Let me tell you about GrowWize, a tiny startup founded by Sarah, a passionate gardener who wanted to change how people learn about plants. Sarah created this app that could predict plant growth using machine learning. Sounds cool, right? But she was stuck in a market filled with big names, and traction was slow.

Sarah needed a BIG breakthrough—a growth hack that would make people notice. And she nailed it. Here’s how she did it:

🌱 The “Aha” Moment

Sarah was at a community gardening event, noticing how everyone was sharing tips and pics on social media. That's when it hit her: gardening may be a solo hobby, but the community is huge online. She had her angle.

🔥 Planting the Hack

1. Community Integration: She made GrowWize social-friendly, letting users share their plant progress, swap tips, and even compete with friends on who could grow the healthiest plants. Each user turned into a low-key promoter.

2. The Viral Challenge: She launched the “30-Day Gardening Challenge.” Users planted a seed and tracked its growth using GrowWize, posting daily updates. Points for consistency, plant health, and community engagement. Top performers won gardening kits, consultations, and shoutouts on GrowWize’s social media.

3. Influencer Collab: Sarah gave early access to gardening influencers, who then shared their experiences on their platforms, tagging GrowWize. Instant credibility and a flood of new users.

4. Data-Driven Moves: Sarah spotted that many users were into exotic plants, so she partnered with botanical gardens and rare plant nurseries. Exclusive discounts on seeds only for GrowWize users, which added a cool factor and created a niche within a niche.

🚀 The Harvest

The “30-Day Gardening Challenge” went viral. Hashtags blew up, people downloaded the app in droves, and engagement levels were through the roof. Tech blogs and magazines started covering it, and partnerships with gardening tool companies followed.

User Engagement: People weren’t just downloading the app—they were hooked, sharing daily, and forming gardening groups.

Press Love: The challenge caught media attention, and soon, GrowWize was featured in tech and lifestyle blogs.

Long-Term Growth: Sarah kept the momentum going by adding features based on feedback, like virtual garden tours and AI-driven plant care tips.

The Legacy

GrowWize didn’t just grow; it became a community hub for gardeners worldwide. Sarah’s hack is now a legit business school case study on how creativity and community can drive insane growth.

Sometimes, the simplest idea, when executed right, can absolutely blow up. 💥

I launched Robust Design Systems :

To create a design system -> Create your components -> Export the code if needed !

https://www.robustlaunch.com/

Waiting for you advice :)

Should you offer lifetime option in both short and long-term?

I am thinking of releasing my nutrition app with a 1 month, 1 year and lifetime subscription option.

I often hear the space is saturated and some ppl talk about having a lifetime option is a great deal.

As an indie developer, my cash is getting very tight and hence the need for the launch, and offering lifetime option (at least in the first 3 months after release to get some cash).

But should you offer such lifetime option in the long term? I do see some “freemium” apps having lifetime option about 2.5x that of annual subscription.

Yet, I don’t really see reputable premium apps doing that. But why not? Most apps churn within a year or two, so offering lifetime seems like a good one.

Would appreciate some advice :))

We recently got selected to be one of Rockethub's featured lifetime deals in Jan. Anyone have any feedback or experience either as a buyer or seller on there?

Is it worth it to launch with them, or Appsumo?

Hey everyone,

I’m curious to know about your experiences with running B2B advertising campaigns on X, specifically for SaaS lead generation. While I've seen some success with other platforms like LinkedIn and Google Ads, I'm considering incorporating X into my strategy.

A few questions to guide the discussion:

• Have you found X effective for reaching decision-makers and key stakeholders in your target industry?
• What types of ads worked best for you?
• How does it compare to other platforms in terms of cost-per-click (CPC) and conversion rate?
• What challenges did you face, and what best practices would you recommend?

I’d appreciate any insights, tips, or lessons learned. It would be great to know if X is worth the investment for B2B SaaS or if other platforms might be more effective.

Looking forward to your thoughts and experiences!

