10 Growth Hacks I (Maybe) Have Tried

How to Hack Your Way to 10K in ARR

Author

Gregory Kennedy
August 11, 2025

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Drinks are on Paul Xue from Spacestation Labs LTD.

10 Growth Hacks I (Maybe) Have Tried

Let’s say you wanted some cool growth hacking ideas for your scrappy startup because you have no budget, no resources, but you have a motivated and clever team.

Here are some ideas that I have (Maybe) tried over the years, with my very hypothetical result for each idea.

1. Bought Fake Followers on Instagram and X

Someone did this to our account on X without asking, and I woke up one morning and had 1,000s of new followers. It added zero to our performance, and it may or may not count against you on X. It’s hard to say definitively. The idea was that it added social proof and encouraged more to follow you, which may have been true pre-Elon’s takeover. Now X is 100% based on the engagement of your post. Followers don’t add much to your reach.

However, I ran a scan on popular Instagram accounts for a client once and found that on many large accounts 50% to 60% of the followers were (maybe) fake. This technique may still work on Instagram if you’re getting started. That app has less transparency on performance than X. People on that app are still impressed with huge follower numbers.

Oh, obviously, you can’t buy fake followers on LinkedIn.

Result: Bad. Do not recommend.

2. Cold Email Outreach

Some might call this spam. Others would call this the backbone of B2B SaaS sales. This works, and everyone does it, but you need to be careful not to anger the receiver with messaging that is wildly off. This is why list building and carefully aligning your message with the receiver is the key to success.

In 2025, delivery has gotten much harder now that the email platforms have put stringent spam controls in place. The hack around this with bulk sends is to use a service that strings together lots of accounts with similar URLs. These tools warm the accounts up so they aren’t instantly flagged as spam.

Result: Positive. Still works great.

3. Scraped Speakers From a Conference Website

We used a script to scrape all the LinkedIn URLs off the site, and then I had the CEO connect with them on LinkedIn. He spoke at the conference, so the outreach was something like, “I believe we met at the XYZ event…”

I used to do this manually, then I hired people to build the lists, and now I use a tool or vibe code a script to do this. But if you use this technique, for the love of all that is holy, do not send a LinkedIn request begging someone to jump on a call with you so you can book them 10 to 15 appointments a month. Instant fail.

Result: Very Positive. I love this technique, and there are lots of variations.

4. Scraped the Entire Apple App Store

We were selling a developer tool for a long time, and a team member had already kicked off this project before I started. It was my first week, and when they asked me what I thought, I suggested we send an email to just a quarter of the list as a test. That decision made me look like a genius when one recipient went scorched earth and reported us to everyone they could think of.

But on the other hand, if you want to build a prospecting list, it’s smart to go to a partner’s site, like HubSpot, and pull down the entire list of like agencies, and use that as the basis for an ABM or Account-Based Marketing style campaign.

Result: Bad. Do not spam. Good. When used to build a prospect list.

5. Screen Captured an Entire Conference App

I hired an Upworker and had them screen capture the complete app 1 JPG per attendee profile, and then used ChatGPT to read the JPGs and build a complete outreach list of all attendees. We enriched the list to get everyone’s email and blasted them. The results were meh, but another company’s marketing team noticed and asked how we did it. I started to explain, and they quickly tuned out because of the complexity.

This idea would work better if we were sponsoring the happy hour and we could have invited eveyone to it. I would love to try that.

Result: Meh. Cool story though, bro.

6. De-Anonymized Website Visitors

Not sure if this is a hack since so many people sell tools now to de-anonymize visitors to your website. The idea is to follow up with a prospect after they have visited. This used to be very easy to do. It’s gotten harder. But there are still tools out there that do it.

On the one hand, this sounds amazing, and it should work. But finding the signal in the noise is critical. For this to work well, you need to spend time designing your site correctly and driving lots of traffic. This is still an underexplored area for me.

Result: Meh. It never worked as well as I would have liked.

7. Competitor Monitoring PR Alert System

Created Google Alerts for our main competitors' company names, then whenever they got press coverage, I'd reach out to the same journalist within 24 hours with a contrasting perspective or additional data point. "I saw your piece on [Competitor X's funding], here's an interesting counter-trend we're seeing in the market..."

There was a point where I was crushing it with PR hacks like this. The problem is that industry publications continue to decline in popularity and impact. You’re better off building a following on social media or YouTube than pursuing this vigorously. But that’s my 2 cents. Maybe you're in an industry where this still works?

Result: Mixed. The pro-PR game is on the way out.

8. Astroturfing on Reddit

Reddit is so crazy that they have a term for creating other anonymous accounts for the same users and posting as an alter ego account. It’s called astroturfing. The practice dates way back to the origin of the platform, where they encouraged users to use anonymous accounts to post so they could engage in discussions not suitable for work.

A diabolical technique is to use an anonymous account to post on threads that are relevant to your business and say nice things about your product, or more diabolical is to say mean things about a competing product.

Result: Very positive. Reddit is on fire, and this works.

9. AI-Generated Comments

Before you reach through your screen and try to choke me, believe it or not, there are use cases where this is helpful and works. For example, with a brand account that is set to look for keywords and respond, it can work well.

The drawbacks with this were that the tools I examined to do this were costly and didn’t seem worth it. But, I have had people show me accounts that are crushing it with this. The numbers don’t lie. I still hate this when it used to comment on my content and I am always sure to make fun of the person in a reply. I do wish that social media did more to discourage this type of stuff. But they don’t.

Result: Mixed. I could probably get more mileage out of this, but I would hate myself.

10. Used AI Voice to Leave Personalized Voicemails

A top sales rep had this perfect voicemail delivery. They sounded warm but urgent, conversational but professional. The problem was that they could only leave maybe 50 quality voicemails per day, so we used AI to clone his voice and leave 100s of unique messages every day.

This is a killer idea, and voice is an underexplored area. You can also send your voicemail as a message on LinkedIn. If done right, it’s cool and works. And if you don’t like your rep’s voice, you can pick from a million different voices that you do like.

Result: Positive. I was surprised to see cold calling making a comeback.

11. Bonus Idea: Create Deepfake Videos of a Founder

Obviously, with their knowledge. LOL. This is a killer idea that I haven’t tried yet, but want to. All you need is some footage of your CEO or Founder, and you upload it into a deep fake AI tool. Now you create deep fakes of them giving personalized sales pitches and demos to prospects.

Like all good mad scientists, I should test it on myself and see what happens.

Result: None yet. I will report back.

009 The Gregory and Paul Show - Live From the Coinbase Hackathon in NYC

On the Gregory and Paul Show, we break down the latest in startups, SaaS, AI, and whatever the internet is debating this week.

On this episode, Gregory checks in live from the sold-out Coinbase Code NYC Hackathon, Paul rants about awkward AI wearable demos, and the duo dives deep into the fallout from GPT-5’s launch—from tool-calling hype to user backlash over lost GPT memories. Plus: autonomous agents replacing browsers, the geopolitical race for compute power, and why the Pentagon might secretly be driving the AI boom.

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About Me

I'm Gregory Kennedy, former creative director, 3X head of marketing, and founder of Vibe Your SaaS. I help early-stage startups build real momentum with strategic clarity, AI-driven execution, and zero BS.

Greogry Kennedy // Vibe Your SaaS // www.vbmrktr.com

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