0:00 Our sauce made $30,000 in 4 days. >> This is Lara. She's the co-founder of Cleo, which launched last month and did $30,000 MR in 4 days. Now, I know what you're thinking. And you're right. Obviously, they didn't build and launch this product in 4 days, but they did go from 0 to $30,000 MR in just a few days thanks to a very different approach to launching a SAS. Here's what everybody gets wrong about launching ASAs. >> I asked Laura to come on to the channel to break down her entire launch strategy for me, including the unexpected marketing channel that got thousands of people on their weight list, the exact email sequence they used to convert hundreds of paying customers overnight
0:45 and their step-by-step playbook that you can use to launch your SAS in 2026. This is one that you cannot miss. I'm Pat Walls and this is Starter Story. Welcome to the channel, Lara. Tell me about who you are, what SAS you built, and what's your story. >> So, hi, my name is Lara Costa, and me and my co-founders built a B2B SAS that made 30K in 4 days. So, this is Cleo, and what it does is basically it's a ghostriter put in your pocket. So, for every founder that is trying to grow on LinkedIn, we solve that very specific problem. It's powered by AI. It thinks like you, it writes like you, and it creates content better than you. We literally launched it in October of 2025 and we've gone from zero to $60,000 a month in less than 2 months. And the way
1:33 we did all of this was by using the Cleo launch playbook. So, I'm so excited to talk about it today. >> Real quick, our audience watching this, we really want to make sure that this is this is legit. This is real. Would you be able to pull up your dashboard and show some of your revenue metrics, prove you're building this, and show me a little bit about what happened when you did this weight list? >> Yeah, of course. So, this is our Polar. This is where we literally launched everything. Yeah. As you can see here, we're already at 62K MR and we have over 932 active subscriptions, over a,000 in total. And you can see the clear spike here on active users from October 1st. The reason why we were able to do this so fast within day one of launch was because we built a weight list. The way we did it was we had many launches which were to our weight list only. So even if
2:19 you go to our landing page right now which I can show you here, you cannot physically buy the product. You need to join a weight list. Why we did this was to build scarcity, FOMO and also soft sell it to our audience. So it didn't feel like we were pushing product because it was a secret. No one knew unless you knew. So that's why we saw two different spikes. The first one was when we launched to our original weight list and the second one when was when we relaunched. >> All right. Well, this weight list strategy is amazing. But before we get into all that, which we are going to do, I want to understand a little bit more about your background. How do you even come up with the idea to start Cleo? How does it get started? >> Well, it all starts with LinkedIn. I started posting on LinkedIn around 3 years ago because what I realized and most people realized when they joined LinkedIn is that all decision makers are
3:06 on that platform. And so you can build a business off the back of creating content. So I started posting on LinkedIn. I built two businesses off the back of it. And then in that journey I met my co-founder Jake who was also in a very similar situation like me. So my background is both in agency and the info product businesses. 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. So, me knowing what I knew and then our co-founders knowing what they knew, we combined it and created this insane launch strategy in under two months. >> All right, Laura, let's talk about this launch strategy, which I think is
3:51 amazing and uh it's unlike anything I've ever seen before. So, I really really want to dig into that and talk all about that. Can you explain exactly how this works high level how you were able to launch and hit like 30k MR in basically a day? Can you explain it? How does it work? Yeah. So, the way Cleo was able to go from zero to 30K MR in its first month was simple. We used the Cleo playbook and it's three parts. Content, weight list, and webinars. We haven't even launched to the public yet. The first launch and second launches were beta launches straight to our weight list. And the thing is, no one is doing it like this. Everybody's doing it the opposite way where they launch something and they promote it. We did it the opposite way, which was the most important part for us. Creating that scarcity, curiosity, and demand for a
4:37 product people hadn't even seen yet. Our customers and my clients have been able to hit 50K, 60K, and 70K following the exact same playbook. It can work for anyone, no matter how big or small your following is. >> That's amazing. And I think that this is a totally different way of thinking about how to build SAS. I think it's actually genius. And I want you to dive in a little bit deeper though on how you guys did this. What was the first thing you did? did I know you said building a weight list. How do you build a weight list and how do you drive interest or attention to that weight list? Could you share with me exactly how to do that? >> Yeah, so the approach that we took was obviously educating on LinkedIn fast because we're all LinkedIn native creators. So we had multiple posts that drove demand to this weight list. So this is one of the posts not from me and not from Jake from our other account
