Kleo's $62K MRR Had Nothing To Do With The Product

This week has been a balancing act. I've been getting way too absorbed into the full time job, which is a weird thing to even say. Isn't that what you're supposed to do when you have a job?

By the time I'm done concentrating on everything that needs to happen for the day job, then I go to the gym, I'm just done. Nothing left.

I keep trying to figure out how to get my brain snapped back to that version of me from a few months ago. Waking up jacked up on coffee, hyperfocused, like I was on Adderall without the Adderall. I don't have the answer yet. Still figuring out how to balance it and get Product Potion on full blast again. I should be shipping a long form video, multiple Shorts, LinkedIn posts, and a full newsletter every single week. Right now it's just the newsletter, and maybe a post or two if I'm lucky.

Sometimes that's just okay. Sometimes you're not the hyperfocused version. Sometimes you're a slippery little snail, and you just keep moving anyway.

Which is actually where this week's issue comes from. Even on a slow week, even without the whole system running, you don't need everything firing to get noticed. You just need to show up in the right spot. That's the whole issue this week.

First time reading?

Kleo, a LinkedIn content tool, hit $62K MRR in under 90 days. Sounds like a fairytale. It isn't. Kleo's four founders (Jake Ward, Lara Acosta, Rob Hoffman, Cam Trew) had a combined 589,000 followers on LinkedIn before the tool had a single paying user. Their actual homepage says so.

That's what this whole story is. Not better onboarding, not a smarter pricing page, not a viral feature. Distribution they already had locked in.

Here's the part that matters for you. You don't have 589K anything. Richard Wang didn't either. He still built Leadmore AI to $30K MRR in four months, zero dollars spent on paid marketing.

No co-founders with a built-in following. No head start. He went into the depths of subreddits where his buyers already hung out and became an actual presence there. Answering questions, sharing what he knew, building trust over months instead of dropping a link and disappearing. His own Indie Hackers founder log tells the whole climb in public, revenue and all.

He didn't borrow an audience like Kleo did. He earned one, one honest thread at a time, until the room started sending him customers.

$30K MRR. $0 spent. Totally different mechanism than Kleo, same underlying move: go where the room already is.

This is the part many solo builders skip. You don't build an audience and then launch. Please don’t do this… You go find the room where your buyer already is. Kleo borrowed 589,000 people on day one. Richard earned trust in the same rooms over four months until they started sending him business.

The move to steal this week: find two or three places online where your exact buyer already hangs out. Show up consistently, answer like you're solving it, not selling it. Keep any mention of your own product under one in ten replies. Let the trust compound.

One action: This week, go find one place, forum, subreddit, group, comment section, where your exact buyer is already talking. Don't post. Just read for five minutes.

Slippery little snail pace this week, but still moving.

👋 I’ll see ya next week! — Dana

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