In 1960, a fictional ad exec named Don Draper sat in a boardroom with no ideas, a room full of tobacco executives, and a crisis. Cigarettes had just been linked to cancer. Every competitor was scrambling to fight the science.

Don ignored all of it and wrote 2 words on a napkin. That scene from the Mad Men pilot became one of the most studied Lucky Strike "it's toasted" ad moments in pop culture. But the real strategy behind it is even better than the fiction.

Don: This is the greatest advertising opportunity since the invention of cereal. We have six identical companies making six identical products. We can say anything we want. How do you make your cigarettes?

Lee Garner, Jr.: I don't know.

Lee Garner, Sr.: Shame on you. We breed insect-repellent tobacco seeds, plant 'em in the North Carolina sunshine, grow it, cut it, cure it, toast it.

Don: There you go. There you go. [He writes: "Lucky Strike. It's Toasted."]

Lee Garner, Jr.: But everybody else's tobacco is toasted.

Don: No, everybody else's tobacco is poisonous. Lucky Strike's is toasted.

Two words. That was all it took. The room went from panic to applause. But the real brilliance wasn't the slogan itself. It was the strategy underneath it.

The Misdirection Nobody Saw Coming

Every other cigarette company in that room (fictional or not) was doing the same thing: fighting the health scare head-on. Running ads about throat doctors. Citing studies. Trying to prove cigarettes were safe.

Lucky Strike ignored all of it.

Don didn't argue that cigarettes were healthy. He didn't acknowledge the Reader's Digest article that had just linked smoking to cancer.

He changed the subject entirely. While every competitor scrambled to defend the product, Lucky Strike talked about how it was made.

"It's toasted" isn't a health claim. It isn't a lie. It's a simple, true description of a manufacturing step.

But in the context of an industry drowning in health panic, a calm, warm message about toasting felt like reassurance. As Don put it: "Advertising is about happiness. Freedom from fear."

A billboard on the side of the road that screams with reassurance that whatever you're doing is okay.

The slogan didn't say Lucky Strike was safe. It just stopped you from thinking about danger.

2 Syllables, Zero Logic, Full Buy-In

Why "toasted" specifically? Any step of the manufacturing process could have been the slogan. "It's cured." "It's sun-grown." "It's blended." None of those would have worked the same way.

"Toasted" hijacked stored memories. By the 1910s and 1920s, toasters were in nearly every American kitchen.

The word triggered images of bread, breakfast, butter melting into English muffins, mom at the kitchen table. Warm, domestic, harmless.

Not cancer sticks. Not poison. Toast.

That single word bypassed logic entirely and went straight to feeling. The brain doesn't debate feelings. It just accepts them.

It's the same reason Starbucks pumps the smell of fresh coffee through every store. The drink might be overpriced. The line might be long.

But when you walk in and catch that warm roast in the air, your guard drops. You stop calculating and start craving. "Toasted" did the same thing, just with 2 syllables instead of an espresso machine.

First-to-Claim: Own the Obvious

Here's the part that trips people up. Every cigarette brand toasted its tobacco. It was a standard step in manufacturing. Lucky Strike didn't have a unique process.

It didn't matter.

What mattered was that Lucky Strike said it first. They stamped a mundane, universal fact in all caps on their packaging: "IT'S TOASTED."

Once claimed, that phrase belonged to them. Other brands could have made the same statement, but they hadn't. And once Lucky Strike owned it, any competitor who tried to say the same thing would sound like a copycat.

It's like being the first person in class to raise your hand with the right answer. 3 other students knew it too. But you said it out loud, so the teacher remembers you. The knowledge was shared. The credit wasn't.

This is the tactic: find a true thing about your product that every competitor also does, but nobody talks about.

Then talk about it loudly, before anyone else can. The audience doesn't know it's universal. To them, it sounds like a differentiator.

The Real "It's Toasted" Story Starts in 1917

The TV version is great storytelling. But the real campaign predates it by decades. "It's Toasted" first appeared around 1917.

Susan Wagner documented the origin in her 1971 book Cigarette Country. The slogan wasn't born out of a health crisis at all. It was born out of a market share war with Camel cigarettes after World War I.

R. J. Reynolds had ridden burley tobacco to 40% of U.S. cigarette sales by 1918. Burley tasted stronger and nuttier than the Virginia tobacco most brands used. When the war cut off Turkish tobacco imports, smokers switched to Camels. American Tobacco was losing ground fast.

Their answer was Lucky Strike, a brand that had existed since 1871 (named after the California Gold Rush). As Wagner writes:

It's the marketing equivalent of a restaurant putting house-made on the menu. Every restaurant makes their food in-house. That's what a kitchen is for.

But writing it down makes it feel intentional, special, considered. Percival Hill did the same thing with toasting: took a step every factory already performed and turned it into a selling point.

The first Lucky Strike "it's toasted" ad leaned heavily into that toast imagery. A hand holding a toasting fork. A piece of bread on a circle.

The message sat next to copy that read: "Think of a cigarette served to you as appetizingly as the hot, buttered toast that comes to your breakfast table."

Lucky Strike "it's toasted" ad from 1917 showing a piece of toast with a fork

The Mad Men version cut the toast. Matt Weiner probably thought bread imagery lacked sex appeal. Fair point.

But the real campaign was more grounded than the TV version. It leaned hard on agriculture. Lucky Strike called itself "The real Burley Cigarette," and in 1917, people knew enough about tobacco varietals for that to matter.

Over the following decades, the campaign evolved. Celebrity endorsements replaced the rustic toast fork. Golfers and actors lent their faces to the "It's Toasted" line.

Lucky Strike mid-century ad featuring golfer Sam Snead with the "It's Toasted to taste better" tagline

The gamble paid off. Lucky Strikes became the best-selling cigarettes in the nation. A 1929 ad declared that "An Ancient Prejudice Has Been Removed," claiming the toasting process eliminated harmful irritants from the tobacco.

Lucky Strike 1929 ad promoting how toasting removed "harmful corrosive acrids" from tobacco

The brand is still sold in the United States today.

Some brands are like that jacket you bought in college that somehow still fits 15 years later. The stitching held. The style aged well.

Lucky Strike's slogan has been running for over a century because the strategy underneath it never went out of fashion.

Dove, Foster's, and Cookie Crisp: Same Trick, Different Product

This exact playbook shows up everywhere in modern marketing. The product doesn't change. The framing does.

Dove doesn't sell soap. Dove sells the feeling of being beautiful. Their ads focus on revealing a woman's inherent beauty by keeping her skin healthy. The soap is incidental. The emotion is the product.

Foster's beer is considered cheap in Australia. Aussies can barely stand it. In the United States, all it took was "Foster's: Australian for beer" and the brand became a hit. Same liquid, different story.

Cookie Crisp is a breakfast cereal that is manufactured to look like chocolate chip cookies. The box art would have you believe it's a healthy, nutritious breakfast.

Bill Bryson wrote about being overwhelmed in the American cereal aisle and realizing that Cookie Crisp was just a way to sell cookies at breakfast. The product didn't change. The context did.

Every one of these follows the same pattern that Lucky Strike pioneered over a century ago: take what your product already is, find the angle nobody has claimed, and say it first.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

Twitter tweet

Study a little bit of social engineering and you can get a lot of info out of your competitors easily.

And the best part is you won't get caught like this.

This 3-minute movie scene captures the best of social engineering.

2/

Twitter tweet

When you jump on trends, cash out as fast as possible.

Lovable is a good example. They would've made a killing if they sold an annual plan based on specific credit usage per month.

It is still making a killing but can easily buy out lots of LTV from customers who jumped on it based on hype.

3/

Twitter tweet

Good example vs bad example on how to write copy.

Rabbit Holes

1. Rockefeller's Autobiography

2. Gemini CLI Tips & Tricks

3. Equifax ran a trial with 1,500 employees using Gemini. 97% requested to keep their licenses when the trial ended

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More Startup Spells 🪄

1. Showtime's Churn Prevention Secret Tactic: 60-40-20 Discount Loophole (LINK)

2. How an AI Prompt-Engineering Growth Tactic Drove 31,548 GitHub Stars (LINK)

3. How Alex Finn Successfully Pivoted His X Niche After Building 100K+ Followers (LINK)

4. Grammarly Monetization Case Study: How "Premium Feature Sampling" Doubled Conversions (LINK)

5. LinkedIn Post Generator: How a Parody Tool Went Viral, Got 2M Users & Sold in 7 Days (LINK)

One of the most effective examples of Showtime's Churn Prevention tactics recently surfaced on a Reddit thread. A user documented their attempt to cancel their subscription.

It is a strategy currently being A/B tested by major players, including the recent ChatGPT Plus cancel-page discount hack.

Instead of letting the customer leave, Showtime presented a 40% discount for 6 months. When they tried to cancel again 6 months later, they were offered 4 months at the same discount.

Showtime's Churn Prevention tactics provided a 40% discount for 6 months during their first cancellation attempt

The 40% Discount Loophole

This pattern reveals a calculated strategy known as a Retention Ladder. Most companies view retention as a binary: either the user stays or they churn.

For a subscription-based giant like Showtime, retention is a spectrum of diminishing generosity.

Showtime Churn Prevention Ladder Formula

The model is designed to protect the user's lifetime value (LTV). The strategy shifts from a one-off trick to a structured descent.

By offering the highest incentive during the first cancellation attempt, they aim to stop churn early. As the user reveal themselves to be price-sensitive or gaming the system, the leash gets shorter.

It is the digital version of a bartender offering a free round to keep you at the bar, then 50% off the next, then just some free pretzels.

Protecting LTV Through Diminishing Returns

Showtime's approach follows a predictable, 3-step monetization logic. In the first stage, they offer a generous 6-month window. The goal is simple: keep the user in the ecosystem.

By the second attempt, they have identified the user as a high risk. They offer a moderate 4-month extension. By the final attempt, the offer drops to just 2 months.

A diagram showing the 3 steps of the descending retention ladder: 6 months, 4 months, and 2 months of discounts

This is a last-ditch effort before they decide the user is no longer worth over-subsidizing. Roam Research successfully demonstrated that hacking upfront LTV is critical for survival.

This isn't just generosity. It is a form of behavioral profiling. Each cancellation attempt tells the company how often you threaten to leave and if you are price-sensitive enough to be saved.

Eventually, the marginal ROI of discounting a chronic canceller drops below zero. The company lets the user go. Understanding subscription churn (101) is the first step.

The Decaying Incentive Strategy

Most marketers focus on the standard top-down funnel: awareness, consideration, and conversion. However, sophisticated subscription services build what we call a Reverse Funnel.

This model tracks the transition from an active user to one who is about to churn. Eventually, it moves them into a status of churned or reacquired.

The process follows the same SaaS retention strategies used by global unicorns.

A visualization of the reverse funnel showing how pricing changes as users move from active to churned and then reacquired

Pricing changes at every step of this journey. An active user pays full price, while a user threatening to leave is offered a discount.

If that user eventually churns, they might receive a winback email with a completely different offer.

Mapping the Subscriber Lifecycle

You won't find these cancel-to-get-discount flows explicitly documented on any public help page. Instead, Showtime builds the legal foundation in their Terms of Use.

They specify that they may provide discretionary credits or promotional offers at their sole discretion. This ability to use dynamic pricing in B2C apps is a massive advantage.

This legal framing ensures that a discount provided in 1 instance doesn't entitle the user to a credit in the future. It allows the company to A/B test pricing without making a promise of consistency.

Even third-party guides, like this one on how to cancel a Showtime subscription, acknowledge these multi-part retention sales pitches as a standard tactic.

For any subscription-based business, the strategic takeaway is clear. Do not offer 1 static price for all users. The first cancellation attempt is your moment of highest impact.

Instead of a single Save Offer, build a retention ladder that decreases in generosity over time. This approach ensures you capture the maximum LTV from every user while identifying those who are simply gaming the system.

The logic follows the economic principle of Zero Defections highlighted by the Harvard Business Review: the longer a customer stays, the more profitable they become. As tenure increases, the cost of servicing drops and the referral value rises.

However, be careful with the discount trap. As Paddle’s guide on SaaS retention strategies warns, heavy discounting can actually double your churn rate by attracting the wrong type of customer.

The Showtime ladder is a way to bridge these 2 worlds. It uses a high-incentive offer to stop immediate churn, but then systematically scales it back. The goal is to move the user back toward full-price profitability rather than letting them hide in a low-value discount loop forever.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

Twitter tweet

Copy what works.

2/

Twitter tweet

When a format works, just jump on it without thinking.

The time to action is very low compared to the potential impact of your actions.

3/

Twitter tweet

You just need 1 thread to go viral and make $20k MRR from it. The goal is to do 100s of marketing experiments to find that one.

Rabbit Holes

1. The Dinner Party Strategy: A SaaS Customer Onboarding Framework with Val Geisler

2. SEO growth loops

3. How Justin Welsh earns 193k/month

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More Startup Spells 🪄

1. Neurogum's Cross-Channel Growth Loop: How TikTok Feeds Amazon, Google, and Retail (LINK)

2. Raycast Wrapped's "Copy as Image" Strategy: Engineering Virality (LINK)

3. Wave AI's "Day-Zero Payback" Meta Ads Machine (LINK)

4. How an AI Prompt-Engineering Growth Tactic Drove 31,548 GitHub Stars (LINK)

5. How Alex Finn Successfully Pivoted His X Niche After Building 100K+ Followers (LINK)

Neurogum's Cross-Channel Growth Loop: How TikTok Feeds Amazon, Google, and Retail

Neurogum's cross-channel growth loop starts with a single bet: pour everything into TikTok and let the demand spill into every other channel.

Kent Yoshimura, co-founder and CEO, built this system over the past 3 years. It turned Neurogum into a top 50 health and household product on Amazon. They outsell 5-Hour Energy. They spend zero on Amazon ads.

The logic is counterintuitive. Instead of optimizing each channel separately, Neurogum feeds one channel aggressively and lets the rest grow on their own.

TikTok Powers 4 Revenue Channels

Most brands run their marketing in silos. TikTok team. Google team. Amazon team. Each one with its own budget, its own ROAS target, its own optimization loop.

Neurogum threw that model out. They made TikTok the single demand engine for the entire business: 80% top-of-funnel awareness, 20% bottom-of-funnel conversion.

Neurogum Cross-Channel Flywheel: TikTok to Amazon to Retail

A Nielsen Epsilon Meltwater study confirmed the results as mentioned by Kent himself. Neurogum reached 13% brand awareness across the United States. One in 7 Americans recognize the brand. The primary driver was TikTok.

Even their partnerships feed the same system. Chess.com, 100 Thieves, Steve Aoki: Kent says 70% of these deals are structured specifically so creators can turn them into TikTok content.

It's the difference between buying a billboard on a highway and buying a billboard that people photograph and text to their friends. The Chess.com sponsorship isn't the ad. It's the raw material for hundreds of ads.

Before, top-of-funnel partnerships had no clear attribution. You sponsored a chess tournament and hoped it moved the needle somewhere.