5:24 called the LinkedIn creator. You can see that 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. So, for example, here is how to write the best LinkedIn tips I found. We're telling them what they want to know and then at the end we show them where they can actually get more results using our tool. This leads them to sign up to our weight list. A different post, for example, by Jake is he's stating a problem here and then he's literally just talking about the typical problems that every founder, entrepreneur, and creator have when they're creating content on the platform. Again, you can't see ACTA. It's simply creating this awareness and taking mind share of
6:10 Cleo. So, that's how we've done it over time. >> Okay, so $30,000 in a few days is insane. If you stick around to the end of the video, you're going to see exactly how they did it. But here's what I really love about their story. Lara figured out how to build hype around her product. And she did it all through creating content. This is the secret to building a SAS or any app or any business online in 2026. Distribution. If you can crack distribution, then you give yourself the opportunity to win. And the number one way to create your own distribution for free is to simply start creating content and building an audience. This is so important that I decided to put together our playbook to help you get your first,000 followers. Which might not sound like a lot, but 1,000 followers is where real products get created and real distribution
6:56 channels get started. Almost every founder that I talk to on this channel has some sort of personal brand. It is essential in 2026 to be creating content online about your product and sharing it with the world. This playbook that I created for you will go over a bunch of real data and examples from actually successful founders that I've talked to on this channel and what's working right now to create actual businesses that generate revenue. We'll go over what type of content to create, how to get your first thousand followers, and how to create content that drives customers to your business. Just click the link in the description to get it, but it won't be free forever. All right, let's get back to the interview. Okay, so you guys over the course of 6 months to a year, it doesn't happen overnight, but you built up trust. You built up this weight list to thousands of people. What happens next? How do you actually get
7:41 your product in front of those people? How do you turn those into paying customers? >> Again, another typical mistake that most founders do is that they build this weight list and they never nurture it. Nurturing your list is one of the main things that you need to do as a founder or someone that wants to build a product and ship it to the public. 4 weeks before we launched the actual product live to our wait list, we warmed up the list showing people why they needed our tool without actually directly selling it to them. And so you can see our first email that we ever sent pre-launch was the problem with AI content and why we're different. What we did is we emphasized the problem that people were thinking about. So the problem with AI content, everybody can write with AI. So we knew that we knew that the number one objection was how is this better than
8:27 chbpt or claw that is free for us. So we got there we kind of like tested different headlines and said why most AI content fails before it even starts. Then we laid out exactly what the problem was. But it isn't an AI AI problem. It's a differentiation problem which then makes people agree with us. That then led to them being engaged into the weight list. You can see here there's no CTA. There's no, oh, we're it's coming soon. Nothing. Simply educating people on the problem that they have so we can build trust rather than just sell them. So now, as you can see, we did over 10 emails before the drop. So then the actual email when we went live, we actually told them, "Hey, Cleo 2.0 is live. Try it now." And the reason why we were able to do that
9:13 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 that they have with writing, building a personal brand, LinkedIn algorithms, and using AI. And then we told them, hey, Cleo is live. Try it here. We immediately within the first line because we wanted to drive as much attention as fast as possible because we had pre-built that trust. So the emails that I was showing were literally the reason why we were able to get to 30K MR and then 60K MR. It wasn't just viral content. It was emails. And this is something most people are sleeping on. Everybody's expecting viral content to work and convert, but it's actually emails where the customers are and are
