B-TIER technique
Trojan-horse marketplace — co-marketing with adjacent vendors via AI
100k ft — What is this?
Trojan-horse marketplace — co-marketing with adjacent vendors via AI
50k ft — Why care?
Growth tactic from a former YC head of growth: have an AI app builder (Emergent) spin up a marketplace, find vendors selling to the same customers (not direct competitors), invite them to be featured, offer generous affiliate splits (10% to you, 20% to them), and use the relationship to land co-branded webinars and channel partnerships.
10k ft — Key takeaways
• A directory is a low-friction excuse to open partner conversations.
• Over-generous referral splits buy goodwill and co-marketing.
5k ft — Tools & techniques
Emergent
affiliate structuring, partner outreach automation
1k ft — Deep-dive / try it
If you want the prompts + instructions comment “prompts” and I’ll send them your way!
#emergent #vibecoding #buildwithai #startup
Transcript excerpt
Promote your competitors. I swear to God dude. They'll end up paying you for I used to be the head of growth for a yc startup This is the most unhinged way I used to use AI to get customers go to this platform right here. Give it a prompt like this We'll build you a marketplace bear with me bro put this prompt in the same chat It'll go search the entire internet for other vendors who sell to the same customers You will add all of those vendors to the marketplace We don't add direct competitors But people who are generally in the same mark email all of those vendors something like this asking if we can feature Them on our marketplace it will probably say yeah convince them to sign an affiliate agreement if we refer a deal to them We get 10% if they refer a deal to us they get 20% some like super generous number Tell anybody bro But the marketplace was just a Trojan horse to get them to do co-branded marketing with you chance of them ripping a webinar Something with you is way higher true story by the way. I actually did this actually worked pretty well You got to start ripping channel partnerships where to go go try immersion your creativity run wild check the link in my bio
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