Founders sharing what actually happened when they tested go-to-market strategies. No fluff, just numbers.
Hit 50 users (mostly free trial and early birds) entirely through Reddit using a manual, anti-pitch approach. Never linked a landing page in the first comment. Instead, explained why someone was having a problem and offered a manual workaround. If they replied asking for more help, then DM’d them. Conversion rate from DM to sign-up was about 40%.
After sending 500+ cold emails over 20 days with a 4.2% reply rate, shared what’s actually working. Hyper-personalization at scale is key — mentioning a recent LinkedIn post or something on their website already looks too spammy, so personalize around the company niche or recent personal info. AI-generated emails are easy to spot in 2026, so testing is critical. Uses Clay for data enrichment, Instantly for deliverability and warmup.
For months, approached Reddit with a distribution mindset — find a subreddit, drop a link, and hope for traffic. It felt transactional and the engagement was predictably low. Decided to flip the script completely: instead of looking for places to post, started looking for places to belong.
Building an AI voice agent SaaS for home service contractors (HVAC, plumbing, electrical) — an AI receptionist that answers their phone 24/7, books appointments, and handles emergency calls. $2,500 setup + $550/mo. Spent two weeks cold calling with the AI itself as the outbound sales tool.
Launched BrandingStudio.ai on Product Hunt and placed #6 with 168 upvotes. Over four days got 400 signups and a 98% activation rate (360 brands created), but only $237 in revenue from a single paying customer — a 0.25% conversion rate. Spent $140 on LinkedIn ads and $20 in AI API costs to serve all 400 free users.
RivalSense launched on Product Hunt achieving 325 votes, 57 comments, and #5 "Product of the Day." In the first 48 hours they received 3,600 new website visitors and 110 trials started. They leveraged TechStars alumni connections, emailed their 400-subscriber newsletter, and posted across Facebook, Reddit, and Telegram PH communities.
Ran two Reddit campaigns for BLUF, a Chrome extension that answers questions about web pages using AI. The first campaign was a basic 30-second screen recording posted to r/SideProject — 10,600 impressions and 32 installs (0.3% conversion). The second used a professionally edited video, posted at 6-8am EST and crossposted to r/ChatGPT, r/OpenAI, and r/artificial — 82,300 impressions and 828 installs (1% conversion).
Built a powerlifting tracking app in one month and launched across Twitter, Hacker News, Indie Hackers, Reddit, and Discord. Got 100 users in the first week with a clear channel breakdown: Reddit drove 60 users, Discord 25, Indie Hackers 15, while Twitter and Hacker News produced zero.
Launched Saner.ai on Product Hunt despite negative discourse about the platform’s value. Results exceeded expectations: 5,000 unique visitors, over 1,000 signups, and "Product of the Day." Invested roughly three weeks of part-time preparation.
Ran a controlled experiment launching three products on different days. Saturday launch: 294 upvotes, #4 product of the day, 867 unique visitors. Thursday: 42 upvotes, #18, 310 visitors. Tuesday: 40 upvotes, #24, 296 visitors.
Launched SlotSwap (a newsletter collaboration platform) by posting in r/substack, chosen for having 100K+ members and strong engagement. Wrote two posts in an authentic, off-the-cuff tone, leveraging existing credibility from running a 2,300-subscriber newsletter. First post: 17 comments and ~35 signups within 24 hours. Second post added ~15 more.
Founded Glorify, an e-commerce design tool. Product Hunt launch generated $10K in sales on day one and over $300K total through lifetime deals. But the go-to-market experiments that followed were costly failures: burned $50K on ads for only $2K in MRR, invested $70K over two years on a side product that returned only $20K, and over-hired a marketing team.
Sent 100 LinkedIn connection requests to Chinese language teachers to promote TypeChinese, a Chinese typing practice tool. Strategy was to target teachers for their leverage (one teacher influencing 100 students). Results were dismal: 3 people accepted (3% acceptance rate), 1 responded positively, and Google Analytics showed just 3 page views.
Joined Feedboard when it had about 150 users and grew it to 500+ with zero ad spend using five channels: newsletter submissions (featured on Internet Is Beautiful, Startups FYI, Workspaces), cross-promotions through existing 10,000+ subscriber newsletters, directory submissions to 20+ sites including BetaList (became trending), posting in 13 subreddits, and build-in-public on Twitter.