10:00 actually buying from because you're not competing with an algorithm. >> Amazing. This strategy is awesome. You guys executed so well. That brings me to my next question. For anyone watching this, maybe they built a SAS, maybe they built an app, maybe they're just starting to create content. If you were to start over today, imagine you didn't have any audience. What would be the step-by-step playbook to launch a SAS in 2026? >> So, where I would start obviously is building a personal brand on LinkedIn. And it doesn't have to be the most viral. You don't have to be an expert. You just have to be useful. So, if you're a beginner that wants to start posting on LinkedIn, the thing that you need to understand is what is your unfair advantage and what can you educate people on, right? Your unfair advantages could be your story or the tactical subject that you have expertise on. You can actually create educational
10:46 content just about that. And that would literally give you the following that you need to then launch something else. And then if you're wondering about the step-by-step playbook on how to build a personal brand, I have a framework called the 4 321. So ideally, you want to post four times a week. That's it. Not five, not six, not seven. Don't overwhelm yourself. Focus on the quality rather than the quantity. then three content pillars that you need to be using. So educational storytelling and then sales generating content. This could be lead magnets. And the second thing the two in that 4 through2 is the two types of audiences you want to be marketing to. 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 and demand or weightless
11:32 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. So the last part of the 4321 was lead magnets. And now how you build them is super simple. You literally only have to create a Google document explaining something or a loom or something else that you already have. Maybe it's a part of your process and then you give it out to people for free and the only thing that you ask for is their email. You send them the lead magnet. They sign up to your email newsletter to get that lead magnet and all the time you just nurture them. And so while you're building in public, creating all of this content, you know, taking hours of your time writing this amazing content that potentially will go viral. The way to guarantee your success is to have that
12:18 weight list in the background building. So when you want to launch something, when you want to offer something, you can. Step number three, which is my favorite, is webinars. You can do two types of lives, a LinkedIn live or you can do a Zoom webinar. For lunch number one, we just did one LinkedIn live, which is literally on LinkedIn. You're going live like you would on Instagram or X. You tell people that you're going to do it. You create a simple post about it, just highlighting what it is going to be about. And then whoever signs up gets a notification directly on LinkedIn that you're going live. All you need is one topic to educate on for the first 20 minutes. Then the next 20 minutes is going to be a walkthrough or a demo. And then the third bit is you're going to be pitching the product, sending the link, tell them where to buy. When you're able to show up as a human, people actually
13:05 connect with you with your mannerisms, with how you look, with where you live, with how you sound. So that's what allowed us to literally hit the 30K in 4 days. Once you have your first couple users or even before you launch or when you're doing better launches like we did ourselves, the thing that you need to focus on to make sure that the product is perfect is hop on calls or DM customers directly to ask them for direct support. What we did was 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. So, we tried our best to make sure that every single one of our customers at the start was able to use that product correctly. So,
13:50 then they could stay on for longer. They gave us an amazing testimonial and then they became Cleo Evangelist. but also in the background we were recording those calls to make sure that we spotted patterns in thinking in problems in bugs in issues that people were having so we could actually fix them immediately. So it was also an iteration play for us so we could have the best product available as fast as possible. So then step number five, what you need to also do is think about how can you get the most demand as fast as possible. You build your weight list and then to incentivize customers to buy, you offer them a lifetime discount or something that feels exclusive. You're trying to push someone to buy. And there's many ways to do it. Psych with psychology, you can do it through curiosity, you could do it through scarcity, or you could do it
14:36 through FOMO. We tried all of them, but the one that worked best at the start was scarcity. We told people 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. And also, if you want to add something else, you can offer them a lifetime discount, which is what we did. 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. And then number six, you need to not share your customers. Most people just launch things and they forget about them and then just, you know, go celebrate the MR. What we're doing actively at Cleo is we're keeping in touch closely with every single one of our customers. One of our co-founders, Rob, he's literally given his personal number to
