Founder Playbook · Starter Story
8 tactics from Lara Costa
How My App Hit $60K/Month in 2 Months
Watch the full episode“We told them this is 50% off for a lifetime if you buy now you will never have to pay the newer price ever again. We only have 500 spots available which made people want to take action faster — when something's available so easily people don't want to buy it immediately.”
50% lifetime discount plus 500-seat cap drove $30K MRR in four days
Combining a permanent price lock with a hard seat cap gave waitlist members two compounding incentives to convert on day one. The dual-trigger tactic collapsed the typical consideration window and drove the spike that hit $30K MRR within the first four days of launch.
“we did over 10 emails before the drop so then the actual email when we went live we actually told them Cleo 2.0 is live try it now. And the reason why we were able to do that successfully was because we had built that urgency scarcity and desire for a product that we told them was going to fix every single one of the problems”
Send 10+ problem-education emails before any CTA to pre-sell the launch
Each warm-up email tackled a specific objection — the first was 'why most AI content fails before it even starts,' directly neutralising the 'why not just use ChatGPT' pushback. By the time the launch email arrived, trust was already built, so a single-line CTA was enough to drive conversions.
“we only have 500 spots available which made people want to take action faster when something's available so easily people don't want to buy it immediately so you need to add that incentive for people to go in and buy and also feel exclusive”
Waitlist-only 500-spot launch creates urgency without public promotion
Cleo was never publicly listed — buyers had to be on the waitlist. By capping access to 500 spots the product felt scarce and exclusive, collapsing the typical consideration window. This manufacturing of urgency drove immediate purchases from subscribers who had been nurtured for weeks.
“there is no call to action there is no direct plug it's simply educating this is something that Jay called edu selling where you're basically telling people what they need to know you're answering their biggest problems and then at the end we show them where they can actually get more results using our tool”
Edu-selling LinkedIn posts with no CTA grew the waitlist before launch
Rather than promoting the product directly, the team published educational LinkedIn content that solved real problems for their ICP, with only a soft tool mention at the end. The no-pitch format avoided sales resistance and converted readers into high-intent waitlist signups before the product existed publicly.
“we were going on VIP white globe onboarding calls where we literally took people through the product so they could use it correctly because the reason why most people stop using software is because they don't understand it it's not because it doesn't work”
VIP white-glove onboarding calls turned confused early users into evangelists
Cleo ran personal onboarding calls with every early customer to ensure they could actually use the product. This reduced early churn caused by confusion rather than product failure, and transformed early customers into testimonial providers and brand evangelists who amplified the launch.
“one of our co-founders Rob he's literally given his personal number to every single one of our users so they can make sure that they're using the tool right that they feel supported most people don't do that but the thing is you need to be doing the things that don't scale if you want to scale faster”
Co-founder's personal number given to every user prevents early churn
Rather than automated support, Cleo used direct human contact to keep users engaged and successful. This unscalable tactic created the retention foundation that allowed rapid MRR growth without churn eroding new subscriber gains — and generated the testimonials used in subsequent launches.
“you have your ICP your ideal client persona and you have your IFP and that is your ideal follower persona so when you're creating content for these two types of personas you can get leads in demand or waitlist signups but you also get a community that pushes you likes your content engages with you every single day and eventually over time can also buy from you”
Create content for ICP buyers and IFP followers separately to scale reach
Lara distinguished between content designed to convert buyers (ICP) and content designed to build a community that amplifies reach (IFP). The IFP audience grew engagement signals that pushed content to more ICP prospects, creating a compounding flywheel that fed both growth and conversion simultaneously.
“I took the marketing concepts from that business and understood the idea of FOMO building weight list using emails and webinars and we took it to SAS i love info but we wanted to do something different and build a software tool”
Apply info-product FOMO and waitlist mechanics to SaaS launches for faster conversions
Lara's unfair advantage was applying proven info-product conversion mechanics — scarcity, email nurture, urgency — to a SaaS launch at a time when most SaaS founders think only about product. The insight was that purchase psychology is universal; almost no SaaS founders were running waitlist-based launches in 2024.