Now TikTok gives them a direct feedback signal. If a partnership produces content that performs on TikTok, it's working. If not, it isn't.

Google Captures What TikTok Creates

When TikTok drives awareness, consumers search. They type the product name into Google. That search intent is demand that Neurogum didn't have to pay for.

Neurogum runs Google Performance Max campaigns to intercept it. PMax targets search, native ads, and YouTube all at once. It captures anyone who saw a creator video and then went looking for more.

Neurogum Google Pmax demand capture funnel

Kent plans to spend millions on Google because TikTok keeps generating fresh search volume. The more awareness TikTok creates, the more intent Google captures.

Most brands miss this connection. They measure TikTok ROAS by looking at the sales that happen on TikTok itself. Neurogum measures TikTok success by looking at what happens everywhere else.

Google PMax is the bridge between seeing a video and making a purchase.

It's like a bar that puts a food truck in the parking lot. The bar pulls people in with music and drinks. The food truck catches the ones who walk outside hungry. Two businesses, one crowd.

Zero Amazon Ads. 52x ROAS.

The real test came in December 2024. Neurogum cut Amazon ad spend to zero. If TikTok awareness was already pushing people to Amazon, the paid ads on Amazon should be redundant.

It was like turning off the oven light to see if the cake was already baking on its own. If the temperature drops, the oven wasn't hot enough. If it holds, the heat was never coming from the light.

The bet paid off. Amazon ROAS hit 52x with no ad spend. They held the number 1 spot in their category and kept outselling 5-Hour Energy on the platform.

The lift showed up across the board. DTC sales went up. Retail velocity increased across 20,000+ doors. On TikTok Shop, a single creator generated $250,000 in one day during the December new arrivals event.

Neurogum multichannel revenue without Amazon ads

Before this shift, Neurogum ran separate ads on Amazon, bottom-of-funnel campaigns on TikTok, and treated each channel like its own business.

After the shift, they concentrated spend on TikTok awareness and Google PMax for intent capture. Every other channel grew organically.

How to Spend More on Less and Grow Everything

Kent shared the actual breakdown on the podcast.

TikTok takes the primary budget. 80% goes to top-of-funnel awareness, 20% to bottom-of-funnel. Google PMax gets a large and growing share to capture the search demand TikTok generates.

Facebook sits at 20 to 30% of digital marketing spend. Kent treats it as hygiene rather than a growth driver. Amazon gets zero ad spend.

Neurogum marketing budget allocation breakdown

Pushing budget into top-of-funnel TikTok reduces TikTok-specific ROAS. That number goes down. But Neurogum stopped caring about channel ROAS. They look at total revenue, total profitability, and total awareness.

When they made this shift, all 3 went up. Revenue climbed. Profitability improved. Brand awareness went from near-zero to 13% nationally.

The counterintuitive part: spending more on one channel while cutting spend everywhere else produced better results than spreading the budget across all of them.

It's the same logic as picking one skill on your resume and going deep. The intern who's OK at design, OK at code, OK at copywriting gets passed over. The one who's elite at design gets hired, and then the company teaches them everything else.

Most brands ask how do we optimize each channel? Neurogum asks a different question: which single channel creates demand that lifts everything else?

It's the same logic behind a good gym routine. You don't need 15 exercises. You need 3 compound lifts that work everything at once. The deadlift doesn't just hit your back. It hits your legs, your grip, your core. One movement, total coverage.

For them, it's TikTok. For another brand, it might be something entirely different. The principle stays the same. Find your demand engine, feed it aggressively, and let the spillover do the work.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

Twitter tweet

If you are in the advertising rabbit hole, you can easily spot an ad from a mile away, but most normies don't know that.

Only the innies know. Outies don't.

2/

Twitter tweet

One of the best things to do is calling your shot and then going viral. And then you can use that as a marketing asset.

If it doesn't work, nobody will know. If it does work, you just got a proof.

3/

Twitter tweet

Money & distribution are 2 things you need to get as much attention on anything you launch.

Its a cycle:

1. Money can get you distribution via organic, email, seo, or paid ads.

2. Distribution can get you money by making an offer.

One of the reasons startups raise $10M+ funding is because they want as much distribution as they can NOW by making 100s of people work on their thing to make even more money. And the only thing it costs them is <10% equity on a good deal.

Rabbit Holes

1. Watch Me LIVE Build a Viral UGC Strategy (Consumer Apps)

2. Fighting Infomania: Why 80% of Your Reading is a Waste of Time

3. Best Reddit Ad Examples to study (15 examples)

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More Startup Spells 🪄

1. SlapMac Viral Marketing: How a Prank App Made $5,000 in One Week (LINK)

2. How Basecamp's PR Strategy Generates Millions in Free Press (LINK)

3. How Alex Hormozi Uses the Kevin Hart Meme to Revive Dead Leads (LINK)

4. Raycast Wrapped's "Copy as Image" Strategy: Engineering Virality (LINK)

5. Wave AI's "Day-Zero Payback" Meta Ads Machine (LINK)

SlapMac Viral Marketing: How a Prank App Made $5,000 in One Week

SlapMac makes your MacBook scream when you slap it. The app's viral marketing happened by accident. One Instagram Reel, zero ad spend, $5,000 in a week.

Tonino Catapano found a GitHub repo, posted one Reel, and 2 days later had a paid macOS app pulling in thousands. No ads. No App Store. No venture capital. Just a laptop that screams when you hit it.

SlapMac viral marketing tweet by Anul Agarwal

The app does exactly what the tagline says. Slap your MacBook. It screams back. That is the entire product. And that simplicity is the reason it worked.

The Reel That Started a $5,000 Business

Tonino scrolls through GitHub and finds spank, an open-source library by taigrr. It uses the MacBook's built-in accelerometer to detect vibrations and play audio files. Slap the keyboard, you get a sound. Close the lid too hard, you get a different sound.

He records a Reel. Terminal open, code running, hand slapping the MacBook. The laptop yelps.

SlapMac viral Instagram Reel by Tonino Catapano

That single Reel hits 79,400 likes and 590 comments. One commenter with 4,580 likes writes: OnlyMacs. The comments section becomes its own entertainment.

Tonino did not plan a product launch. He posted a funny video. But the reaction told him everything he needed to know. People wanted this, yet most of them had no clue how to run a terminal command. Tonino turned a raw script into a product for them.

48 Hours From Viral Video to Paid Download

2 days after the first Reel, Tonino posts again. I had to do it. I went viral slapping my laptop. So obviously I had to build an app.

SlapMac from viral video to app launch in 2 days

He wraps the open-source library into a native macOS app called SlapMac. Launched at $3, later raised to $7 as demand grew. No App Store review process. No 30% Apple tax.

He distributes through amore.computer, a platform by Lucas Loverso that lets indie developers sell Mac apps directly.

SlapMac homepage with download button

The download is free. You install it, slap your MacBook, and it works. The app lets you verify compatibility on your own machine before asking for a license since it only works on some versions of Apple Silicon.

By the time the paywall appears, you have already confirmed the slap.

The app adds hidden Easter eggs on top of the base functionality. Different sound packs. Tonino turns a raw command-line tool into something your non-technical friend can try in 30 seconds.

Tonino Catapano announcing the SlapMac app on Instagram

The second Reel pulls 22,700 likes and 521 comments.

This is the speed that kills competition. Don't overthink for months. Find what people react to, package it, and ship before the attention fades.

The Product That Does Its Own PR

Tonino did not pitch a single media outlet. He did not DM influencers. He did not run paid promotion.

The concept sold itself because it fits in one sentence: there is an app that makes your MacBook moan when you slap it.

If you have watched BBC's Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch as the lead, you know the scene. Irene Adler changes Sherlock's ringtone to a moan. It keeps going off at the worst possible moments. That single gag became one of the most iconic bits in the entire series. One of my personal favourites. Devices making unexpected sounds is comedy that writes itself. SlapMac runs on the same energy.

DailyLoud tweets it. 51,000 views.

DailyLoud tweet about SlapMac going viral

Dexerto tweets it. 871,000 views.

Dexerto tweet about SlapMac earning $5k

Anul Agarwal tweets about it with the line You all are overthinking your app ideas. 5.6 million impressions. 597 retweets. 10,828 likes.

SlapMac trends on X under Explore with 559 X posts.

SlapMac trending on X with 559 posts

The earned media cascade happened because the product is its own punchline. The 3-second demo naturally engineers word-of-mouth virality without Tonino spending a dollar on distribution.

Reddit, X, Instagram, Product Hunt: All at Once

Viral attention has a short half-life. Tonino does not sit back. He seeds every platform he can reach, from Reddit to Product Hunt, tailoring each post to the specific crowd. This is the Reddit playbook for content virality in action.

Tonino Catapano sharing SlapMac analytics on X

The numbers after 1 week: 20,000 visitors, 23,000 pageviews, 46 seconds average time on page, over 7,000 app installs, and $5,000 in sales. All organic.

Google search results showing SlapMac coverage everywhere

One platform's algorithm can bury your content tomorrow. By hitting Reddit, X, Instagram, and Product Hunt simultaneously, Tonino created multiple entry points that outlasted the initial viral spike.

The Growth Loop Hiding on the Discount Page

This is the part most people miss about SlapMac. The real growth engine is not the Reels Tonino made. It is the discount page.

It is a tweet-for-discount mechanic adapted for Instagram Reels.

SlapMac discount page with refund tiers

The structure is simple. Buy SlapMac. Post a Reel about it on Instagram or TikTok. Tag @tonnozfpv and use #slapmac.

If your Reel hits 2,000 views, you get 50% back. Hit 20,000 views and you get a full refund.

It is exactly like a bar offering free drinks if you bring 5 friends on a Friday night. You aren't losing money on drinks; you are buying a packed house at a discount.

Every buyer who wants their refund becomes a content creator. They shoot a video, tag the brand, and push it to their followers. If the Reel hits the target, Tonino refunds them from their own purchase.

The refund isn't just a refund; it's a customer acquisition channel. Each buyer's Reel is a fresh chance to go viral. Content creates buyers, and those buyers create more content.

Superhuman ran the same loop with tweets instead of Reels.

Tonino sold a $7 app that makes your laptop scream, all without raising money or hiring a marketing team. Sometimes the best product is simply the one that makes people laugh hard enough to open their wallet.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

Source: @bindra_dhruv

Measure so you can improve.

2/

Source: @0beets

One of the reasons to choose B2B instead of B2C.

3/

Source: @theseoguy_

Local SEO hack!!

Whenever you think you can't game a platform, think again. Because someone is already doing it.

#1 lesson in gaming platforms: never use same phone numbers, address, person names, payment methods, etc...

Always create duplicates. It's more work, but it saves you in the long run if you get caught.

Rabbit Holes

1. THE shortest LinkedIn course you’ll ever need

2. The Trigger Technique: Turn Buyer Stories into Smarter Marketing Campaigns

3. The SEO-Driven User Acquisition Behind Zapier's Growth to $35M ARR

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More Startup Spells 🪄

1. Stealing Reddit Content That Goes Viral on X (Twitter) (LINK)

2. How Gamifying Failure Increased Chess.com Subscriptions by 20% (LINK)

3. How Basecamp's PR Strategy Generates Millions in Free Press (LINK)

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5. Raycast Wrapped's "Copy as Image" Strategy: Engineering Virality (LINK)

Stealing Reddit Content That Goes Viral on X (Twitter)

Stealing content from Reddit and posting it on X is the smartest arbitrage play in 2026.

While most creators burn out trying to write original thought pieces every morning, smart operators take a different approach. They find value in one market (Reddit) where it is abundant and move it to another market (X) where it is scarce.

Ian Nuttall's entire strategy relies on this simple truth.

Stealing content from Reddit and posting it on X strategy example

People are not everywhere at once. Only content creators are everywhere.

Ian Nuttall stealing content from Reddit

The signal advantage of niche subreddits

Reddit is a meritocracy of ideas. Subreddits like /r/ClaudeAI or /r/SaaS act as massive filters. 1000s of users upvote good content and downvote noise. By the time a post reaches the "Hot" tab on a niche subreddit, it has already been validated by 100s of humans.

You must monitor these high-signal environments. When you see a tool, a script, or a discussion gaining traction on Reddit, you know it has a high probability of working on X.

The audience on X has likely never seen it. They don't browse the specific documentation pages or GitHub repositories that Reddit users dig up. To them, you aren't a reposter. You are a curator.

Monitoring changelogs for automated news content

Manual curation is only half the strategy. You also need a system for automated content generation. Developers crave updates about the tools they use daily.

Ian built a pipeline that monitors changelogs for popular developer tools. When a tool like Claude Code or OpenAI Codex releases an update, his system catches it.

This isn't an opinion. It is news.

He pipes these updates directly into a Telegram channel called dev/changelogs. This channel serves as a holding tank and a distribution channel in itself.

Ian Nuttall's dev changelogs Telegram channel

Building a Telegram asset with automation

The Telegram channel acts as a source of truth feed. The content in this channel is purely automated. The bot scrapes the release notes and prints it nicely.

Once the system is built, the cost of content production drops to zero. The bot works while you sleep. It creates a constant drumbeat of activity that proves you have your finger on the pulse of the industry.

Turning automated logs into social posts

The final step is moving this automated content back to the public square. You take these changelogs and post them to X.

Look at the structure of these updates.

Ian Nuttall tweeting Claude Code update

He uses a consistent format:

• Headline with version number

• "Features" section

• "Fixes" section

• Screenshot of the terminal or changelog

Ian Nuttall tweeting Factory CLI update

He doesn't add fluffy commentary. He doesn't say "I'm so excited about this update!" He just presents the data.

This establishes authority. By consistently breaking news about updates for tools like Factory CLI or Claude, he becomes the go-to source for that information.

Curation is better than creation

Creators obsess over "originality." They think every tweet must be a unique insight born from hours of meditation.

This strategy proves that curation is a form of creation.

He leverages the work of others—the developers writing code, the Reddit users filtering links, the companies publishing changelogs—to build his own distribution.

You can replicate this stealing Reddit content for X loop in any niche:

• Find the subreddit where your target customers hang out

• Sort by "Top" or "Rising"

• Identify the resources they love

• Repackage those resources for X or LinkedIn

• Automate the news feed for that specific niche

The internet is fragmented. Value is trapped in silos. Your job is to build the bridge.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

Twitter tweet

Never really thought that affiliates help with SEO but it makes sense since most affiliates write blogs and make videos on your product.

That's why you need a strong affiliate plan for the first 6 months especially if the product is novel. Steal Copy AI's Affiliate Program that gave 45% for the first 6 months.

2/

Twitter tweet

Tons of good replies and a masterclass in engagement bait on social media. Use such questions where everyone can show their expertise.

3/

Twitter tweet

Everytime a bad thing happens in relation to your company you need to put out a good press release out. No matter whose mistake it is... once a narrative is established, it's hard to change it unless you apply pressure in opposite direction.

An example would be "all billionaires are bad." Its so overused by politicians like Bernie to fool the public that its accepted as a truth rather than an opinion.

