Growth marketing
128 tweets
pro tip if you want to grow on here or grow anything anywhere online. when you create you should always craft content that is instantly shareable. this is because in today’s age group chats are the real distribution layer. feeds are just staging area. if something can’t survive being dropped into a chat with zero context, it’s not going to get you anywhere.
2026 is the GREATEST time to build a startup in 30 years I’m 36. I’ve sold 3 startups, helped build companies that raised billions, and backed teams from seed to unicorn. 20 MEGA shifts that make this the BEST time to build in a GENERATION: 1. Hardware got smart. Download open-source AI models from HuggingFace to cheap robots and they're suddenly smart. Opens up tons of use-cases. 2. SaaS is imploding. AI can replicate $500K software for pennies. Enterprise software that took 30 engineers now requires 1 and a Claude Code subscription. Founders will go more niche and more custom and outprice incumbents. 3. Outcome-based pricing is eating subscriptions. With AI agents handling work automatically, founders can guarantee results instead of selling features. This creates a massive arbitrage opportunity to steal market share from rigid subscription models. 4. Vibe marketing is the new marketing. AI agents/tools like Lindy, Gemini and Claude Code Using agents to do personalized outreach, ads and content creation it’s getting good. This is like getting on social in 2005. 5. Social is FYP-ified. Distribution no longer requires massive followings, just content that hits. Founders can build audience from zero without ads and then convert them to owned media channels (text/email). 6. Interfaces are vanishing. Conversations are replacing dashboards across industries. This removes training barriers and means customers can use sophisticated products immediately. 7. Companies are obsessed with efficiency and cutting costs right now. Corporate budgets are getting reallocated to AI. Companies are cutting traditional software spend to make room for AI-powered alternatives. This creates fast-tracked approvals for startups delivering 10x efficiency. 8. 99% of MVPs won't need VC. Low-cost MVPs combined with creator partnerships and AI automation allow bootstrapped scaling. For most software businesses, outside funding is now unnecessary. 9. Global teams. You don’t need to hire in your own city anymore. Opens up tons of arbitrage opportunities and ways to create products unlike before. 10. Millions of creators want to get paid. If you have the right product, the right network of creators, you can hit scale insanely efficiently. Never before did this exist. Next gen founders are building startups community first, software second. 11. Prototyping is nearly instant. With Lovable, Rork etc, you can test ideas in days, not months. MVP speed is basically 1x/week. This creates room for multiple products from small companies (multipreneurship), helps get to PMF faster, 12. LLM APIs create building blocks weekly. I can’t even keep up with how many new APIs/tools coming out from LLMs weekly. Example: Nano Banana pro comes out, probably 1000 ideas built on top of that can be $5M/year businesses. 13. $1m+ revenue per employee. With the leverage of LLMs, community and agents, employees are way more efficient. It won’t be uncommon to generate $1m per employee. This will lead to a rise of "multipreneurship", small teams owning multiple products /businesses. Holding companies will be as common as startups. 14. Superniche is the new niche. Because costs to create software startups is 1/100th, you can service little niches (i call them superniches) and still have a life-changing business. 15. Mobile app ecosystem about to 10X. 2 reasons. First is, adding AI to apps make apps more useful. More useful apps, make more money. Second, 16. Compliance and boring workflows are suddenly buildable. Permits, audits, insurance, payroll edge cases, filings, RFPs. These were “too annoying” for startups before. Agents thrive on rules, checklists, and repetition. The least sexy problems now have the best unit economics. 17. Claude Code killed the “engineering bottleneck.” The constraint is no longer “can we build it,” it’s “do we understand the workflow deeply enough.” The winning founders are ex-operators who encode tribal knowledge into agents. Code is cheap. Taste + domain insight is scarce. 18. The long tail of software is now profitable. Niches that capped at $200k ARR can clear $5M with near-zero marginal cost. 19. Services are quietly becoming software. Manual agencies are one agent away from product margins. 20. if AI can replicate $500K software for $20/month, what’s your moat? distribution, customer service, brand, data etc. REALLY good time to be a world class designer/marketer. (and even more.... but this is getting long already!) We've entered the rarest of windows... when multiple technological shifts collide at once, creating a brief period where small teams can build things that were previously impossible. THE FUTURE OF BUILDING STARTUPS IS DIFFERENT. I know this... This unique moment won't last forever. Markets will adapt. Giants will respond. The window will close. But right now, a founder with clear vision and bias for action can build more in six months than was previously possible in years. (note: if you need an idea to get creative juices flowing, grab one at @ideabrowser) The next generation of great companies is being created right now, many by founders you've never heard of. Some by people who would never have had a shot in previous cycles. That's the beauty of these rare windows. The playing field briefly levels, and the future belongs to those who see it clearly and move first. It's a sacred time, don't bookmark/share this, build something in 2026, will ya? Happy building, my friends. 2026 is yours. Am I wrong?
Stripe offered to acquire us for $1.2 billion when we had $2M in revenue. Today, we've raised $330M at an $8B valuation and reached $1B ARR. We could've died three times during this journey. This is the story I've never told anyone before:
Starting at midnight PT tonight, all Pro and Max plans have 2x their usual usage limits through New Year's Eve.
