Cleo

Built a 6-week content calendar specifically to drive waitlist signups. Published three content types: (1) founder/story-driven posts with a person front-and-center in images, (2) 'edgy selling' posts that broke down complex topics (e.g. AI SEO) step-by-step while subtly embedding the product as a placement, (3) genuinely useful tactical posts (e.g. exact meeting agendas) with a soft CTA to the waitlist or lead magnet.

Rob posted a thread on X (a brand new account, ~3-4 months old, under 9K followers) crafted with a hook containing three ingredients: social proof ('we hit 62K MRR in 53 days'), curiosity ('a single meeting that will define our next 90 days'), and a promised benefit ('here is the exact agenda'). The post went viral.

Sent a sequence of early-bird emails to the waitlist announcing 500 beta spots at a 50% lifetime discount. Follow-up emails counted down remaining spots ('only 239 spots left', then '300 left', etc.), included a webinar recording, and reinforced the value proposition. Emailed ~5 out of 7 days during launch week.

Co-founder Lara hosted a live launch webinar featuring: an exclusive offer (1-on-1 coaching calls, community access) available only to webinar attendees, a capped number of slots to create scarcity, live purchase announcements to drive FOMO, a live product demo, and a surprise live testimonial from an existing customer interviewed on-stream.

Deliberately capped the product at 500 users for ~1 month. Stacked calendars with back-to-back 30-minute customer calls (targeting 50+ calls per Jason Lemkin's advice). Recorded all calls with Aioma, fed transcripts into Claude to extract bug reports, feature requests, and ICP insights. Used verbatim customer language to rewrite landing page and ad copy.

Re-ran the early-bird email sequence for a second cohort of 500 users with a slightly reduced discount (less extreme than cohort 1, since the product was more proven). Repeated the scarcity/urgency countdown email structure.

Collected emails for the public launch webinar in parallel with the second beta. Planned discounts, prizes, and exclusive offers for webinar attendees. Continued publishing content on LinkedIn and X to funnel new subscribers. Product made publicly purchasable on the website for the first time.

Invested ~$30K/month into content production including a YouTube agency, social managers for cross-posting to Threads and Instagram, and co-founders spending at least 2 full days per week solely on content creation. All co-founders create content and cross-promote/repost each other's best-performing posts across LinkedIn and X.