The library

Marketing experiments

What founders tried, what it cost, and what happened. Every number shown was disclosed by the founder.

6 experiments match

RedditDidn't work

0
paying users: 2
posts auto-removed: 10
days

Reddit was his main channel. Ten days in: shadow-removed, then banned — and 0 paying users

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.

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Product HuntDidn't work

0
paying members: $0
revenue: 15
days

15 days after launching to zero audience: $0, 3 upvotes, 0 stars

Taiko_TOEDA · AI-automation safety audit membership

Launching a $9/month membership with no list and no following, Taiko_TOEDA published the day-15 numbers: $0 revenue, 3 Product Hunt upvotes, 0 stars across 17 GitHub repos. The only thing that worked was a careful argument in someone else's replies.

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Cold DMDidn't work

0
users won: 200
DMs sent: 2
replies

200 cold DMs, 2 replies — and she became the customer

Sofia

Sofia DM'd 200 potential users. Two replied: one wasn't interested; the other pitched her his own SaaS — a better pitch than hers — and she became a paying user of it.

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Directories & launch sitesDidn't work

0
paying customers: 8
signups: 23
days

22 directories, 10 channels, 23 days: 8 signups and zero paying customers

Muhammad Haris Zafar · ColdCraft

Muhammad Haris Zafar pushed ColdCraft across 22 AI directories, about 15 listing sites and daily posts on nine social channels. In 23 days: 8 signups, 0 paying. Directories and social posts produced no traceable signups; community posts and one-on-one conversations produced all of them.

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RedditDidn't work

0
human visits from launch: 183
r/microsaas launch posts analysed: 7
days

Four launch posts, zero clicks — so she measured where everyone says to launch

Biyun Hu · Verilabs Audit

Biyun Hu launched a Stripe app with four posts in a week and tracked every visit with her own beacon: zero human visits. She then analysed 600 r/microsaas posts — 42% of launch posts survived moderation, and the median survivor got 1 upvote.

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CommunitiesDidn't work

5
new subscribers: 92%
imported subscribers kept: 30
days

Banned on Substack, Reddit and Etsy in month one — for offering free promotion

Alexander Belyanin · tinyfound

Alexander Belyanin launched tinyfound, a newsletter of founders' first-customer stories, and spent month one offering people free write-ups of their own stories. The result: 5 new subscribers, banned four times on Reddit, banned on Substack, temporarily on Etsy — and Gmail started marking his emails as spam.

Read experiment Public source