Dax Hamman | Hard Part First

3x founder. Sold Chango for $122M. Building Writing Hard Part First → Founders who know tech is commodity and distribution is the moat.

[Dax Hamman | Hard Part First @Daxfyi]

I've chased funds that were never a fit because they "seemed" interested. Every approach to the wrong room leaves a trace, and the traces become a story you didn't mean to tell. Gravity runs in both directions, and pointed carelessly it pulls against you.

[Dax Hamman | Hard Part First @Daxfyi]

Founders pour their energy into the deals in front of them and almost none into which room they get invited into next. The first is sales, the force you apply. The second is gravity, and gravity is the one that compounds while you sleep.

[Dax Hamman | Hard Part First @Daxfyi]

An investor wrote a cheque to https://t.co/pIrLIYv3HF after a single 25-minute call. Everyone assumes the deck does the work in a moment like that. It did almost nothing. Two people had been talking about us in rooms I wasn't in for months. That pull has a name, and it's gravity.

[Dax Hamman | Hard Part First @Daxfyi]

Gravity is the pull that brings deals to you before you ask. I ran one free session for someone who wasn't a client, no pitch, and months later it came back as half a dozen clients across a private equity portfolio. The session where I sold nothing closed the most.
https://t.co/eyBOOtZB59

[Dax Hamman | Hard Part First @Daxfyi]

There's a particular price zone where the buyer needs a moment to think. Too high for impulse, too low for procurement.

The booking is the first signal of intent. The 72 hours afterwards are where the deal actually gets made.

Most Founders treat the booking as the finish line. Meta is happy to keep selling them new ones.

[Dax Hamman | Hard Part First @Daxfyi]

A friend who'd run marketing for a Fortune 500 taught me a single question years ago.
"How would your existing customers describe what you do to a friend, a colleague, or a family member?"
I have never had a customer come back with the words I would have used. Not once.

[Dax Hamman | Hard Part First @Daxfyi]

Meta's algorithm is figuring out who responds to your ad.
That isn't the same as figuring out who your right customer is. If your creative is pitched at the wrong person, Meta will obediently find more of the wrong person.
Cheaply. At scale. Forever if you let it.

[Dax Hamman | Hard Part First @Daxfyi]

A Founder I spoke to last week was proud of his $89 cost per booked call.

I asked him his close rate on those bookings. He didn't know.

He'd been measuring the dashboard, not the business.

[Dax Hamman | Hard Part First @Daxfyi]

Conventional wisdom: hide the price in your ad to maximise clicks.

We put $2,750 a month directly in our Meta creative this month. Clicks dropped. Bookings got dramatically better.

The clicks we were losing were the ones we shouldn't have been paying for in the first place.

[Dax Hamman | Hard Part First @Daxfyi]

Two agencies, same week, same product, same ICP brief, clean pixels on both.

One came back with a very high cost per click and almost no bookings. The other came back at $210 a booking, the kind of pipeline that actually closes.

The variable wasn't Meta. Meta was doing exactly what Meta does in both.

[Dax Hamman | Hard Part First @Daxfyi]

https://t.co/FY0JYn4al3

[Dax Hamman | Hard Part First @Daxfyi]

Most founders build first and go looking for distribution. The ones who win find distribution first and shape the product to match. Or at minimum, they treat the two as a two-way conversation. That relationship is the whole game now.

[Dax Hamman | Hard Part First @Daxfyi]

Proactive distribution is what you build deliberately. Reactive distribution is what finds you organically. Both matter. The mistake is counting the reactive as a strategy and not building the proactive.

[Dax Hamman | Hard Part First @Daxfyi]

If your value proposition can't be understood in the time it takes someone to glance at a cold email on their phone, it's too complicated. That's the real messaging test. Not the boardroom. Not the pitch deck. One sentence on a phone screen.

[Dax Hamman | Hard Part First @Daxfyi]

Most companies test a distribution channel for 60 days, decide it's not working, and move on. The ones who win stay long enough to iterate. Distribution channels almost never work on the first try. The advantage goes to whoever stays long enough to learn.

[Dax Hamman | Hard Part First @Daxfyi]

At Chango we spent $3 million just to ship a basic platform. A founder today can do the same over a weekend. The building problem is solved. The distribution problem is wide open. Most founders haven't updated their ratio.

[Dax Hamman | Hard Part First @Daxfyi]

SO many people trying to give @elonmusk money for X ads, but have random policy violation alerts. Support sends standard notes saying to check policies. I only have $10k for this campaign, but $10k / campaign is still $10k to X.

[Dax Hamman | Hard Part First @Daxfyi]

Try blocking your mornings until 10am. Doesn't mean you aren't going to work on your business, just now take scheduled meetings. Change everything about my morning productivity. #snacktime #smallbusiness

[Dax Hamman | Hard Part First @Daxfyi]

I HATE the percentage of spend model for managing FB, Google, TikTok ads! It makes very little sense, and it is encourages agencies to give you bad advice in order to grow their own revenues! #snacktime #smallbusiness

[Dax Hamman | Hard Part First @Daxfyi]

"My google ads started great but then stopped working" is a common problem. It is likely your business HAS A VERY SMALL SET of keywords and keyphrases that are profitable, and if you add more, are not. Not all Ad accounts can scale! #snacktime #smallbusiness #marketing #ads