Acquisition Channel Playbooks
Channel-specific acquisition plays across outbound, Reddit, SEO/AEO, affiliates, creators, partnerships, TikTok, paid social, and community referrals.
52%
Best tweets about Growth Hacking
50 Best Tweets About Growth Hacking (2026)
A curated collection of the sharpest, most-shared X posts about growth hacking—saved so you do not have to dig through the timeline yourself. Updated weekly.
Unconventional tactics that actually moved a metric, told by the person who ran them.
- Creators
- 43
- Updated
Original Xholic analysis
What 50 top Growth Hacking posts reveal
Across these posts, the most specific operator accounts pair a tactic with a reported metric or a defined learning process: manual customer conversations, channel tests, referral-driven delivery, retention work, and public content. The evidence also cautions against treating reach or a single channel as proof of business growth; the posts repeatedly connect growth decisions to conversion, retention, and revenue.
- Dominant tone
- Positive
- Median score
- 11.3
- Leading format
- List
- Recent posts
- 46%
74% of posts
All-time engagement
38% of posts
Published in 90 days
Conversation map
The themes creators return to
Experimentation and Iteration},{
Experimentation discipline: rapid low-cost tests, measuring the right funnel metrics, scaling validated bets, and using AI to accelerate insight and prototyping.
44%
Founder-Led Content
Building audiences and inbound demand through founder content, build-in-public updates, authentic wins and failures, high posting frequency, and substantive replies.
32%
Activation and Conversion
Activation, onboarding, conversion-rate optimization, paywalls, product focus, and removing friction at moments of user hesitation.
30%
Retention and LTV
Retention, repeat purchases, lifecycle messaging, post-purchase experience, subscriptions, and maximizing LTV rather than endlessly rebuying acquisition.
20%
Early-Stage Customer Discovery
Manual early-stage distribution: customer conversations, hyper-personal outreach, demos, niche-community participation, and validating an ICP before scaling.
16%
Product Growth Loops
Product-embedded distribution through referrals, sharing, branded outputs, invites, waitlists, network effects, and incentive programs.
10%
Social Launch Amplification
Founder-led launch tactics on X: viral hooks, launch videos, coordinated early engagement, reposting iterations, and public milestones.
6%
Tone and stance
Sentiment Positive leads
Author posture Supportive leads
Performance benchmark
- Median likes
- 23
- Median reposts
- 1
- Median replies
- 9
- Median views
- 2.3K
Posts with media make up 34% of this collection. Their median all-time score is 13.0, compared with 9.47 for text-only posts.
Format mix
- List 38% · score 7.98
- Story 30% · score 5.06
- Announcement 16% · score 24.1
- Opinion 16% · score 6.84
Consensus and debate
Where creators agree, and where they do not
Shared view
Manual discovery before scaling
Two operator accounts put manual learning before scale: one recommends speaking directly with 10–20 ICP matches and validating a channel through consistent conversions; another describes trial-user calls and demos as the learning loop that sharpened positioning and exposed product gaps.
Shared view
Retention and monetization complete the growth picture
Several posts argue that acquisition alone is insufficient. They focus on repeat purchase, post-purchase experience, retention, and mapping growth efforts to profitable user actions.
Shared view
Test small, then concentrate
A recurring proposed process is to set a measurable goal, test on a limited scale, and direct more effort to approaches that show evidence of conversion or revenue impact.
Open debate
No single channel is presented as universal
Channel recommendations differ by operator and context. One B2B founder ranks outbound highest and paid ads lowest without strong PMF; another describes paid acquisition as reliable; a SaaS founder says affiliates outperformed their own marketing.
Open debate
Audience growth and business growth can diverge
One post presents launch videos and coordinated early engagement as a way to drive inbound, while another founder reports that follower growth from X tactics did not increase MRR before they shifted effort to outreach, Reddit, affiliates, and customer conversations.
Open debate
Tactics are framed as subject to trust and platform constraints
Posts draw a boundary around tactics: one condemns deceptive or illegal behavior labeled “growth hacking,” while others advise filtering harmful advice and prioritizing trust over hype.
What performs
Patterns behind standout posts
Outlier posts span playbooks, stories, and critique
The five supplied score outliers cover a launch-video playbook, a critique of growth hacking, a Zapier growth-rate story, a B2B channel tier list, and a build-in-public retrospective.
Social-launch amplification leads supplied theme medians
Social Launch Amplification has the highest supplied theme median all-time score, at 198.03. The supplied Story-format evidence includes launch, experimentation, and referral/inbound revenue narratives.
Founder-led content has a higher supplied median score
Founder-Led Content has a supplied median all-time score of 26.51, above Acquisition Channel Playbooks (11.26) and Activation and Conversion (7.981).
Statistical standouts
- View standout post 1 Score 985.8 · 87.55× median
- View standout post 2 Score 663.7 · 58.94× median
- View standout post 3 Score 198.0 · 17.59× median
- View standout post 4 Score 99.7 · 8.85× median
- View standout post 5 Score 96.6 · 8.58× median
Creator landscape
Who shapes this conversation
The five most represented creators account for 20% of the selected posts.
-
1. AdrienBrb
@adrien_brbr
2 posts
-
2. Finn Mallery
@fin465
2 posts
-
3. Jude || Happyful
@HappyfulofWeb3
2 posts
-
4. Harshil Tomar
@Hartdrawss
2 posts
-
5. Sarah Carusona
@sarah_carusona
2 posts
-
6. Sasha Sage
@SSage38676
2 posts
Delivery and incentives can support distribution
DreamLaunch reports that referrals and inbound content supplied its clients, while SP3ND reports using partnerships, a points program, and purchase-sharing incentives as part of early distribution.
Founder content is presented alongside other channels
Two builders describe founder content or X as a top-of-funnel and launch asset, alongside outbound, paid acquisition, localization, short-form video, or other channels.
Creators reported tests of publishing mechanics
Two creators report publishing experiments: one says earnings increased from about $200 to about $400 after changing their posting process, and another says doubling content output doubled reach and follower growth.
Since the previous snapshot
What changed since Aug 7, 2026
- 70% of the selected posts remained.
- The creator count changed by 0.
- The leading sentiment remained stable.
How this analysis was made
Themes, sentiment, stance, and post format are classified per tweet. All counts, shares, medians, creator concentration, freshness, and performance comparisons are then calculated directly from the published snapshot.
Xholic's all-time score compares engagement while accounting for reach, post age, and creator consistency. It is used for relative comparisons within this collection.
This report analyzes the exact 50-post snapshot shown below. AI identifies editorial categories and drafts explanations; all statistics are calculated from the snapshot, and every narrative claim is checked against cited posts before publication.
Best Growth Hacking tweets
Top Growth Hacking tweets from 43 creators
Ranked 01–50
- 01
@fin465 ·
I might regret posting this cuz it's one of our best growth hacks and anyone can do it, BUT here's how to get 250k-5m+ views on your launch video its OP cuz if you crack the formula, you can ship a new vid each month and drive insane inbound. We make 1/month and clear 200k+ views every time 1. make a launch video. either record it yourself with a screen-capture tool like Borumi or find good editor to put it together for you (i use @flowjamhq ) 2. open your tweet with a hook that kills the scroll. think "the first ever ___" or "today we're replacing ___." 3. personally, I do a search for viral X launches in the last 60 days on @origamichat and try to use the same formats (bc these formats are already proven by the algo, so you’re not guessing) 4. After finding these super viral launches (10m+ views) try to replicate the X post opening line, video format, quote tweets that worked best, etc. when you launch 5. ping your network (investors, friends, people you used to work with). give them the exact date and time you're going live. 6. once you're live, blast an email to everyone who agreed to help. drop in your launch tweet plus clear directions on what you want from them. 7. in those directions, spell out your core message and show sample quote-tweets you'd love them to mirror. (follow X's rules on disclosed posts) 8. push everyone to interact with the post inside the first hour if they can. 9. You can also run paid ads on the video after the first day or so to boost engagement 10. launch every time you make a big new feature that could be framed as a standalone product ------ the best part is that if you flop, it means no one saw it anyway. So swap the hook and relaunch the next week. ppl will literally ‘launch’ 3-5x/month and it works Hoping to see more great launch vids on X Will be posting more playbooks to go viral every week on here
- 02
- 03
@wadefoster ·
It was May 2012, and we hadn't yet launched @Zapier. Two YC office hours changed everything. The first was with @GarryTan. He had one question: "Have you launched?" We said no. We had users. People had paid us. But in our minds, the product wasn't good enough. Garry didn't care. He said launch now. We did and realized we were dumb to wait. Our second office hours was with @PaulG. Same question: "Have you launched?" This time we got to say yes. So he gave us an assignment: "Grow revenue 10% week over week. 10% is great. 20% is fantastic." So we set off to grow 10% a week. And we did. Last week PG posted this thread, and it brought all this back. 10% a week is 142x a year. Even at scale, growth rate is the signal. Focus on growth rate and you'll find the future.
