It is becoming clear to me from Martin's success and peter levels success and the success of Tom Francis that it is very advantageous to have a following of people who will be interested in your products when you release them. They will be your first customers, they will form the crucial early community, and they will tell their friends and help create virality.

How to get your initial customers

2015.11.20 - NYT - Shares of Square Soar by 45% After Public Offering
- At Square, the company can still count on loyal merchants. When Mr. Dorsey was releasing the credit card reader in 2009, he passed a woman named Cheri Mims every morning while she sold flowers outdoors near his apartment. She became Square’s first merchant.
  “His vibe felt genuine,” Ms. Mims said in an interview

Misc articles / videos / discussions

Google - Google Ads YouTube Channel(explains how to use their services)
2008.08.11 - WSJ - The Business of Politics
- San Francisco entrepreneurs Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky are ardent supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. They've attended his rallies and have an Obama '08 poster hanging in the hallway of their apartment, and Mr. Chesky has donated to the campaign. But when running their start-up, AirBed & Breakfast Inc. -- a Web site that helps travelers find locals willing to rent them a spare bed -- they keep mum about their politics. In fact, they've approached both presidential campaigns in hopes they will promote their site to supporters trekking to the national party conventions.
2008.10.22 - CodingHorror - The One Thing Every Software Engineer Should Know
- "One particular theme of Steve's experience at Google and Amazon kept coming up time and time again: 'If there was one thing I could teach every engineer, it would be how to market.'"
2009.01.27 - Travis Kalanick - Twitter LeadGen and the coming wave of @reply SPAM
- Great idea here...
2014.08.27 - Tapdaq Blog - How To Top The App Store Charts With No Marketing Budget

- 3. The Queue Jumper - The most famous example of this was Mailbox, which registered 1.25 million people to their waiting list within 3 weeks of launch. For almost a month, I remember my Twitter feed being filled with users sharing their queue position as they eagerly awaited full access to Mailbox. Why was this happening? Well, Mailbox cashed in on their huge waiting list, allowing users to jump up the queue if they shared the app to their social networks. This viral loop worked, and on March 15th 2013, Dropbox acquired Mailbox for $100 million. [Nathan - brilliant idea]
2014.09.06 - MySocialSherpa - The Ultimate Retaliation: Pranking my roommate with targeted Facebook ads
2014.12.01 - HackTheSystem - How I Created My First Online Business
2015.02.01 - TechCrunch - The SaaS Adventure (to a billion-dollar valuation): Triple (revenue), triple, double, double, double
2016.11.15 - TechCrunch - This is why Snapchat didn’t give Spectacles to techies

How to Target Facebook Ads Based on Email Address & Phone Number (Custom Audience)
- I'm thinking a good tactic might be to use a fake CL ad to get a list of email addresses, and then use Google / Facebook ads to to heavily target those people who respond to the CL ad. That may be more persuasive than calling them.

Restaurants should make more use of their bathrooms as a way to capture potential customers. I went into one restaurant because I needed to use the toilet, but the food smelled so good and the bathroom tiles were so nice that I thought "This is a place I should check out".