Rabbit Holes

1. The 5 Levels of Market Awareness (CUSTOMER PSYCHOLOGY)

2. VEO 3 Free for everyone with LMArena

3. The Behavioral Architect (Nikita Bier)

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More Startup Spells 🪄

1. MiniMax's Share and Earn Credits Playbook: Trade Monopoly Money for Real Testimonials (LINK)

2. How Gamifying Failure Increased Chess.com Subscriptions by 20% (LINK)

3. How Basecamp's PR Strategy Generates Millions in Free Press (LINK)

4. How Alex Hormozi Uses the Kevin Hart Meme to Revive Dead Leads (LINK)

5. Raycast Wrapped's "Copy as Image" Strategy: Engineering Virality (LINK)

MiniMax wants its users to share their AI agent experience and earn credits for posting about it on social media. The credits cost MiniMax almost nothing to issue.

But every post a user creates is real social proof on a real platform, with a real person's name on it. Here's the growth loop hiding behind a simple Google Form.

GitHub's Hottest Repo Has a Cashier Position Open

MiniMax wants you to share your experience and earn credits for it, and the timing is not accidental. OpenClaw, the open-source personal AI agent created by Peter Steinberger, just crossed 300,000 GitHub stars. It went from 9,000 to 60,000 stars in a matter of days, making it one of the fastest-growing repos in GitHub history.

MiniMax didn't build OpenClaw. But they rode the OpenClaw wave. Their M2.5 model is one of the primary providers OpenClaw integrates with, and MiniMax's token usage surged 6x in February 2026 because of that integration.

That's when they launched MaxClaw, their own cloud-hosted version of the agent, and started paying users to talk about it.

MaxClaw is the consumer-facing product. You give it a name, a personality, and context about your life. It deploys in 10 seconds, runs 24/7 in the cloud, and connects to your messaging apps. Think of it as a personal AI that actually stays on.

Like hiring an intern who never sleeps, never asks for a raise, and remembers every conversation you've ever had with them.

MiniMax lets users share and earn credits through the MaxClaw Showcase Program banner showing 10,000 credits reward

The interesting part isn't the product. It's the growth loop hiding behind a Google Form.

5,000 Credits for a Social Post. 10,000 for a Video.

MiniMax just launched what they call the MaxClaw Showcase Program. The pitch: share your MaxClaw experience on social media, earn credits.

Two tiers:

• Standard Reward (5,000 credits): Post a use case or a successful example on social media. Keep it live for 24 hours. That's it.

• Creative Reward (10,000 credits): Make a video, write an article, or record a podcast. Double the credits for deeper content.

It's like a restaurant that gives you a free appetizer if you post a photo of your meal. The appetizer costs them pennies. The Instagram post brings in 3 new reservations.

MaxClaw Showcase Program Google Form showing reward tiers and participation details

The rules are straightforward. Try new MaxClaw features, show real workflows, and keep examples concrete.

How Mandatory Hashtags Become Free SEO

Here's where MiniMax turns a simple credits program into a distribution machine.

They don't just ask you to post anywhere. They tell you exactly where and how:

• X (Twitter): Tag @MiniMax_AI, use #MaxClaw #MiniMax Agent

• LinkedIn: Tag @MiniMax, use #MaxClaw #MiniMax Agent

• Reddit: Use #MaxClaw #MiniMax Agent

• YouTube: Use #MaxClaw #MiniMax Agent

Every post requires specific hashtags and brand tags. That's not a suggestion. It's a requirement for getting paid via credits. Remember, every social media platform is a search engine in disguise.

Every piece of user content becomes a branded search signal across 4 platforms simultaneously. Same mechanic as tweet for discount, just with credits instead of a coupon code.

Superhuman ran a similar play: tweet about the product, get a free month.

Giga AI gated their waitlist behind a share action while Unroll.me replaced their paywall with a sharewall.

The pattern is the same. Trade distribution for access.

Same energy as a gym that gives you a free month if you bring a friend who signs up. You think you're getting a deal. The gym just cut its customer acquisition cost by half.

The Loyalty Card Economics of AI Credits

Credits cost MiniMax almost nothing to issue. They're internal currency with no cash-out option. But to the user, credits feel like real money because they unlock compute time on the platform.

This is the same mechanic freemium games have used for years. The marginal cost of giving someone 10,000 credits is close to zero.

It's like a coffee shop loyalty card. Stamping a card costs nothing. But by the time you're 2 stamps away from a free latte, you'll walk past 3 other cafes to get there.

A genuine user testimonial posted across X, LinkedIn, Reddit, and YouTube is worth more than any credit MiniMax hands out.

MiniMax gets:

• Authentic social proof from real users

• Algorithmic visibility through mandatory hashtags and trending page

• Multi-platform distribution without paying for ads

• Content that looks organic because it is organic

The user gets credits. MiniMax gets a marketing army.

The Form That Doubles as Market Research

After posting, users fill out a submission form with their UID, email, country, industry, and a link to their post. MiniMax reviews content quality within 24 hours and adds credits to the account.

But look at what MiniMax actually collects through that form: user IDs, email addresses, countries, industries of work, and direct links to the content those users created.

That's a full user profile attached to a piece of organic marketing.

Most companies pay research firms thousands of dollars for this kind of data. MiniMax gets it for free, wrapped inside a rewards program that users volunteer for.

They know who their power users are, what industries they work in, which use cases resonate, and which platforms drive the most engagement.

The credits program is the front door. The data is the back room.

Steal This Credits-for-Content Playbook

You don't need to be MiniMax to run this play. Any product with an internal credit system can do the same thing:

1. Pick 3-4 platforms where your users already hang out

2. Define specific hashtags and tagging rules so every post feeds your brand's search footprint

3. Set 2 reward tiers: easy (share a screenshot) and deep (make a video or write something)

4. Collect submissions through a form that also captures user data

5. Review within 24 hours to keep the flywheel spinning

FireCrawl ran a similar credits-for-follows play during onboarding. OpenArt AI used activity-based credits to drive feature adoption. The mechanic scales across any product with internal currency.

The credits cost you nothing. The distribution costs you nothing. The social proof is real because real users made it.

Most companies pay agencies to manufacture testimonials. MiniMax is paying in Monopoly money and getting the real thing.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

Twitter tweet

Always be A/B testing!!!

2/

Twitter tweet

There is no reason not to do videos anymore. If you didn't want to be famous, even faceless works now.

3/

Twitter tweet

Always be learning but implement 3-5x more than you learn otherwise the knowledge evaporates.

Rabbit Holes

1. How to Master Distribution For Your AI Apps

2. You have 12 shots in life

3. How Alex Hormozi Built a 1M+ Organic Following in 6 Months

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Do me a favor and share it in your company's Slack #marketing channel.

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More Startup Spells 🪄

1. Browse Traffic vs. Search Traffic: Study of YouTube Tutorial Channel Performance (2 Years of Data) (LINK)

2. Ahrefs' alternative to the boring Chrome Extension Uninstall Survey (LINK)

3. How Gamifying Failure Increased Chess.com Subscriptions by 20% (LINK)

4. How Basecamp's PR Strategy Generates Millions in Free Press (LINK)

5. How Alex Hormozi Uses the Kevin Hart Meme to Revive Dead Leads (LINK)

Most creators run a media company. They are on a treadmill. If they stop running (uploading), the electricity (revenue) cuts off.

Thomas Frank realized he didn't want a treadmill. He wanted an equity portfolio.

He pivoted from a 2.9 million subscriber channel to a tiny, unproven channel called Thomas Frank Explains. The goal wasn't just "niche down." It was a fundamental shift in business models.

He moved from Operating Expenses (OpEx) to Capital Expenditures (CapEx).

On his main channel, a vlog was an expense of time that paid out quickly and died. On his new channel, every video is an asset that compounds.

This strategy generates ~$100,000 monthly from template sales. He isn't playing the "creator economy" game anymore. He is playing the "digital real estate" game.

The "10 out of 10" Valuation Model

Wall Street values companies based on future cash flows, not just current earnings. Frank values videos the same way.

He calls this the "10 out of 10" phenomenon.

A typical YouTuber panics if a video gets 10 views in its first week. It signals algorithmic death. But for a tutorial channel, "Week 1" metrics are irrelevant.

• Week 1: 10 views (Flop)

• Month 6: 5,000 views (Traction)

• Year 3: 300,000 views (Cash Cow)

This is the Long-Tail Asset Model. A video explaining Notion formulas is a depreciating asset that unexpectedly appreciates. As long as the software exists, the video prints money.

Frank stopped chasing the dopamine of "New uploads." He started chasing the compound interest of "Total Library Value."

The "Zapier" SEO Playbook

Frank stole his smartest marketing tactic from a B2B SaaS company: Zapier.

Zapier connects apps. But they don't just write about "API integrations." They write articles like "The Best To-Do Apps for 2026." They target the problem, not the tool.

Frank applied this to his "Wider Net" content pillar.

His video on AI Voice Notes could have been titled "How to use Notion AI for transcription." That targets people who already know Notion.

Instead, he titled it to solve a universal problem: "How I Use ChatGPT to Take PERFECT Notes with My Voice."

Browse vs Search Traffic - Thomas Frank AI Voice Notes Video

He pitched the outcome (perfect notes), not the mechanism (Notion).

This captures Problem Aware users who have no idea they need Notion yet. Once they watch the video to solve their note-taking problem, Frank introduces Notion as the vehicle. He expands his Total Addressable Market (TAM) by catching users upstream.

The Search-to-Browse Pipeline

Frank originally thought this would be a search-only operation. People type "Notion task manager," watch, and leave.

He was wrong. He inadvertently unlocked the Search-to-Browse Pipeline.

YouTube's algorithm is a hybrid. It uses high-intent search data to feed low-intent browse recommendations.

When a user watches a 40-minute tutorial on Notion databases and stays until the end, that retention signal is massive. YouTube thinks: "This user loves this topic."

The algorithm then takes that "boring" tutorial and pushes it to the Home Page of users with similar interests.

High-quality search content eventually triggers browse features. You don't have to choose between SEO and virality. If you solve the user's problem effectively, the algorithm will promote you to lookalike audiences.

The 5-Pillar Content Ecosystem

Frank doesn't just make tutorials. He builds a balanced portfolio across 5 specific categories, each serving a different psychological function.

1. Fundamentals: The mechanics. (Low views, high necessity).

2. Feature Releases: Newsjacking updates. (High urgency, low shelf-life).

3. Popcorn Content: Listicles/Mistakes. (High CTR, broad appeal).

4. Wider Net: The Zapier strategy. (Top of funnel expansion).

5. Build Guides: The conversion engine.

The Build Guides (e.g., "Building a Second Brain with Notion") are the most valuable assets because they leverage the Endowment Effect.

When a viewer follows along and builds a system with Frank, they value the software more because they helped create it. They aren't just passive watchers; they are active builders. This psychological investment makes them infinitely more likely to buy his Ultimate Brain template to complete the system.

The "Growing Pie" Market Theory

Business schools teach First Mover Advantage. Frank proved it doesn't matter.

When he entered the Notion space, August Bradley and Marie Poulin already owned it. The market looked saturated.

But the Growing Pie Theory states that market share is irrelevant if the market itself is exploding.

Notion was onboarding millions of new users. Every day, thousands of people searched for "Notion tutorial" for the very first time. They didn't know who Marie Poulin was. They just wanted an answer.

Frank didn't need to steal their viewers. He just needed to stand in the river of new users.

If the underlying platform is growing, saturation is a myth.

Building a Defensive Moat with Updates

Frank creates a defensive moat by covering every single feature update, even the boring ones.

This utilizes Authority Bias. Even if a viewer prefers another creator's personality, they return to Frank for the definitive, up-to-date facts. He signals that he is the source of truth.

For tech, most people regularly look for Ben Thompson from Stratechery for his opinion pieces. Similarly, people look for Thomas Frank for new feature releases of Notion.

More importantly, it keeps his library fresh. When Notion changes a feature, old tutorials from competitors decay. Frank updates his. His assets appreciate while competitors' assets depreciate.

Expert SEOs know that Google repeatedly rewards updates for older content rather than always pumping out newer content.

Thomas Frank built a machine that compounds. Every video is a worker that never sleeps. That is the power of a software library mindset.

Source: Thomas Frank on Creator Science

Top Tweets of the day

1/

Twitter tweet

Insane stuff!

2/

Twitter tweet

The most unsaid rule in startups: retention is the mother of everything. Every business that succeeds only succeeds because they have figured out retention. Once TikTok gets you scrolling, you're done. Its just so addictive.

And the best businesses that people don't churn out of are the ones governments love. A small list of government business that don't churn:

1. Healthcare / Hospitals

2. Education (K-12, Higher Ed)

3. Insurance

4. Social Security payments

5. Defense / Military contracts

6. Transportation

3/

Twitter tweet

Sell every email.

Rabbit Holes

1. The Greatest Marketer of All Time and The Cofounder of the Michelin Family Dynasty Andre Michel

2. Chat GPT’s Smartest Features

3. 15 Times to use AI, and 5 Not to

What’d ya think of today’s newsletter? Hit ‘reply’ and let me know.

Do me a favor and share it in your company's Slack #marketing channel.

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More Startup Spells 🪄

1. 12 Velvet Rope Marketing Examples (From 1893 to a 450K Waitlist) (LINK)

2. Z.ai's Pricing Nudge: Beating Claude With Stacked Discount (50% First Purchase + 10%/20% Off) (LINK)

3. Ahrefs' alternative to the boring Chrome Extension Uninstall Survey (LINK)

4. How Gamifying Failure Increased Chess.com Subscriptions by 20% (LINK)

5. How Basecamp's PR Strategy Generates Millions in Free Press (LINK)

Velvet Rope is a marketing strategy that uses deliberate restriction on who can buy, join, or access what you sell. The term was coined by Rajesh Jain, who developed it as a system for identifying and nurturing a brand's most valuable customers.

Velvet Rope Marketing Examples

It works because human psychology is wired to want what it can't have. When access is limited, 3 emotional triggers fire simultaneously. People fear missing out. People crave the bragging rights of owning something rare. And people want others to see them as part of an elite group. It's pure herd mentality.

Think of a crowded bar with a line out the door on a Saturday night. The bar across the street might pour the same drinks, but nobody's standing outside it. The line IS the review that the bar is high-end.

The math supports the instinct. A small segment of high-value customers consistently generates revenue that's wildly disproportionate to their size.

Global consumers now spend around $1.6 trillion every year on luxury goods and experiences, according to the 2024 Bain & Company and Altagamma luxury market study, underscoring how powerful the human appetite for status and indulgence remains.

Every velvet rope business makes the same conscious trade: a smaller audience in exchange for higher prices, stronger loyalty, and customers who market the product just by using it.

12 companies have mastered this trade.

The Waldorf Hotel: Where the Velvet Rope Was Invented (1893)

Before any of these patterns had a name, there was the Waldorf.

William Waldorf Astor opened a 450-room hotel on the site of his former Fifth Avenue mansion in 1893. He wasn't building a place for travelers to sleep. He was building a stage for New York's wealthiest families.