- 04
@fin465 ·
we hit 1,000+ B2B customers in under a year. i made a TIER LIST for every growth channel to grow a startup in 2026. here it is: S TIER (best) → Outbound unbeatable way to get your first 10 customers. literally just ask people if they want to buy your sh*t if you built something ppl want (very hard), it works it's simple, it's just not easy as you scale, shift to warm outbound to target the 95% of companies who see your posts but don't come inbound This drives >50% of our revenue i've done 3 businesses and this is always how we got our first customers A TIER (great) → Building in public on X + Linkedin compounds trust + pulls in warm inbound over time. takes a while to start, but founder-led content is the only 'moat' left best strategy for quickly growing a new account is: 1) posting milestones (we got our first 10 customers, I quit my job, "i started a company" etc. - these kill it on x/linkedin - don't ask me why) 2) sharing 'hacks'/tips in your field of expertise This is 95% of what i do personally we bring in 100-500ish new users a day from my organic content, it's how we do best top of funnel B TIER (good, but slow) → AEO/SEO takes 2-5 months to get results literally just get a good llms.txt + pump out tail end keyword blogs title each one as the exact question your buyer types e.g. "how to [x] without [y]" & LLMs cite those headers almost verbatim when they answer we get ~15% of signups through Claude/ChatGPT D TIER (avoid) → UGC/ tiktok b2c this works great. don’t waste your money if you’re B2B (no attribution, BIG time investment, wrong audience unless u target 20 yr old doomscrollers) The only reason to do this if you're B2B is if you're massive + building brand (e.g. Replit, Base44) F TIER (waste of money) → paid ads great for consumer (mobile), eCom, DTC, but doesn’t work if you're B2B and don’t have very strong PMF Plus, need a large budget to spend $5-10k before exiting learning and getting any results typically ------ Again, i've talked to 100s of startups and this is what i've seen wrk best in 2026 (for B2B) will be posting 1-2 more growth hacks each week
- 05
@seraleev ·
I’m taking a break from X. I don’t know how long it will last. I’m a bit tired of the constant focus on reach, monetization and being public all the time. I want to spend some time in silence, focusing on my business. Over the last 2.5 years of my build-in-public journey, I grew from $0 to $100K/month. Here are 10 short lessons I’ve learned: 1. If you want to build a personal brand, X is the perfect place to start. Some of the most well-known people in tech might end up reading your posts. I was shocked that people I looked up to not only read my posts, but also replied and supported me. 2. X is the perfect place to bring attention to a problem. Things can go viral and even large corporations may start responding. I’ve experienced this firsthand. 3. If you’re building products for developers, X is an amazing launch platform. Your audience can help you with Product Hunt launches and be your first supporters on Reddit. 4. If you’re a mobile developer and become popular on X, be prepared for a lot of copies. And I mean a lot. Names, icons, screenshots, internal models, UX, paywalls. Accept it early and understand that it’s simply part of the journey. 5. You can grow without hard paywalls. You can let customers actually try your product. This approach works surprisingly well. 6. Filter all advice. Seriously, filter everything. Some of the advice you read on X can get your developer account terminated. I’ve helped many developers who shared harmful advice on X, gained huge reach, and later ran into serious issues with Apple themselves. 7. Design matters. People have learned to distinguish AI slop from products built with care. Don’t be afraid to put a piece of yourself into every app you create. 8. Learn paid acquisition. It’s a reliable and controllable growth channel. I’ve been growing this way consistently for the last 2.5 years. 9. If you don’t have a budget, learn ASO, localize your app and pricing, create videos about your products, and publish them on Reels, TikTok, and Shorts. You can grow without money too. 10. Stay true to your principles. That’s something I’ve carried throughout this entire journey. Sometimes people will hate you for it (and that’s okay). It’s still better than changing your beliefs every single day. Thank you to everyone who followed my journey. See you soon ❤️
- 06
@getryze ·
i spent 1.5 days studying the growth loops behind the fastest-growing startups they're the closest thing to free distribution here are 7 brilliant ones: 1/ robinhood — you referred friends to jump the waitlist. 1m signups before launch, $0 on ads 2/ rogo — every report a banker exports says "powered by rogo," then gets forwarded around the firm. signups come in on their own 3/ gas — it pinged kids "someone in your grade likes you," they downloaded to find out who. #1 in the app store, then sold to discord 4/ tl;dv — after every meeting it emails a branded recap to everyone on the call, even non-users. each one turns into a lead 5/ calendly — every booking link you send puts calendly in front of whoever books. that's most of how it got to $100m+ ARR with barely any ads 6/ lovable — every app you build ships with an "edit with lovable" button. $10m ARR in ~2 months 7/ dropbox — invite a friend, you both get free storage. that loop took them from 100k to 4m users in 15 months if you want to build one, design for virality from the start: 1/ make sharing rewarding, low-friction, and tied directly to the aha moment 2/ validate the pmf first, then obsess over sharing 3/ make sharing feel like the natural, core reason the app exists, not something you bolt on after launch — or it won't spread. that's the mistake almost everyone makes: they launch, growth is flat, and only then do they think about it 4/ measure it — new users per user, and how fast they come a single loop like this has carried startups from $0 to $10m ARR with no ad spend
- 07
@KevinSzabo14 ·
Super simple way to explode on your X: For rapid growth: • Blast out posts constantly • Jump into conversations everywhere • Infuse real character and edge in all you share For turning it into cash: • Build a solid product/service • Target real pain points • Blast targeted outreach messages • Share proof-of-skill posts regularly
- 08
- 09
@alexcooldev ·
The fastest way to grow your X account? - Copy viral formats (don’t reinvent the wheel) - Flex your MRR (people love numbers) - Don’t lie (trust > hype) - Post in big communities (get instant reach) - Share both wins & failures (authenticity wins) - Post daily Do this consistently → your account will grow faster than you think.
- 10
@gaganbiyani ·
Growth marketing was perhaps the most important trend in tech in 2010. Chamath literally got 1% of Facebook and became a billionaire for starting the first ever growth team at Facebook. I ran a conference called “Growth Hackers Conference” and it was sold out multiple years in a row. By 2020, growth marketing was practically dead. Nobody was talking about it and most growth teams folded fully into product orgs. In 2026, I believe growth hacking will make a strong comeback (likely without the cringey name). Growth used to be a cool art where super high IQ and high EQ practitioners leveraged consumer insight, data and product to create unique ways to grow their products. They built crazy referral loops using Facebook or LinkedIn connect, created SEO-friendly pages en masse for marketplaces, and built spammy viral apps as customer acquisition tools. Eventually, most of those acquisition channels closed up - and so most growth marketers became "user acquisition" or product managers. With a new disruptive force like AI, growth opportunities have opened up again. We have at our fingertips an extremely broad set of new tools that are still developing: - Vibe coding allows you to build micro-products and micro-workflows from scratch, without having to suck up engineering resources. Experimentation can explode, if you figure out how to pull it off. - AI can ingest massive amounts of data and therefore help create new insights. - AEO will become a massive growth opportunity that will require inventive solutions to trick LLMs into recommending your product. And I’m fairly confident OpenAI/Anthropic will offer an “App Store” for ChatGPT and Claude. (The current version OpenAI released is just the beginning). - Content marketing will look totally different in the age of unlimited creativity (and productivity) from AI-generated content. There are tons of fresh opportunities for growth marketers to play with and innovate on. The intersection of data, product, and marketing is going to have a rebirth. Game on.