Title mostly. Launched a cold email campaign a week ago, and got not just zero discovery calls, but zero replies. Around 1000 prospects contacted. PPC ads niche.

What could be wrong? Please roast my opener email, CTA, and structure:

Subject: b2b sales

{NAME}, are you satisfied with the quality of leads coming from your ads?

An effective B2B PPC strategy should engage leads at every stage of the customer journey and connect with key decision-makers.

Would you mind if I recorded a quick video to show which strategy might work best for {COMPANY}?

Hey everyone! Lately, I’ve been curious about how other growth folks structure their work routines. I know that routines can vary depending on whether you’re in marketing or product growth, but it feels like we’re all aiming at the same thing and that is driving revenue.

For instance, my day usually kicks off with diving into data (marketing, sales, product), then watching a few user recordings and writing down notes. After that, I jump into running experiments. I’m curious to hear how you all approach it—any hacks that help you come up with better experiments or stay focused on what matters most?

I have an analytics startup and would like to create an onboarding sequence next. I already have close to 3,000 customers and have completely forgotten about this tool. LOL

I hope it's a low-hanging fruit for customer satisfaction (tips) and marketing (promotion of referral program).

This is what I've been thinking about so far:

1. Mail: Introducing myself, thanks for account creation, first steps with the software
2. Mail: This is how you use test mode
3. Mail: Join our Slack, you'll get xyz
4. Mail: Referral program, how to use, what you get as a reward
5. Mail: Some best practice with a specific feature, that our customers love
6. Mail: Write a testimonial and get a backlink from our website (promote your product)
7. Mail: Freebie with useful information

I am thinking about a one-week period, so that the new customers get one mail per day.

Any thoughts on this?

Hi guys, What advice would you recommend to someone who is trying to grow a flight booking business that only caters to crypto currency users. How would you generally move from zero to 1000 users in this case?

I'm looking to connect with active LinkedIn users through Sales Navigator—specifically, leads who've posted at least 3-4 times in the past month. Any tips on filters, techniques, or search strategies within Sales Navigator to find these engaged users?

Langtail is the ultimate tool for making LLM testing easy with a spreadsheet-like interface, natural language scoring, and real-time insights.

Here's what makes it powerful:

• Spreadsheet-Style Testing Interface
• Hosted Tools for Fast Prototyping
• Model Comparison Configurations
• Shareable AI Apps
• Stateful Assistants with Memory
• Magic Buttons for Streamlined Workflows
• AI Firewall for Security
• Self-Hosting Options

Check it out here → https://www.langtail.com

Please show some love on PH → https://www.producthunt.com/posts/langtail-1-0

Thank you for your support! ❤️

Hey r/GrowthHacking

I’m curious to know what tools or data sources you all use for outbound marketing. 

Specifically, if you’re running outbound outreach through email, calls, or any other channels, where do you usually find your data?  

Drop your thoughts in the comments! 

BTW, we built Lasso AI for a very specific use case that you can read in the comments.  

I am keen to find popularly used tools, thanks in advance for your recommendations! ♥️

→ Find target audience on Reddit
→ Interview them to understand their problem + pain points (post, survey, DM)
→ Make sure your product solves their problem.
→ Offer it to them for free and ask for feedback.

If you can’t get any users like this, build something better.

This is how I got my first 100+ users for my MVP, took me 2 weeks.

I'm looking to refine the metrics we track for a usage-based SaaS business model.

Customers technically subscribe but that subscription is just a small chunk of the revenue they generate, essentially they are billed transaction based. Sort of like your electricity bill. The more you use our services, the more you pay. It can vary every month, customer by customer.

What are some key metrics or indicators that others in usage-based models have found most impactful for growth, retention, and forecasting?

How did you determine which customers would you consider churned?

Any insights on usage-specific metrics or overlooked KPIs are welcome!

We are a YC startup planning to launch on Bookface and Hacker News. We are curious to know what the traction from these channels might be.

