Justin Novak

Luckiest man in the world | Seed-Series B startup advisor | Helping builders accelerate growth | Previously co-founder @ GLD (acquired)

[Justin Novak @wavewavewavey]

Most startup playbooks are bloated, outdated, or written by people who’ve never built anything.

So I started writing the one I wish I had when I was scaling my first company.

It’s not theory or fluff.

It’s 101+ scrappy, unorthodox growth tactics that I’ve used (or watched founders use) to drive huge wins.

Here are a few favorites from the upcoming book: 👇

𝟭. 𝗔𝗱𝗱 𝗥𝗲𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘂𝗲, 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗶𝗻 𝗪𝗲𝗶𝗿𝗱 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲𝘀

You don’t have to be SaaS to charge a monthly subscription.

Eight Sleep added a $200/year sleep optimization subscription, on top of selling mattresses. Web design agencies like Refresh Digital can charge a monthly subscription for edits, hosting, and support.

Monthly billing = stability, predictability, and easier CAC/LTV math.

No subscription = you're always chasing your next customer.

𝟮. 𝗛𝗶𝗷𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗧𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗩𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗼𝘀 𝗪𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗮 𝗞𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗿 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁

Find viral videos in your niche. Drop an educational or witty comment. Use an engagement pod to push it to the top. Free brand awareness.

𝟯. 𝗧𝘂𝗿𝗻 𝗖𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗪𝗮𝗹𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗕𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗯𝗼𝗮𝗿𝗱𝘀

Swag that’s actually good = free impressions for years. Think Golf balls, travel bags, hoodies, and dad hats. $10/day in ads vanishes. A $10 hoodie lasts years—and starts conversations.

Shameless plug: Brand Sauce makes this stupid easy.

𝟰. 𝗧𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀𝗹𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗟𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝗮 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁, 𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝗮 𝗧𝗮𝘀𝗸

A great newsletter = the most leveraged content engine in your business. 1 email → 10–30 content pieces.

Make it beautiful. Tactical. Shareable. Then syndicate it everywhere. Consistency compounds.

I recommend using beehiiv.

𝟱. 𝗔𝗱𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 “𝗥𝗶𝗱𝗶𝗰𝘂𝗹𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗹𝘆 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗶𝘃𝗲” 𝗢𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻

At one of the first companies I co-founded, GLD, we added 24k solid gold pieces that were 20–50x the typical price. It wasn’t for everyone, but someone always bought it.

Any business can do this. Think luxury tiers, premium bundles, or white-glove services.

---

If you want the full list (101+ tactics ), I’m dropping a book later this year. Drop a comment and I’ll DM you the teaser.

[Noah Kagan @noahkagan]

Steal this prompt. I run every X post through it now.

It uses X's open-source ranking, where copying your link is weighted 40x a like.

"Score my X post 1 to 10 using X's ranking weights: copy link 20, reply 5, quote 5, DM share 5, follow 4, repost 1, like 0.5. Tell me which actions it will earn. Then rewrite it to earn a share or a reply. My post: [paste]"

It took my Marc Lou post from 6/10 to 9.5/10 (27K views).

The weights:
Someone copies your link: 20
Reply: 5 (+15 if you follow each other)
Quote: 5
DM'd to a friend: 5
New follow: 4
Repost: 1
Like: 0.5
Profile click: 0
Bookmark: not in the list

[vittorio @IterIntellectus]

once ASI is here and living somewhere because of "work" becomes pointless, people with money will just move to the nicest places on earth

Mediterranean climate, ocean, mountains, good food, beautiful isolated towns

places like this are going to become insanely valuable
probably worth buying real estate there now

[Justin Novak @wavewavewavey]

@thebeautyofsaas How to get access?

[Tim Ferriss @tferriss]

Everything big starts small and focused.

1,000 true fans is step #1, whether you want a $100K per year business or the next Uber.

I’ve seen this with all of my fastest-growing and most successful startups. They start laser-focused on 100 to 1,000 people, niche-ing down as necessary with their messaging and targeting (demographically, geographically, etc.) to get to a manageable and cost-effectively reachable number.

So, you may ask yourself, “Why aim for a mere $100K when I can try to build a billion-dollar business?” Two reasons:

1) Aiming for the latter from the outset often leads to neglecting the high-touch 1,000 true fans who act as your most powerful unpaid marketing force for “crossing the chasm” into the mainstream.

If you don’t build that initial army, you’re likely to fail.

2) Do you really want to build and manage a big company? For most people, it’s not a fun experience; it’s an all-consuming taskmaster. There are certainly ace CEOs who thread the needle and enjoy this roller coaster, but they are outliers.

Read Small Giants by Bo Burlingham for some fantastic examples of companies that choose to be the best rather than the biggest.

[DHH @dhh]

This goes for makers of all shapes.

[Sam Parr @thesamparr]

Websites that I've loved for 20+ years: uncrate.

Been going daily for years.

