i just raised a pre-seed round for @rallyupteam and i'm hiring.
here's how i went from fired to funded in 42 days.
for those following the journey: last month i was let go from beehiiv. instead of hunting for a job, i decided to bet on myself.
i was planning on bootstrapping, starting with a services model and some early revenue.
then something unexpected happened...
RallyUp resonated way harder than i anticipated. teams actually got excited about turning employees into their best marketing channel. startups and fortune 500s started reaching out asking when they could sign up.
when Eric Ong from @lightbank reached out saying he saw the billion-dollar opportunity too, i knew it was time to move faster.
eric is incredibly bright and strategic, and i couldn’t be more excited to partner with him. Lightbank has a strong track record of picking winners, having invested early in companies like Udemy, Sprout Social, TastyTrade, Expel, and more.
and now for everyone keeping score at home... raising money isn't the goal. building an incredible product that delivers real value is.
and to do that even faster, i'm hiring an all-star engineer.
not looking for someone who just codes. i need someone who will:
- shape the product roadmap alongside me
- bring their own ideas and vision to the table
- think about customers and the business, not just the code
- ideally someone passionate about social media
we're offering:
💰 competitive salary
📈 strong equity package
🏠 100% remote + great benefits
🏝️ unlimited pto
🚀 rare chance to get in at the ground level
application link in the first reply, please tag the perfect person for this role below 👇
ps: also looking for a cracked creative gtm pro who knows how to reach b2b buyers without making them want to delete your emails. open to fractional or agency setups.
all gas no brakes. this is only the beginning. thank you G-d!
my lead magnets get way more comments than my personal posts.
but the post about becoming a dad? that one filled my DMs for a week. people sharing their own stories, sending voice notes, checking in months later.
nobody ever DM'd me about a free PDF.
a fortune 500 CEO hadn't posted on linkedin in 3 months.
we plugged in her voice, her company positioning, transcripts from her last 5 talks. built a living context system around her.
30 days later she's posting 3x a week and her team is asking us to expand to the whole org.
paid a ghostwriter $3k/month once. spent 4 weeks training them on my voice. still rewrote half their drafts.
when i finally built a context system that captured how i actually think, first drafts started coming out ready to post.
$3k/month problem, $0 solution.
a tech billionaire told me i was wasting my life.
halfway through my pitch he said i was wasting my time.
first instinct: this guy's a jerk.
second instinct: what if he's right?
that question haunted me for months. then i pivoted my entire company.
started a local newsletter with 300 subscribers and $200 in fb ads.
4 weeks later: 1,200 subscribers at $0.34 each.
then someone on the street recognized me from the newsletter. that's when it stopped being a side project.
we spent 6 months trying to get employees to post on linkedin for their company.
activation rate across the entire industry: 2-10%. herding cats.
then one CEO started posting 3x a week using our system and his team started asking to join. top down > bottom up.
we spent 6 months building an employee advocacy platform.
activation rates across the industry? 2-10%. herding cats.
then our biggest customer asked us to start with their CEO instead. within 30 days he went from posting once a quarter to 3x a week.
top down > bottom up. lesson learned the hard way.
i pitched my startup on a zoom call with my newborn strapped to my chest. the investor didn't even flinch. that's the kind of people you want backing you.
my local newsletter costs me ~$1,350/month to run:
→ writer: $250
→ fb ads: $1,000
→ social media manager: $100
revenue last quarter: $2,500 from one sponsor.
the math works. but it took 8 months to get here.
our biggest customer is a $100M+ ARR company with 700+ employees.
their CEO went from posting once a quarter to 3x a week. every post pulls 15-20K impressions.
we started with one exec. now they want to roll it out to the whole org.
got fired. raised a pre-seed round 42 days later.
everyone told me to job hunt. i bet on myself instead.
biggest lesson: getting fired was the best thing that happened to my startup.
for 10 years i had business podcasts in my airpods during every commute. speed-reading self help books at night.
last month i bought a fiction novel. felt guilty the entire time.
finished it in 4 days. went back to the bookstore and bought 3 more.
we didn't abandon the thesis. we abandoned the entry point.
built an employee advocacy platform. learned that bottom-up activation across the industry sits at 2-10%. so we flipped it.
start with execs. deliver something unbelievable. then conquer the rest of the org.
Life as a founder is crazy
one minute you are fixing a api big then 10 minutes later your pitching a 10 year vision to investors
if you are looking to have a varied work day i would highly recommend