- 11
@omarships ·
Distribution is where most startups quietly die. Everyone talks about it like it’s some growth hack. Almost nobody does it right. People ask me: “How did you distribute Agently?” It's Simple. Unsexy. Boring. No playbook. No magic channel. Here’s what actually works: 1) Before you even think about picking a channel → Draft who your ideal customer might be (don’t overthink it speed > perfection) → Make sure your landing page speaks directly to their pain and outcome (nothing else matters) → Find 10–20 real people that match this profile (LinkedIn is easiest) → DM them manually: no templates, no automation, just real conversations → Pay attention to which conversations actually convert and why Now you have your first real ICP signal. 2) From there: → Figure out where these people actually spend time (Discord, Reddit, X, Hacker News, etc.) → Double down on the one place that shows the most engagement → Keep it manual: you’re still learning, not scaling → Once you start seeing consistent conversions, you’ve validated a channel 3) Now it gets interesting: → Test 3–4 different approaches within that channel → Let them run long enough to matter → Kill what doesn’t work, double down on what does At this point, you have: → A real ICP → A proven channel → A strategy that converts Now you can scale. Content, automation, growth loops: all of it works after this. Most people try to skip this and distribute to 10 channels at the same time and wonder why it isn't working. That’s why most people never crack distribution. No playbooks. No gated threads. No “10 hacks”. Just what actually works.
- 12
@JosephKChoi ·
peptides is probably the fastest growing category in consumer apps rn this one just made $100,000 in its first 70 days, then $200,000 in the next 30 days. and still growing got @Cedric_Roberge to share the entire marketing strategy on the pod. full video 👇 0:00 - The $100K Strategy: Achieving Six-Figure App Revenue in 70 Days 1:12 - Growth Engine Alpha: Inside the Consumer Club and Developer Tech Stack 2:25 - Market Positioning: Solving the Tracking Gap in the Exploding Peptide Space 3:57 - Pioneering a Trend: Navigating Early Concept Phase to Product Launch 5:30 - Organic Amplification: Building a High-Engagement Influencer Retainer System 6:35 - Performance Optimization: Transitioning Organic TikTok Winners into Paid Meta Ads 7:55 - Tracking Metrics: Acquisition Costs and Analyzing Dashboard Conversion Rates 9:33 - High-Converting Formats: Analyzing Organic Slideshows vs. Traditional Talking Head UGC 11:31 - User Journey Architecture: Mapping the Flow from For You Page to App Store Downloads 13:38 - Residual Traffic Networks: Monetizing Link-in-Bio Real Estate via Private Creator Communities 15:08 - Influencer Deal Frameworks: Retainers, Contract Logistics, and Milestone Bonuses 18:11 - Low-Risk Testing: Getting 20,000 Total Views for $200 Monthly Retainers 18:36 - Creative Freedom Guide: Structuring Asset Briefs Without Restricting Creators 20:04 - Operations Architecture: Standardizing Outreach Playbooks for Rapid Team Delegation 21:31 - Affiliate Incentive Systems: Boosting Content Output with Strategic Revenue Splits 22:58 - Interface UX Audit: High-Converting Paywalls, AI Insights, and Onboarding Flows 26:33 - Finding the Pain Point: Understanding Why Users Will Pay for Convenience and Safety 28:36 - Age-Gated Conversion: Customizing User Journeys for Gen Z vs. Mature Audiences 31:16 - Listening to the Market: Rapid Iteration of Syringe Calculators and Core Tracker Features 32:22 - Product Pruning: Knowing Which Underutilized Features to Remove 33:48 - Automated Feedback Loops: Collecting Multi-Channel User Insights Weekly 34:59 - Structuring the Company: Scaling Outreach Hires and Marketing Manager Positions 36:29 - Quality Control Framework: Vetting Creator Content Before It Goes Live 36:50 - Founder's Background: Translating High School Esports Management into App Growth 38:42 - Bootstrapping & Equity: Securing Angel Investment and Insane Tech Talent 41:17 - Scaling Up Spend: Static Creative Strategies, Meta Compliance, and Breaking Top 100 Rankings 44:33 - Fraud & View Bot Auditing: Vetting Real Engagement Against Fake Metrics 46:50 - Paid Ad Deep Dive: Why a Cluttered Static Graphic is Beating Clean Video Ads 50:06 - Platform Constraints: Why TikTok Rejects Peptide Ads While Meta Succeeds 51:29 - Outro: Post-Launch Plans, Future Hiring, and Final Growth Alpha Breakdown
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- 13
@Hartdrawss ·
Dreamlaunch recently hit $100k milestone A few months ago, DreamLaunch didn't exist. In this time, a lot has changes Today we've crossed $100K revenue, 50+ MVPs shipped, clients across India, US, Dubai, Saudi Arabia. Here's exactly how we did it, so you can do it too. The core principle that changed everything : We made the work good enough that clients became our distribution. No ads. No cold outreach. No marketplace. Just work that was worth talking about. Here's the breakdown : 1. Pricing (the ladder) Simple rule : after 3 clients said yes without flinching, raise the price. - $500 x 3 clients - $1,000 x 3 clients - $2,000 x 3 clients - $3,500 x 3 clients - $5,000 x 3 clients Every time 3 people said yes, we knew we were still underpriced. Not 10x overnight. One step at a time. 2. Acquisition (what worked) Organic content. Always. Only. - No paid ads - No cold email sequences - No growth hacks Our first $5K client came from a referral. Saudi-based founder. We built their MVP. They were happy. They sent us the next one. That single referral paid more than 6 months of trying every freelancing platform combined. 3. The work itself One client wanted to automate their entire RFP document filing process. 10-15 hours of manual work every month. We built the pipeline. Eliminated the hours. They used that time to close a $40K contract in month one. That was the shift : You don't get paid for the work. You get paid for the value the work creates. Not your hours. Not your effort. The outcome. 4. What didn't work Freelancing platforms. Every single one. - Fiverr : couldn't figure it out - Upwork : same - Contra : closest, but payment friction with Indian clients broke it every time We wasted months trying to force these to work. In hindsight, high trust + high ticket work doesn't come from a listing. It comes from someone seeing your work and deciding they want exactly that. What actually worked : → Delivering so well that referrals came without asking → Raising price after every 3 yes's — not before, not after → Building in public so inbound replaced outbound → Saying no to scope creep early — protected quality, protected reputation → Organic content as the only acquisition channel we actually doubled down on What's not working yet : Outbound is still unstructured. Every client still comes from referral or inbound content. That's great until you have a slow month. Building a proper outbound system now. The path from $500 to $5,000 isn't glamorous. It's lowball clients you deliver for anyway. Watching them win with what you built. And knowing exactly what to charge the next one. Do the right things consistently : Good work. Real referrals. Honest pricing. It compounds. One day you're not the cheapest option in the room anymore. Goal now : $500K revenue by end of 2026. LFG. PS : What's the price you're charging right now that you already know is too low?
- 14
@VaibhavSisinty ·
One more AGI like moment today thanks to Codex 🙏 We connected Codex to all our data sources. PostHog, our DB, Meta CLI, everything. Yesterday we ran one prompt. An "opportunities finder" with ultra mode on, plus some direction on where to look for gaps. Few hours later? It surfaced gaps that could potentially DOUBLE revenue from our existing users. Not with some crazy new feature With very very basic product optimisations. Honestly, a great data science team would've caught these long ago. But guess what, startups our size don't have one 😅 The team was mindblown. We now have 11 experiments lined up to recover lost revenue and fix these leaks going forward. Even if a few of them work, that's roughly a 100x ROI on our lifetime AI spend. The unlock is unimaginable 🤯 Thanks @sama @gdb @thsottiaux for doing what you guys do 🙏
- 15
@brodieseo ·
AEO Tip: I've been increasingly experimenting with trying to influence ChatGPT output for my eCommerce clients. Particularly for queries where I'm comparing my client against competitors for basic 'buy' and 'sell' queries for them as a business. The balance that we're trying to strike within this experimentation is ensuring that we're staying within the confines of their branding and not outright mentioning competitors – something that is far more common within the SaaS space. For this client, a lot of their competitors are considered to be "marketplaces", whereas my client holds all stock on-site (a major point of difference) and does the buying and selling of the stock itself. The major benefit to this approach is that they can maintain the quality of the product through their own authentication processes, being a clear advantage over the classic marketplace model. Within this experiment, we published a comparison page that compared them against "marketplaces" across various metrics in order to influence the output, and our new page was used as a core source in ChatGPT within a day. And we're already starting to gain more control over how they're being represented, making a clear argument for why both buyers and sellers should choose them over key competitors, without mentioning them directly. In my opinion, this type of approach is the way forward when doing these types of experiments, rather than creating content that goes outside of company guidelines for the sake of AEO. It is a fine line for this type of work, but clear benefit when it is executed correctly.