George C. Boldt, the general manager, understood this from the start. He furnished every room with European antiques. He installed electricity and private bathrooms (a first at the time). He introduced room service. Fresh flowers and a daily newspaper appeared in every room. His overarching rule for staff: the guest is always right.

He gave his employees 1 specific directive before the hotel opened: "Never speak abruptly to a woman guest nor be indifferent to her complaints." His reasoning was blunt. A woman's attitude in a hotel is based on 2 assumptions: that she is there to have things done for her without any trouble to herself, and that she can leave when she wants to, on 5 minutes' notice.

Oscar Tschirky, the maître d', memorized the names of New York's 1,368 millionaires before his first day. In an anonymous, rapidly growing city, being recognized was the rarest luxury of all. He was the original version of how Chewy wows its customers: giving personal attention to customers at a scale nobody else attempted.

The opening night set the template. George organized a charity gala for Mrs. William Kissam Vanderbilt's chosen charity. Despite heavy rain, 1500 people from the 400 most prominent families in New York showed up. Crowds lined the streets outside just to watch the guests arrive.

The Waldorf generated $4.5 million in its first year. That's over $100 million in today's dollars.

Every velvet rope company since has been running a version of George's playbook: make the inside irresistible, and let the line outside do the selling.

Velvet rope falls into 3 distinct patterns.

The Gatekeepers: Ferrari, Rolex, and the Art of Saying No

The first pattern is the most direct. You decide who gets in. Not the market. Not demand. You.

Companies that gatekeep access don't just set a high price. They set qualification criteria that money alone can't satisfy. The message is unmistakable: we choose you. You don't choose us.

Ferrari: The $25 Million Entry Fee

Ferrari doesn't sell hypercars. Ferrari grants permission to buy them.

Standard models? Visit a dealer, configure, wait. But for the LaFerrari or the F80, money is irrelevant. Ferrari headquarters decides who receives an allocation.

The LaFerrari required at least 5 prior Ferraris purchased new. The F80 reportedly requires 12-13, including 5-7 limited editions. Owners must service at official dealerships, avoid quick resales (there's an 18-month no-sell rule on certain models), participate in brand events like the Ferrari Challenge racing series and the Cavalcade rally, and customize through the Tailor Made and Atelier programs.

Ferrari segments clients into 3 tiers: important, VIP, and top. Only top-tier clients access the rarest cars. VIP status for the F80 reportedly requires $25-40 million in lifetime Ferrari spending.

2/3rds of all new Ferraris delivered in 2022 went to existing clients. Operating margins approach 30%, nearly unheard of in the auto industry. The more restrictive the rope gets, the more profitable the company becomes.

Rolex: The Waitlist You Can't Buy Your Way Off

Walk into a Rolex authorized dealer with $10,000 cash, point at a Submariner in the catalog, and the answer is the same everywhere: nothing available.

Rolex doesn't run a waitlist. It operates what dealers call an interest list, and being on it means nothing without a relationship. Rolex enforces a 70/30 rule with dealers. Roughly 70% of allocated inventory must be less desirable models. Only 30% are the steel sports watches everyone actually wants. Dealers have to move the entire catalog before they receive the pieces customers line up for.

Daytona wait times: 2-9 years. The grey market proves the strategy works. A steel Daytona regularly sells for 86% above retail. Rolex could produce more watches. It chooses not to. The scarcity is the brand.

Soho House: The Creative-Only Velvet Rope

Nick Jones founded Soho House in London in 1995 with a counterintuitive filter: not how much money you have, but what you create.

Filmmakers, designers, musicians, media professionals: in. Bankers, lawyers, corporate executives: explicitly out. In 2010, Soho House purged roughly 500 corporate members from its Manhattan location to preserve the creative atmosphere. The dress code includes not a suit policy.

Applicants detail their creative pursuits and secure endorsements from existing members. A committee of current members reviews every application. The club now operates 40+ locations across 17 countries with tiered membership: Every House (global access), Local House (single location), Under-27 (reduced pricing), and Soho Friends (travel benefits without full club access).

By 2024, Soho House generated $1.2 billion in annual revenue. Membership revenues grew 17.2% to $418 million. In Q2 2025, it posted its first quarterly net profit since going public, $24.9 million. In August 2025, the company announced a $2.7 billion deal to go private.

Disney Club 33: The Secret Inside the Theme Park

Walt Disney conceived Club 33 as a private space inside Disneyland for corporate sponsors and personal guests. He died 5 months before it opened in May 1967.

Located at 33 Royal Street in New Orleans Square, Club 33 was the only place in Disneyland that served alcohol for decades. The entrance is an unassuming green door with a small 33 plaque. Most of the park's millions of annual visitors walk past it without knowing it exists.

Membership is invite-only. Initiation fees range from $30,000-$100,000. Annual dues run $15,000-$30,000. The waitlist has historically been 10-18 years, with roughly 480 slots at Disneyland.

Disney doesn't disclose Club 33 revenue. The real value is what it gives the brand: mystique.

Dan Kennedy: The Consultant Who Fires Clients

Dan Kennedy built the Glazer-Kennedy Insider's Circle (now Magnetic Marketing) into a direct-response marketing empire. His personal consulting practice ran on a different model: he made it nearly impossible to hire him.

His Platinum Inner Circle mastermind capped membership at 15. Annual fee: $7,200. A higher tier, the Gems Gold Dozen, cost $60,000 per year. His consulting day rate hit $19,000. Fame made every number stick.

The money wasn't the real barrier. Dan actively disqualified prospects. He once returned an $80,000 retainer to a client he fired, saying the pain of the refund was less than the pain of a bad client relationship.

He called ideal clients whales. High-spending, high-implementing business owners who generated outsized returns. Dan proved that a personal brand could operate like a nightclub: the harder you are to access, the more people want in.

Superhuman, Raya, Apple, Hampton: 4 Waitlists, 1 Strategy

The second pattern turns waiting itself into a feature. The line doesn't just build demand. It becomes the primary marketing engine.

Superhuman: The 450,000-Person Waitlist for Email

Rahul Vohra charged $30/month for an email client in a market where Gmail is free. And 450,000 people lined up for the privilege.

Superhuman launched invite-only and screened every applicant with surveys about their email habits. If your volume was too low, you were denied. The product was built for power-emailers who spent 3+ hours daily in their inbox.

Every approved user was required to complete a mandatory 30-minute onboarding call. Like a personal tailor who measures you before you're allowed to buy a suit. The fitting takes 30 minutes. But every time you wear it, you remember why you waited.

At peak, 20 full-time staff handled nothing but these calls. During each session, a specialist migrated the user's email, demonstrated keyboard shortcuts, and ensured they immediately felt the speed difference. The estimated return per onboarding call: 60x customer lifetime value.

Every outgoing email carried a Sent via Superhuman line at the bottom. A status badge that doubled as a viral loop. Users referred an average of 3.4 people within 6 months.

By August 2021, Superhuman had 15,000 paying customers and an $825 million valuation. A velvet rope made people pay $360/year for something they could get for free.

Raya: The 8% Acceptance Rate Dating App

Raya launched in February 2015 as a dating app for people who would never use a dating app. Daniel Gendelman built it for celebrities, creatives, and high-profile professionals who needed privacy as much as connection.

The application process is intentionally opaque. Applicants submit their name, age, location, job, and Instagram handle. An anonymous committee reviews creative background, professional achievements, social media presence, and connections to existing members. A referral from a current member is almost mandatory. 87% of accepted applicants had referrals or existing connections in their contacts.

Acceptance rate: approximately 8%. More selective than Harvard Business School. The waitlist has reached 2.5 million people. Some applicants wait years. Many remain in pending status forever without an official rejection.

Inside the app, profiles feature photo slideshows set to a song. Privacy rules are absolute: no screenshots, no public discussion of members. Violations mean immediate removal. Ben Affleck, Channing Tatum, Drew Barrymore, John Mayer, Lizzo, Simone Biles, and Olivia Rodrigo have all reportedly used the platform.

Standard membership costs $24.99/month. Raya+ runs $49.99/month.

By May 2024, Raya reached $100 million in cumulative user spending with virtually zero traditional advertising. The exclusivity creates the desire. The desire creates the waitlist. The waitlist IS the marketing.

Apple: The Mass-Market Velvet Rope

Apple made exclusivity work at a scale no luxury brand had attempted. Every iPhone launch since 2007 has followed the same engineered cycle: manufactured secrecy, a cinematic keynote, pre-orders that sell out within minutes, and lines that form overnight. Apple does nothing to discourage the lines. The lines outside Apple Stores DO the marketing.

The scarcity is temporary. The perception is permanent. Apple uses pricing psychology to steer buyers toward its highest-margin Pro models. The standard iPhone is available. The Pro is harder to get. The Pro Max is harder still.

In Q4 2025, the iPhone 17 launch contributed to $102.5 billion in quarterly revenue, up 8% year-over-year.

Hampton: The Founder's Application

Sam Parr sold The Hustle newsletter to HubSpot, then launched Hampton in 2023 with co-founder Joe Speiser. The thesis: founders running real businesses ($3M+ revenue or $3M+ funding, or a $10M+ exit) need honest peer groups, not networking events.

The application requires detailed company information, references, an interview, and survives a community veto. Existing members can reject applicants. Sam and Joe review every application personally.

Acceptance rate: 4-8%. The average member's company generates $20-23 million in revenue.

Once accepted, members join Core groups of 8 local founders who meet in person 10 times a year. The culture enforces a no-jerks policy and radical transparency. Members share what they'd never say publicly. The entire value prop is that network = net worth, literally.

Hampton hit $6 million in ARR in its first year with 700 members. By late 2024: 1,000+ members, ~$8 million ARR. Members report specific outcomes. One hired a VP of Engineering in 14 days through a Hampton introduction. Another connected with exit advisors who facilitated a $100M+ acquisition. A 3rd got a 5-point margin increase in 90 days after a pricing rebuild.

Sam's stated target for Hampton: a $100 million/year business. The entire business model is built on velvet-rope marketing, only successful founders get in making it a desirable community.

Lululemon and Hermès: FOMO as a Business Model

The third pattern restricts supply, not access. Anyone can theoretically buy. But the window is so narrow and the quantity so limited that buying feels like winning a lottery.

Lululemon: FOMO for Yoga Pants

Lululemon applied a velvet rope strategy reserved for luxury goods to athletic apparel. And it worked.

The company deliberately limits production on specific colors, designs, and seasonal collections. When a product drops, it won't be restocked after sellout. No rain checks. No coming back next season. Spot an Align tank in a color you want? Buy it now or lose it permanently.

Limited-edition collections are timed to cultural moments. Lunar New Year drops, seasonal capsules, exclusive collaborations that appear and vanish within days. Lululemon rarely discounts, reinforcing the perception that availability is finite and the product is worth full price. Its membership program adds another layer: members get early access to drops, creating a 2-tier system where insiders shop before the public.

This is engineered scarcity, not a supply chain problem. Lululemon's direct-to-consumer model gives it complete control over pricing and availability.

Revenue over the last 12 months: $11.07 billion, with a 58% gross profit margin. That margin is extraordinary for a clothing brand, and it's a direct consequence of never training customers to wait for sales.

Hermès Birkin: The Most Famous Velvet Rope Product in the World

The Birkin bag started on a Paris-to-London flight in 1984. British actress Jane Birkin sat next to Jean-Louis Dumas, CEO of Hermès. Her straw bag's contents spilled everywhere. She said she couldn't find a leather bag she liked. He sketched a design on an airsickness bag. The Birkin was born. A single sketch on a sick bag created a $300,000 product.

It wasn't an instant hit. Chanel dominated the 1980s and 1990s luxury bag market. The Birkin's status exploded in the early 2000s, cemented when Sex and the City featured Samantha trying to name-drop her way past the waitlist.

Today, walking into an Hermès boutique and asking for a Birkin gets you nowhere. There is no public waitlist. Hermès eliminated it around 2010. Instead, the company runs an allocation system built on relationships and purchase history.

The process: become a regular customer at a specific boutique. Build a relationship with 1 sales associate (SA). Spend on other Hermès products. Scarves, shoes, jewelry, ready-to-wear, home goods. The unspoken pre-spend ratio ranges from 1:1 to 5:1 of the Birkin's retail price, depending on the boutique and the bag. Hermès wants genuine brand appreciation, not transparent qualification spending. Then, if the stars align, your SA offers you the chance to buy a Birkin.

It's like a restaurant where you have to eat there 50 times before they'll hand you the secret menu. The secret menu isn't better. But knowing it exists changes how the regular menu tastes.

Each bag is handmade by a single artisan over 18-48 hours. Most boutiques cap customers at 2 quota bags (Birkin, Kelly, or Constance) per year. Hermès does not sell Birkins online.

Hermès reported €15.2 billion ($16 billion) in 2024 revenue, up 15% year-over-year, defying a global luxury slowdown. The leather goods division (including the Birkin) accounts for over 40% of revenue, growing 18% in 2024. Some rare Birkins have sold at auction for over $300,000. The bag outperforms the S&P 500 as an investment asset.

Restrict → Desire → Pay → Advertise. Repeat.

12 companies. 3 patterns. 1 formula.

Every velvet rope marketing strategy, from the Waldorf's opening night in 1893 to Raya's 2.5-million-person waitlist, runs on the same engine:

Restrict access → Desire increases → Willingness to pay goes up → The people inside become the marketing for the people outside.

The specific mechanism changes. Ferrari uses a $25 million spending ladder. Superhuman uses a 30-minute onboarding call. Hermès uses a pre-spend ratio. Dan uses the word no.

But the output is always the same. Premium pricing. Higher lifetime value. And customers who market the product just by having it.

The question isn't whether this strategy works. The data from 12 examples spanning 130 years proves it does.

The question is which rope works for your business: gatekeeping, waitlists, or scarcity.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

Twitter tweet

Extremely true.

2/

Twitter tweet

This trick for apps is copied from e-commerce and games. I've seen it in both.

It's a smart hack to copy strategies from adjacent industries. There are standalone Shopify apps that literally provide this.

3/

Twitter tweet

Product-Channel Fit!!!

Every product has a natural home. One channel where everything just works. Your goal is to find that channel.

1. Make-up and beauty products. Instagram. Visual format, influencer culture, the before-and-after scroll. It all lines up perfectly.

2. AI apps for college students. TikTok. Visual format, the densest Gen-Z social media app.

3. AI video services for startups. TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Sora's own social app.

Go where your audience already goes to consume what you help them create.

Rabbit Holes

1. Todd Graves, Raising Cane’s | David Senra

2. Offline Outbound

3. Instagram Algorithm Mastery Guide: How We Hit 50.1M Views in 90 Days

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More Startup Spells 🪄

1. MiniMax's Invite and Earn Masterclass: Claude's Brain, 10x Cheaper Price (LINK)

2. How Ahrefs SEO Glossary Built an SEO Machine With One Boring Page (LINK)

3. Z.ai's Pricing Nudge: Beating Claude With Stacked Discount (50% First Purchase + 10%/20% Off) (LINK)

4. Ahrefs' alternative to the boring Chrome Extension Uninstall Survey (LINK)

5. How Gamifying Failure Increased Chess.com Subscriptions by 20% (LINK)

The MiniMax referral program uses a unique Intelligence Arbitrage strategy to scale its user base fast.