Somewhat weird not being able to find any data over the internet.

Any insights will be helpful. Thanks in advance :)

Doubt this is a hack anymore but exact match domain names (even .orgs) rank insanely well.

I currently rank in the #1 spot for "no code jobs" with nocodejobs .org. Above Indeed and LinkedIn which is hard to do.

Nothing on the site, yet.

I won it at GoDaddy auctions for $371. A great deal if you ask me.

Hi guys, i got an idea for airtable marketplace. Just wanted to ask, how would you go and validate it. I have seen most of the avenues dont actually work

Hey growth hackers!

Who are your favourite YouTubers?

I've been learning tons from the stuff Greg Isenberg and Neil Patel channels, but I'm specifically looking for YouTubers who:

- Share their actual tech stack and tool recommendations

- Provide step-by-step tutorials (not just theory)

- Show real-time demonstrations of tools in action

- Give actionable tips you can implement same-day

Who are you getting value from right now?

Would especially love recommendations for channels that do deep dives into:

1. Marketing automation tools

2. Analytics and tracking setups

3. Landing page builders

4. Email marketing platforms

5. Growth hacking tools

If you recommend a channel, please share one specific tutorial/tool review that helped you. Makes it easier for everyone to find the good stuff!

Hey everyone,

I’ve been diving into various data sources for my projects, and I keep coming across Apollo. While I’ve heard a lot of buzz about it, I can’t help but notice that their datasets seem outdated and often don’t align with the specific niches I'm targeting.

Has anyone else experienced this? What’s the appeal of using Apollo despite these issues? Are there any particular use cases where it shines, or is it just a legacy tool that people are holding onto for familiarity?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

For the last 7 days, my Linkedin has been behaving weirdly.

1. Avg impressions of 100k on 5 posts weekly has come down to 60k.
2. Posts are struggling on the first hour for impressions.
3. No change is style, tone, hashtags or quality. (I can say no change in quality as I do deep dives of product and tech)
4. Earlier in 1 hour, the post with 10 reactions would amass 1k impressions but now with even 30 reactions, they are hardly doing 1k impressions for the day

Anybody else with this observation or is my Linkedin doomed?

My oath of not posting self-photos and jokes is hurting me it seems :)

I offer both monthly and yearly subscriptions in my app. I wonder if I issue promo codes for specific influences that gives the end user 30% off for yearly subscriptions and gives the influencer 50% of the income for the first year. Would that be a compelling offer?

I think it would be easier to handle it if I only offer this on yearly subscriptions and not monthly. Is that a good idea?

What kind of percentages work best?

I am selling a fitness app on monthly subscriptions. I have accounts on instagram and Facebook which is where my audience are. I don’t practice most of the workout myself so I find it a bit hard to create good content. I don’t need a super fancy social media strategy but I would benefit from some activity.

Is there a low effort way of having, for instance, a brand ambassador program where I can reach their audiences as well as use their content on my social media accounts? Is there a way to do this without too much effort from my side?

I wonder if I could offer my ambassadors a cut of the initial subscription cost. For instance, they get 50% of the income from the first three months for each user that subscribed with an offer code specific for each ambassador.

What do you think? I need a low effort solution since I am the only person in the company.

I'm running ads on Instagram and want the ads CTA to open the landing page in device browsers l(chrome/safari) and not in the Instagram in-built browser

I have seen this being done successfully by others and want to replicate the same

Pls guide me if you have done this successfully - I have explored Stackoverflow posts and doesn't seem any one of them working definitely

Hey everyone, I have a question - Do you all (ideally content marketers for startups and scaleups) check LinkedIn over the weekend? Is it a good way to build a network, do outreach, and post organic content, over the weekend?

I recently took a deep dive into better understanding our ICP. Over the past two weeks, I’ve had 10 in-depth conversations (with guided questions) with app developers aiming to eventually make a living from their apps. Here are my top three learnings, which have led us to make some major changes in our approach.

