Open-source founder · Launch
How an open-source founder got 15× more reach in 4.5 months.
Weekly calls, work async in Slack, content done for him — he reviews and approves. 4.5 months in: 15× more reach per day than his own best months, 2.5× the followers, and a launch post that passed 100K impressions. The same reach bought as LinkedIn ads would have cost ≈ $13,900.
Client
Founder of an open-source developer tool (anonymized)
Program
Founder content on LinkedIn, fully managed
Timeline
4.5 months (June → October 2026)
15×
Reach per day vs. his own best months
32×
Impressions per day vs. all prior days
27×
Engagements per day
2.5×
Followers (1,394 → 3,441)
281K
Impressions in 141 days
116K
Impressions on the launch post
24%
Of viewers are decision-makers
$13,876
What the same reach would cost in ads
The situation
He is the engineer, the founder, support and sales. The product was good — too good to stay invisible — but writing about it was always the last job on the list, so distribution happened when it happened. At some point that stopped being a nice-to-have: he needed reach without adding a second job to the week.
What we did
- 01
Weekly calls to pull out what's actually worth saying, then everything else runs async in Slack — he never has to open a content tool.
- 02
Content done for him: we ideate, draft, publish and engage. He reviews and approves; we ship and report everything.
- 03
Held a steady 2–3 posts a week while he kept building the product.
- 04
Built launch week around one moment: the launch post passed 100,000 impressions and brought in a wave of new signups.
- 05
Measured the result against his own best months before us — not an average — so the lift is the honest floor, not one lucky spike.
- 06
Before us (224 days): 13,888 impressions in total, 62 a day. With us (141 days): 281,055 impressions, 1,993 a day — 32× against all prior days, 18.5× with launch weeks removed.
- 07
Engagements went from 2.2 a day to 58 (27×). New followers from 1.0 a day to 14.5. Followers grew from 1,394 to 3,441 — +2,047 with us, vs +223 in the 224 days before.
- 08
9 of his top 10 posts of the year came after we started. What worked: the launch moment (116,486 impressions, 4,417 engagements), personal founder stories (43K and 18.5K), and taking objections head-on (12.5K).
- 09
Who it reached: 24% decision-makers (owners, CXOs, directors, VPs), 13% founders or co-founders, 13% software engineers.
- 10
Ad value: 281,055 impressions × $49.37 CPM (median Thought Leader Ads, ZenABM 2026 benchmark) = $13,876 — still $10,944 at the cheapest format's median.
Proof
“There's no reason to build in silence today.”
One launch post passed 100,000 impressions and brought in a wave of new signups — his words. The same reach bought as LinkedIn ads would have cost ≈ $13,900. He got it organically, and the content keeps compounding.
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