Most growth loops fail as the product value just isn't clearly worth the effort of referring a friend. MiniMax dodges this trap. They pair their referral engine with a product that acts as a significantly cheaper, faster version of Claude.

Claude Intelligence Heist by MiniMax

Anthropic recently identified a massive campaign by MiniMax to illicitly extract Claude’s capabilities.

For users, this accidental third-party validation is absolute gold. It serves as irrefutable proof. It confirms MiniMax delivers high-end reasoning at a fraction of the cost.

Think of it like a generic medication. It contains the exact same active ingredient as the brand-name drug, but it costs 70% less.

Distillation was once a purely technical term. Now, it serves as a powerful marketing proof-of-value. This is like a rival chef suing a competitor for stealing their secret sauce. The lawsuit only proves the sauce is actually worth eating.

UI Placements that Drive 10x More Invites

Product visibility marks the absolute difference between a dead feature and a viral hit. MiniMax 2.5 positions its Invite and Earn program directly in the primary navigation bar.

Minimax referral program - Navbar showing the invite and earn program

Growth is treated as a first-class UI element. They guarantee every single user is intimately aware of the mutual incentive loop from the exact moment of landing on the pricing page.

Mutual Incentive Engineering: 10% off for both sides

The minimax referral program mechanism relies on simple, irrefutable math: a 10% voucher for the inviter, and a 10% discount for the invitee.

This dual-sided reward lowers the barrier to entry for brand new users. At the exact same time, it pushes existing users to become massive active promoters.

They built a foolproof closed-loop economy. The absolute cheapest way to use the product is to advocate for it.

Strategic Defaults & 6-Tier Pricing

Pricing psychology heavily impacts long-term user retention. The MiniMax 2.5 pricing page defaults to yearly billing, instantly pitching a 2 months free value proposition.

Defaulting to an annual plan deliberately trades fast signups for long-term commitment. This is a 4D chess move in the AI coding space. A new state-of-the-art model drops almost every single month. Users who lock into a yearly subscription rarely push the product limits for all 12 months. That translates into pure profit for MiniMax.

It also anchors the pricing. When users inevitably check the monthly options, the higher cost pushes them right back to the annual deal.

Pricing plans with yearly default and 6 pricing tiers

MiniMax offers 6 distinct pricing tiers ranging from Starter to Ultra High Speed. This intentional spread captures wildly diverse user segments.

They bridge the massive gap between premium AI intelligence and an aggressive, low-cost market entry. And that combination makes the Invite and Earn loop dangerously effective.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

Twitter tweet

TIL Manus has lots of use cases for sales people who want to grab emails of founders and Manus actually finds them without any shenanigans. This thread is insightful.

2/

Twitter tweet

Lots of people are saying this.

Codex 5.2 x-high is essentially one-shotting things end-to-end.

It means you prompt and the app/site gets built with full functionality. Its available on Teams and Pro ($200) plan only but it solves the hardest of problems.

You can use 5.4 high now as it is available on Free, Go, Plus plan too and they brought the secret ingredients that made 5.2 x-high better.

2026 is a breakthrough year for AI agents.

3/

Twitter tweet

There will be entire companies built around this.

Rabbit Holes

1. NINJUTSU SEO NOBODY SHARES

2. Finding YC W21 Founders' Emails

3. Shipping at Inference-Speed

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More Startup Spells 🪄

1. Ryanair's Social Media Marketing Strategy (LINK)

2. How Claude Targets Developers With Google Ads Using Smart Bidding (LINK)

3. How Ahrefs SEO Glossary Built an SEO Machine With One Boring Page (LINK)

4. Z.ai's Pricing Nudge: Beating Claude With Stacked Discount (50% First Purchase + 10%/20% Off) (LINK)

5. Ahrefs' alternative to the boring Chrome Extension Uninstall Survey (LINK)

Ryanair developed what might be the most counterintuitive social media strategy to date to answer a brutal question.

"If your product is good enough, the marketing is easy."

CEO Michael O'Leary once stood before 100+ marketers on the floor. He presented what could be called The Product Paradox: a dilemma where a product is so cheap it sells itself based entirely on mental availability. He believed the airline would achieve massive scale and comfortably hit its target of 250 million passengers by 2026 based purely on the product alone. If the product wins on price, why market at all? Why not drop the marketing spend to zero? He asked them a simple, brutal question.

"I can probably predict that we will hit our target of 250 million passengers by 2026 just by the product alone... What's the role of marketing then for this business?"

Everyone went silent. The incoming social media team eventually figured out the answer to this challenge. If a product sells itself, marketing isn't needed to drive sales. It is needed to manage perception, reset expectations, and to entertain people so you stay top of mind when people are on a budget.

When a budget airline faces a perception crisis due to the gap between their $10 flights and millennial expectations for premium service, they usually apologize. Ryanair did the opposite.

Ryanair was democratizing travel across Europe. But the online sentiment was overwhelmingly negative. Passengers were constantly complaining about the budget airline. They treated it as a joke.

Millennials who grew up expecting premium service were furious that a flight costing the price of a takeout pizza didn't come with USB chargers and hot towels. This expectation gap caused unnecessary tension. Like walking into a $2 dive bar and complaining they couldn't make you a fresh-squeezed margarita.

Ryanair - Social Media Marketing Strategy

Instead of fighting the tide with a polished corporate routine, they leaned into the friction. Their marketing team realized that trying to look like a warm, customer-care, fluffy brand was completely unbelievable to the public.

Why Trolling Beats PR

When COVID hit and TikTok exploded, the audience grew tired of fake aesthetics found on platforms like Instagram. The internet wanted raw, unpolished reality.

Fake Instagram vs Real TikTok

Instead of hiding from their haters, Ryanair decided to amplify them. They created a Hate-Funnel. They started taking real passenger complaints and openly mocking them on their TikTok and X accounts.

When a passenger posted a photo complaining about a windowless seat, they bluntly replied: We sell seats, not windows. When another grumbled about a private suite, they mocked the passenger.

Ryanair trolling customers on X

They embraced the unhinged trends of social media to turn daily gripes into massive engagement.

Building Brand Loyalty with Insults

The genius lay in community building through shared misery. By leaning into self-deprecation, they acknowledged what everyone already knew. Flying budget is universally unpleasant. But it is incredibly cheap.

Ryanair matching audience expectations

Michael Corcoran, the former head of social media, capitalized on the polarizing playbook established by CEO Michael O'Leary. He understood that even bad publicity generates free reach. He aimed for headlines rather than buying traditional ads.

They used cultural moments to Jab, Jab, Hook. This was Gary Vee's famous one-liner, but Ryanair team uses it with a different interpretation.

Ryanair's Jab, Jab, Hook model

They mercilessly went after politicians during the UK's Partygate.

Ryanair insulting politicians

They roasted competitors. They brought a human, audacious voice that resonated deeply with younger audiences.

This unhinged approach didn't just win over TikTok. It captured the attention of the exact people who mattered most. CEO Michael O'Leary and Ryanair's investors don't scroll through TikTok. They read the Financial Times and the Sunday Times.

When those publications printed full-page articles citing the airline's social media as a masterclass, the C-suite finally saw it. The team received a handwritten note of approval from O'Leary himself. The social team wasn't doing anything new. They were simply replicating O'Leary's old-school, polarizing PR tactics in a new digital medium.

Setting Expectations to the Floor

This relentless trolling caused a psychological shift: it set customer expectations to the absolute floor. If a passenger expects a terrible experience, their bar for satisfaction drops to simply arriving safely.

It is like buying a used textbook off Facebook Marketplace labeled 'heavily water damaged.' When it shows up and you can still read most of the pages, you feel like you won the lottery. After all, the goal was knowledge, not luxury.

Ryanair highlights their own drawbacks: narrow seats, strict baggage limits, secondary airports, and pay-to-use facilities. By turning strict cost-cutting into a punchline, they ensure customers focus solely on price.

If a passenger doesn't want to pay for a window, they won't get one. If they expect business-class treatment, they are reminded that their fare was cheaper than a pizza. Expectation management became the true marketing hook.

The ROI of Being Unhinged

Ryanair abandoned the customer is always right doctrine. They acted like a club bouncer who doesn't care if you claim to 'know the promoter' because everyone gets the exact same treatment and waits in the same line. Because of this, they became TikTok royalty. They amassed a following 7 times larger than Easyjet, proving the immense benefits of organic reach.

The bold strategy paid off spectacularly after a massive slump in 2021 and 2022 which definitely co-incided with the pandemic.

Ryanair airline passengers in millions

In 2024, they carried 184 million passengers. They solidified their status as Europe's largest airline. In 2025, they carried over 200 million passengers.

They proved that if the core product is cheap and serves a distinct need reliably, the marketing doesn't need to apologize. It just needs to entertain. And for Ryanair, the haters are footing the bill for the entertainment.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

Twitter tweet

Stop using social media for just 2 weeks and watch out your behaviour. It will be positively improved.

Turns out, all the knowledge you need is in old books.

You can even hire a VA to curate specific posts for you in your niches of interest. Or train an AI agent on it.

14 days is all you need to start seeing results from dopamine detox.

Only exception to use social media is to building your own brand in the early days. AI is good enough to curate your taste now.

2/

Twitter tweet

Golden tip for getting reviews. You should always ask for a review the moment the job is done. Nobody cares after it is done. Just do it then and there.

I remember going to buy a Windows Laptop and as I was leaving, the guy asked me for a review. And I did it plus installed some app for credits then and there because of good customer service.

3/

Twitter tweet

Compound interest works if you have skills to compound. Early teens or 20s are the best time to do it.

If you are older, you're screwed. Just kidding.

"Never too late to start all over again." ~ Benjamin Button

Rabbit Holes

1. Stop Telling Claude Code What To Do

2. Why YouTube Is The Better Ad Traffic Source

3. How I’ve 10x’d My Podcast Growth Year Over Year

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More Startup Spells 🪄

1. How OpenArt AI engineered the perfect feature adoption loop using activity-based credits (LINK)

2. How to Reverse-Engineer Hacker News for Your Startup Launch (LINK)

3. How Claude Targets Developers With Google Ads Using Smart Bidding (LINK)

4. How Ahrefs SEO Glossary Built an SEO Machine With One Boring Page (LINK)

5. Z.ai's Pricing Nudge: Beating Claude With Stacked Discount (50% First Purchase + 10%/20% Off) (LINK)

How OpenArt AI engineered the perfect feature adoption loop using activity-based credits

OpenArt AI uses activity-based free credits to walk new users through its product the way free samples work at Costco. You grab one, then another, and before you know it you have walked through the entire store. The result is a growth loop that drives both feature adoption and social follows at the same time.

The omnipresent token reminder

A persistent nudge sits in the bottom right corner of the OpenArt AI interface. This subtle but ever-present Follow us to earn more credits prompt ensures that every single visitor is aware of the opportunity to extend their usage without pulling out a credit card.

It functions similar to a casino handing out complimentary chips just as you walk near the high roller tables.

OpenArt AI's UI showing an activity-based free credits nudge in the bottom right corner

This intentional placement acts as a constant reminder. It turns casually browsing users into engaged participants looking for their next reward.

Turning feature discovery into a quest

OpenArt AI encourages its users to thoroughly explore the core product by rewarding them with activity-based free credits.

Instead of just giving away a lump sum of tokens upfront, they gamify feature discovery.

A dashboard detailing how users can earn credits by completing specific feature-related tasks

Simple tasks, like creating your first image, making a video, generating audio, or designing a character, each yield 50 credits. More complex actions, like creating a full story, are rewarded with 200 credits.

To maximize engagement, there is a completionist incentive. Finishing all of the guided tasks unlocks a massive 500-credit bonus. This effectively ensures users try every single feature the platform has built.

Paying a premium for B2B eyeballs

Beyond feature discovery, this section acts as a powerful social growth loop. OpenArt AI actively rewards users for following their brand on social platforms. They distribute 20 credits each for joining Discord, subscribing on YouTube, or following on Twitter/X and Instagram.

A rewards menu offering varying amounts of credits for following the company on different social platforms

Notably, following the company on LinkedIn grants a massive 100-credit reward. This lopsided incentive structure suggests that B2B or professional networking is a significantly higher-value channel for their specific growth model.

Free credits cost OpenArt AI nothing to distribute, but they buy something expensive: a user who has tried every feature and follows the brand on 5 platforms. That is the real return on a well-structured credit system.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

Twitter tweet

Pro-tip: Use a female name.

A guy on X known as Nikita once shared that he used to have a 100% VC strike rate.

Wonder why? Best part you get advantages without the disadvantages as a guy with a mostly female name.

2/

Twitter tweet

Nano Banana Pro is GOAT'd.

3/

Twitter tweet

I recently learned that Claude can only understand 100-150 instructions at the same time.

This is much worse for smaller models.

Rabbit Holes

1. Why HubSpot Lost 20M Clicks (and How They Plan to Recover)

2. The 2026 SEO Playbook – Maximize Coverage

3. Automating Competitor Research with Firecrawl: A Comprehensive Tutorial

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More Startup Spells 🪄

1. Wispr Flow's Case Study Page Is a Conversion Funnel in Disguise (LINK)

2. James Clear's Newsletter Conversion Strategy (2M+ Subscribers) (LINK)

3. How to Reverse-Engineer Hacker News for Your Startup Launch (LINK)

4. How Claude Targets Developers With Google Ads Using Smart Bidding (LINK)

5. How Ahrefs SEO Glossary Built an SEO Machine With One Boring Page (LINK)

Wispr Flow built a set of persona-targeted case studies that turn a simple navigation dropdown into a conversion funnel. Every visitor sees themselves.

Open the Resources tab on their site and 6 case studies appear. Not a generic testimonials carousel. Not a wall of logos. 6 stories, each aimed at a different buyer segment.

Wispr Flow's persona-targeted case studies listed under the Resources dropdown with NEW badges

A NEW badge marks the freshest additions. It pulls your eye back on repeat visits. And because the full roster appears on hover, users stumble into stories they never planned to read. One glance at a headline and curiosity takes over. That's how they got me to read it.

6 Stories for 6 Buyer Segments

6 different stories. 6 different mirrors. Each one aimed at a different buyer so they see their own reflection. None of these picks are random.

1. Clay — B2B Teams

A B2B software company with 200+ employees. Their go-to-market team adopted Wispr Flow across demos, follow-ups, and CRM updates. The result: 20% faster GTM execution.

This case study speaks directly to GTM teams and revenue ops leaders evaluating a tool for their entire org.

Clay x Wispr Flow Case Study — 52% faster responses, 20% more calls, $3.08M estimated savings

2. Reid Hoffman — Founders

Co-founder of LinkedIn, investor at Manas AI and Inflection AI.
Reid switched from typing to talking and called himself voicepilled.

When the co-founder of LinkedIn declares himself voicepilled, it stops being a testimonial. It becomes permission for every founder to try.

