The Chicken-and-Egg Problem: Organic vs. Paid Marketing
The order of operations most founders get wrong.
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Last week, I saw a LinkedIn post from a SaaS founder that stopped me mid-scroll.
It had 250+ comments — which usually means one thing:
someone managed to articulate a tension a lot of founders are quietly sitting with.
What made the post worth lingering on wasn’t the question itself — it was the comments.
One founder argued firmly for paid acquisition:
“If you already know your ICP and have a proven funnel, ads aren’t risky — not running them is.”
Another warned against skipping steps:
“Paid acquisition doesn’t fix unclear positioning. It just helps you find out faster that something’s broken.”
Someone nailed the sequencing problem:
“Organic is how you learn what to say. Paid is how you scale saying it.”
And one line stuck with me the most:
“Ads don’t fail quietly. They fail loudly and expensively.”
Taken together, the comments weren’t really disagreeing about ads.
They were disagreeing about order of operations.
The Order of Operations Most Founders Get Wrong
This is the real chicken-and-egg problem.
Founders and first-time CEOs often ask:
Should I invest in organic growth or paid marketing first?
But the better question is:
What needs to be true before paid marketing works?
In my experience, the sequence looks like this:
Organic discovery
Conversations, content, partnerships, community.
This is where you learn:who your power users actually are
what problem feels urgent enough to act on
what language resonates without persuasion
Organic validation
Patterns start to repeat.
Certain messages convert. Certain channels outperform others.
You’re no longer guessing — you’re observing.Paid amplification
Only now do ads make sense.
Not to discover demand, but to scale proven demand.
This is why ads don’t create growth.
They amplify whatever signal already exists.
Ads Don’t Create Truth. They Amplify It.
You can turn on ads at almost any stage — platforms will happily take your money.
But ads don’t tell you what works. They just scale whatever you put into them.
If you don’t clearly know:
who your power users are
why they convert
what language they use to describe value
what moment made them say “this is for me”
…paid marketing becomes an expensive guessing game.
That’s why “organic vs. paid” is a false choice.
The real question is which comes first — and why.
So When Does It Make Sense to Spend a Lot on Ads?
Spending heavily on ads makes sense when:
You can clearly define your ads’ ideal outcome, not just impressions
You know which channels already work best organically
Your creatives are grounded in real user language and outcomes
You’re scaling what’s proven — not searching for proof
At that point, ads stop feeling risky.
They feel inevitable.
And How Much is Reasonable?
Very roughly:
Early stages: small, experimental budgets
Post message–market fit: 10–20% of ARR, deployed gradually
Scaling phase: aggressive spend only when retention and payback justify it
$20K/month isn’t reckless if it’s amplifying validated insight.
It is reckless if it’s compensating for unclear positioning.
My Takeaway
Organic growth will only take you so far.
At scale, ads are mandatory.
But ads without organic insight are just expensive noise.
That’s why I’ve come to see organic work as the foundation — and paid growth as the accelerator.
Building real relationships with customers isn’t a “nice to have,” it’s the work. When I was a first-time CEO, I even asked my co-founder to build a feature that helped us identify our power users. I then personally reached out to all of them to understand how they were actually using the product.
What I learned was uncomfortable: I had built our entire communication strategy for the wrong target audience.
Only after I rebuilt our messaging, positioning, and approach around the right users did things start to click. Growth picked up — organically — and we eventually reached nearly $8K in MRR.
That experience fundamentally changed how I think about paid marketing. Ads didn’t unlock growth for us. Clarity did.
If you want to see how 👉 read my 90-Day Organic Growth Marketing for SaaS Blueprint in Exclusive Insights.
It’s the same system I developed to grow my previous AI SaaS from $0 to nearly $8K MRR in its first year — organically.
#GoldenFindlings a.k.a useful links
Organic Traffic vs. Paid Ads: Finding the Right Mix for Sustainable Growth in 2025
An up-to-date article arguing that organic and paid aren’t rivals — they’re parts of the same engine, and that balancing them builds more resilient growth than leaning on one alone.
👉 https://clinkitsolutions.com/organic-traffic-vs-paid-ads-finding-the-right-mix-for-sustainable-growth-in-2025/2025 SaaS Industry Report: The Shift from Paid to Organic Marketing
A 2025 industry report showing how many SaaS companies are strategically leaning into organic tactics (content, SEO, engagement) as part of cost-effective long-term growth.
👉 https://flareai.co/news/2025-saas-industry-report-the-shift-from-paid-to-organic-marketing/Paid Ads vs Organic Marketing | 2025 Guide
A practical 2025 guide breaking down when paid ads help (quick visibility) versus when organic investment is smarter (trust and long-term authority), and how to make them work together.
👉 https://www.zealousweb.com/blog/paid-ads-vs-organic-marketing-2025-strategy/SaaS Growth Without Ads: Proven Organic Strategies for 2026
A forward-looking piece focused on organic channels that outperform paid ads in 2026, useful for bootstrapped founders who need growth engines that compound over time.
👉 https://www.brandedagency.com/blog/powerful-ways-to-market-a-saas-product-without-paid-ads-14-proven-strategies-for-2026
#CEOCheck
What’s the first piece of evidence you need from your organic efforts before you turn on significant paid spend — and how will you know you’ve truly found it?
Build the signal first.
Then amplify it.
— Victoria
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