... used to waste way too much time looking for clever distribution tricks or viralloops, hoping I could skip the slow grind. But whenever I see a success story broken down the hack usually turns out to be pretty hands-on work personally onboarding users replying to feedback and actually writing good content. Sometimes calling basic consistent marketing a growth hack makes it sound like there's some secret shortcut to traction. curious if anyone here has seen a tactic ... ... Marketing asks: Who is the customer, why should they care, and how do we earn demand? Growth hacking asks: Which measurable bottleneck can we move next, and what experiment will tell us? But neither replaces the other. A clever

... first" is gone. The products winning today (Cursor, Lovable, Gamma) reduce the friction plus letting users edit AI outputs instead of building from scratch. A fundamentally different value proposition. So the question for builders is: Is classic PLG (freemium, viralloops, self-serve onboarding) still a viable strategy in 2026? Or has AI made it obsolete for most categories? And if you've launched a PLG product recently. What actually worked? Comment from Andrei Tudor(@andreitudor14): I believe PLG still ... ... only ever validate it iteratively over time by checking whether your product still truly matters to the audience you're building for. AI has massively shortened the cycle for re evaluating that fit, because markets, expectations, and

... deliver better ROI than paid search, which has become increasingly expensive and competitive. Trial Intelligence : We provide behavioral analytics you can't get from your own trial - comparative shopping patterns, feature prioritization across your category, and benchmarking against competitors. Think of us as a qualified pipeline channel, not a marketing expense. Q: How do you solve the cold start problem? Most marketplaces fail because they can't get critical mass on both sides. A: Our go-to-market strategy addresses ... ... launch creating immediate visibility to product-focused companies Demand side (Trial users): Building initial user base through our existing Willful Positivity community and professional network Offering premium trial terms (extended periods, enterprise features unlocked) only available through VeriTry Creating viral

... garage? Would Oasis have ever got back together? (Had to). Here s the video (it s still slowly picking up cross-platform). My background is head of social at ByteDance (TikTok, etc.), so I m an obsessive for a viralloop. You don t always need glossy videos to win attention, although it definitely helps in a video-driven-feed-world. High production doesn't always need to be the bar, just highly engineered to to platform algo ... ... micro startup team! Comment from Azvya Erstevan(@azvyae): Love this, Dan I m still pretty new to all this and just piecing together our first marketing framework, so I m not 100% sure how to think about