You have $0 for marketing. Your product just launched. How will you get users?

since announcing i’m going indie/fractional, 5 principal level designers from FAANG* have told me they’re planning to do the same thing. either i’m friends with only entrepreneurial designers (possible), but I think it’s more likely that this is a real emergent role. these designers have big ideas and have the ability to make a much bigger impact than current tech co structures allow. none of them are motivated by creating shareholder value. they’re motivated like typical designers: they want to solve interesting problems and build cool shit. it used to be that they needed the tech co structure in order to do that but obviously that’s no longer the case. job insecurity in tech is having an opposite at the top than the bottom. it’s making senior IC’s want to YOLO into their own projects while more junior IC’s are scrambling to adapt and prove their value. we’ve seen this in engineering - and we already have a name for it - MTS Member of Technical Staff. there’s no role yet for designers who feel the same way, so they want to go indie and work on things that fulfil them.