Highest Engagement Days on X Best Monday ever: Today Best Sunday ever: Yesterday Best Saturday ever: Day before yesterday Best Friday ever: Day before that
Before Adam posted his podcast episode, Tailwind had: - 13 Partners at $5000 - 3 Ambassadors at $2500 - 5 supporters at $500 => $75k MRR Now: - 22 Partners at $5000 - 4 Ambassadors at $2500 - 22 supporters at $500 => $131k MRR That's +$56k MRR with a tweet, not counting the Tailwind+ sub boosts, free PR, and all the long-term ripple effects for the business that are yet to come. The community is now sensitized to the cause and are much more likely to convert into a subscription in the future than they would have before this, just because Adam sounded like a human and not a faceless corporation. When you build something people love with a great attention to craft and manage to tell a compelling story, people show up for you. That’s something a data driven founder, busy optimizing funnels and nudging button colors, will never quite reach. Because trust isn’t a metric, goodwill doesn’t fit in a dashboard, and people don’t rally behind experiments. They rally behind work that feels intentional, human, and worth supporting.
"Distribution" is NOT your competitive advantage. Your competitive advantage is, was, and will always be your own CONFIDENCE. Confidence to see the project through, actually ship it, do everything necessary to get it in front of as many people as possible, not quit too early, know when to hang it up, etc etc etc. Distribution is merely a byproduct of founder confidence. This is just something I've noticed after interviewing 1000s.
If you have applied @ycombinator you should also consider these equity-free grants too 1. @GoogleStartups : $100k in credits 2. @vercel : $3,600 in credits 3. @aforevc Grants $1,000 4. @joinedgecity grants : $5k-40K 5. @emergent_vc : upto 100k 6. @thielfellowship : upto 200K
linktree is a billion-dollar company????? a billion???????? dollars??????????????? for literally... links. in. a. tree.
TrustMRR now earns more revenue than my 3 main startups. - DataFast was built in 14 months - CodeFast was built in 9 months - ShipFast was built in 7 days - TrustMRR was built in 1 day Entrepreneurship ≠ linear
Launched http://searchable.com 12 days ago. 4,800 signups, hundreds of paying users, and $40K MRR. Today we’re announcing a $4M pre-seed led by Freestyle Capital. AI Search is real, and we’re building the infrastructure for it. If you want to come work with us in London, shoot me a message.
I'm trying to put together a list of all the distribution "channels" that work in 2026: 1. Organic Short Form 2. Niche Communities (Reddit, Discord, FB Groups) 3. ASO (App Store & Platform) 4. Personal Brand 5. UGC 6. Influencers 7. Engineering As Marketing (Free Tools) 8. SEO & AIO (incl. programmatic) 9. X & LinkedIn 10. Viral Video Launches 11. Organic Long Form (YouTube) 12. Cold Email & Outreach 13. Salespeople 14. Paid Ads 15. Affiliate 16. Feedback/Customer Calls 17. Timing & Trends 18. Positioning 19. Open Source What am I missing?
"Distribution" is becoming a cope term. It's a very loosely-defined word, and it has this air of unattainability about it. It's too easy to say you're limited by your lack of distribution, and curse those who "have it". Here's a reality check: - You can have 100k followers on X and still nobody gives a shit about your product. Your audience and your customers are not necessarily the same thing. - You can have a mailing list of 10,000 people and still get zero conversions due to timing, messaging, or lack of relevance. - You can have millions of people using your free product but nobody wants to pay for the upgrade. Just look at the number of celebrity business ventures that fail. Restaurants, clothing brands, etc. They all have "distribution" but in the end it didn't make a material difference. Success is down to a matrix of different factors. It's about building a product that solves a problem, marketing that communicates that well, pricing that people find fair but also allows you to grow the business, growing multiple different marketing / distribution channels by being valuable and / or interesting, and the skills to do all of the above multiple times over because you won't be successful the first time. If you are looking at successful people on X and scoffing that they are only there because of their "distribution" you're missing the forest for the trees.
My 2026 prediction: Right now, anyone who is deep in tech and coding is realizing Opus 4.5 has broken the ceiling, making it so you can code anything now. The only cost is time. When the next model comes out, this will be the breakthrough moment where all of mainstream floods in and everyone is going to create an app. If you know how good coding is with AI now, work hard and work fast. Soon, the wall is going to break down and it will be MASS adoption. You think marketing your app is hard now? Oh, just wait...
2025 as an entrepreneur: Earned $885K with my startups Launched 3 new startups Built a $780K SaaS Made $147K in the stock market Got 107K followers on 𝕏 Read 10 books Traveled to 9 countries Exercised for 340+ days Gained 4kg of muscles Walked 4.2M steps Top 1% sleep score on WHOOP Reached 57.4 mg/kg/min VO₂ max Reached <18 yo biological age Drank 0L of alcohol Spent 365 days with my wife I hope 2026 unfolds like 2025: peace of mind, discipline, more startups. Happy New Year
I asked my 430,000 followers for their favorite podcast episodes of 2025. Here are the 10 that came out on top: