No one recommends anything average.

If you’re visiting NYC and you ask me for a bagel rec, I’m not sending you somewhere average. I’m giving you the best I’ve got after asking your location, and you’re probably ending up at Black Seed or Russ and Daughters.

This is important to remember as founders. You’ll only grow through word of mouth early on - every other channel will be too expensive - which means you’ve got to be recommendable. You need to be the best in a specific category. And, that category has to be asked about a lot. Or, the problem has to come up a lot.

The key to getting recommendations, as always, is narrowing the profile of the customer and the problem you’re solving for them.

Here’s what I mean.

I remember when The Infatuation launched in NYC around 2009. This slogan (or a variant of it) has been around since then:

They started as an email-based newsletter, and the title for each email was always comically specific.

The reason I remember when they launched is I remember the first time someone forwarded me one of their emails. I’d just asked the guy who sat next to me at work if he had any restaurant recommendations for when my parents came to the city that weekend. He nearly jumped out of his chair, yelping “oh oh oh I just saw this!” before forwarding me an email titled something like: “Where to eat in Murray Hill when your parents are picking up the tab.” I lived in Murray Hill at the time.