Reid Hoffman case study — key results and his voicepilled declaration

3. Tijs Nieuwboer — Makers

A self-taught developer and founder. Tijs built a working app with his voice while running the Amsterdam Marathon. Three hours of running. One functioning app at the finish line.

A story so extreme it gets shared on its own merit.

4. Gaurav Vohra — Advisors

Startup advisor and growth leader who helped build Superhuman. Gaurav advises 10+ companies while raising three kids. His value is tied to how fast and clearly he can respond.

Superhuman is a brand synonymous with speed. An advisor juggling 10+ companies needs it more than anyone.

5. Greg Dickson — Writers

A writer who used to spend 60 minutes producing 300-500 words. With Flow, Greg writes 500-800 words in 5-10 minutes.

Writers stare at blank pages every day. Showing one who went from 60 minutes per post to 5 removes every objection.

6. Anthony Troli — Creators

A creator who found his creative rhythm through voice. Anthony's page rounds out the roster with a use case for content creators.

The catch-all for anyone who makes content for a living.

The 3-Second Case Study Format

These case studies are not walls of text.

Every page leads with key results in bold type. Bullet points deliver the main takeaways. Some include embedded video or a simple table so the idea lands fast.

Quantifiable impact showing savings in a tabular format

The format is designed for someone hovering over a dropdown, not someone who sat down to read a whitepaper. You get the core metric, the persona match, and the outcome within seconds.

40 WPM to 150 WPM: One Try Is All It Takes

The case studies exist to manufacture one moment: the first try.

Voice-to-text at this speed is a 3x multiplier. Typing at 40 WPM (words per minute) after you have spoken at 150 WPM feels like switching from a highway back to a dirt road. Once you feel it, the old way feels broken.

I don't use Wispr Flow but my VoiceInk dashboard shows the 3x speed.

VoiceInk stats dashboard showing 3x speed improvement — 40h speaking vs 120h typing equivalent

Wispr Flow does not need to convince you after the first session. The case studies are the push to get you there. Every persona, every stat, every video on those pages serves one purpose: lower the barrier to the first aha moment.

Build Mirrors, Not Testimonials

A good case study page is a casting call. Every visitor should walk in, see someone who looks like them on stage, and think: I belong here.

Pick personas that mirror your buyer segments. Give each one a story that feels specific, not generic. Lead with numbers. Make the page scannable.

Use formats that invite discovery. Badges, hover menus, video. Let people stumble into stories without committing to a click.

That is how Wispr Flow turns a Resources dropdown into a conversion funnel using persona-targeted case-studies.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

Twitter tweet

I have tested this myself but you can actually watch the video.

Grok translation on X works, but it basically says:

AI Studio at ai.dev using Gemini 3.1 Pro gives you better results than Gemini App using the same model.

2/

Twitter tweet

There is reason most customer facing jobs like customer support or air-hostess are women. Gong did a study where they found that women close more B2B deals than men.

3/

Twitter tweet

Badass insight! This comment nails it:

Explains why AWS, Azure etc have such generous credits for startups programs. Even if you give away 100k in credits to 100 companies, just takes one to break out to offset the cost

These 2 AI companies show its true:

1. Cerebras - Made a deal with OpenAI, #1 in AI consumer software, for Codex Spark which is absurdly fast

2. Groq - Made a deal with Nvidia which is #1 in AI hardware

Both Cerebras and Groq provide faster responses. You know how AI responds 30 seconds to 1 minute later after you ask a question. With Groq or Cerebras, it's <1 second like Google Search. Another company Taalas launched a product that shows you how fast the future responses are going to be.

Rabbit Holes

1. How We REPLACED SEMrush & Ahrefs with AI (Save $1000s/Month!) | DataForSEO + Claude MCP Integration

2. I connected my brain to Claude Code

3. Prompt engineering techniques for effective AI outputs

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More Startup Spells 🪄

1. LinkedIn Post Generator: How a Parody Tool Went Viral, Got 2M Users & Sold in 7 Days (LINK)

2. ColorBliss' Programmatic SEO Strategy: How 8,700 AI Pages Captured Long-Tail Search (LINK)

3. James Clear's Newsletter Conversion Strategy (2M+ Subscribers) (LINK)

4. How to Reverse-Engineer Hacker News for Your Startup Launch (LINK)

5. How Claude Targets Developers With Google Ads Using Smart Bidding (LINK)

LinkedIn post generator tools come and go, but Tom Orbach's viral parody tool achieved something remarkable.

What started as a joke about LinkedIn's cringe culture became a phenomenon that got 22M+ views, reached 2 million users and sold within 7 days.

LinkedIn Post Generator - Viral Tool

The idea behind the LinkedIn post generator

Tom Orbach didn't set out to build a business. He wanted to understand why certain LinkedIn posts went viral.

After scraping hundreds of thousands of posts, a pattern emerged. The most successful posts shared one uncomfortable trait: narcissism.

Everyone knows LinkedIn's feed can be cringeworthy. People post humble brags disguised as inspirational advice. The platform rewards self-promotion. Tom realized this wasn't a bug. It was a feature people loved to hate.
It was a pattern interrupt. Amidst LinkedIn's serious self-promotion, absurdity became its own attention magnet.

So he built a parody tool.

The Viral Post Generator asked users 2 simple questions:

1. What did you do today?

2. What is your inspirational advice?

Then it promised to generate a "viral" LinkedIn post complete with a "cringe meter" slider. Users waited 10 seconds for their personalized cringefest.

The design followed Jakob's Law. Users knew exactly what to do because the interface matched their existing mental models.

The twist? The tool didn't actually analyze cringe levels. The slider was decorative. The 10-second wait was entirely artificial.

But these frictions created something powerful: anticipation and labor illusion. People thought something complex was happening behind the scenes. This exploited what behavioral economists call Labor Perception Bias. People value outcomes more when they perceive effort behind them.

Why the LinkedIn post generator worked

3 things made this tool spread:

1. It tapped into shared frustration. LinkedIn professionals secretly agreed the platform was cringey but played along anyway. The generator gave permission to laugh at something everyone found ridiculous yet participated in. The sharing worked because it touched several psychological biases. Social proof, scarcity, and confirmation bias all played a role.

2. User-generated content drove sharing. People couldn't copy the text results. They had to take screenshots. The prompt explicitly said "take a screenshot and share." Thousands shared images with the tool's yellow background and watermark baked in.

3. Private channels fueled growth. Most sharing happened in Slack, WhatsApp, and DMs rather than public social feeds. People sent screenshots to friends saying "this is so true" or "look what I made." This "word-of-Slack" proved more powerful than traditional social sharing.

LinkedIn Post Generator - Cringe Meter

The 24-hour test that changed everything

After a modest launch with 10,000 daily users, Tom received an acquisition offer from Taplio, a LinkedIn growth tool. The founder Tibo saw potential but didn't agree on price. They settled on a 24-hour test: Tom would add a Taplio link to see what traffic it could drive.

With one day to prove value, Tom posted to Reddit's /r/InternetIsBeautiful community. He'd previously focused on LinkedIn-specific subreddits. This broader audience responded differently.

Within hours, the post reached 1.5 million people. Kushaan Shah, an influencer, shared it on X. That tweet hit 22 million people and garnered 181,000 likes. Reddit's official accounts amplified it. Instagram pages with millions of followers joined in.

That single day brought 1.4 million users to the LinkedIn post generator. Traffic surged so violently it crashed Adalo, the platform where the tool was hosted, like a tsunami hitting a sandcastle. The surge took thousands of other apps down with it. An Adalo staff member confirmed the outage was caused specifically by Tom's tool.

Before the 24-hour window ended, Taplio's founder messaged back. No negotiation needed. He accepted the original asking price.

What the LinkedIn post generator teaches us about modern virality

Lesson 1: Screenshots beat share buttons

The decision to prevent text copying forced users to take screenshots. Those screenshots traveled through private channels with branding intact.

Traditional social share buttons are megaphones shouting into a crowded room. Screenshots are whispered secrets passed between friends. Secrets/gossips/scandals spread faster than announcements.

Lesson 2: Fake friction creates real engagement

The 10-second loading screen served no technical purpose. But it made people wait, creating anticipation. When results finally appeared, they felt earned. This labor illusion made users think complex work happened behind the scenes. That increased perceived value.

The tool also exploited the Peak End Rule. Users remembered the anticipation and the funny result, not the brief processing time.

Lesson 3: Start with the headline

Tom applied Amazon's "working backward" approach without knowing. The basic idea is imagine a TechCrunch headline before building anything: "Parody LinkedIn tool mocks platform's narcissism, goes viral."

By unknowingly designing for that specific coverage, he created something inherently newsworthy. Business Insider, BuzzFeed, and The Guardian eventually covered it with variations of that angle.

The LinkedIn Post Generator exit

The tool sold within a week of its viral explosion to Taplio. 6 months later, Taplio itself was acquired for tens of millions of dollars.

Most LinkedIn post generator tools aim to help users create better content. Tom's tool did something different: it gave people permission to laugh at the game everyone was playing. That emotional connection drove its success. Not the technical features.

This is the permission economy: people don't buy solutions, they buy permission to feel what they already feel. The parody tool gave them a good chuckle.

Sometimes the most effective marketing isn't about solving problems. It's about making people feel seen. The LinkedIn post generator didn't help users post better. It helped them admit what they already knew: LinkedIn can be ridiculous, and that's okay.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

Twitter tweet

Sweet little app playbook.

2/

Twitter tweet

Cool way to use Claude Code with Google Analytics.

Everyone is using CLI now to see things. Claude Desktop if CLI is not your thing.

3/

Twitter tweet

Wild stuff!

Most interesting part in the comment: "there now exists a class of companies who have been ralphing for an entire year and there's batches of ycombinator companies whom have been ralphing in secret for 6 months."

Rabbit Holes

1. Using Grok to find "diamonds in the rough" talent

2. How to Actually Use AI (A Simple Framework)

3. 15 High-Reward SEO Tactics I Used to Grow My Business to $50k+ ARR

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More Startup Spells 🪄

1. Grammarly Monetization Case Study: How "Premium Feature Sampling" Doubled Conversions (LINK)

2. Fingerprint's Homepage Personalization Strategy (LINK)

3. ColorBliss' Programmatic SEO Strategy: How 8,700 AI Pages Captured Long-Tail Search (LINK)

4. James Clear's Newsletter Conversion Strategy (2M+ Subscribers) (LINK)

5. How to Reverse-Engineer Hacker News for Your Startup Launch (LINK)

When Albert Cheng became VP of Growth at Grammarly, 90% of users were on the free plan and ignoring every upgrade prompt to the paid version.

The product wasn't the problem. Premium could rewrite clunky sentences, fix tone issues, and expand vocabulary. But free users never saw these features, so they treated Grammarly as a basic spellchecker. Paying for better spellchecking didn't make sense.

Invisible value doesn't convert.

Grammarly's invisible value problem

The free product fixed spelling. The paid product fixed writing.

Because the advanced features were completely hidden behind a paywall, users built a mental model that "Grammarly equals spellcheck." Most ignored upgrades because paying a monthly subscription just to fix "their" vs "there" felt unnecessary.

This is the standard freemium failure mode. You gate your best features to create pressure, but gating often creates ignorance.

Interspersing paid suggestions in free workflows

Albert's team tried something different. They interspersed premium suggestions directly inside the free experience. When users typed, Grammarly would flag harsh tone or repetitive words. Users could see the suggestion and read the improvement, but couldn't apply it with one click.

Grammarly premium suggestion sampling interface

That's the difference between a paywall and a window.

Users experienced the value of an actual editor before paying a cent. They saw the gap between decent writing and polished writing.

Premium feature sampling creates information symmetry

This is the Costco sample strategy applied to software. You taste the white cheddar before buying the block. The sample proves quality and removes risk.

Before this experiment, upgrading to Grammarly Premium was a gamble. Users had to trust marketing copy. By showing paid suggestions, they removed the gamble. Users saw exactly what they were missing.

The decision shifted. It wasn't about trusting an ad anymore. It was about wanting that specific fix.

Upgrades nearly doubled

The impact was immediate. Albert confirmed that upgrade rates nearly doubled. It became the single biggest monetization win during his tenure.

Users didn't feel tricked. They felt informed.

The "freeloaders" weren't cheap. They were just under-educated about the product's capabilities. Once they saw the utility, they pulled out their credit cards.

Applying the sampling strategy to your SaaS

Most PLG companies hide their best work. They assume users will upgrade to "unlock power." But users can't crave power they haven't tasted.

Show the output. Gate the execution.

If your tool helps sales teams find prospects like Apollo, show the exact CEOs the user wants to pitch. Blur their phone number.

If your platform runs on professional curiosity like LinkedIn, tell the user "5 recruiters at Google viewed your profile." Blur their names.

If your tool analyzes search traffic like Ahrefs, show the high-volume keyword list. Blur the difficulty metric or disable the export button.

Let the product sell itself. Marketing can promise value, but only the product can prove it.

Source: Albert Cheng

Top Tweets of the day

1/

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Good example of using TikTok for local targeting.

2/

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Love this tactic. Target AI SEO phrases using Google Search Console.

3/

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Such products will absolutely print on short-form platforms like TikTok & Instagram since more kids are born every year. And kids love talking to AI like ChatGPT, but soft toys make this even better.

The genius is the models are absolutely better at talking now. Microsoft has released VibeVoice ASR which is super duper fast and I love listening to Grok's voice for reading long-form articles. Its a seductive female voice made for gooning but very good on ears. I divide articles into chunks of 1000-words to read long-form 5000 word articles as I tend to procrastinate long-form reading due to fucked up attention span. Read a pretty badass article today in ~20-30 minutes. ChatGPT voice is good too but Grok’s much better. You can even voice-clone using your favorite voice like Scarlett Johansson’s voice & then recreate voice clone using Kokoro TTS.

If you are into e-comm, this (or OpenClaw Raspberry Pi) is the product to sell. I always thought talking to an AI voice is gooning but there are other use cases where it is extremely better to listen so you can focus. Like long-form reading for me. Try it if you haven’t.

Rabbit Holes

1. SEO Expert Lonnie Jones talks Google algorithms, social media strategies on Breadcrumb

2. Prompting vs JSON Mode vs Function Calling vs Constrained Generation vs SAP

3. Why the winner takes all in Content Marketing

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More Startup Spells 🪄

1. How Alex Finn Successfully Pivoted His X Niche After Building 100K+ Followers (LINK)

2. Claude's Gift Strategy: Beat December SaaS Slump with Holiday Campaign (LINK)

3. Niche vs. General YouTube Channels: Thomas Frank's 290K+ vs. 2M+ Subscribers (Case Study) (LINK)

4. Fingerprint's Homepage Personalization Strategy (LINK)

5. ColorBliss' Programmatic SEO Strategy: How 8,700 AI Pages Captured Long-Tail Search (LINK)

On December 28, 2021, Alex Finn bought a JPEG of a cartoon monkey for $30k and started writing as NFT God on X.

3 years later, that account became Alex Finn. Same reach. Same engagement.

