No guru advice · No made-up case studies
Real marketing experiments: what founders tried, what it cost, and what happened — including what didn't work. Every number comes from the founder's own words, with a link to the source.
Editor's picks
Marc Lou
Marc Lou says he grew a B2B SaaS from zero to $80,000+ with cold email as the only channel and $0 spend: directory-sourced leads, a CRM, a template email, a sales call, and a short drip sequence.
Jack Friks
Jack Friks spends about an hour a day making and posting 6 short videos across warmed-up TikTok and Instagram accounts. He reports 30,000 downloads for his B2C app in a month, with no paid ads.
David Ch · Shipper
David Ch tested every free channel for Shipper in its first 66 days. Reddit posts written as a fellow builder — honest numbers, no links — drove 798,124 views; a #7 Product of the Day added a spike. Directories, Hacker News and an Indie Hackers post did nothing.
Browse
Just published
Manjiri · KathaDaily
Manjiri is posting every day as she tries to take KathaDaily, a paid daily-stories site, from 26 to 100 paying readers in 21 days. By day 12: two Instagram ad campaigns and an X post sent hundreds of visitors but no buyers. 28 paying users, $48.37 in, $113.50 spent.
Manjiri · KathaDaily
To find her first readers, Manjiri collaborated with three Instagram creators for KathaDaily, a paid daily-stories site: one creator posted a story, two made dedicated reels. The story brought 5 paying users. The reels brought none.
Tony Dinh · TypingMind Custom
Tony Dinh tested LinkedIn Ads for TypingMind Custom in three rounds: broad targeting, Lead Gen forms, then a Lead Gen form turned into an AI quiz. $2,052.03 bought 183,663 impressions and a handful of leads, none of whom had come back when he posted. He stopped the channel.
Tibo · SuperX
Tibo turned on Outrank — his own AI SEO tool — for SuperX in November 2025. It did the keyword research, wrote the articles, got contextual backlinks and built some free tools. By September 2026 daily Google impressions had gone from about 2K to 23K. Signups and revenue weren't shared.
Pratham Naik · BearConnect
Instead of building an X audience or launching on Product Hunt, Pratham Naik DMed 80 agency owners from LinkedIn groups in one week, offering free access for honest feedback. 12 replied, 8 used BearConnect, and 3 paid within two weeks: his first $201 MRR.
Noah Greenberg · Stacker
Stacker's founder Noah Greenberg posted on LinkedIn almost daily to reach buyers. His most viral post, read by 700,000 people, didn't produce a single sales call. A post the week before, seen by only 4,000, set up three.
Just as useful
Tony Dinh · TypingMind Custom
Tony Dinh tested LinkedIn Ads for TypingMind Custom in three rounds: broad targeting, Lead Gen forms, then a Lead Gen form turned into an AI quiz. $2,052.03 bought 183,663 impressions and a handful of leads, none of whom had come back when he posted. He stopped the channel.
Nevo David · Postiz
Before Postiz went open source, Nevo David focused on SEO: an UpWork freelancer pitched news sites, bought backlinks and wrote many articles. After four months at around $3K a month he called it useless — with very low domain authority, even easy keywords wouldn't rank — and switched to open source.
Koran Thorne · Helios
Koran Thorne set out to get 50 users in 25 days with Reddit as the main channel. He built karma for two weeks, then his first posts were removed by Reddit's spam filter, his comments became invisible to everyone but him for nearly a week, and the account was banned sitewide. Day 10: 0 paying users.
The people behind the numbers
Jack Friks
Solo founder of Postbridge
5 marketing experiments
Short-form video · X (Twitter)
Nevo David
Founder of Postiz
4 marketing experiments
Partnerships · Reddit · SEO
Tibo
Serial founder (Outrank, Revid, SuperX)
3 marketing experiments
Product Hunt · SEO · Sponsorships & paid placements
Marc Lou
Indie hacker
3 marketing experiments
Cold email · Meta Ads
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What founders tried, what it cost and what happened. Real numbers only. One email a week.
For founders
Wins, flops, screenshots, numbers. Useful evidence is welcome; pure promotion isn't. You're building a business — it's okay to market it.