Field Notes - Oct 27, '25

Executive Signals

Cloud is fallback: self-host browsers until anti-bot defenses raise costs.
Secrets stay out: models only see data after login; prompts never hold credentials.
PR is LLM fuel: wire releases feed answer engines, not old SEO.
Front door first: homepage and pricing bottlenecks set demand capacity.
Distribution over creation: squeeze fewer assets across channels your buyers read.
One pipeline, one truth: a single CRM lifecycle enforces accountable growth.

Press-release wires will not move traditional rankings, but they can influence what answer engines and knowledge panels ingest. Treat them as low-effort ways to get claims into the training and browsing stream, measured over weeks, not quarters.

Ship 3–4 truthful, keyword-aimed releases with nofollow links this quarter
Track 10 target prompts across major LLMs; seek >50% top-5 inclusion in 14 days
Measure branded search lift and referral quality; kill after two cycles if flat

Series A PR, Embargo First

Run two weeks of disciplined embargo pitches while investors and advisors work parallel intros to tier-1 outlets. If an investor lands the exclusive, take it and pivot everything else to amplification. Keep a wire ready as fallback if the exclusive does not land.

T-14 days: embargo pitches; T-7: finalize founder posts and internal amplification
If no exclusive by T-10, prep wire-as-fallback
Target 3–5 tier-1 or tier-2 mentions and +30% week-over-week branded search

Fix The Front Door Before Buying Traffic

Funnel flatness is usually a leaky front door. Traffic concentrates on a power law: homepage, pricing, then the core feature page you drive to. Optimize those three first and pause long-tail page work until conversion moves.

Lift homepage-to-demo conversion by +50–100% in 30 days with clearer hero and CTAs
Instrument homepage to pricing to form; remove dead ends and form friction
A/B only these three templates until conversion moves meaningfully

Make Events A Community Flywheel

Events work because buyers self-select time and attention. Codify that energy into a lightweight community of operators and adjacent vendors that produces compounding demand rather than one-off vanity moments.

Run a 90-day pilot: monthly roundtable plus one shared research drop, 25 qualified members
Co-market with two adjacent vendors monthly; track referral MQL to SQL conversion
Set OKRs: 30 net-new MQLs from community touchpoints and >25% SQL rate

Spend 2x On Distribution vs Creation

Creating great content without distribution is wasted effort. Publish fewer, higher-signal pieces and squeeze them across the channels your buyers actually read. Build seasonal, data-backed anchors that earn coverage and compound.

For every piece: 5 tailored social posts, 3 community threads, 1 earned or PR angle
Use HN or Product Hunt only when genuinely useful to buyers
Retarget with the same asset; aim for 3x sessions and +0.5–1.0 pp CTA conversion

Sales

One Pipeline, One Truth

Dueling spreadsheets break growth. Pick one system of record and enforce a single lifecycle with SLAs so MQLs do not live in both leads and deals. Event leads must land in the CRM within 2–4 business days with clear ownership.

Establish lifecycle: Lead → MQL → SQL → Opportunity → Won or Lost in the CRM
Publish a weekly dashboard for new MQLs and SQLs, aged pipe, and coverage ≥3x target
Require expected close dates and next steps on every opportunity

Engineering

Default To Self-Hosted; Escalate To Cloud When Blocked

Run your own headless browsers by default for cost and control. Escalate to a cloud browser pool only when vendors’ anti-bot defenses materially impede runs. Cloud providers earn their keep with IP rotation, regional routing, and evasion layers, but treat them as an on-ramp, not a starting point. Maintain portability so you can switch in under a day.

Track CAPTCHAs, bot-related 4xx or 5xx, and latency spikes as block indicators
Escalate if block rate exceeds 5% across 200+ requests or >1 CAPTCHA per 50 flows
Keep a portability layer to cut over between local and cloud in under one day

Keep Credentials Out Of The Model

Draw a hard boundary: perform authentication and deterministic navigation in code, hand off to AI only after login. This keeps secrets out of prompts and context, reduces leakage risk, and isolates failures for faster debugging.

Enforce pre-auth no-model modules; allow model calls only after authentication
Add CI checks that fail on secret patterns in prompts or configs
Redact headers and cookies from logs and screenshots before any model access

Secret Taxonomy For Multi-Channel Compliance

Credentials diverge by OEM and by channel, so avoid baking vendor names into secret identifiers. Use indirection: generic secret names mapped at runtime to the correct OEM and channel. Rotate predictably and audit access with least privilege.

Name as channel_env_purpose_vN, map OEM to secret at runtime
Rotate quarterly or on incident; keep dual active versions for zero-downtime cutover
Use least-privilege service accounts, audit pulls, and sample noisy logs at 3–5%