Alex Finn NFT God transformation tweet

Everyone tells you to pick a niche and stay there. Alex ignored them. Multiple 6-figure accounts have pivoted successfully, and some founders skip the grind entirely by buying established accounts at 10,000 followers.

The Chrome extension that exposed account buying on X

I used to run Twemex, later rebranded as Tweethunter X. The tool stored tweets with their usernames, which meant you could suddenly see a popular account's older identities if they changed their handle as it searched via unique tweets. Before ChatGPT, people would manually steal tweets and reword them so each one was a bit unique.

It revealed something most people miss: accounts change hands all the time.

X's algorithm doesn't punish pivots. You don't lose followers when you switch niches. SuperX does similar tracking now. Both tools show the same pattern: accounts get bought cheap, rebranded, and scaled up.

Jack Butcher went from design philosophy to crypto NFTs.

Jack Butcher quote about progress

Different content. Same audience.

Jack Butcher's NFT grid artwork

Why founders buy aged accounts instead of starting from zero

Social Growth Engineers recently bought an older account too at ~5k followers to get engagement going for their newer account. I remember seeing their older account details on SuperX.

X now shows how many times a username changed and when the account was created.

Social Growth Engineers account details

Most of the time, if you see an old account with a username change, it was bought.

Nobody cares about the history of your account. They care about what you're posting now.

The playbook nobody talks about: viral niches as launchpads

Here's the strategy people actually use: blow up in a high-growth niche, then use that account as a springboard.

Create more than 1 account while you're at it. Tools like OpenClaw make this actually feasible now. Jacky Chou is already running 400+ karma-farming Reddit accounts using proxies and Alibaba's Qwen model without getting banned from Reddit. That number's only going up.

Jacky Chou - 400+ Reddit accounts using OpenClaw and Qwen

If you know what AI writing looks like, you'll spot these bot farms everywhere on Reddit and X.

Crypto and NFTs explode during bull markets. AI does the same during hype cycles. Sports content goes viral during championships. These niches have built-in viral mechanics.

Build one account to 50k in a hot niche. Then spin up 3 more accounts in different spaces. Your main account becomes the distribution engine. Cross-promote. Convert followers. Move attention from the trendy niche into more stable ones.

Some founders buy aged accounts in dying categories specifically to rebrand during the next hype cycle. The account already has trust signals. The algorithm ranks it higher—like an aged domain. You just change what you post to get sorted into different algorithmic buckets.

Why the first 10k followers changes everything

Growth on X isn't linear. It's exponential after 10k.

Before that, you're shouting into the void. After 10k, the algorithm starts amplifying you automatically. Social proof compounds. Each new follower makes the next one easier to get.

So your only job is hitting 10k as fast as possible. Everything else is easier from there.

Grey hat tactics speed this up on any platform, not just X:

• Buy aged accounts created before a certain date

• Delete old content to reset algorithmic categorization so you get placed in new buckets

• Change your username to match your new niche if it's obvious (like @NFT_God)

The alternative is to spend 2 years building credibility while your competitors shortcut the system.

The algorithm bucket problem when you pivot

X's interest graph decides who sees your content. When you switch niches, you have to retrain the system.

Post consistently in your new category. Let the old audience churn naturally. Your follower count isn't your audience. Your engaged followers are.

Sure, engagement might drop temporarily. But it's still better than starting from zero.

Alex did this when he jumped from NFT to AI. Jack did this when he went from design to NFT. Social Growth Engineers did this by buying an aged account.

Your niche isn't permanent. Your distribution is.

This is why people build personal brands instead of business brands. They can launch multiple products in completely different niches. Look at how MrBeast did it with Feastables (chocolate) and Viewstats (SaaS for YouTubers).

In the end, Alex Finn went from ~100K followers in Crypto to ~430K followers in AI by jumping trends and pivoting successfully in <3 years.

Top Tweets of the day

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The goal is to increase awareness so one day people get curious and check out Claude.

2/

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Lots of YouTubers have started copying this technique for sponsor videos. Great psychological hack!

3/

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There is always a way to cater to the luxury audience.

Rabbit Holes

1. How I Get Creators to Promote My Apps for $0 Upfront (using Whop Apps)

2. The SEO ROI of Blog Content

3. Let the Model Write the Prompt

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More Startup Spells 🪄

1. How an AI Prompt-Engineering Growth Tactic Drove 31,548 GitHub Stars (LINK)

2. How YadaPhone Captures Voice of Customer Data using Automated Feedback Forms (LINK)

3. Claude's Gift Strategy: Beat December SaaS Slump with Holiday Campaign (LINK)

4. Niche vs. General YouTube Channels: Thomas Frank's 290K+ vs. 2M+ Subscribers (Case Study) (LINK)

5. Fingerprint's Homepage Personalization Strategy (LINK)

The fastest way to earn a Github Star is to let an AI ask right after a quick win. Installation succeeds. The terminal shows green text. The user is still there, hand on keyboard, dopamine fresh from solving a problem that was frustrating 5 minutes ago.

That's when Claude Delegator shows a prompt:

Claude Delegator - Use an AI to ask for a GitHub Star

Two options. Yes or no thanks. Not a dark pattern. Not a guilt trip. Just an ask at the exact moment it matters.

Claude Delegator has 803 stars now. Oh My OpenCode, which did this first, sits at 31.5k stars. Both projects use the same simple trick.

The tactic works because of what's happening in that moment. You just succeeded. Someone asking for something small when you're happy feels fundamentally different than asking when you're annoyed or busy.

Social proof is the real product

Stars are a social signal. When a developer lands on a GitHub repo, the first thing they see is that star count. 31.5k stars tells them this project is trustworthy, popular, and worth their time.

It's the same reason people follow influencers with large audiences: we assume popularity equals quality. Think about the time you joined Instagram or X, or TikTok. You saw a lot of people following Kim Kardashian or The Rock, so you automatically followed them. The same is true for developers.

Every star you earn becomes a reason for the next developer to install. And every new install is another chance to ask for a star. That's the flywheel: stars drive installs, installs drive stars.

How to implement it in your own developer project

If you want to add this to your CLI tool or installer, here's the logic from the two projects:

Claude Delegator uses an interactive prompt:

"Use AskUserQuestion to ask the user if they'd like to star the claude-delegator repository on GitHub to support the project."

Oh My OpenCode prints a message with a one-liner that users can copy-paste (or you can make it interactive):

Oh My OpenCode - Use an AI to ask for a GitHub Star

The psychology of timing

You give me value. I feel inclined to give something back. That's reciprocity in action. But timing determines whether that feeling turns into action.

Ask during the struggle, "Rate us while your install is broken," and you get nothing. Ask right after the win, after the value has been delivered, and people are genuinely happy to help. The ask feels natural, not like a demand.

The mechanics are simple. Starring takes 3 seconds since it's a quick action as AI calls a CLI tool already installed by most developers.

Most projects miss this entirely in the post-AI world. They ask on their README. In footer links. On banners that everyone scrolls past. Anywhere except the moment that actually matters. If you've seen StackOverflow's declining graph, you know what I mean. Most developers live in Terminal or IDE nowadays. Very rarely do they Google anymore.

Why this pattern scales everywhere

Claude Delegator and Oh My OpenCode proved this works for open source. But the mechanism isn't limited to GitHub. The rise of AI-powered assistants and bots makes it easier than ever to insert the ask at the perfect moment.

SaaS companies can ask for G2 reviews right after an AI bot or human support agent successfully resolves a customer's issue. If you're running a customer chat agent and it solves the problem, that's the moment. The user just got value directly from your team or AI. Ask then.

E-commerce shops can send an automated email after an AI bot or human handles a return, answers a product question, or fixes a shipping problem. The interaction resolved something. The customer is relieved. Ask for a Google My Business review in that moment, not after a generic purchase.

The pattern transfers anywhere because the psychology doesn't change. What matters is matching the ask to the emotional state. If you want them to star something, ask when they've finally gotten the value. If you want them to review you, ask when they just had a good experience with your support team.

This idea can be extended beyond GitHub. Imagine a ChatGPT plugin that, after helping a user, asks for a Google My Business review for a local shop. Or a free SaaS tool that offers credits in exchange for a Trustpilot review. The reciprocity principle is universal.

Top Tweets of the day

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Pets market is bigger than kids.

2/

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This Claude Code timer browser extension is amazing. It clearly shows you a timer so it helps you to send prompts faster with the 5-min cache timer and manage your usage better.

3/

Twitter tweet

Whenever something is trending on X, there are usually search patterns around the world, because X is real time.

Newsjacking is underrated if you want to build audience fast. You only need one head to break out of a loop.

Rabbit Holes

1. I Used Claude Code to Launch a $32,000 Company in 40 Days

2. What's the best GTM strategy you've seen?

3. LocalRank.so UX Audit using OpenClaw (w/ The Mom Test)

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More Startup Spells 🪄

1. Wave AI's "Day-Zero Payback" Meta Ads Machine (LINK)

2. Duolingo's Screenshot Tracking Strategy: How To Go Viral via Social Sharing (LINK)

3. How YadaPhone Captures Voice of Customer Data using Automated Feedback Forms (LINK)

4. Claude's Gift Strategy: Beat December SaaS Slump with Holiday Campaign (LINK)

5. Niche vs. General YouTube Channels: Thomas Frank's 290K+ vs. 2M+ Subscribers (Case Study) (LINK)

Josh Mohrer spent $100,000 on Meta ads in July 2024. Every single dollar came back the same day.

Most founders burn venture cash hoping for a 12-month payback period. Josh built Wave AI to $7 million ARR in under two years by enforcing a stricter rule: if the ad spend doesn't pay for itself immediately, do not scale.

He treats Meta like a vending machine. Put $1 in. Get $1 (or more) out instantly via annual plans.

Wave AI app interface showing recording and summary features

The Meta day-zero payback constraint

Josh's constraint became his moat. He refused to go "in the red" on acquisition.

The math is simple but brutal. If your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is $30, you need to collect at least $30 from that user on Day 0. You cannot rely on a 12-month LTV (Lifetime Value) prediction to justify the spend.

This forces 2 things:

1. Aggressive Annual Plans: You must sell the yearly subscription upfront.

2. High Conversion Rates: Your funnel must convince cold traffic to pay immediately.

When Josh started, Wave AI had roughly $10,000 MRR. He tested Meta with $300/day. The money returned instantly. He scaled until he hit $100,000 in monthly spend, maintaining that 1.0x Day-0 Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).

If the payback dips below 1.0x on Day 0, he stops scaling. He fixes the funnel or the creative. Then he spends again.

Renting the model (no MMP required)

Sophisticated marketers love Mobile Measurement Partners (MMPs) and complex attribution models. Josh ignored them.

He feeds Meta one clear signal: Purchase.

He installed the Facebook SDK directly. No middleman. No fancy tracking pixels for "Add to Cart" or "View Content." Just the raw subscription event.

His philosophy is that Meta is a "rented recommendation engine." It is smarter than you. It knows who will buy. If you try to micro-target interests or restrict demographics, you make the machine dumber.

Give the algorithm a broad audience and a clear goal. Let it hunt.

Ugly creative sells to professionals

The ads that drove this growth do not look like ads. They look like user recommendations.

Josh and his ad consultant, Marcus Burke, developed a specific creative formula for User Generated Content (UGC):

1. The Hook (3 seconds): "My boss thinks I got way better at meetings." Immediate social proof and benefit.

2. The Demo (20 seconds): Open app -> Record -> Transcript appears -> Summary generated. Show the work.

3. The Close (5 seconds): "If you talk for work, this pays for itself."

They target a specific demographic: 30-50-year-old professionals. These aren't "AI hype" enthusiasts. They are busy people who hate taking notes.

The creative is "ugly" on purpose. Polished brand videos trigger banner blindness. A shaky camera video of a phone recording a Zoom call signals authenticity.

The "Army of One" marketing team

Wave AI reached $2M ARR with Josh writing code and Marcus Burke running ads. No VP of Marketing. No content team. No agency bloat.

The structure:

• Founder (Josh): Owns the product, the offer, and the funnel.

• Specialist (Marcus): Manages the ad account, trafficking, and budget adjustments.

• Producers: Separate freelancers/agencies produce the UGC creative based on specific briefs.

This lean structure prevents signal loss. If ads stop converting, Josh knows it's likely an offer problem or a technical issue, not a "brand alignment" issue.

By reinvesting the immediate cash flow, Wave hit a compounding loop that looks like a glitch in the matrix.

• Feb 2024: $100K ARR

• Apr 2024: $500K ARR

• Jun 2024: $1M ARR

• Sep 2024: $4M ARR

• May 2025: $6M ARR

• Sep 2025: $7M ARR

They process 200,000 minutes of audio every weekday. On Saturdays, usage drops 90%. The ad spend breathes with the usage.

Most SaaS founders treat Meta ads as a dark art. Josh Mohrer treats it as a financial instrument. If you solve for immediate payback, the "risk" of paid acquisition vanishes. You aren't spending money. You're buying revenue at a discount.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

Twitter tweet

Founder-led content has grown in B2B. And even employee-led content too.

In a not-so-distant future, most B2B companies will ask employees to post.

2/

Twitter tweet

If you own a subreddit and grow it to 100,000+ members, it's free distribution.

Always grow on social and then funnel the audience into your own community.

3rd-party platforms can literally ban you for no reason. No need to depend on it ever.

3/

Twitter tweet

Always good to personalize. Best way to do it is targeted scraping.

Rabbit Holes

1. B2B Sellers: How to develop targeting and messaging that no one can compete with BY feature

2. Explode product analysis

3. When to Use AI Agents: A Simple Flowchart

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More Startup Spells 🪄

1. Raycast Wrapped's "Copy as Image" Strategy: Engineering Virality (LINK)

2. Claude's 7-Day Guest Pass: A Masterclass in Weaponized Scarcity (LINK)

3. Duolingo's Screenshot Tracking Strategy: How To Go Viral via Social Sharing (LINK)

4. How YadaPhone Captures Voice of Customer Data using Automated Feedback Forms (LINK)

5. Claude's Gift Strategy: Beat December SaaS Slump with Holiday Campaign (LINK)

Raycast Wrapped launched without relying on a newsletter to drive engagement. Instead, they included one small button.

The "Copy as Image" button.

Raycast Wrapped 2025 - Copy as Image

One click turns your private productivity data into a shareable marketing asset.

Most productivity tools bury their year-end recaps in email archives. Raycast built theirs directly into the workflow.

This follows the same playbook as Spotify Wrapped, but adapts it for developers who value efficiency above everything else.

Raycast Wrapped 2025 - meet your wrapped introduction

Why the "Copy as Image" button works

The "Copy as Image" button does exactly what it promises. It skips the operating system's screenshot tool. You don't need to crop or edit. You don't need to save a file to your desktop.

Every extra step in a sharing workflow kills conversion rates.

The button removes the friction between wanting to share and actually sharing. This is similar to how X.com hacked dark social with screenshot watermarks. X.com made sure their branding appeared on Instagram and Slack by making the native sharing behavior effortless.

Raycast did the same thing. Once someone's stats appear in a Slack channel or Discord server, others check their own. They share too and the viral loop compounds.

