Paul Graham characterizes marketing strategies designed to intentionally anger people for attention as a tactic of "scammers." He argues that such approaches reveal a lack of long-term focus and earnest engineering, predicting that companies relying on these gimmicks will never become truly massive.

A repeatable framework for creating viral stunts is to take a familiar concept—like a toy store, meditation app, or musical—and create the "world's first" version specifically for your target audience. The inherent absurdity of a "meditation app for CISOs" or a "dating app for accountants" generates curiosity and makes the campaign highly shareable.

Before investing in top-of-funnel marketing, ensure your core growth engine works. Gamma paused all other efforts and dedicated their entire team for months to perfecting the first 30 seconds of the user experience. This focus on the 'aha moment' was the key to unlocking true organic virality.

Brands jumping on viral memes may see a temporary spike in views, but it's a hollow victory. Consumers remember the trend itself, not the brand's participation in it. This common social media tactic fails to build brand equity or impact the bottom line.

For a product to be inherently "talkable," marketing input is crucial during design. Marketers are often brought in post-launch to sell a finished product. Instead, they should be involved early to help design features that encourage sharing and create organic growth loops, making their job exponentially easier.

Unlike info products, you can't just "sprinkle marketing" on a SaaS product post-build. SaaS requires solving a real pain point to prevent churn. Great marketing for a product nobody wants simply accelerates its demise by exposing its lack of product-market fit more quickly.

Gaining millions of views is a vanity metric if the audience isn't engaged or aligned with business goals. Instead of pursuing fleeting viral moments, focus on consistent content that cultivates a real community. That engaged community, not a passive audience, can eventually be converted into customers.

Gamma's AI launch succeeded not just because of the product, but because they intentionally crafted a "spicy" and provocative tweet designed to spark debate. This drew engagement from influential figures like Paul Graham, massively amplifying their reach beyond what a standard announcement could achieve.

The IVF company Nucleus ran a subway campaign with provocative slogans like 'Have your best baby' to deliberately anger a segment of the population. This 'rage bait' strategy manufactures virality in controversial industries, leveraging negative reactions to gain widespread attention that would otherwise be difficult to achieve.