- 16
@HappyfulofWeb3 ·
Career Update; Last Friday (Feb 20th) Was My Last Day at SP3ND! Over the past 11 months at @SP3NDdotshop , I’ve led Growth & Marketing efforts focused on building early-stage distribution for a crypto-commerce platform aiming to enable users to shop global retail using digital assets. This involved: > Developing and executing GTM strategy > Scaling acquisition through Beta > Launching the SP3ND Pioneers program > Positioning the brand with a consistent voice and real-world usage messaging > Identifying and targeting early adopter user segments > Securing and orchestrating strategic ecosystem partnerships In the first 5 months post-launch, these efforts contributed to: > Growth from ~20 to 3.3K+ followers > 10K+ connected wallets > 1.2K+ completed orders > $110K+ in checkout volume > at some points, retention rate was 90-100% “All achieved with $0 CAC or paid acquisition spend.” Other notable wins; > Ecosystem Credibility > Multiple Grant wins > Solana Mobile x Radiants DAO Hackathon win > Placed 5th in the Stablecoin track for the Cypherpunk Colosseum Hackathon > MonkeFoundry Accelerator If you’ve ever: > chased 2x SP3ND points through a limited-time partnership > shared a purchase to unlock bonus points > or participated in voucher-based campaigns, you’ve likely interacted with one of the growth loops I helped deploy. As I wrap up this chapter at SP3ND, I’m particularly taking some time to reflect and refine my experience, and how it shapes me going forward. Onwards.
- 17
- 18
@emilylai ·
Thinking about how crypto incentives on retail apps skew user behavior. This makes traditional metrics like LTV more difficult to measure and affects user acquisition marketing downstream When targeting new users on CT, there’s two distinct user types: 1. Those who actively use your product for its main use-case (e.g. want to trade gold and think you’re the best venue to do it, so continually trade on your platform) 2. Those who only use your product to farm it for a potential airdrop (may drive revenue but out of speculation) LTV and payback period are common metrics used in traditional marketing. If you know the average revenue a user drives, you have a cost you’re willing to pay to get a new one - this helps give you a benchmark for CPA targets To get “real” LTV in crypto retail products when incentives are involved though, you have to cohort “top” users based on retention and revenue, and measure it there Even that doesn’t feel fully accurate though; I find LTV in crypto a lot more elastic as the audience size is small whilst new competitors pop up and vampire attack each other through incentives - it makes metrics like LTV less durable Downstream from all this as well, LTV from a high-revenue-over-time type quality user captured from CT also may not be comparable to non-crypto native users you capture on other channels, so you a margin is needed to have a target CPA when running growth experiments What does this mean for crypto apps? For one, I particularly would want to build or work somewhere with a mission bigger than CT. To get there most quickly means: 1. Focus on retention and lifecycle, crypto-native TAM is small, maintain easiest targetable revenue 2. Product teams should focus on new features and baseline being competitive to crypto apps (helps with retention and UA) 3. Onboarding and onramp flows optimizing for conversion rate for non CT users, can even segment these based on different channels 4. Measurable experiments that growth teams can quickly scale, cut, and optimize
- 19
@leonabboud ·
X growth hack: Double how much content your publish. Last year, I ran an experiment. "What would happen if I doubled my content output?" I tried it. The results? My account doubled in reach and follower growth. Do it, the algo does not nerf you for volume.
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- 20
@danmartell ·
growth hacking isn't a tactic. it's one question: who already has my customers? here's how it plays out: wealth manager friend: "my best clients have jets." ok.. who sells the list of every private plane at an airport? turns out, someone does. that was his whole channel. payroll software client burning cash on cold dials. i asked what was true about his 100 customers. "they all use google apps for domains." that meant early adopters. so instead of dialing 300k businesses, he filtered to the 20k that matched. done. find the unique angle nobody else sees. that's the moat. if everyone knew it, it'd stop working.
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@HappyfulofWeb3 ·
Was talking to a founder of a Web3 product with 220M users. I shared a bunch of growth ideas. He replied with one line: “Cool. How to monetize?” That question hit harder than anything else. Because it exposes a truth most people in crypto avoid: If your growth strategy doesn’t drive revenue, it’s just noise. We’ve normalized: > Vanity metrics > “Community building” with no value capture > Campaigns that look good but don’t pay But real operators think differently. They’re not asking: → “Will this go viral?” They’re asking: → “Does this increase revenue per user?” Every growth idea should map to: Acquisition → Activation → Retention → Monetization If you can’t clearly answer: > What user action increases? > How that action makes money? > How often it repeats? Then it’s not a strategy, It’s fluff. If you’re a founder or operator, change how you think about growth; > From: “Let’s get more users” > To: “Let’s get more valuable users doing profitable actions” Different game entirely.
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@IAmPascio ·
I'm doing a public 30 day challenge. The goal is to grow Stanley. As of today, Stanley has 2,200 active users. Our goal is to get him in the hands of 10,000 people. To do so, for the next 30 days, I will run 3 growth experiments in public and document it: Experiment 1: - Send 500+ hyper-personal DM's to prospects I will use Stanley to find me 500+ people who would be a good fit to use him, then use Stanley to come up with personalized outreach to these people. Will measure and share the results of each DM. Experiment 2: - 30 long-form account audits in 30 days One of the things Stanley does best is spot the gaps on your Twitter account and in your strategy. So, I'll have Stanley analyze 30 accounts and post a long form audit every single day. The experiment here is simple. Can Stanley attract high-level users by simply doing what he does best... in public? Experiment 3: - Spend $2,000 on Twitter Ads in the next 30 days Can paid acquisition lead to more users? And is Twitter Ads a good way to get people to your Twitter-native product? We'll find out. Each week, I will create a new ad and allocate a budget of $500, experimenting with different ad styles + audience targeting. And I'll document it all along the way. The Overall Goal: "How many total new users can we generate across these 3 initiatives in 30 days of focused effort?" Hopefully, you can then apply what I learn along the way, to your own product that you want to market. Follow me @iampascio and enable notifications on my profile (the lil' bell icon) to not miss a single update. - Pascio P.S. One more thing I'm also running 2 other separate experiments that my interest you. 1. On @xgrowthpascal, I'm growing this fresh account from 0 to 10,000 followers in the next 3 months, using only Stanley. Learn more here: https://t.co/ELhWxkE6Wv 2. On @creatorpascal, I'm posting 30 long form articles in 30 days just to see what the f*ck happens. Learn more here + read the first one here: https://t.co/VZtSBaUJFE
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@ToriiRowe ·
Meta is combining awareness and sales into a single campaign type in Q2, and I think it’s the most significant structural change to paid social prospecting in the last few years. This is different from Customer Lifecycle Strategy! Here’s what’s actually happening. The new campaign runs sales optimization as the primary objective while simultaneously pulling in reach optimization to expand into new audiences at lower CPMs. You’re not running two campaigns anymore. You’re running one that does both, and Meta is handling the allocation. The reason this matters for brands spending $100K or more per month isn’t the CPM drop. It’s what this signals about where Meta’s entire ad system is heading in 2026. Every tool they’re building right now points in the same direction: new customer acquisition percentage is becoming the primary metric the platform is optimizing toward at the infrastructure level. Not ROAS. Net new buyers as a percentage of total purchases. Most brands in the $5M to $50M range are running prospecting and retargeting in silos and measuring everything through a blended ROAS number that makes the account look healthier than it is. What that blended number is hiding is how much of your “acquisition” spend is actually just recycling warm audiences you already paid to build. Meta is building a system that makes that problem visible whether you want to see it or not. We’re in beta on this at DREAMLABS. What I’m watching isn’t ROAS. It’s the new customer rate inside the purchase mix. If that number isn’t climbing, the campaign isn’t working, full stop, regardless of what the dashboard shows. The brands that come out ahead in this environment will be the ones with the margins and the CLTV to absorb a higher CAC on new customers and let those customers compound. The ones that don’t will be the ones who realize too late that they’ve been running retention campaigns with acquisition budgets. Q2 is going to make that distinction very clear
