What do you do when you’ve built the product and nobody knows it exists? Tom Girgash had about 20 signups a couple of weeks after launching Taproot, a memory layer that connects your own notes and files to Claude, ChatGPT and any other AI tool that speaks MCP. When I asked him on the Unscripted SaaS Podcast what problem he still hadn’t solved, he didn’t name a feature.
“I think cracking distribution and marketing has been, is going to be the toughest challenge and so far it is, you know, the toughest challenge to do at scale. You know, I’m not in a position right now. I want to spend money on ads or, you know, anything of that nature.”
Tom Girgash, Taproot (28:19)
That’s the position most bootstrapped founders are in. You can’t buy the channel, so you have to build one. Here’s what came out of that conversation, and where search fits into it.
🎧 Listen to this episode
📺 Watch the interview
Code is getting cheap. Distribution isn’t.
Tom’s read on the market is blunt. As software gets easier to build, the advantage moves to whoever can actually reach people:
“I do think, you know, as, you know, software at least becomes a bit commoditized. distribution and marketing is going to be, that’s going to be the most important aspect to building a business, software business, name any business really.”
Tom Girgash, Taproot (25:03)
He’s not wrong, and he’s not alone. Nick Eubanks made the same argument on the show, that distribution is the only moat left once content is commoditized. If a solo founder can ship a working MVP in two or three weeks (Tom did), so can the next one. The thing they can’t copy as easily is an audience that already trusts you.
The trap: tweaking instead of talking to users
The most useful thing Tom said wasn’t about channels at all. It was about attention. With AI you can do almost anything, so it gets harder to pick the one thing that moves the needle:
“I appreciate the feedback, but at the same time, know making this small change in my website and really doing that for weeks is not going to move the needle in terms of getting clients or getting users as well as getting feedback from people and actually trying to solve a problem.”
Tom Girgash, Taproot (29:45)
If you sell SEO to founders, read that twice. We wrote a whole piece on it, nobody approves the fix you can’t justify, because Tom’s quote is the room you’re pitching to. A website change competes with talking to users for a founder’s week, and it usually loses. Your recommendation has to show why it’s the needle-mover, not just that it’s correct.
Where organic search fits for an early SaaS
Tom’s first instinct was the one everybody suggests: forums and Reddit. He found out fast that people don’t like being sold to. Search is the organic channel that doesn’t punish you for having something to sell, because the person typed the question first. For a product like Taproot, the work looks like this:
- Start with the question that already opens doors. Tom’s best line in demos is asking people where everything they’ve done in Claude or ChatGPT actually lives. That’s a search query waiting to be answered.
- Check the words people actually use. Tom said terminology was the hardest part of the build, and he settled on “memory layer.” Before you commit a category name to your homepage, look at what people search for in a keyword tool like OpenSEO and see whether the phrase has any demand at all.
- Write the comparison pages. Taproot already has a versus page against built-in AI memory. That’s the right instinct. People evaluating a new category search for how it differs from what they already have.
- Use the blog for the questions you hear on calls. Every confused reaction from your mom (Tom’s literal market test) is a page you haven’t written yet.
None of that costs ad spend. It costs time, which is why the focus problem above matters so much.
Borrow audiences before you build your own
Tom also spotted something I think a lot of founders miss. Creators already have distribution built in:
“Because they have almost built in distribution because of the audience they have, the people, you know, trust them.”
Tom Girgash, Taproot (27:11)
You don’t need to become a creator to use that. You can partner with one. In the episode I pushed Tom toward collaboration plays, niche Slack and Skool communities, and launch platforms like AppSumo, where a lifetime discount is almost like getting paid for a feedback audience. A podcast tour does the same thing. Every interview puts you in front of an audience someone else spent years building, and leaves an indexable page behind.
Be the human in the room
Tom’s last point is the one I’d tape to the monitor:
“I think being human, being as human as possible, connecting with your audience on a very human level, it’s going to be something that’s going to be pretty large going forward.”
Tom Girgash, Taproot (25:31)
He’s building a tool for people drowning in AI output, and his answer to AI slop is more of himself, not more content. So what’s the one question your users keep asking that you still haven’t answered in public?
Listen to the full conversation on Unscripted SaaS, or read the show recap: Tom Girgash on building Taproot, the memory layer for solo AI operators.