This week was pretty uneventful on my end. Not much to report.

But I did stumble across a thread that I HAVE to share with you.

It’s from Rob Hoffman, founder of Mentions.so, Contact.so and Kleo.so. I’ve been messaging with him back and forth recently, and honestly… I admire the hell out of him. The guy’s a role model for me.

Most of these “how I hit $XX MRR” posts are fluff. Rob’s wasn’t. It was specific, detailed, and full of actual tactics.

Here’s his breakdown.

Validation doesn’t come from code, it comes from people raising their hands.

Rob and his co-founders built a waitlist 60 days before launch. By the time they went live, 3,500 people were on it. That instantly turned into $20K MRR on launch day.

They used Loops to run it, and he recommends it.

The takeaway? Don’t spend months building in a vacuum. Collect emails first, build second.

Most people blast promos. Doesn’t work.

Their highest-converting posts? They didn’t even mention the product until slide 5… or even slide 11.

Example:

People shut down the second they feel sold to. Keep it subtle.

Rob: “Being a solo SaaS founder who builds and markets is like not just making the NBA, but being fucking LeBron.”

Translation: don’t bet your company on being a unicorn.

Rob’s trio:

They met through cold outreach and DMs. Sometimes, that’s all it takes.

Mentions worked because it sat perfectly on a rising trend: SEO + LLMs.

Instead of trying to convince people to care about some random idea, they built where the momentum already was.

There’s always a wave somewhere. Google Trends, newsletters like Greg Eisenberg’s. Whatever it takes, find it.

You can’t outbuild SEMrush. You can’t outspend a VC-backed competitor.

So Rob’s team focused on:

Positioning is about turning competitors’ strengths into weaknesses.

Recommended read: Obviously Awesome by April Dunford.

Product quality is commoditized. Service is not.

Great customer service → higher retention, more trust, and a flywheel of insights you can funnel back into the product.

Most companies suck at this. That’s your edge.

Jason Lemkin says it, Rob lives it: actually talk to 50. Not 30, not “almost 50.”

Rob stacked 15-min calls back-to-back for 2 weeks, dumped transcripts into Claude, and used AI to surface the roadmap.

Bonus: those calls → crazy conversion. People buy after they talk to the founder.

Give out your phone number. Do founder calls. Hustle on service.

You’re not building a $100M company yet. You’re just fighting to see another day.

This entire thread? Rob building in public.

It’s the easiest way to grow an audience, and distribution is the ultimate cheat code in business.

People love to watch the “come-up story.” That’s what gives you leverage long before you’ve got a $10M exit.

That’s Rob’s entire playbook, no fluff.

Follow him for more:

Here’s the full thread.

That's the latest from the hangar. Thanks for riding shotgun with me on this.

If you’re curious, want to test Letterly Beta, or just wanna say hi, reply to this. I read every one.

One last favor: if you see the ad underneath, give it a click. It costs you nothing and supports me more than you can imagine.

Talk soon,
Vicente

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