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@SchmelebeckPPC ·
If you're spending $200K/month on Meta and $30K on Google, you're not diversified You're exposed Here's the test that proves it: Go to GA4 → Acquisition → User Type (New vs Returning) (or Triple Whale, Northbeam, Wicked Reports, etc) Filter by Google Ads traffic What percentage is NEW traffic? If it's under 75%, your "second channel" is a lie You're running two channels but getting new customers from ONE Here's what's actually happening: Meta drives awareness → Person doesn't buy → Googles your brand 3 days later → Clicks your Google ad → Converts Google credits itself with the sale Your dashboard shows: Meta: 250% ROAS Google: 700% ROAS Total: "We're killing it on both channels!" But the reality: 95% of NEW customers came from Meta Google intercepted the conversion Meta created You have ZERO acquisition independence THE REAL TEST: Turn off Meta for 7 days (I know, terrifying) if you cant stomach that, just watch next time you pullback on Meta then watch what happens to Google revenue In accounts I audit before we setup true TOF prospecting campaigns, it's not far fetched to see Google revenue drops 40-60% when Meta gets pulled back Why? Because Google was just catching what Meta threw When Meta stops creating awareness, Google has nothing to harvest That's not diversification...it's just dependency with extra steps. THE FIX: Separate your Google campaigns into three buckets: BUCKET 1: DEFENSE (Branded Search) Keywords: [Your brand], [brand] reviews, [brand] discount Purpose: Protect your house (cheap CPCs, block competitors) Budget: 5-10% of total Google spend Expectation: 10x+ ROAS BUCKET 2: SUPPORT (Retargeting) Audiences: Website visitors, cart abandoners, subscribers Purpose: Close people Meta warmed up Budget: 10-20% of total Google spend Expectation: 200-400% ROAS (still mostly Meta's work) BUCKET 3: OFFENSE (Cold Acquisition) Keywords: Category terms, competitor alternatives, problem searches Audiences: Lookalikes, In-Market, ZERO overlap with existing customers Purpose: Find people who've never heard of you Budget: 70-80% of total Google spend THIS is diversification. THIS is what protects you when Meta has a bad week or if your creatives start dying off but here's what I see in 90% of accounts I audit: Bucket 1: 60% of spend (massive brand tax) Bucket 2: 30% of spend (retargeting Meta's work) Bucket 3: 10% of spend (barely testing cold) Then brand owners who i talk to wonder why turning off Meta kills the business You should only care about ONE question when diversifying: What happens to overall revenue when Channel A goes to zero? If the answer is "Revenue drops 90%," you don't have two channels. Check your New visitor % If you don't like the number, DM me. I'll show you the exact account structure that fixes it
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@natiakourdadze ·
I recently discovered a new growth hack that SaaS startup founders use on X, Product Hunt, Hacker News and Reddit: 1. They set up Google Alerts, F5bot, ReplyGuy or BrandWatch for the competitors' products 2. Then, using these social listening tools, find discussions that mention their competitors 3. And leave comments that follow this framework: "Any reason why not using X instead of Y (competitor’s product)? Way better if you do not want to {problem agitation and/or unique selling proposition}" 4. People get curious and start googling the alternative 5. As a result, this improves SEO, gets them mentions, backlinks and customers
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@sarah_carusona ·
Let's talk about the Head of Growth (HOG) role. Who needs one. What they do. And what they don't. 𝐖𝐡𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐇𝐎𝐆 𝐢𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 Most brands don't need a Head of Growth until they're somewhere between $8 - 15M. Before that? IMHO (most) founders should run growth themselves. Learn Shopify. Learn Meta. Learn Google. Get into the numbers. You'll understand your business in ways no hire can shortcut for you. You'll know which levers matter, what to prioritize, and when something's off before it shows up on a report. But at a certain point, that founder's bandwidth maxes out, and they are spending way too much time managing agencies, marketing calendars, and day-to-day operations. They can no longer focus on the product and larger strategic levers. That's when you bring in a Head of Growth. Because not doing so will hold you back. 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐇𝐎𝐆 𝐨𝐰𝐧𝐬 Some companies say the HOG "owns the P&L." And they do, if you consider that owning top-line and bottom-line growth... and everything in between. On the topline they own total revenue, new and repeat, AOV, and units shipped. In the middle they own the team and costs around: - acquisition (media spend, agency costs, influencer partnerships) - retention (email/sms, loyalty, subscription) - conversion (CRO, landing pages, offer structure) They also own a certain level of the OPEX and content creation budget. They should have strong input on inventory (because stockouts and overstocks kill growth). They need a seat at the table on shipping cost and return programs (because these kill margin). And they are part of the discussion on new product launches based on opportunity they see in the numbers. Because they live in the numbers. They know the relationship between what you're paying to acquire a customer and what that customer is actually worth. They know what lever affects what KPI. And they know, based on data, where the team's focus needs to be. 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲'𝐫𝐞 𝐧𝐨𝐭 They're not your CEO. And they aren't your brand, product, ops, creative, HR, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 growth person rolled into one. They care deeply about every aspect of the business, because they know they can't grow the company without it. But caring about something isn't the same as owning it. (A HOG who tries to own everything ends up owning nothing well.) It's your job as a founder to give them what they need to win. The right team around them. Clear ownership. And the trust to actually do the job. The Head of Growth is an operator at their core. Set them up for success.
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@iamfra5er ·
THIS GUY NICHED DOWN SO HARD HE WENT FROM $0 TO $23K/MO IN ONE VIRAL POST stefano spent a year pivoting his design tool 3 times and barely made any money then he noticed something weird: the only people actually happy with his product were the ones designing mobile apps so he said screw it, deleted everything else, and rebuilt the entire tool to do ONE thing: generate mobile app designs with AI posted a demo to reddit. got some conversations going. then dropped it on X with a simple hook: "comment sleek for early access" that post hit 1M views their AI costs went so high during the launch they panic-deployed a paywall. conversions died instantly. they had to roll it back within hours day one revenue: $2,500 that was already more than the previous product made in an entire year the unfair advantage wasn't the tech or the AI, it was that he stopped trying to optimize a mediocre product and just found a problem people actually cared about solving most founders keep adding features to products that don't matter. stefano just started over and picked the right problem now they're at $23.4k/mo with 90% margins because acquisition cost is basically zero all organic. all X and reddit. no ads goal: $200k/mo in 12 months
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@adrien_brbr ·
Things that actually moved the needle for my SaaS: - Hard paywall from day one (free tier = $0 revenue for weeks) - Affiliates at 40% commission (beat all my own marketing combined) - Reddit 3x/week in niche subreddits (not r/startups) - TikTok 2x/day, reverse-engineered from viral trends - IndieHackers website 3x/week Things that wasted my time: - Product Hunt - Generic startup subreddits - Posting on 5 platforms at 20% effort each What's working for you that nobody talks about?
