They said ‘if only people knew about our business we could change the world’.

But faced with competition from brands with crazy VC funding and household names with bottomless marketing budgets they struggled to breakthrough.

Instead of accepting the situation they did what founders did best and created a different way to win.

One by one they approached large Media owners with an idea.

‘Who are you?’ Said the Media owners.

‘We are set to become the biggest brand in the world’ said the founders ‘but we could be even bigger and spend more money on your channels by adding just a dash of advertising.’

Hearing this, the media owners searched around for spare advertising inventory, concluding that it was better to help future customers than let it go to waste.

After the first burst of advertising more people started to talk about the young ventures.

Other Media owners, eager to build relationships with exciting new clients, offered advertising to the entrepreneurs at hugely discounted rates.

Over the months, this process repeated itself, until lots of new advertising channels were added to their marketing mix.

The results were incredible and saw them outperform the competition on a fraction of their advertising spend.

Before too long investors were beating a path to their door, customers searched for their products by name and paid more for it when they found it.

The businesses grew, raised more money, and became the media owners most loyal and valued customers.

Money was made, dreams came true …