I’m going to say something that might make a few “growth hackers” mad. Most of the SEO advice you read is garbage. It’s a colossal waste of time, money, and energy. I say this as someone who has been in the Silicon Valley trenches for over a decade, with two successful exits and over 200 angel investments in companies you’ve probably heard of, like Anthropic and Scale AI.
For six years, I was obsessed with SEO. I went down the rabbit hole, and I went deep. I read every blog, bought the courses, and hired the expensive consultants who promised first-page rankings. At my first startup, MovieLaLa, we chased Google’s algorithm like it was the only thing that mattered. We celebrated every time our domain authority ticked up a point. We were getting featured in tech blogs. On the surface, we were killing it.
But here’s the dirty secret about a lot of that early traffic: it was empty. It didn’t convert. We were attracting a lot of eyeballs, but not a lot of actual users who stuck around. We were a classic case of being busy but not productive. We were burning cash on content and ads to acquire users who would churn out a month later. It was a leaky bucket, and we were pouring money into it, all while patting ourselves on the back for our beautiful, upward-trending traffic graphs.
It took me a long time, and a lot of expensive mistakes, to realize that most SEO advice is focused on gaming an algorithm instead of building a real business. It’s about short-term tricks, not long-term value. It’s a sugar high, not sustainable growth.
So what’s the secret? It’s not a new keyword research tool or a magic backlink strategy. It’s something much more fundamental, something that gets lost in the noise of “hacks” and “tricks.”
It’s building a product and a brand that people genuinely love and want to share.
That’s it. When you focus on that, the SEO takes care of itself. People will link to you because you’re a valuable resource, not because you asked them to. They’ll search for your brand by name because they’ve heard good things from their friends. They’ll become your evangelists. That’s the kind of marketing you can’t buy.
The Playbook We Used to Achieve Profitability at RemoteTeam
My second startup, RemoteTeam, was on the verge of collapse. We had raised a seed round, built a product, and were burning through cash trying to acquire customers. Our cost per acquisition (CPA) was astronomical. We were paying hundreds of dollars to acquire a customer that was only paying us $50 a month. The math just didn't work. We were on the fast track to joining the startup graveyard.
We had a “come to Jesus” moment. We had to make a radical change, and fast. We decided to do something that scared the hell out of us: we stopped all of our paid marketing. Every single dollar. We shut down the Google Ads, the Facebook campaigns, everything. Our investors thought we were insane.
We took all of that energy and money and focused it 100% on our existing users. We got on the phone with them. We did hundreds of Zoom calls. We listened to their problems, their frustrations, and their ideas. We built the features they were asking for, not the ones we thought were cool. We obsessed over every little detail of the product experience, from onboarding to cancellation. We were on a mission to make our product so good that our users couldn't imagine their work life without it.
And then, we built a referral program.
The Referral Program That Saved Our Company
I know what you’re thinking. A referral program? That’s not exactly groundbreaking. But most referral programs are an afterthought. A little “give $10, get $10” button buried in the settings menu that no one ever clicks. We decided to make it a core, unmissable part of the product experience.
We made it incredibly easy to share. It was front and center in the user's dashboard. We gave them a unique, easy-to-remember link. We even pre-wrote the email and social media posts for them. All they had to do was click a button.
And we rewarded them generously. We gave them a 50% discount on their subscription for every single new customer they referred. For life. The new customer also got a 50% discount for their first three months. It was an insanely good deal. It was a win-win-win. Our users got a cheaper product, their friends got a deal, and we got a new customer for a fraction of the cost of our old marketing channels.
The results were staggering. Within six months, our referral program was driving over 60% of our new signups. Our CPA plummeted from hundreds of dollars to almost zero. We became profitable. And we did it all without spending a dime on ads. RemoteTeam was eventually acquired by Gusto, and that referral program was a huge part of our success story.
Content That People Actually Want to Read
Around the same time, we completely changed our approach to content. We stopped writing the same boring, keyword-stuffed blog posts that every other B2B SaaS company was churning out. You know the ones: “10 Tips for Better Remote Collaboration.” Nobody reads that stuff. It’s written for algorithms, not for people.
Instead, we started sharing our own story. We wrote about our struggles, our failures, and our successes. We were brutally honest and transparent. We wrote a post titled “Why We Killed Our $50,000/Month Marketing Budget.” We shared the exact numbers from our referral program, including the code. We even published our cap table and explained our equity philosophy.
People were hungry for that kind of authenticity. Our blog traffic exploded. But this time, it was different. This time, the traffic was converting. People were reading our story and signing up for our product because they felt a connection to us. They believed in our mission. They saw that we were real people trying to solve a real problem, not just another faceless corporation trying to sell them something.
Don't Just Acquire Users, Create Fans
What I learned from that experience, and what I’ve seen validated time and time again through my angel investments, is that retention is the new growth. It’s not enough to just get people to sign up for your product. You have to get them to fall in love with it. You have to turn them into fans.
Fans are the people who will stick with you, even when you mess up. They’re the people who will tell their friends about you, unprompted. They’re the people who will give you the honest feedback you need to get better. They are your most valuable asset, and they are the foundation of all sustainable, long-term growth.
So how do you create fans? It starts with a great product, but it doesn’t end there. You have to provide amazing, human customer service. You have to build a community around your brand. You have to have a mission that people can get behind. You have to stand for something more than just making money.
The Mistakes That Cost Us Thousands (and Almost Cost Us the Company)
I’m not going to pretend that we got everything right. We made a lot of mistakes. At MovieLaLa, we once spent $50,000 on a fancy PR agency that got us a few vanity mentions in big publications. It felt great to see our name in TechCrunch, but it resulted in exactly zero new customers. We blew another $20,000 on a booth at a major tech conference that was a complete ghost town for us. We had a great-looking booth, but we were in the wrong section, and our target audience just wasn't there.
But our biggest mistake, the one that almost killed RemoteTeam, was focusing on the wrong things. We were so obsessed with the top of the funnel—traffic, signups, press mentions—that we completely neglected the bottom of the funnel. We didn't understand our users. We didn't know why they were churning. We were so busy trying to be everywhere that we weren’t really connecting with anyone.
The Lessons That Made Us Millions
It was only when we stopped chasing the shiny objects and started focusing on the fundamentals that things started to click. When we put our users first. When we built a product they loved. When we gave them a reason to share it.
That’s the real secret to SEO. It’s not about a bunch of technical tricks or gaming an algorithm. It’s about building a brand that people care about. It’s about creating so much value that people can’t help but talk about you. Do that, and the rest will follow.
So, my advice to you is this: stop reading the SEO blogs. Stop obsessing over your keyword rankings. Stop trying to find the latest trick to fool Google. Instead, go talk to your users. Obsess over their problems. Build something they love. And then, make it incredibly easy for them to tell the world about it. If you do that, you won’t have to worry about SEO ever again. You’ll be too busy building a real, sustainable business.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do all experts agree with this view?
No, and that's fine. The best ideas in business are often contrarian. I share my perspective based on my experience and data, but I encourage you to seek out opposing viewpoints and form your own conclusions.
How can I apply this thinking to my own situation?
Start by identifying the core principle behind the opinion, not the specific example. Then ask yourself: does this principle apply to my context? If yes, test it in a small, low-risk way before going all in.
What experience informs this perspective?
This perspective comes from over a decade of building companies in Silicon Valley, two successful exits (RemoteTeam to Gusto, MovieLaLa to Gfycat), and investing in 200+ startups including Anthropic, OpenAI, and Scale AI. I write about what I've lived.