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@camolNFT ·
I've made my career in crypto and seeing bad marketing genuinely makes me mad. Wasted budget on agencies that sell you overpriced services with 0 conversion, massive egos from influencers, and teams all trying the same exact playbook. Here's what you SHOULD be doing. 1. Have a growth employee go through your end-to-end product flow, ensuring onboarding is EASY. 2. Come up with a simple, repeatable brand positioning that is both a tagline AND an onboarding tool. 3. Stop worrying about the perfect logo. 4. Focus on the growth funnels similar WEB2 products use. Don't just YOLO your marketing. 5. Run paid marketing experiments, either with creators or ads (or both). See what converts and what doesn't. 6. Find ways to always contact your customers. Email, LinkedIn newsletters, or other. 7. Focus on SPECIFIC geos, don't try to onboard the world on day 1. Maybe just focus on Miami. 8. Find a way to make mindshare a moat for your company. If people are talking about you, they're not talking about others. 9. Be accessible. The best founders I know are almost always focussed on engaging with their users (or prospective ones). 10. Get niche-micro creators in industries adjacent to yours to create content. Crypto creators take every paid deal, which means none of them convert. But, what if you focus on WEB2 creators focussed on your niche? Way better. Obviously, all of these can get broken down way more. But these are the basics.
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@zmbnski ·
8 mental models i keep coming back to as an indie hacker: - jobs to be done: people don't buy products, they buy solutions - distribution first: a worse product with better reach usually wins - activation > acquisition: getting users in the door means nothing if they don't stick - the aha moment: find it fast, show it fast to your users - ramen profitability: survive long enough to find what works - default alive vs default dead: know which one your product is right now - 10x better or 10x cheaper: if you're not either, you're invisible - ship, measure, iterate: perfection is a distraction, data is the answer
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@TheecomMike ·
was having dinner with a guy in dubai last month. runs a supplements brand. doing ~$250k/month. been stuck around that number for almost a year. we got talking about growth and he said something i hear constantly at this level. "we're profitable. product is great. ads are working. but it feels like the business isn't really building. like every month we're starting from zero again." i knew exactly what he meant before he finished the sentence. i asked him one question. "what's your repeat purchase rate" he paused. "around 18% i think" i asked for his analytics. it was 16%. i broke it down for him. he was acquiring ~1,600 new customers a month at a $34 CAC. that's ~$54k/month on acquisition. out of those 1,600 customers only ~256 would ever buy again. the other 1,344? gone. paid for. acquired. lost. every single month. "now look at this" i showed him another brand in the same category. similar revenue. similar pricing. similar traffic. repeat purchase rate: 40%. same ~1,600 new customers. but 640 of them come back. that's 384 extra repeat purchases at near zero acquisition cost. at a $90 AOV that's ~$34k/month in revenue they don't pay to generate. "that's the gap between your business and theirs. not the product. not the ads. not the traffic. just what happens after someone buys." he just stared at the screen. "so i've built a machine that acquires customers and then just releases them" "yeah" "for a year" "yeah" most brands at $200k–$300k/month are here. they've built elite acquisition systems. and almost nothing to keep the people they paid for. every month resets. every month they rebuy their own growth. and then wonder why scaling feels heavy. the ceiling you're hitting isn't an ads problem. it's what happens after the click. and it's been right in front of you the whole time.
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@TheecomMike ·
a friend’s store was stuck at $180k/month. for months, he couldn’t push it past it. ads were healthy. product was strong. team was solid. so he told himself what everyone tells themselves: “it’s a creative problem.” his solution? new angles. more UGC. different hooks. he spent ~$55k trying to prove it. didn’t move. one day we sat down at a cafe and pulled up the numbers. cohort data by acquisition month. 18 months. repeat purchase rate: 13%. flat. didn’t matter what he did on ads. 87% of customers bought once… and never came back. he was spending ~$42k/month acquiring customers and losing almost all of them after the first order. every month was a reset. same bucket. same leak. we looked at the post-purchase experience: thank you email. shipping notification. review request at day 30. that’s it. no reason to come back. no timing. no path to the next product. we rebuilt retention from the ground up: – post-purchase flows by SKU – winbacks based on actual repurchase behavior – SMS that felt human – cross-sells based on what customers actually bought next repeat purchase rate went from 13% → 29% in a quarter. that $180k ceiling disappeared. he hit $260k within 60 days. no increase in ad spend. he thought the problem was acquisition. it wasn’t. the growth was sitting in retention the whole time. untouched.
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@joulee ·
The art and excellence of growth Most companies think growth means running more experiments. DoorDash Chief Growth Officer Brian Hale sees it very differently. When I asked him what separates excellent growth teams from okay ones, his answer surprised me. Excellent growth teams are not obsessing over A/B tests or marketing channels. They’re obsessing over every moment a customer hesitates. At DoorDash, for example, customers sometimes hesitated to place an order because they were worried about delivery fees. Even when the app already offered zero delivery fees. As Brian put it: “We were like, ‘but there’s zero fees. What do you mean you’re worried?’” The problem wasn’t the offer; the problem was people didn’t know about the offer. And that lack of knowledge was a key growth lever. Most growth teams run experiments; the great ones hunt friction. Listen to our full conversation, and read up on my takeaways for the 7 biggest contrasts between okay growth teams and excellent ones after our conversation here: https://t.co/yUts8Vb0ED
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@sarah_carusona ·
In 2026 my team will oversee almost $100M in revenue for 𝐬𝐮𝐛𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐞𝐬. I've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. And at this point, we know exactly what works. While I'm not launching my own brand anytime soon (one day....) But if I did, here's exactly what I'd do 👇 1. 𝐌𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐲. Dog food = sticky. Pasta subscription = not so much (unless it's really good pasta). You've got to be honest with yourself >> Is it likely the consumer will cancel because they can find an easier/cheaper/better alternative? How long will the consumer get benefit from the product? Is there a layer of belief in what the product does (think supplements) that needs constant reinforcement? 2. 𝐁𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐲 𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐜𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 >> 𝐨𝐧 𝐩𝐮𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐞. Subscription brands are built on acquisition volume and LTV. If you have real confidence in your product, give yourself room to break even or even lose 5-10% on that first order. It opens up your ability to test creatives, messaging, and offers at a pace you can't afford otherwise. 3. 𝐎𝐛𝐬𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭-𝐩𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞. Not just the email series. The unboxing. The insert that educates them about what your product does. The little things that make them feel like a part of something. Those are the things that move LTV beyond just product stickiness. 4. 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐟𝐚𝐬𝐭. If you're betting on losing money upfront, you better know exactly why people are churning. What are they telling you on the way out? How fast can you use that to tighten the experience or improve/adjust the product? The strategy is simple: sticky product, calculated risk on acquisition, obsessive post-purchase. Execution is where it gets hard 😉
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@aigleeson ·
The most followed accounts in every niche figured something out that nobody is teaching. They post every single day. Sometimes twice. I spent 3 weeks going through the top 50 accounts in 6 different niches on Instagram. Not to scroll. To study. I tracked posting frequency, caption length, content format, and engagement rate across every single account. What I found broke everything the "post less, post better" crowd has been telling people for years. The accounts with the highest follower growth were not the ones carefully curating one perfect post a week. They were posting every single day. Some of them twice. And the growth gap between them and the weekly posters wasn't small. It was embarrassing. So I went deeper. The algorithm has one job: keep people on the app. And it does that by showing people content from accounts they already engage with. The more you post, the more chances you give the algorithm to put you in front of your own audience. The more chances it puts you in front of your audience, the more chances they engage. The more they engage, the more it pushes you to new people. Frequency is not the enemy of quality. Disappearing for a week is. The second thing I found was about what daily posting actually does to your skill. The accounts posting every day were not just growing faster. They were getting visibly better every month. Their hooks got sharper. Their captions got tighter. Their content sense got stronger. You cannot think your way to better content. You have to post your way there. The weekly posters were treating every post like a performance review. The daily posters were treating every post like practice. And practice compounds in a way that careful deliberation never does. The third thing was the hardest to accept. Consistency is not just a growth strategy. It is a trust signal. When someone finds your account and sees you posted yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, they follow you because they know you will show up tomorrow. When someone finds your account and your last post was eleven days ago, they keep scrolling. The most followed accounts are not more talented than everyone else. They just never gave the algorithm a reason to forget them. Volume without quality is noise. But quality without volume is a secret. Post like you mean it. Post like tomorrow depends on it. Because on Instagram, it does.
