Elephas (LFS)

Aayush posted on niche subreddits where their ICP (Mac power users, productivity enthusiasts) were active. The core post format was a short video demo of a specific feature wrapped in a problem-solution story frame — e.g., "Me or my friend was facing this problem, so I built this feature to solve it — here's how it works, try it free for 30 days, looking for feedback." They explicitly avoided blatant self-promotion and instead explained the reasoning behind the feature. UTM links were added to every Reddit post to track which subreddit, feature, and date drove conversions. They targeted subreddits with 5,000+ members, often preferring smaller niche ones where mods were more forgiving and audiences were tightly focused. They posted to one subreddit per day over 14–15 days, tweaking copy slightly between posts to improve performance without appearing as spam. This cadence drove initial customer feedback and conversions. Within the first 6 months of this Reddit strategy, they reached $3,000 MRR. They used the qualitative feedback from comments — mood, objections, feature requests — to shape the product roadmap. One early post about their "Super Brain" feature generated enough feedback and requests that it became the product's flagship feature used by thousands today.

Kumber (co-founder) had already started the product (Elephas) before Aayush joined; Aayush brought 11 years of corporate experience plus consulting work with early-stage startups on product and marketing. No pre-existing audience, but Aayush joined once early traction was established, reducing cold-start risk.

SEO — programmatic and intent-driven blog content targeting low-competition, high-demand keywords on Google drove the majority of revenue growth from $3K MRR to $12K MRR, generating ~$70K in 2023 alone.

Reddit has diminishing returns over time — mods started cracking down on promotional posts, engagement dropped, and accounts got banned. It was effective early but not scalable long-term. Aayush noted Reddit stops working or shows diminishing returns as you invest more time/effort into it beyond the early phase.