15:22 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. So, if I was starting over all over from scratch, that's exactly what I would do. >> All right. Well, thank you for sharing that playbook, Laura. I think it's amazing. I think a lot of people are going to really enjoy that and should implement it, especially uh if they're building a SAS. Changing topics real quick. I want to understand tech stack behind Cleo. How did you guys build the app? How did you build the SAS? What do you use day-to-day to run the business >> to build Cleo? Actually, we use Claude and Claude code. Then we use Nex.js for the TypeScript for the code. Then Vasel and Vasel chat. Then Vasel again for hosting and then clerk for authentication. For the operations and
16:08 monetization, we use Slack for communication. We use loops for emails. currently for onboarding calls and then Fernandan for managing those emails for support and then to monetize we used Polar and Polo's native landing page. >> Beautiful. Well, thank you for sharing that. Last question that we ask everyone who comes on to starter story if you could go back in time before you launch the SAS that had this amazing launch. What would be your advice to young Lara or for anyone watching this that wants to launch a SAS in 2026? >> I would say two things. Number one is build a personal brand on LinkedIn. No matter how much you think it's cringe, if you want to make money, LinkedIn is your best shot. Twitter is cool, Instagram is cool, but LinkedIn is so much better. There's just not no competition at all. So, that's one
16:54 thing. Build your personal brand. Educate on a important topic that you already know. And if you don't know it very well, you'll learn it through writing about it consistently. The second thing, build an email list. You never know when you're going to lose access to your social media platforms. You never know when you'll need to actually promote something. So, it's better to actually build and then nurture that list instead of trying to do it once. You have to do it before you need to. >> Beautiful. Well, thank you for that amazing advice. I think a lot of people watching this are going to love this strategy. I think it's a totally different way of thinking about how to launch a SAS from a marketer's perspective. A lot of people watching this video may be very focused on building features and doing things the old way, but this is this is amazing. So, thanks for coming on, Laura. Thank you for having me. People have our entire playbook, so I hope they see it.
17:41 >> All right. Thank you to Laura for coming on to the channel. I'll bring our producer Gus on right now. Gus, what did you think about that one? >> What I really loved about that just how strategic everything was. For myself personally, I'm just kind of creating stuff online, just posting like whatever I'm thinking about. And this was like very strategic like the weight list and the type of content they created and the signups and the emails that you saw. So, I thought that was pretty interesting. >> Yeah. I mean, sometimes you can just look at the math of things, right? Like >> the goal is maybe a fraction like 1% or maybe even less actually show up and sign up for your weight list and then you kind of know at that point, okay, if I have a weight list of 10,000 people and I can convert 1% of them, that's 100 paying customers. It's a numbers game, right? Do I'm sure if you did the math on what their conversion was, maybe they converted 1% of people on their weight
18:28 list to that. I mean, that means 99% of people are rejecting them, right? more people that watch this channel that are builders should go learn from marketers like Lara and people that are in other niches on on how they convert customers and and how they get paying customers. That that's really the sauce here. I don't know what you think about that. >> And the last thing is just, you know, what they said about LinkedIn. I feel like I don't know if you'll catch me making content on LinkedIn, but like she said, there's so many there's so few people doing it on there that it's like probably a huge opportunity if you can get over that. >> If there are more creators than consumers, it's bad for you because it's harder to stand out. But if there are more consumers than creators, like on LinkedIn, I think that's very true. There's just not that many people creating because they're worried about feeling cringe or whatever their boss is on there, whatever, that's where the money is, the sauce is, right? And I
19:13 think you can build a great business. On that note, if you're looking to build something, it's all about distribution. It's about doing launch, but you got to build something. You got to have something that uh people can use. Definitely check out Starter Story Build. It is our program where you will come up with an idea, you'll build it, and you'll launch it to actual people like they did at Cleo. If you are ready to get off the sidelines and actually build something, look, it may not be a million-dollar idea, but get something out there, get feedback, get it into the market. That's what Starter Story Build is all about. I'll put a link in the description for you to sign up, get started. More cohorts are launching this week. If you're ready to get started right now, definitely check it out. All right, that's it for this one. Thank you guys for watching. We'll see you in the next one. Peace.
