Choosing YOUR stack: a decision procedure

Run the Bullseye, do not guess

Knowing the shape of the stack, one capture, one preference, one owned, does not tell you which specific channels are yours. That depends on where your buyers actually are, and the way to find out is not a hunch, it is the Bullseye Framework from Traction. Brainstorm every channel that could plausibly work, no filtering yet. Then run cheap, fast tests on the handful that look most promising, not to scale them but to learn whether they pull at all. Then, and only then, pick the one core channel that moved and go 10x on it.

The discipline here is the inverse of the buffet instinct. Bullseye does not ask you to run many channels well, it asks you to find the one that works and pour everything into it before you so much as look at a second. Most founders test nothing and commit to everything. Bullseye tests cheaply and commits hard, which is the only way to find a channel that compounds rather than dabbling across ten that never do.

Score every candidate on agent-automatability

For a solo operator there is a second filter the classic framework never had to consider, and it changes which channels are even viable. A channel only makes your stack if an AI agent can run the repetitive 80 percent of it, the drafting, the scoring, the routing, the follow-up, the reporting. If running a channel well requires a human doing the same grind every day, it is not a solo channel no matter how good its economics look.

So score each candidate on agent-automatability before you commit. A channel where agents draft the content, qualify the inbound, and handle the routine follow-up is a channel one person can actually run at depth. A channel that demands constant bespoke human judgement at every step is one you will run badly and resent. The constraint for the lean founder has moved from headcount to channel selection, and this filter is how you select.

Match the stack to your buyer

The last input is the simplest and the most often skipped: where do your buyers actually live. If they search when they have a problem, your capture channel is real and you should lean into search and comparison pages. If they almost never search, if your category is something they do not yet know to look for, capture is a thin channel for you and your weight belongs in preference and partnerships, creating and borrowing demand rather than harvesting it.

A consultant whose buyers are relationship-led should not waste a quarter on paid search, they should pair LinkedIn with partner-sourced referrals at their 89-dollar cost per lead. A self-serve SaaS founder whose buyers Google their problem should anchor on organic and comparison pages. Same three-job shape, different specific channels, chosen by following your buyer rather than copying someone else's stack.