Raycast Wrapped 2025 - Top Extensions List

People imitate what they see around them as humans are memetic creatures. Move to a neighborhood where people run at 6am, and suddenly you find yourself lacing up running shoes you haven't touched in years. I have watched this happen repeatedly - people who never ran for decades adopting entirely new behaviors simply because everyone else was doing it.

James Clear puts it well: "The key, if you want to build habits that last, is to join a group where the desired behavior is the normal behavior."

This is why ambitious people cluster in certain cities like San Francisco for startups or Los Angeles for Hollywood. When the default behavior in your environment is high achievement, high achievement becomes your default too.

Remember the ChatGPT Ghibli trend? One person posted their AI-generated portrait, and suddenly everyone was doing it.

Raycast's "Copy as Image" button works the same way. You see a productivity nerd post their Wrapped stats, and with 1-click you can do the same.

Rewriting user memory via the Peak End Rule

Marketers often treat "Wrapped" campaigns as acquisition channels. But they are actually retention engines.

The Peak-End Rule says that humans judge an experience based on 2 moments: how they felt at the peak intensity, and how they felt at the end. We ignore everything else.

This is why Game of Thrones is hated while Breaking Bad is loved. It comes down to Peak-End Rule.

Raycast Wrapped creates a positive ending to the user's year. It shows them how productive they were. It highlights their flow states. It rewrites their memory of the tool to be positive right before they decide whether to keep using it in 2026.

Variable rewards drive the initial click

The "Copy as Image" button drives the share. But variable rewards drive the engagement.

Users click through the Wrapped experience because they do not know what they will find. It is the slot machine effect.

Raycast wrapped showing usage patterns by day and hour

Will I be in the top 1%?

Am I a night owl or an early bird?

What was my most used extension?

This uncertainty creates anticipation. If Raycast simply sent a static PDF with the same data, engagement would drop. The interactive reveal triggers a dopamine hit that primes the user to share the result.

Turning private data into public bragging rights

Humans do not share data because they love a platform. They share it because they love what the data says about them.

Raycast doesn't just show that you opened NordVPN 352 times. They frame it as your "Top Application."

Raw data is boring. Contextualized data is interesting.

Raycast top applications launched

The wrapped format taps into 3 psychological drivers:

• Identity confirmation: Your usage patterns reflect who you are. A developer with 322 emoji insertions and Zed as their second-most-launched app signals a specific workflow.

• Status signaling: High numbers demonstrate mastery. You aren't just using a tool. You are extracting maximum value from it.

• Tribal belonging: Sharing your Raycast stats identifies you as part of the productivity-obsessed developer community. It acts as a membership card.

Raycast wrapped personality card summary

How to execute the "liquid content" strategy

Raycast Wrapped did its job because they treated the user's clipboard as the primary distribution channel. They didn't force a link click. They provided a portable asset.

• Design for the clipboard: Do not ask users to tweet a link. Give them an image to post so they can brag about themselves and share their productivity journey.

• Bypass the "link tax": Social algorithms crush posts with external links. An image upload has zero penalty. Give users an asset the algorithms will actually show.

• Brand through aesthetic, not logos: Raycast used a distinct color gradient rather than a giant logo. If it looks like an ad, users won't post it. If it looks like art, they will.

Don't ask users to "share." Give them an asset they want to own. Let them decide where to paste it.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

Twitter tweet

Lots of people are saying this. Try NotebookLM Slides if you are actually a consulting company or if you make slides.

Everybody is praising NotebookLM for the slides part.

2/

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Be wary of people promoting other platforms on X.

They never mention that it's sponsored and take the money. It's almost, always sponsored.

Very few people mentioned that it's an ad. They mostly get paid $1k per month.

3/

Twitter tweet

The insider models are better than what we see in public.

Rabbit Holes

1. How aHrefs Sells Without Being Salesy: Content that Converts w/ Joshua Hardwick.

2. How I Built an Automated Weekly SEO & GEO Newsletter Aggregating Research Papers & Patents

3. The Goldilocks Rule: How to Stay Motivated in Life and Business

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More Startup Spells 🪄

1. How Alex Hormozi Uses the Kevin Hart Meme to Revive Dead Leads (LINK)

2. Wave AI's Zero-Failure Retention Strategy (LINK)

3. How Perplexity newsjacked the TikTok ban using fake M&A PR Hack (LINK)

4. Grubhub’s Local Link Building Strategy That Solved the Cold Start Problem (LINK)

5. Claude's 7-Day Guest Pass: A Masterclass in Weaponized Scarcity (LINK)

Most sales follow-ups are tragic. They start with "Just checking in" or "Wanted to bump this to the top of your inbox." They smell like desperation.

Alex Hormozi stopped sending them.

When prospects "ghosted" him after the initial contact, he didn't send a generic text nudge. He sent a single image. No context. No "just circling back."

He sent the wide-eyed, confused face of Kevin Hart meme.

Alex Hormozi's tweet using the Kevin Hart meme in cold outreach

This works because it violates the unwritten rules of professional correspondence. Business emails are supposed to be stiff. They are supposed to be polite. They are supposed to be boring.

When you break that frame, you force a reaction.

Pattern interruption breaks the scroll

Your prospect's inbox is a wall of gray text. Their brain filters it automatically. Spam. Spam. Bill. Boss. Spam.

The Kevin Hart image triggers pattern interruption. It is a visual stop sign.

The brain recognizes the face before it recognizes the sales intent. Because the image is funny, it disarms the tension. The expression perfectly matches the feeling of "I am waiting for you to reply and it is getting awkward."

Text demands cognitive load. You have to read it. You have to process the tone. You have to formulate a polite excuse.

A meme demands nothing. You see it. You laugh. You reply.

"If a picture is worth 1000 words, a meme is probably 10000." ~ Elon Musk

Proof that memes outlive their source material

You might worry that using pop culture makes you look outdated. The data suggests the opposite. Memes often outlive the very media that spawned them.

Look at the meme from the show Dexter.

Sergeant Doakes, the character who delivered the line, died in Season 2. That was 2007. He has been dead in the show's canon for nearly 2 decades. The protagonist, Dexter, had 8 seasons and a 2021 reboot.

Yet, if you search "Dexter" on X's GIF search today, Doakes often appears first.

Dexter GIF search rankings showing Doakes above Dexter

A supporting character who hasn't been on screen in 18 years outranks the show's star.

This proves cultural persistence. The meme detached from the show. It became its own entity. It became shorthand for "I caught you."

This is why Hormozi's strategy works. He isn't relying on people liking Kevin Hart's stand-up. He is relying on people recognizing the symbol of Kevin Hart's face.

Familiarity bias builds trust

Marketing usually tries to be high-fidelity. Polished graphics. Perfect lighting. On-brand colors. Like /r/Instagramreality.

Meme marketing succeeds because it is low-fidelity like TikTok. It looks like something a friend would send. This triggers familiarity bias. We trust things we have seen before.

When a prospect sees a polished marketing graphic, their guard goes up. Someone is trying to sell me something.

When they see Kevin Hart or Sergeant Doakes, their guard stays down.

This is why resurrected memes outperform fresh creative. The audience already has context. They don't need to learn what it means—they already know. That saved cognitive load translates to higher engagement.

This works beyond sales. Social media. Paid ads. Content marketing. Anywhere you need to stop the scroll and earn attention.

SaaS companies use trending memes in Facebook ads, LinkedIn carousels, and email campaigns. The familiarity creates instant pattern recognition. Your brain processes known images faster than unknown ones.

How to resurrect viral moments for your marketing

Find memes that are trending again after years of dormancy. Monitor GIF search rankings on X or Giphy. Look for characters or moments that dominated pop culture 5 or 10 years ago and are suddenly relevant again.

Connect those memes to your product. If you're selling email software, pair the Doakes stare with copy about open rates. If you're in fintech, use it for fraud detection messaging. The meme provides the hook. Your product provides the context.

Test them in cold outreach first. Send a meme as a follow-up when prospects go silent. Track reply rates. If it works, scale it into paid ads and social content.

The lesson isn't to use the Doakes meme specifically. The lesson is to watch what culture resurrects, then borrow that attention for your own channels.

Top Tweets of the day

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Borrow use cases to use AI from everyone. There's always a unique way someone uses it.

2/

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Good example of AI replacing a role at a company.

3/

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Pretty good tips for running an agency business.

Rabbit Holes

1. How we grew sales by 13x with #manychat on #instagram

2. Don’t invest in dark mode

3. Monetization Law Number #8 - How you charge is often more important than what you charge. Your choice of value metric is important

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More Startup Spells 🪄

1. How Basecamp's PR Strategy Generates Millions in Free Press (LINK)

2. Discord's Checkpoint 2025: Designing a Viral Year-In-Review (LINK)

3. Carrie Rose's 50/50 Reactive PR Framework: Spot Trends Before Competitors (LINK)

4. Wave AI's Zero-Failure Retention Strategy (LINK)

5. How Perplexity newsjacked the TikTok ban using fake M&A PR Hack (LINK)

David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) published a blog post in October 2022. It wasn't a press release. It was an open letter about why Basecamp (formerly 37signals) was leaving the cloud.

This open letter was a masterclass in Basecamp's PR strategy.

Basecamp's PR Strategy using an Open Letter

The post had specific numbers, a clear enemy, and a controversial stance. The tech press picked it up immediately. Within 48 hours, major outlets were linking to the post as a primary source.

Most corporate blogs are graveyards. They publish safe updates about "synergy" and "optimizing workflows" that nobody reads.

Jason Fried and DHH do the exact opposite. They use their blog to pick fights. They draw lines in the sand. By framing business decisions as moral battles, they make the media pay attention.

This isn't luck. It's a calculated approach that turns a blog post into millions of dollars in free advertising.

How to force reporters to quote you

Reporters are busy. They're also lazy. They have to cover 10 articles a day.

When you send a press release, you ask them to do work. You ask them to parse corporate jargon, find the story, and verify the facts. Most press releases go straight to the trash.

Basecamp flips this dynamic. They write the story for the reporter.

An open letter acts as a "primary source." When DHH writes a post, he provides the conflict, the quotes, and the data in one package. A journalist at The Verge doesn't need to interview him. They can quote the post, add 2 sentences of context, and publish.

The blog post becomes the news event.

This forces outlets to link back to Basecamp. If TechCrunch writes about the cloud exit, they link to the original post to prove their sources.

Basecamp gets the traffic. They get the domain authority. They get the narrative control.

Deconstructing the contrarian blog post

The 2022 cloud exit post is a textbook example of this strategy.

It didn't say "We are changing hosting providers." That's boring.

Instead, DHH framed it as a rebellion against "Big Tech" extortion. He included a specific, headline-grabbing number: leaving AWS and Google Cloud would save the company $7 million over 5 years.

That specific number acted as a hook.

Ars Technica analyzed the math immediately. The Register covered the savings in detail. Both outlets linked back to Basecamp.

Later, the company updated the projection to $10 million in savings. The press cycle restarted.

If they had quietly switched servers, nobody would have cared. By shouting about the cost, they turned a backend infrastructure change into a global debate about server costs.

How narrative tension forces major media coverage

Basecamp's strategy relies on one thing: narrative tension.

A product update has zero tension. A fight has stakes.

Basecamp creates tension by taking a contrarian stance and accepting the consequences.

In April 2021, Jason Fried published a post announcing a ban on political discussions at work. The backlash was immediate. One-third of the company resigned.

Most CEOs would hide. Fried and DHH kept posting.

The post, "Changes at Basecamp", became a cultural flashpoint. It generated thousands of backlinks from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and every tech blog.

The stakes were real. People quit. That made the story impossible to ignore. Reporters can smell performative controversy, but they respect actual blood on the floor because it gets clicks.

4 times Basecamp manipulated the news cycle

Basecamp has run this playbook for a decade. The pattern is always the same: pick a fight, show the receipts, wait for the links.

The fight against Apple (2020)

When Apple threatened to remove the HEY email app over fees, Basecamp didn't negotiate privately.

They took the fight public. Fried published a series of emails and updates framing Apple as a monopoly bullying a small developer.

The Verge covered the saga daily, linking to Basecamp's posts as the canonical record.

Radical focus (2014)

Most SaaS companies add more products to grow revenue. Basecamp subtracted instead.

They dropped all other products to focus solely on their project management tool.

Forbes covered the rebrand because the move seemed crazy.

The "craziness" was the hook.

Leaving the cloud (2022)

DHH attacked the sacred cow of modern tech infrastructure: Amazon Web Services (AWS).

He argued that renting servers is a financial racket for mature companies. The post validated what many CTOs secretly thought but were afraid to say.

Internal policy as public news (2021)

The political discussion ban proved that internal memos can be external marketing assets.

Even negative press builds domain authority.

How to run this playbook yourself

You don't need DHH's X following to use this approach. You need courage.

Most founders are afraid to have an opinion. They want to be liked by everyone. That's a recipe for obscurity.

Here's how to turn your blog into a press magnet:

• Pick a contrarian stance. What does your industry believe that you know is wrong?

• Find the numbers. Don't just complain. Bring data. "$7 million savings" travels further than "$5 million savings".

• Create a villain. It could be a competitor, a monopoly (Apple), or a concept (rental costs).

• Publish on your own domain. Never give this content to Medium or LinkedIn. You want the backlinks.

• Accept the heat. Sharp edges cut. Some people will hate you. That means the strategy is working.

Basecamp proves that you don't need a PR agency for journalists to write about you. You just need a bold point of view.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

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The one who knows their niche well can use AI to 10x themselves.

AI is pretty good at following specific instructions.

Experts know one thing better than any beginner and that is to knowing which questions to ask?

One of my best friends literally told me that if you talk to AI like an expert and give it as much in-depth instructions as possible, it will think longer and harder plus use the most available GPU resources and come up with the most brilliant solution you have ever seen.

I could only think upto 10-20 minutes (sometimes 30 minutes) but she goes upto 60 minutes every single time. The output difference was massive.

“If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” ~ Albert Einstein

Every programmer knows that thinking more about the problem leads to a solution eventually. You have to let the problem marinate in your subconcious for a long time and it'll come up with an answer in the shower or while you were sleeping.

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Love this!

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2026 is the year of marketers.

Rabbit Holes

1. David R. Bell | Effectively Market To Millennials and Gen-Z

2. How to cut your AI costs by 90% while improving performance (according to Databricks)

3. The Google landscape is changing, here's what you need to know.

What'd ya think of today's newsletter? Hit 'reply' and let me know.

Do me a favor and share it in your company's Slack #marketing channel.

First time? Subscribe.

Follow me on X.

More Startup Spells 🪄

1. How Gamifying Failure Increased Chess.com Subscriptions by 20% (LINK)

2. How Prayer Lock automates UGC marketing using Gemini 3 & Python (LINK)

3. Interest Graph vs Follower Graph Algorithm (LINK)

4. How Higgsfield AI used 9-hour credit giveaways to slash SaaS CAC (LINK)

5. Discord's Checkpoint 2025: Designing a Viral Year-In-Review (LINK)