Engine Hit $150M With Phone Calls and a Magician. Skip Viral.

A travel company hired a magician to work its trade show booth. Not as a joke. As a sales tactic.

That company is Engine, and it bootstrapped to $150 million in bookings before taking a dollar of outside funding. No viral launch. No clever social media calendar that anyone can find. Just events, phone calls, and a guy doing card tricks.

If you've been staring at your follower count and feeling behind, this one's for you.

Elia Wallen of Engine, Grant Lee of Gamma, and Crystal Huang of Google Ventures argued that startups can win early customers without going viral. TechCrunch reported on the panel on October 23, 2026.

Their advice was different from what you usually hear. Wallen's company manages lodging and travel bookings for midsize businesses, and it grew through old-school sales. Lee's company, Gamma, makes AI presentation software and grew through creators. Huang looks at usage data from the investor side.

The shared message: the best channel depends on who your customer is, and social media isn't automatically the answer.

Wallen said traditional sales methods like events and cold calling can beat social media. Engine ran events and made calls, and it reached $150 million in bookings on its own money.

Here's the part worth sitting with. Many companies avoid phone sales entirely, or they never learned to do them well. That leaves a large group of buyers who prefer a human voice, and almost nobody is calling them.

Think about who buys travel for a midsize company. It's an office manager or a finance lead with forty other tasks. They don't scroll startup Twitter. They answer the phone, or they return a voicemail from someone who sounds useful.

And the magician? It worked because it was memorable and it pulled people to the booth. In person, a bit of fun gets a conversation started, and conversations are where sales actually happen.

Gamma went the opposite direction. Lee described an influencer program the company called its Ambassadors, nicknamed "Gambassadors," and the company later reached a multi-billion-dollar valuation.

But his advice wasn't "hire influencers and wait." He said the opposite. Don't treat influencer marketing as set it and forget it. Spend real time with creators so they can explain your product's value in their own words. Without that, he said, the spend doesn't matter.

He also suggested matching creators to different customer groups. A consultant making a client deck and a marketer building a slide for executives have different needs. A creator who speaks to one group won't automatically persuade the other.

Giving someone a platform doesn't produce sales. Teaching them why your product matters might.

Huang's advice starts after the first customers arrive. Study usage. Is it recurring? Is it growing? Do customers refer others?

She also talked about super fans, the people who promote your company or even ask to work there. If you spot them, build a way to turn them into evangelists. That could be as simple as a private group, early access to features, or a monthly call with your team.

This connects to the product-market fit survey method Superhuman published through First Round Review. Its team asked users how they'd feel if they could no longer use the product, then focused on the people who answered "very disappointed." Those are your super fans in waiting.

Start with a boring question: where does my customer already spend time?

A dentist hears about software from other dentists and trade shows. A college student hears about an app from friends and short videos. A purchasing manager at a factory takes calls. Your channel should match their habits, not yours.

Write a short list of five possible channels. For each one, answer three things: how would a customer find out about us here, how much would a two-week test cost, and what number would tell us it worked?

Then rank them by cost and speed. Phone outreach costs time but almost no money. Events cost money but give you dense feedback. Creators cost money and need relationship work. Content costs time and pays off slowly.

Pick two. Not five. Two.

Why so few? Because every channel needs follow-up. A phone list needs second calls. A creator needs a thank-you and a check-in. An event needs a week of emails afterward. Spread yourself across five and you'll do all of them badly.

Here's a plan you can steal.

Phone test. Make a list of 50 companies that match your customer profile. Call or email each of them with a short pitch and a clear ask, like a fifteen-minute chat. Track how many pick up, how many agree to talk, and how many ask for a next step. If 5 of 50 agree to a call, that's 10%, a number you can work with.

Creator test. Find three small creators who already talk to your customer. Pay or trade for a real walkthrough, not a quick shout-out. Give each one a unique link or code so you can see which one drove sign-ups.

Event test. Pick one local meetup or industry event. Bring a simple demo and a sign-up sheet. Count how many conversations you have and how many leave contact info.

Write the results down. Don't trust your memory. Two weeks of honest numbers beat two months of vibes. And if a test fails, that's still a result: you just saved yourself six months of the wrong effort.

Paul Graham's essay "Do Things That Don't Scale" argues that startups rarely grow by themselves. Founders recruit their first users by hand. He points to Stripe's founders setting up prospects on the spot rather than asking if they'd try the beta, and Airbnb's founders going door to door in New York to help hosts improve their listings.

His math is worth knowing. Start with 100 users and grow 10% a week, and you reach about 14,000 in a year. Early effort compounds.

The takeaway for you: manual work in month one isn't a failure of strategy. It's the strategy. It also gives you something automated channels can't, which is the exact words your customers use when they describe their problem.

Channel testing gets messy fast. You've got call lists, creator names, event dates, and numbers scattered across five places.

You can keep it in a spreadsheet, a Notion page, or a planning tool like Foundra that has go-to-market templates for first-time founders. Whatever you choose, keep one table with four columns: channel, cost, result, next step. Update it every Friday.

That table also becomes a quiet superpower when you talk to investors. Instead of saying "we're exploring growth channels," you can say "we tested three, and phone outreach converted at 10%." Specific beats vague every time.

Going viral is one option among many. Engine reached $150 million in bookings with events and phone calls. Gamma grew through creators, but only because it spent time teaching them the product.

Choose a channel based on where your customer already pays attention. Test two channels for two weeks each with a clear success number. Watch usage and referrals once customers arrive, and find your super fans.

Do some things by hand. It's slow, and it works.

Do startups need to go viral to succeed? No. According to the Disrupt panel, effectiveness depends on your business type, and channels like events and phone sales can match or beat social media.

How did Engine grow without social media? Engine ran events and made phone outreach calls, and it reached $150 million in bookings before taking outside funding. It even hired a magician to draw people to its booth.

What was Gamma's Ambassadors program? It was an influencer program that Gamma used to grow. CEO Grant Lee said founders should spend significant time with creators so they can explain the product's value.

How should I pick my first marketing channel? Start with where your customer already spends time. List five channels, estimate the cost and the success number for a two-week test, and pick two.

What should I measure after getting my first customers? Crystal Huang suggested looking at whether usage is recurring or growing and whether customers refer others, then finding super fans who promote the company.

Is cold calling still worth it? For some customers, yes. Elia Wallen said many companies avoid phone sales, which leaves a large offline client base without much competition.

1. Startups don't need to go viral to win customers, TechCrunch, October 23, 2026
2. The secret to fast startup growth isn't early sales, top names in tech say, TechCrunch, October 22, 2026
3. Do Things That Don't Scale, Paul Graham
4. How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product/Market Fit, First Round Review