Top 3 Insights:

1. Speedy Setup Beats Privacy – Surprising but true! While privacy is important (our original top marketing argument), developers prioritize a quick and easy setup even more. Quote: "I just wanted to try it out fast."
2. Automated Email Reports Build Emotional Connection – These aren’t just data dumps; they’re touchpoints that help developers feel more secure about the general health of their app. To be honest, I personally haven't thought about these automatically generated mails for ages! Quote: "Every Sunday I know that everything is going well. That is a great motivation."
3. Marketing is a Major Pain Point – Our customers are struggling most with marketing their apps, making it clear that they need more than just analytics; they need support in growing their user base.

With these insights, we completely rewrote our front page to address these needs and help our audience find the solutions they’re looking for faster. First week already shows a slightly higher conversion rate (website visitors to account creation).

• Week 1 (control): 0,89 %
• Week 2 (test): 1,02 %

We’re also testing new outreach channels to refine our messaging even further.

If you’re working on customer discovery, I highly recommend jumping on calls with your ICP – the insights are invaluable. I was surprised how many customers took the time to talk to me. And what was even more surprising: I thought it was a chore that I had to do. But I quickly found that I enjoyed talking to the developers and was in a good mood after every conversation.

Hey everyone! I wanted to share this because it’s the kind of conversation I often have with other builders in the space. I’ve been getting a lot of DMs lately asking how we grew our SaaS so “quickly” and made it look easy. Truth is... it took A LOT of work. I realized most people reaching out were struggling with those early stages—getting that first momentum. Because once you get some initial traction, things DO get easier. Cash flow starts coming in, you get real user feedback, and you start to see what really works.

So here’s my breakdown of how we went from 0 to 100 customers with cold outreach, mostly on Twitter and LinkedIn. I’ll stick to that 0–100 stage, but if this helps, I can follow up with a post on how we got from 100 to 1,000. Let’s dive in.

Offering Free Access for the First 100 Customers

To kick things off, I decided to offer my product for FREE to the first 100 users. My goal was to target creators who could use the tool with their audiences, knowing that this “free access” could act as a marketing expense. Think about it... every time one of these creators used the tool with their fans, their audience was exposed to the product. And since many of their fans were business owners, we’d be right in front of a relevant audience.

Each new user wasn’t just a customer—they became an ambassador for the product, showing others what it could do and helping to build credibility. That first base of loyal users came directly from this approach, and it gave us some early traction without spending on ads or sponsorships.

Twitter DM Strategy... And a Few Tool Fails

I started with Twitter, focusing on DMs to reach creators and business owners directly. Now, I tried out some automation tools like TweetDM and ColdDM to see if they could speed things up. Here’s the honest review: both had some useful features for sending messages at scale, but response rates were lower than I expected. Twitter’s API restrictions made the tools clunky, and it felt like these tools didn’t have strong support, probably because the founders may have moved on to other projects. After some trial and error, I decided to go with manual outreach instead, and here’s the structure that worked:

1. Personalized Intro – I started each DM with something specific to the person, like a recent tweet or something from their profile. Simple... but effective. “Hey [Name], saw your tweet about [topic] and really appreciated your take!”
2. Value Statement – I’d give a quick intro to what I was building and how it might be relevant. No pitch, just a line that made them curious. “I’m building a tool that helps creators strengthen their relationship with fans so they come back again and again.”
3. Soft Call to Action – I’d close by inviting them to try it out, no pressure. “Would love to hear your thoughts... I’m happy to set you up with early access if you’re interested.”

Sending 30–40 messages per day, I found the response rate was MUCH better with manual outreach. I kept it genuine and avoided sounding like spam, which helped me connect better. Around 25% responded, which gave me solid traction without feeling pushy.

