CW Lin

Founder of @portaly_cc | product of the Day | 20x growth since 2023 | Building growth engines for AI built products

[CW Lin @_cw_lin]

@tonychang430 @insforge Must survive and thrive!

[Marcos Rico Peng @Marcos12345rico]

today we're launching @Palmier_io, a video editor Claude can edit.

use AI to edit, organize, and generate footage directly in the timeline.

finally, a video editor built for AI.

open-source. mac native. available now.

[CW Lin @_cw_lin]

3. Remember to celebrate small wins. Whether you acquire a new customer, or finish a successful pitch…

None of them seems life-changing, but compounding the incidents is massive. Not to mention how rare small wins show up. Why not celebrate the moment?

You totally deserve it.

[CW Lin @_cw_lin]

After 10+ years as a startup founder, I found out these tips extremely effective:

1. Set goals to COMPLETE tasks, as opposed to starting them.

Closing a task brings satisfaction almost all the time, while halfway through neither produce actual results nor joy.

[CW Lin @_cw_lin]

2. Keep a log of what you did each working day. This is not for the purpose of recording your progress, but rather keep you feel grounded even through the most chaotic days.

Furthermore you can pick the top highlights of the day, and see how much you have achieved.

[CW Lin @_cw_lin]

@fin465 @ycombinator Yes this is how to grind!

[Finn Mallery @fin465]

in @ycombinator they have a playbook on how to get customers ASAP for your startup.

if you follow this, you’ll brute force your way to 100 customers, almost no matter what your product is.

Here it is:

1/ launch-max.

product hunt, hackerNews, devhunt, betalist, peerlist, indie hackers, etc. YC tells you to launch 3 times MINIMUM

2/ pull your competitor’s strongest backlinks and get yourself listed in the same places.

whatever article they have listed, you make a better version and ask the site to replace it (or supplement) with yours.

3/ WARM OUTBOUND.

Everyone knows about building in public. but you still need to capitalize on the 99% of leads who see your content but don’t come inbound

scrape everyone who likes your posts on Linkedin each week, check if they fit your customer profile, and message them.

you set this up to fire automatically with @origamichat (i dropped a prompt in the comments)

4/ find 20 to 30 ugc creators on tiktok / instagram in your niche. ask them to create content about your product, ideally from a fresh account.

pay them a fixed fee ($15–$30 per video) plus performance incentives ($1k for 1 million views, etc).

you can use @sideshift_app (best creators imo) and line up 20+ of these creators in 1 day

5/ when building in public, a video is 10x better than an image/text - spam use cases of ur product on X/Linkedin

6/ figure out where your customers actually spend time.

which slack/discord groups are they in? what newsletters do they open? which podcasts and accounts do they follow? pay those people for shoutouts

7/ there's a fresh trend on x basically every week. jump on the relevant ones and fold your product in (like i’m doing right now).

To find trends i just use Origami & search “Lead Gen/GTM posts that are viral on X” to find the best posts every week in my niche

Then, I will reply to those, quote tweet them, and use the formats that work myself

(that’s the secret to why my account has high engagement BTW - you can do this too)
---------

if you are doing all this every single week and DO NOT GIVE UP (launching, posting demos, contacting new customers)

I guarantee you will hit your customer goals. Then the game becomes retention.

will be posting 2-3 more growth hacks every single week

[CW Lin @_cw_lin]

@tonychang430 Have a good one Tony!

[CW Lin @_cw_lin]

@gregisenberg Months after we launch, I was introduced to a VP of investments at an IPO company.

After my pitch, the VC said:
"We could throw a team of 3 engineers to build this in a month."

I replied: "Why don't you?"

We then grew from 2k to 200k since then.

They didn't build anything.

[CW Lin @_cw_lin]

@andrewchen This is so accurate! I got to met an SR006 alumni weeks ago, super nice founder and super helpful.

[CW Lin @_cw_lin]

@tonychang430 @claudeai @ycombinator @bcherny @trq212 @_catwu Such nice events! So jealous 😍

[CW Lin @_cw_lin]

@aymanasri22 Fully done with ai?

[CW Lin @_cw_lin]

Hi, I follow AI builders who actually ship.

If you're:

✅ vibe coding a SaaS
✅ building with AI, not just prototyping
✅ chasing your first paying users

Drop your project below

Let's connect 🤝

[CW Lin @_cw_lin]

@aayushv_ looking good! is this made with AI?

[CW Lin @_cw_lin]

@GJarrosson I bet tones of mature founders know how to do business. Wonder how many % of 40yr+ does YC receive 🤔

[Sarah Chieng @MilksandMatcha]

"Technical writing completely changed my life." -
@trq212

In less than 2 years, Thariq (@AnthropicAI) cracked the code on writing technical articles that consistently pass 1M+ views.

In this 15-min workshop, he breaks down: 
→ his exact writing workflow 
→ tactics behind articles that go viral 
→ how he leverages AI to write faster (without losing his voice) 
→ why technical writing is the most underrated way to drive mindshare

Technical writing is one of the most powerful (and completely free) ways to gain views, build authority, and teach the world what you know.

This is the 4th [Technical] Write & Learn, a curated workshop series cohosted with @swyx and @KernelLabs_ai.

[Thariq @trq212]

https://t.co/MXt5XS4xBX

[CW Lin @_cw_lin]

@trq212 Looks great! Md for one layer of documents, abd html for more complex of information.

While reading html is easier, is it moew or less efficient in token costs?

[CW Lin @_cw_lin]

@ramizwebti @insforge @tonychang430 @Portaly_cc @zeaburapp @yuaanlin great insight, thanks!

[CW Lin @_cw_lin]

@tonychang430 @ycombinator Yeah keep grinding wherever you are. That’s the essence of startups