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@Hartdrawss ·
This reddit user SaaS hit 0 → $25K MRR and exit in < 2 years his advice? painfully simple. here's the breakdown : 1/ PLG didn't get him from 0 to 1 >clean signup meant nothing without buying intent >he called almost every trial user early >most calls were awkward and useless >a few completely changed his positioning 2/ demos became the learning loop >self-serve didnt mean skipping the call >demos dont scale, but learning does >confused users exposed hidden product gaps >live objections made the product sharper 3/ content worked late, not early >he wrote zero content early, big mistake >old posts generated inbound near the sale >specific articles became long-term acquisition assets >content felt useless before it compounded 4/ specific content beat polished advice >generic startup advice got ignored fast >exact failures made the lessons believable >wrong assumptions created the strongest posts >founders trust scars more than frameworks 5/ boring problems made the business >B2B finance teams were leaking money >not sexy, but expensive enough to fix >clear ROI made buying easier >boring pain created real willingness to pay the actual lesson: >talk before automating >demo before scaling >write before ready 0 to 1 is uncomfortable. thats why founders avoid it.
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@oliviaakory ·
We simulated a year of marketing decisions 36 million times, and we are now sharing everything we found. I thought about not posting this on a Saturday but no need to pretend that we aren't thinking about causal inference 7 days a week over here at Haus... First, why do we invest so much in our estimators and improving experiment precision at Haus? Because an experiment doesn't create value just because it produces a lift estimate. It creates value when that estimate leads to a better decision – scale the channel, pull back, hold, retest. If the signal behind those decisions is noisy, doing more of them doesn't average you toward the truth, it means you make more wrong turns, faster. We've watched this play out anecdotally for years. But anecdotes aren't numbers. So Patrick Hillery built a simulation that modeled a full year of experiment-driven budget decisions, varying only the two levers a team actually controls: how precise their measurement is, and how often they test. What we found: - Acting on noisy results left the business worse off than doing nothing 38% of the time, more than twice as often as the precise approaches. - You can't test your way out of noisy signals with higher testing volume. Brands running noisy experiments finished ahead no more often at 15 tests a year than at 6. - A strong experimentation program is worth double digits. The precise, high-cadence approach delivered a 13.2% average revenue lift, more than double the noisy approach's payoff (5.6%) at the same cadence and limit. - A tight confidence interval can be manufactured. Some methods look precise by hand-picking a few well-matched markets, but the result only holds for those markets. In these cases, precise results aren’t necessarily accurate ones. I'm linking in thread the full article, methodology walkthrough and companion spreadsheet we are calling Monte Carlo, and we are making it available to all.
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@nrmehta ·
Agentic Coding Might Let Us "Fire Bullets, Then Cannonballs": Jim Collins, the legendary business author of "Good to Great," wrote about an approach to experimentation in companies to avoid what many get wrong: "First, you fire bullets (low-cost, low-risk, low-distraction experiments) to figure out what will work—calibrating your line of sight by taking small shots. Then, once you have empirical validation, you fire a cannonball (concentrating resources into a big bet) on the calibrated line of sight." When I read that years ago, it resonated with me so much. At Gainsight (and in past companies), we would come up with a "brilliant idea" (the non-brilliant ones usually came from me!) and go all in on it. This led to dozens of failed experiments and a team feeling disheartened by the indecision of the company. The truth is that we had a long list of ideas, but the brittle nature of pre-AI companies meant that the work to test was so significant that we could only do one at a time. Building a prototype, launching a website, iterating - all took too much effort. And worse yet, we often bailed on the experiment before we truly gave it enough time. One view of agentic coding tools like Claude Code and Codex is that you can execute on all of your ideas. I think that's misguided. The truth is that most ideas are bad. A different view is that these tools reduce the cycle time for testing. You can prototype, build, launch, etc. rapidly and with limited resources. And then you can run these experiments in parallel. There are of course still constraints (e.g., if you have a B2B sales force, you can't throw all experiments at them). But the ability to test and fail fast could radically change the way companies work. For me, when I fired cannonballs, I missed like 99% of the time! Here's to hoping agentic harnesses let us get more precise with our aim.
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@adrien_brbr ·
I followed X growth advice for 2 months straight. Reply to 50 people a day. Post 3 times. Build in public. Thread on Mondays. My follower count went up. My MRR stayed at $0. Then I stopped. Closed X for most of the day. Spent that time on cold outreach, Reddit, affiliates, and talking to people who might actually pay. $500 MRR in 3 weeks. The X growth playbook grows your X account. It doesn't grow your business.
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@ascorbichelix ·
🚀 Startup Concepts Every Founder Should Know [Part 3] In Part 2, we explored Competitive Advantage, Network Effects, and Switching Coste, the concepts that help startups defend their position once they've built something valuable. But before any of those matter, a startup first needs to answer one question: Do people actually want this product? Let's look at three concepts that explain how successful startups find product-market fit and scale from there 1. Product-Market Fit (PMF) Product-Market Fit is the stage where your product solves a real problem for a specific group of customers so well that they keep coming back and actively recommend it to others. Before PMF, growth often feels forced. After PMF, customers start pulling the product instead of the company constantly pushing it. Signs of Product-Market Fit include: - Strong customer retention - Word-of-mouth referrals - Increasing organic growth - Customers saying they would be disappointed if the product disappeared Example Imagine you build an AI coding assistant. Initially, developers try it but continue using other tools because it doesn't offer enough value. Over time, you add a planning mode, task checklists, significantly improve code quality, reduce hallucinations, and make it consistently follow software engineering best practices. Developers now rely on it for their daily work, use it across entire projects, and recommend it to their teammates because it has become an essential part of their workflow. That's a strong indicator of Product-Market Fit. 2. Growth Loops A growth loop is a system where each new user helps generate future users. Instead of relying only on paid marketing, the product itself drives growth. Example Imagine you build an AI resume platform. A job seeker creates a polished resume using your AI tool and shares a review link with mentors or friends for feedback. They also share the resume with recruiters and hiring managers during job applications. The mentors, recruiters, and hiring managers discover the platform, recommend it to other candidates, or use it to create and review resumes themselves. Those new users then share resumes with even more people, bringing additional users onto the platform. Every new user helps attract more users, creating a continuous growth loop. 3. Flywheel A flywheel is a self-reinforcing cycle where improvements in one part of the business make every other part stronger. As the cycle repeats, growth becomes easier and faster. Example An AI coding platform attracts more developers. More developers generate more feedback and bug reports. That feedback improves the model. A better product attracts even more developers. The cycle keeps reinforcing itself, making the business stronger over time. Many of the world's most successful companies are built around powerful flywheels rather than one-time growth hacks. Thanks a lot for staying till the end!! Wait for Part 4! #startups #tech #business
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@ChrisClickUp ·
hot take that shouldnt be a hot take: the brands winning right now are the ones answering DMs at 11pm not running AI chatbots. actually answering everyone optimized for reach last year. hacked the algorithm. posted 3x a day. batched content a month in advance and then posted and ghosted posting and ghosting is the new "spray and pray" the algorithm sees it. your audience feels it meanwhile the brands actually replying to every comment within 15 minutes? theyre building something no ad budget can buy trust the irony of 2026: the most scalable growth strategy is the least scalable thing you can do actually talking to people you dont need better content you need to actually show up after you post it thats the part everyone skips
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@bmykhaylivvv ·
Just crossed $500 MRR with Amplifresh after 3 months of building. Started as a weekend project to solve my own content amplification problem - now helping 200+ creators automate their social media workflows. The growth loop was simple: build in public, ship fast, listen to users. Every feature request became a validation signal. The hardest part wasn't the code - it was saying no to features that didn't move the needle. Twitter followers went from 100 to 2000 in 40 days by sharing real metrics, failed experiments, and technical decisions. No growth hacks, just consistent updates on the journey. Turns out people love following along when you're transparent about both wins and losses. Next milestone is $2K MRR by Q1. Already seeing patterns in user behavior that suggest a premium tier could work. The beauty of indie development is you can pivot based on real data, not boardroom theories. --- Hit a weird bug today where Amplifresh was posting content twice for some users. Spent 4 hours debugging only to find it was a race condition in the queue processor. Classic distributed systems problem. The fix was adding a simple idempotency key, but the real lesson was about monitoring. Now I'm tracking every queue operation with proper observability. Sometimes the simplest bugs teach you the most about your architecture. This is why I love building products solo. You feel every edge case, understand every user flow. When something breaks at 2am, there's no pointing fingers - just you, the code, and a strong cup of coffee. --- Amplifresh users are asking for analytics dashboards. Part of me wants to build it - the engineering challenge looks fun. But I keep asking: does this move the core metric? Right now, 80% of churn happens because onboarding is clunky. Analytics won't fix that. Better UX will. It's tempting to build what excites you as a developer vs what users actually need. Staying disciplined about the roadmap is the hardest part of indie development. Every feature feels important when you're deep in user feedback. But focus wins. --- Three lessons from getting Amplifresh to $500 MRR: Ship before you're ready. My first version was embarrassing but it validated the core hypothesis. Users care more about solving their problem than perfect UI. Pricing is a product feature. Started at $9/month, raised to $19 after week 2. Higher price attracted better customers who gave better feedback. Technical debt is fine early on. My code is messy but the product works. Clean code doesn't pay the bills - happy customers do.