What other cool stuff you been visiting for +20 years that's a bit unknown?

https://t.co/8sC50Qa9WG

[Dr. Julie Gurner @drgurner]

Nick Saban's Five Enemies of Greatness is always worth a read. He didn't write these, but they're a solid short list of his coaching philosophy throughout the years...

Ingest them for your team, and ingest them for yourself.

The 5 Enemies..keep them away from you.

[chl$ @chelsssseeeea]

30 years of Super Mario 64 and I genuinely don’t think people who weren’t there can understand just how magical this game felt.

Walking into Peach’s Castle for the first time. Hearing the music. Running down those hallways, finding a painting, and realizing you could literally JUMP INTO IT and enter an entirely different world.

Every door was a mystery. Every painting was a new adventure. Every star felt like you’d discovered something nobody else had.

The first time you flew with the Wing Cap. Racing that stupid penguin down the slide. Swimming through Dire, Dire Docks. Running around Bobomb Battlefield with absolutely no idea what you were supposed to be doing, but somehow having the time of your life.
And the music. God, the music.
There was no YouTube tutorial telling you where to go. No internet spoiling every secret before you found it. Just you, your N64, and an entire new game to be explored.

I think what makes me emotional looking back is realizing we weren’t just experiencing one of the greatest leaps in gaming history. We were experiencing a kind of childhood wonder you can never quite get back. Those mornings sitting on the floor in front of the TV, completely lost in a world that felt so big.

I can still hear the castle music and immediately feel like a kid again.

[Nikita Bier @nikitabier]

@steveonomics The point of man is to build, create, and improve the lives of others.

The number on the screen is not relevant.

[Alex Hormozi @AlexHormozi]

Everything you want is on the other side of not giving a fuck, asking again, and taking another shot. Life gives you endless lottery tickets to try and you only need one win to change your life forever .

[Justin Novak @wavewavewavey]

@markfzhuk 1-800-Mark-Zhuk

[Brandon Luu, MD @BrandonLuuMD]

10 minutes of TikTok was enough to impair people’s ability to remember and carry out intentions.

Twitter and YouTube didn’t show the same decline.

Rapid context-switching may be where most of cognitive cost is.

[Nicholas Fabiano, MD @NTFabiano]

Life satisfaction is highly consistent with personality traits.

The top trait was "Have a lot of fun".

[tobi lutke @tobi]

It’s so good to have AI bring the outside perspective to the amazing accomplishment of western culture.

Set it to your local anthem, play it in every school once a week.

[Daily Loud @DailyLoud]

The New York Times reveals their list of the 100 best TV shows of the 21st century.

[Sam Blond @samdblond]

The #1 marketing lesson from Monaco:

Monaco has our first marketing hire starting today. I’ve been doing marketing for the company with <10% of my time. I don’t have much marketing experience prior to Monaco (I’ve been in sales most of my career). My #1 lesson: just try things.

The animation below represents my experience perfectly. The data isn’t mine, but anecdotally seems correct. 9 out of 10 startups never try something new. Most that do, fail and quit trying new things. The top 1% just keep shooting. Keep shooting.

[Starter Story @starter_story]

He built 3 boring websites that pay him $32K/month - no AI trend, no fancy features, just databases.

Rashid isn’t a coder. He studied finance, maxed out credit cards raising $100K for a fintech, and while hunting for investors he realized: finding this list is brutal.

So he manually built a list of 40,000 investors, launched on Product Hunt, and made $4K in month one.

That became AngelMatch - now at $29K MRR with 360 subscribers, a 33% trial conversion, and 800–1,000 clicks a day. Pricing starts at $59/mo and goes into the thousands.

Then he cloned the model:

> InvestorHunt - $2,800/mo, pure SEO, zero marketing
> JournalistHunt - a database of 200,000 journalists at $49–$99 tiers

The unlock? One day he saw 60 clicks/day in Google Analytics and thought: what if I 10x this? He hired 6 content writers, shipped free tools, and ran programmatic SEO for 8 months.

Went from $3K > $20K MRR. Peaked at $43K.

Half his revenue still comes from programmatic SEO.

His playbook for 2026:

1. Pick a database that solves a painful B2B problem
2. Collect the data manually (or scrape it)
3. Launch fast, get eyeballs, then double down on programmatic SEO

Ideas he’d build today: an influencer database sorted by niche + audience size. Or a newsletter sponsorship database.

The takeaway: boring beats trendy. Painful B2B problems + SEO compound for years while AI apps go to zero.

[Codie Sanchez @Codie_Sanchez]

I just interviewed 5 billionaires at my live book launch and asked them how they build companies and make decisions.

Here are 7 things they said that I can’t stop thinking about:

1. Keep a written list of your failures

[Nikita Bier @nikitabier]

The vast majority of large companies survive purely by launching things and discovering what works by Process of Elimination.

There is no rhyme or reason -- or conviction -- in anything they do.

[Justin Novak @wavewavewavey]

@AllanPeters Elite