple:

“Our customers want to know who is Apple and what is it that we stand for. Where do we fit in this world?”
What we’re about isn’t making boxes for people to get their jobs done although we do that well. We do that better than almost anybody in some cases. But Apple is about something more than that. Apple at the core, its core value, is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better. That’s what we believe. And we have had the opportunity to work with people like that. We have had the opportunity to work with people like you with software developers, with customers, who have done it in some big and some small ways. And we believe that, in this world, people can change it for the better. Those people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are ones that actually do.