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How we kept community growth momentum one month from our PH top 5 launch

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Hey PH folks,

It's been about a month since our PH launch and I still get asked for launch tips. That's cool, but our focus right now is on growing community and engagement. I've seen some founders say they struggled with a post-launch lull, so here is what worked and didn't work for us since launch:

Partnerships

  • we partnered up with Techstars Startup Weekend Valencia to offer winners and participants discounts / freebies on Causo

    • partnering / sponsoring events by larger players is ofc almost always a great way to grow but with caveats: this will often only be accessible through already in-network connections, and should be balanced, so you don't spend all your energy chasing one sponsorship that may or may not flop

Social media & SEO / building in public

  • being genuine (and a bit funny) on X and Reddit has brough some really cool customer and ecosystem conversations. We tried automating it in the beginning; the outcome was total slop, so now we write our social stuff manually. Takes a bit of time, but it's honestly fun to meet people and help them out occasionally with their fundraising or sales struggles, and receive reciprocal product feedback.

    • Side effect: we are a top 1% posted on r/indiehackers lol

  • Consistently posting new articles on . This is one of our biggest sources of clicks + helped with domain rank (150 unique organic clicks from google search within a month of launching and zero ad spend) + getting quoted by chatGPT / claude on occasions

  • posts like this one have been good. This probably took 25 min to write but it's absolutely time I don't want to "save" by reverting to generic "listen to signals and post something in response" tools

Owned community engagement

  • we launched Raccoon o'Clock: a regular office hour (capped at 15 people for now) for founders to loosely chat about VC readiness and exchange fundraising tips. Pic is from the first one :)

we're thinking about launching a Discord server, similarly for founders to support one another with fundraising and sales. Wondering if that's interesting?

Community requested features

  • we shipped a bunch of things that was directly requested by our community:

    • a new Causo plan that includes 1:1 coaching with my cofounder and I on deck, fundraising readiness, messaging (very limited monthly spots though)

    • use your own email writing prompts / train prompts on your writing samples: Causo can now write exactly like users

Raccoons! 🦝🦝🦝🦝

  • our cold outreach emails have a 15% reply rate. The single thing that works the most: short, snappy messaging that goes heavy on raccoon mentions. Sometimes you have to be a bit silly. Always, you should be yourself. Don't copy others' branding or voice. Find the one that you get excited about :))

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The bit about trying to automate social content first and getting "total slop" is painfully relatable. We went through the same cycle and honestly the manual posts that take 20 minutes tend to spark 10x more actual conversations than anything generated.

The Raccoon o'Clock office hours idea is smart. Capping it at 15 keeps the quality of the conversation up and creates scarcity that makes people actually show up. Would be curious if the Discord ends up cannibalizing it or if they serve different needs.

 good to see a fellow manual posting enjoyer :)

 really, I'm glad to here that too

This is a refreshing reminder that launches are not finish lines. The office hours idea stands out because it creates actual relationships instead of just collecting users. Community feels much harder to copy than features.

 agree with you - distribution can't be copied, features have stopped being a moat a whiiiile ago :)

Cool stuff as always! Thnx guys!

Thanks for sharing
Reading through this gave me ideas and a potential plan.

 curious to hear whatcha planning 🦝

Two founders could read this and take opposite lessons. One might conclude that partnerships drove the momentum. Another might say the real driver was consistent community interaction and shipping user requested features. The interesting part is that both could be right depending on their audience and stage.

 definitely - this is 100% not a playbook, and rather a 'this happened to work for us so far.' Everyone should experiment lots and find their own mix of stuff - hopefully this post is a bit of inspo.

Will say though - partnerships very, very rarely drive core growth. They tend to be a good aux channel to drive an extra 5-10% here and there, but usually you can't fully rely on someone else's growth engine to also grow your userbase.

The line that'll stick: you tried automating the social stuff, got total slop, and went back to writing by hand. More founders need to hear that. The 25 minutes you "wasted" on this post is exactly why it works. Your top 1% on r/indiehackers proves it.

On the Discord: I'd hold off. It's easy to launch and brutal to keep alive, and a half-dead server reads worse than none. Raccoon o'Clock capped at 15 is already your community engine. Push that first, let people ask for the Discord before you build it. Demand-pull beats supply-push on community every time.

And the 15% cold reply rate from going heavy on raccoons? That's the same lesson as any good creative: be specific, be a bit silly, sound like yourself. You found a voice you're excited about, so it doesn't read like everyone else's.

Well run for one month out. The lull is real and you side-stepped it by doing the unscalable stuff on purpose.

 Good points on holding off on the discord. There's definitely community appetite for it, but we might wait a bit. Doing unscalable things indeed :))

15% reply rate on cold outreach is indeed impressive, was that meaningful replies only?

I’m so very hesitant about cold outreach and do it sparingly only when I genuinely believe there’s value ... but even then, I feel like I’m apologizing more than pitching, lol.

Do you have the Discord channel set up?

 Hey Vicky, I know what you mean!! I remember my first cold outreach years ago - it was so bad I was basically saying sorry for disturbing you :)) a lifelong learning has been that glory sits atop the cringe mountain. In a way, using an assisted tool has made this easier - it feels like someone is co-authoring the outreach with me and decreases the personal stress about it.

15% - meaningful replies, as in bounces filtered out. Of course some were Nos (some just straight up, some with an explanation), which I absolutely count as meaningful. Only a no reply gives me no signal.

Discord channel is coming very soon. We've been busy shipping our sales intelligence product. Maybe something interesting for you since you mention cold outreach:)