v1.1.1 — Honesty fixes across Strategies 1, 4, 6, 7

What changed

Corrected overhyped or inaccurate claims in four strategies. No new strategies added; no structural changes.

Strategy 1 (MCP Servers): Corrected the auto-discovery myth — MCP servers require explicit user installation, not passive AI discovery. Removed unsourced installation stat. Honest about near-term ROI uncertainty while preserving the long-term thesis.

Strategy 4 (AEO): Removed the "AEO is where SEO was in 2010" talking point. Flagged the Peter Levels AI referral anecdote as a single data point, not a benchmark. Success metric updated: AI referral traffic is now a monitored signal, not an engineered target.

Strategy 6 (Newsletter Acquisition): Added reality check on post-acquisition trust drop — open rates typically decline 20–40% in the first 3 months. Success metric updated accordingly.

Strategy 7 (Content Repurposing): Corrected the "50+ pieces" vanity metric. Realistic publishable throughput for a solo founder who edits seriously is 10–15 pieces per pillar. Success metric updated to match.

Appendix: Removed the "mobile in 2010" MCP quote and "AEO in 2010" quote, which contradicted the updated strategy text. Added anecdote caveat to the Peter Levels stat.

v1.1.0

Highlights

• Add Strategy 8: Pre-Build Distribution Validation for consumer mobile apps
• Add Technical SEO Baseline guidance to the playbook
• Improve agent execution guardrails, implementation handoff, and delivery status tracking
• Add minimal docs CI plus strategy-count consistency checks
• Add repo hygiene improvements including .gitignore coverage for local artifacts and env files

Source updates

• Clarify Strategy 8 sourcing and attribution in the playbook and README
• Improve iOS pre-order guidance with safer release-date handling notes

Since v1.0

This release packages the major playbook and protocol improvements made after the initial v1.0 tag into a new stable baseline.

v1.0 — Drop-in Marketing Protocol

Startup Growth Playbook v1.0

Clone into any startup repo. Point your LLM agent at AGENT.md. It auto-discovers your product from the codebase and executes a marketing plan.

Quick Start

cd your-project/
git clone https://github.com/fayerman-source/startup-growth-playbook.git marketing/
# Tell your LLM agent: "Read marketing/AGENT.md and follow the protocol."

7 Distribution Strategies

1. MCP Servers — let AI assistants sell for you (zero CAC)
2. Programmatic SEO — generate thousands of keyword-targeted pages
3. Free Tool — build a grader/calculator as top-of-funnel
4. Answer Engine Optimization — be the source ChatGPT and Perplexity cite
5. Viral Artifacts — make product outputs shareable (Spotify Wrapped model)
6. Newsletter Acquisition — buy an audience for $5-20K
7. Content Repurposing — one pillar piece becomes 50+ across channels

How the Protocol Works

The agent runs 4 phases automatically:

1. Discover — scans your codebase (README, package.json, landing page, etc.)
2. Select — picks 2-3 best strategies using heuristic matching
3. Plan — generates a tailored plan.md with real tasks and metrics
4. Execute — produces marketing artifacts (content, SEO pages, outreach, etc.)

Works with any LLM — Claude, GPT, Gemini, open-source models.

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Strategies derived from Greg Isenberg's Startup Ideas Podcast.