Gettin' to Market
For when your job is real, but your role is…negotiable.
A podcast about building products, launching them, and figuring out how to stay useful along the way.
Gettin' to Market
41 - The Show Was the Product with Chad Cosper
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Nate sits down with Chad Cosper, Principal Product Marketing Manager at insightsoftware and self-described Deadhead, to explore what the Grateful Dead accidentally got right about building a product people can't leave behind.
They didn't set out to pioneer freemium distribution. They didn't design a community — they just created conditions and got out of the way. The taping section was born from values, not strategy. The mailing list came from loyalty to specific fans. The touring revenue that kept them in the top five grossing acts of the '80s — competing with Thriller-era Michael Jackson — came from a band that genuinely didn't think they owned the music once they played it.
It's a conversation about power users, brand elasticity, what it means to serve your core audience even when the casual ones show up, and whether any of it could be replicated today.
Also: lessons learned includes a defense of Gen Z's "six seven" habit that is, arguably, airtight.
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