LinkedIn Outreach Strategy for Higher Engagement

While Twitter was great for creators, LinkedIn helped me reach business owners and growth-focused professionals who’d also benefit from the product. Here’s how I approached LinkedIn:

1. Connection Request – First, I’d connect with a short intro based on their profile. Something like, “Hi [Name], saw you’re working in [relevant industry] and I’d love to connect.”
2. Follow-Up Message – Once they accepted, I’d follow up with a brief message about the product. Here’s where I kept it short and relevant: “I recently launched a tool for creators and business owners to help with customer retention. If that’s something useful, I’d be happy to set you up with early access.”

LinkedIn worked especially well for decision-makers who were already familiar with retention issues, so this strategy brought in users who were more likely to stick around and even refer others.

Key Takeaways and Lessons Learned

Using Twitter and LinkedIn helped me hit that 100-user mark pretty quickly. Here’s what I learned:

1. Free access as a marketing boost – Offering free access to creators didn’t just build our user base; it promoted the product organically. Their fans saw it in action, and it kept the outreach authentic.
2. Manual DMs outperformed automated tools – TweetDM and ColdDM didn’t perform as well as I’d hoped, and Twitter’s API restrictions made automation clunky. Personal, real-time messages got way better responses.
3. Focus on quality over quantity – The manual approach meant I wasn’t reaching hundreds of people, but the ones I connected with felt engaged and genuinely interested.

Next Steps: 100 to 1,000 Coming Soon

Once we reached the 100-user milestone, we switched gears a bit. Going from 100 to 1,000 required more structure and time, so we added email outreach into the mix. This part was more challenging but helped us scale sustainably. I’ll break down that approach in a follow-up post if people are interested.

Hope this helps anyone working through those first few stages—it’s definitely a grind, but if you’re up for the challenge, cold outreach can be incredibly effective. Let me know if you have any questions or want more details... happy to dive deeper into anything here!

I am trying to reach more audiences with my post on LinkedIn. The problem I face is that the only reach I get is from my colleagues or from my city. I want to reach to broader audiences. How can I do that with my post on LinkedIn? Any help would be appreciated.

Hey r/GrowthHacking

I’ve been exploring ways to make cold email outreach more personalized and engaging.

Video-based outreach has been a big focus for me recently since it adds that personal touch and usually gets a better response than plain text.

I ended up creating my own tool to help with this (it’s called LeadsEngager) since other tools were expensive. I'm on the lookout for other personalization options, too.

For those of you who do cold outreach, what tools have you found most effective for personalizing emails?

Whether it's text personalization, video, images, or other creative approaches, I’d love to hear what’s worked for you!

In a major move, Stripe has acquired Bridge, a stablecoin platform, for a record-breaking $1.1 billion, marking its biggest acquisition yet and the largest in Web3 history.

Hot on the heels of its recent buyout of LemonSqueezy, Stripe is on an acquisition spree, doubling down on payments and now taking a bold step into crypto.

Bridge’s stablecoin API offers fast, borderless transactions, appealing to developers and opening the door to decentralized payments without volatility. With Stripe rapidly expanding its reach, this could redefine the future of digital finance—and Stripe is positioned to lead the way!

In a surprising turn for the B2B SaaS and startup community, Stripe has acquired LemonSqueezy, a favorite payment processing solution known for its developer-friendly API and straightforward pricing.

This acquisition could mark a significant shift in the payment processing landscape, reducing competition and potentially impacting costs for developers and startups worldwide.

While LemonSqueezy’s blog post describes the acquisition as the “culmination of years of close partnership” with Stripe, some in the startup community are concerned about what this means for independent developers and small companies.

LemonSqueezy was regarded as a strong alternative to the payment giant, offering an easy-to-integrate API and an approachable price point, ideal for smaller players in the SaaS space.

But now, with LemonSqueezy folded into Stripe, developers may face fewer options, with Stripe holding substantial control over pricing. This consolidation raises concerns that prices could rise, knowing that alternatives are limited.

As Stripe continues its rise to dominance, many are left wondering: will LemonSqueezy’s simple, developer-friendly approach survive within Stripe’s ecosystem, or will this acquisition mark the end of an era for payment processing diversity?