Here is, without order or structure, a list of topics that I want to talk about in the book. It includes topics I myself find interesting, topics that other founders talk about, and suggestions from within my community.

Do you have any ideas and themes I should talk about? Let me know!

If you find something you find PARTICULARLY interesting among the following items, please tell me about that, too!

Here is what I plan to have in the book:

• The difference between personal audiences and product audiences (and how to build either) — Thanks for the suggestion, Andrea.
• How can you build a micro-community around the problem your solution solves? What are the benefits of such a community? — Thanks for the suggestion, Stephen.
• A ‘roadmap‘ for building audience-first(Audience extraction -> Community Building -> List building -> Building product, etc) — Thanks, Alex.
• How important is it to be Customer Zero for your own product? Do you have to? Might it work without that? — Thanks for the suggestion, Raj.
• The difference between Audience-First and Product-First, with benefits and drawbacks.
• Why “audience-first” is not just “building an audience”.
  • The many kinds of audiences you’ll encounter when building a business (and how to approach them).
• Defining the term “audience” for bootstrappers.
  • What’s the difference between Market, Audience, Consumer, Customer, User, Following, Fans?
  • Why is there so much confusion about the term?
• How funding and your choice of audience are related.
• How to analyze an audience.
  • Following demand, validating demonstrated demand (and what looks like demand, but isn’t).
  • Observing a market and it’s constituents without prejudice.
  • Where to find domain experts.
  • Preventing analysis paralysis.
• The best audience is a niche audience.
  • What makes niches special?
  • Is there a risk in niching down too much? Or too little?
  • Should you stay in the niche forever? Or move beyond it? When?
• The best niche audience is a tribe.
  • How to establish yourself as part of a tribe?
  • How to communicate to tribes. (And how NOT to)
• A Guide: Pragmatic steps to find your audience
  • Awareness: Finding potential audiences that you can relate to
  • Affinity: Examining which potential audiences you deeply care about
  • Opportunity: Scouting for interesting problems in your potential audiences
  • Appreciation: See which potential audiences are willing and able to buy solutions to their problems
    • Budget and willingness to pay: how can those be measured? How to we detect purchasing agency? — Thanks for the suggestion, Brendan.
  • Size: Figure out if the potential audience is big (and small) enough for a business
• Building an audience from within a community
  • Why should I want to become a domain expert?
  • How can I build reputation within my community?
  • How to listen to an audience, and what to listen for. How to discern insights? — Thanks for the suggestion, Justin.
• The tools and strategies of audience-building.
  • Landing pages, customer exploration, content marketing, community projects: what works, what doesn’t, and why.
  • Why you can’t avoid becoming a subject matter expert.
  • How do people build a following for themselves, their business, and their services?
  • Why “getting out of the house” matters. — Thanks for the suggestion, Vance.
• What to do when you went product-first and want to turn your business into an audience-first biz?
  • Salvaging a product that no one wants to pay for.
  • Salvaging an audience that doesn’t respond to your offer.
• What happens when audiences change over time?
  • How do you react?
  • How do you detect that?
  • How and when to break up with an audience? — Thanks for suggestion, Justin.
• Finding critical problems within an audience, both at a glance and in depth. Thanks S.Shravan for the suggestion.
  • What to give away and what to charge for? — Thanks for the suggestion, Justin.
• Micro-SaaS audiences and what makes them different from other audiences. + Case Studies (thanks, Alex)
• Lots of case studies. (Who should I talk to here? Who has done audience-first really well? Who did it fail for? Let me know if you know someone with an amazing story. )
• How to find and learn the voice of your audience.
• How to do multiple audience analyses, which criteria to select one from — Thanks for the suggestion, Alex.
• How to automate audience acquisition, and when should you not do it. Tips and examples for well-known marketing channels reddit, twitter, etc., with growth recommendations from influencers and examples: how they have done it (people with audience) — Thanks for the suggestion, Inanc!
• The different ways in which conversations can develop an idea: supporting, challenging, side-tracking, alternate viewpoints, checking, refining, etc — Thanks, Gregory
• How to interview people to get to the struggle that they have, which is the essence of the problem that business is about to solve? — Thanks, Bane
• How to lead with courage and deal with overwhelm when building an audience, especially as an outsider? How can I come from the space of vulnerability, authenticity, to connect with my audience? — Thanks, Deepanker
• How to reach out to audiences who don’t have a watering hole or other established places to hang out online. — Thanks, Paolo

Comments? Ideas? Complaints? Examples? Put them here: