Community tactics

Borrowed the Supreme / sneaker-bot drop playbook for his dad's new restaurant: a reservation waitlist, with reservations dropped every Wednesday at 4:00 p.m. and announced in a local Facebook group. On the first drop only ~20 people signed up for 100 spots, but he declared it full anyway: better to look full and have people chase you than to look available. The waitlist also let them control table sizes (e.g. seat a party of 8 at a 7-seat table plus a chair) to fill capacity. TikToks, Google Ads and Facebook also ran.

Instead of building the wearable first, built a free app. Took 100 people from the waitlist ('Founding 100'), ran a Facebook group with them and got on calls constantly. Learned users juggled 3-4 apps (symptom tracking, community, research) and combined them into one experience.

After walking away from a VC term sheet, and with ~10,000 users on the app, ran an equity crowdfunding round on Seedrs (now Republic). Before going live, agreed terms and valuation with a handful of pre-identified angels (2-3 put in six figures each per round); everyone else invests on the same terms, no preferred shares, from as little as ~10. Made a pitch video plus docs and financials; publicly stated what the money would fund. Gave perks: all first-round investors got a Savvy Navvy sailing jacket; another round gave 3-year subscriptions. Set a minimum (enough for the next 12-18 months) and a maximum (to cap dilution) and closed the round when the max was hit. Used the money mainly for B2C marketing. Later taps the 2,500 investors (mostly boaters) for expertise, e.g. logistics or marketing advice. Investors can sell on the platform's secondary market.

Launched the first digital program in January (New Year's) as a 30-day group challenge: day-1 and day-30 photos, prize (~$100) for the winner, daily coaching in a Facebook group. Repeated monthly (Feb, March...). Used participants' before/after photos as organic marketing to a ~5K-follower Instagram. No paid media for years; growth spread by word of mouth.

As soon as a user enters the app, a real person DMs them ('Welcome to the app. Let me know what I can help you find'). In-app community staffed all day by expert coaches answering pelvic floor and similar questions.

Took the ~30 most engaged users from the previous app's community and paid them to post TikTok content the team supplied as Canva slideshows (users could tweak text or add their own pictures). Because many players played Brawl Stars, slideshows covered Brawl Stars and ended with an explicit call to action: 'Playbite's the fastest way to get gems. If you know, you know.' About 35 people posted.

When the app was done, Kyle posted in r/baseballcards as the founder: 'I made this baseball card scanning app; a few months ago I posted about it and got a good response; now it's built and it's $4.99 on the App Store', with a link to the app and to the original post. Referencing the validation post made it feel like a community member following up rather than an ad. He kept posting updates for new features. A friend who later did marketing posted in r/footballcards and got banned for self-promotion.

For the Series Hamptons campaign (a TV-show-style series with 12 intern spots), Series put up a LinkedIn post and LinkedIn job, got ~2,500 applications, and Eunice personally texted many applicants to invite them into a 'race to the Hamptons' rather than just picking 12. About 150 joined. The race had challenges; one of the last was to invite as many people as possible.

Six months after launch, with no audience or budget, made a first Reddit post about the game: a few screenshots, a short explanation of what the idle RPG is, and a few metrics about how free-to-play it is (gamers want to try before paying). The game was still rough; the post drew mostly critical comments, and the discussion itself pushed it in front of thousands of players.

Reddit became the main (only) marketing channel after year one. Many subreddits cap developer self-promotion at once a month, so he only posted major updates, once every few months. Posts that sparked the most discussion, especially the most criticism, performed best. Results varied post to post.

Before launch, built a ~3K waitlist and ~500 Instagram followers through the run club; in the two days the app was on the store before launch, asked friends and run club regulars to create profiles; launched Dec 26.

Before building, Kyle posted the idea (a baseball card cataloging/scanning app) in r/baseballcards, a fairly small subreddit, after seeing on Twitter that you should validate first. 10-15 people replied that they would use it. A Redditor later DMed him asking whether he was still building it, which got him to finish the unfinished app.