How to execute your idea with the "Audience, Community, Product" funnel

You have an idea for a product. What should you do next?

So many founders (including me) go under the assumption that, after finding a good startup idea, you should:

1. Build the product (either the full product or an MVP)

2. Figure out a way to market that product

Greg Isenberg is a person who builds internet businesses. In fact, he built over 6 businesses that make him over $100 million a year.

The question I set to answer is: How did he start building all of those businesses? How did he validate the ideas?

Which led to me to the ACP framework that Greg invented for building, validating, and finding traction for your ideas (btw, I found it interesting that a lot of people on IH talked about Greg, but almost nobody mentioned his framework, which has been pivotal to his success).

You'll fail because you have 0 distribution

Peter Thiel, one of the world's most popular startup investors, famously said:

“Most businesses get zero distribution channels to work: poor sales rather than bad product is the most common cause of failure. If you can get just one distribution channel to work, you have a great business. If you try for several but don’t nail one, you’re finished.”

Greg's ACP framework starts with distribution in mind. "A" stands for Audience (so distribution is the first part of the process), "C" stands for community and "P" stands for "product":

Examples of the ACP Framework in Action

In the ACP framework, instead of building a product that you sell first, you begin with a social account in order to build the audience.

The reason: Distribution is (generally) harder than building a product.

Examples: One of Greg's product's is a design studio called "Design Scientist".

Design Scientist did $1 million in revenue and $450k in profit in 2023.

The way Greg started with Design Scientist is by building a Twitter/X account:

This account was tweeting posts around design inspiration. This is how they started building their audience and followers.

Greg also built another agency called The Boring Marketer. Greg also used the same framework (ACP) to build the business, starting with creating a Twitter/X account:

The account was tweeting "boring" marketing advice.

Notice a pattern: These social accounts are "controversial."

• Most designers look at design as an art. The Design Scientist does the opposite.

• Most marketers are trying to come up with the latest and greatest "growth hack." The boring marketer does the opposite.

Greg does this on purpose:

We look at what other accounts in the space are doing.

And try to do the opposite. The opposite is an important point because you're trying to create "scroll stopping" content. If it looks like everything else, they'll keep scrolling.

At this stage, Greg is trying to focus on only 1 platform. "Multiple platforms at this stage is a distraction," according to Greg.

How much to grow before starting to build a community?

Greg waits "until we get to 10,000 followers before we usually build anything."

According to Greg, in B2B, if you have 10,000 followers, you're the Mr. Beast of your category. Your growth depends on 2 things:

• What you post

• Your posting frequency (every day, every 2nd day, etc.)

• How you grow your social account (Greg recommends replying to popular accounts to get started)

After you build your audience to a certain size, you transition to the second part of the ACP framework: Community.

How to Create a Community from Your Social Media Audience

Greg defines a "community" in a different way than most founders do.

The whole point of a community is to have one-on-one conversations with people so that you can learn about their pain points, which may inspire you to build something.

With "Design Scientist," Greg started promoting a free course on the X profile:

With "The Boring Marketer", Greg started offering a free, 7-day course on AI-assisted SEO:

You can see the links to these courses in the bios of the corresponding X profiles.

Greg also thinks that "challenges" are a great way to build a community. Something like: "90-day keto challenge". That's 90 days to get in touch with your users and ask how they're going.

Challenges are also a great match for a community. You get users email to send the challenges and you invite them to a community so they can get accountability/interact with people so they increase the chances they'll complete the challenge.

Offer products and services to your community

People started to like you because you post cool content on your social media account.

People also started to trust you because you gave them a free, valuable resource.

Now's the time to pitch your product/service.

When it comes to products, Greg spends no more than 30 days developing a product.

Sometimes Greg partners with existing businesses for the first product. Sometimes he partners with a founder who has a great product but lacks an audience. All these approaches worked well for Greg.

After you offer a first product, you can offer a second adjacent product, which increases the lifetime value of the customer.

This is the basic framework from Greg Isenberg when it comes to building & launching a product, without distribution killing you before you even begin.