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@SSage38676 ·
Here's the 8-step process to crack your acquisition funnel : 1. Strategy not vibes Market + competitor + customer reviews → ICP → positioning → message architecture. Ex: "For solo founders drowning in spreadsheets, we turn tasks into a tracked workflow." 2. One North Star, tested in order Acquisition → Activation → Revenue. Test out of order, learn fake lessons. Ex: North Star = weekly active workspaces, not signups. 3. Demand in two stages Create (education, trust) → Capture (search, retargeting, lookalikes). Ex: Create = founder-led LinkedIn posts. Capture = comparison-page SEO + retargeting to trial. 4. Landing page does the heavy lifting Obvious offer, fast trust, frictionless next step. Ex: "Set up in 5 minutes" + one customer logo strip + one CTA + email-only signup. 5. Test the right layer Wrong test + wrong signal = noisy data, not insight. Ex: Don't tweak the form fields when nobody's clicking the CTA. Fix the CTA first. 6. Measure on purpose North Star → primary metrics → secondary diagnostics → leading signals when volume's low. Ex: Primary = trial-to-paid rate. Secondary = time-to-first-workflow. 7. CRO: find the drop-off, remove the friction Off-site vs on-site, then top-down: campaign → ad group → creative → page. Ex: Good CTR, nobody signs up = on-site trust problem, not a targeting one. 8. Make it repeatable 1-3 tests/week. Watch the right metrics. Ship one improvement, every week.
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@Nate_Google_ ·
if you're spending over $300k/month on google, when is the last time you tested whether your branded traffic is actually incremental? actually driving net new revenue, not conversions you would have gotten anyway? we had a brand spending $350k/month on google sign with us because we didn't sound like every other google ads agency trying to sell them media buying. media buying is only half the battle. we do it the best, but that's not what brands at scale care about most. they care about measurement. proving the spend you're driving is added net new customer revenue. we have these conversations all the time. we're currently running a geo-holdout test for another brand that's been hesitant to scale youtube because they've scaled on meta for the life of the business, so youtube reads to them like a retargeting tool. we're taking youtube to $10k/day, then holding spend flat in a set of matched control DMAs while we scale the test markets. matched controls, not just our historically strong markets, because if you pull spend from your best DMAs you bake in selection bias and regression to the mean and your incrementality read is junk. this has to be done for both meta and youtube, because it resets the platform CAC and ROAS targets you've set in your MTA stack (northbeam, triple whale, etc). example: say you're running a $55 CAC target on both meta and youtube. if you find youtube's iROAS is higher than meta's, you can tolerate a higher reported CAC on youtube, because the true incremental cost per customer is lower than the platform number says. and you can't test it once. iROAS decays as you scale, so you re-test at different spend levels to see where diminishing returns kick in. youtube might run a 1.7x iROAS at $10k/day and a 1.5x at $30k/day. the CAC targets should move with the level of scale, not stay fixed. this is where MMM earns its place. incrementality experiments are point-in-time and you can't run them continuously across every channel. MMM is always-on. it captures cross-channel halo, saturation curves, and longer-term brand effects across the entire ecosystem, and you calibrate it with the geo experiments so the model is grounded in causal truth instead of correlation. that's how you keep making data-driven allocation decisions at scale instead of guessing why you can't hit CAC anymore. measurement triangulation, MTA plus incrementality experiments plus MMM, is one of the most important pieces of the puzzle for brands at scale. almost none of them are doing it correctly. we're working on getting certified through google's meridian partner program so we can build MMM and incrementality in-house. not renting another 3rd party platform's black box and trusting their number. owning the measurement.
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@rfunk82 ·
Tracking growth publicly as I build #Talo. 1 week update 👇 Current user acquisition: Building Talo | User Acquisition: ▓▓░░░░░░░░ 53/300 Goal: 300 companies. Current: 53 companies. +23 companies in the last week 🚀 Top acquisition channels: • Organic TikTok content • Partnerships with mentors & coaches What's been most exciting is that many of these users are coming through word of mouth and community referrals. Also, Talo was built entirely on @Replit, which has allowed us to move from idea to product faster than anything I've used before. 17.7% of the way there. #buildinpublic #replit #saas #startup #cleaningbusiness #smallbusiness #talo #replit @zhenthebuilder @MannyBernabe @raymmar @amasad @HL3rd_ @nickco @amapel @samuel_spitz @agi2asi
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@rcmisk ·
growing on X without posting cringe "growth hacks": - say something specific, not something safe - reply to people with an actual take, not "great point!" - post when you have something real to say, not to stay consistent - let your failures be public before your wins the accounts I watch grow fastest aren't optimizing for virality. they're just relentlessly honest about what they're building and what isn't working.
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@robaiapps ·
Reddit is the best acquisition channel for B2C apps. But Redditors can smell a marketer from a mile away. My exact strategy: - Find highly specific niche communities - Answer questions genuinely - Drop the link ONLY when it perfectly solves their problem - High intent traffic > viral vanity metrics 📈 Are you using Reddit for growth yet?
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@SSage38676 ·
Most founders treat growth like a launch. Build. Ship. Push hard for a few weeks. Then it slows — so they plan the next one. That's not growth. That's a treadmill. Real growth is a system. You build the machine: funnel, messaging, campaigns, landing pages, tracking, conversion fixes. Then you make it repeatable with one simple weekly loop: → Run a few focused experiments → Watch the right metrics → Review what worked → Ship one real improvement Every week. Without fail. Small wins stack. That's the whole point.
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@jiayuan_jy ·
Recently, I did some research about @ahrefs. Ahrefs started as a tiny bootstrapped SEO tool built by a solo engineer who put his own savings on the line. Today it does $100M+ in ARR, is still independent, and competes head-on with giants. Meanwhile, its rival Semrush just agreed to be acquired by Adobe for $1.9B. Here's the story of Ahrefs: > be geeky engineer obsessed with backlinks > hack nights building your own web crawler > put ~$300k personal savings into servers instead of a house > launch basic backlink checker, niche SEO folks notice > no VC, no sales team, just ship and support users > move team to Singapore, keep headcount lean > answer support tickets yourself, fix bugs same day > 2015: hire first marketer, Tim, when ARR still under eight figures > decide “we’ll just teach SEO better than anyone” > publish deep tutorials, case studies, experiments > every blog post quietly pulls in more customers > no tracking pixels, no retargeting, no crazy funnels > revenue compounds from a few million to $100M+ ARR > still no investors, still no outbound sales machine > 2025: headlines say “Adobe to acquire Semrush for $1.9B” > Ahrefs just keeps shipping features and content > users stick around because the tool actually works What makes this story wild is how boring it looks from the outside. No funding announcements, no hype cycle, no “growth hacks”. Just a founder willing to risk his own money, a product that keeps getting better, and a team that learns in public for a decade. While competitors chase exits and acquirers, Ahrefs shows another path: build slowly, own your distribution, and let trust compound. Don’t worry if you lack big logos, flashy investors, or a “strategic acquisition" coming up. Focus on solving a real problem, demonstrate your work, and keep going even when others get distracted.
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