🌱 What’s the Most Effective $0 Marketing Strategy?


This week’s Founder Finds includes:

🔥 A directory of tiny teams
🌱 How to do $0 marketing
🔍 An SEO Chrome extension
🧠 Shopify’s internal memo on AI
🛡️ How to make your product defensible
➡️ And more…



🪶 Remember This

Your ‘not-to-do’ list should be longer than your to-do list.



🤓 Fav Finds

Tools, tweets and more from Trends Pro Members


🔍 Detailed shared by Elia Zane
An SEO extension for Chrome


🔥 Tiny Teams shared by Elie Steinbock
A directory of tech companies with small teams


🧠 Shopify AI Memo shared by Kevin Galang
An internal memo on how Shopify is embracing AI



🏆 Trends Pro Member Wins

📚 Darren Travel is relaunching MicroChapters


🥈 Elie Steinbock ranked 2nd worldwide on Github Trending with Inbox Zero


👨‍💻 Nathan Sudds is hosting co-working meetups in Asunción


⚙️ Barun Pandey shared his ad creation workflow using GPT-4o


🤖 Eddie Forson’s article on DeepSeek v3 was published on Medium



🐦 Tweet of the Week



🛠️ Tools of the Week

🎞️ ​Gling.ai​ — Let AI edit your videos


⏱️ ​Rize​ — Maximize your productivity with AI


📊 Julius AI — Analyze your data with computational AI



🔧 Try This

What’s The Most Effective $0 Marketing Strategy?

Building your foundation for sustainable growth starts with your first 100 users:

  • Practice $0 marketing by finding where your ideal customers already hang out and engaging them directly without spending on paid ads.
  • Reach deep early on – even with just 10 customers, learning everything about them will teach you more than broad but shallow outreach.
  • Build your product around your most successful early users and let go of customers who aren’t the right fit, even if it means fewer users at the start.



💬 Join the Conversation

Here’s what Trends Pro Members are talking about…



❔ Ask Yourself

How Can You Defend Your Product When It’s Easily Cloneable?

To build a lasting moat when AI can clone your app in days, focus on advantages that take time to develop:

  • Focus on serving customers exceptionally well instead of obsessing over early moats – most successful startups built their moats after achieving product-market fit.
  • Find which moat fits your business – whether it’s network effects, platform integrations, data advantages or another moat that builds over time.
  • Track how competition changes as you grow – after proving the market exists, incumbents will be your main threat, not startups.



🍢 Trends Tribe

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Next meetup: May 19



The Most Popular Link From Last Week:
💻 Cursor Playbooks


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