Tech Start Up Case Study #1

Building a High-Signal Community App for Meaningful Online Engagement

Overview

  • Client Type: Early-stage SaaS Startup (B2C)

  • Product: Web + Mobile Platform for Interest-Based Communities

  • Role: Head of Marketing & Ops (Freelance)

  • Objective: Drive pre-launch momentum, activate early users, and lay the foundation for long-term user retention.

The Challenge

The startup had an ambitious mission: to create noise-free online spaces for people who actually care about the topics they’re in. But early on, they faced:

  • A crowded and jaded user base burned by Slack, Discord, and Facebook Groups

  • No existing audience or waitlist

  • Lack of product-market feedback

  • A lean team juggling engineering and design, with no internal marketing lead

The Strategy

I stepped in as a fractional marketing + operations partner to lead:

  • Positioning & Messaging: Clarified the brand’s “why,” core differentiators, and emotional hook

  • Go-to-Market Plan: Built a 60-day content and acquisition roadmap tied to measurable milestones

  • Community Acquisition: Reached moderators, creators, and startup founders to seed initial high-signal communities

  • Prelaunch Infrastructure: Created onboarding flows, launch emails, product explainer deck, and user research forms

  • In-App Retention Loops: Designed engagement prompts, mod playbooks, and high-retention feature ideas for v1

Execution

  • Built a brand voice rooted in clarity, courage, and culture

  • Launched waitlist and early access campaigns through Reddit, Twitter, LinkedIn, and curated outreach

  • Led onboarding for beta users with a warm, personalized system that turned early testers into superfans

  • Created founder-led thought content to support long-term positioning as a category-defining product

  • Worked directly with the product team to influence roadmap through user feedback and sentiment tracking

Results

  • 20 daily active users within 1 week of beta launch (no ads)

  • 70+ mod applications across verticals like AI, parenting, wellness, and design

  • 15% average reply rate from cold outreach to high-status moderators

  • Clear north star metric identified for v1 retention: Day 2 return rate

  • Pre-launch community engagement strategy now core to the company’s growth thesis

Tools Used

  • Web: Typeform, Notion, Zapier, Webflow

  • Design: Canva, Figma

  • Analytics & Ops: Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Airtable, Loom

  • Content & Copy: ChatGPT (with heavy human editing), Framer, EmailOctopus