Warm > Wide

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Hey—It's Tim. 

We launched to the warmest room I’ve got: this list. It worked. Here’s the messy truth, the plan, and what you can steal before lunch.

Launch notes from the inside

I used to “go wide” first - spray LinkedIn, blast socials, pray. This time I went narrow: newsletter only. Why? Because warmth compounds. You already know what I’m building, and you’re generous with feedback. What I’m looking for it tighter feedback loops to make the product as good as I can.

The Founders list are my new R&D. I’m reading every draft they ship, grabbing testimonials, and turning those into proof-driven posts.

When someone says “Search Score helped me pick the winning angle,” that’s a story, not a slogan. Stories travel. Slogans don’t.

Proof > Product

A single screenshot or line of praise is the seed; plant it in public and let it grow. I’ll grab a founder’s win - say, a Search Score choosing the right angle - turn it into a tight post with the exact before/after, then expand that into a walkthrough page with steps, templates, and indexed examples.

That’s proof → post → pillar. Each turn widens the surface area where people can discover you, and none of it reads like a commercial because it started with evidence.

The next feeder stream is questions. Every “Can Penfriend do X?” becomes a how-to. 

If I hear the same question three times, it graduates into a landing page with a runnable checklist. 

If a CMO asks it with extra spice, I steal their phrasing for the headline and write the story they’ll forward to their team. That’s questions → content map - your audience is quietly handing you your editorial calendar.

Finally, the loop that keeps the flywheel honest: feedback → feature → launch. Ship small improvements, pair each with a crisp before/after (gif if you’ve got it), and announce them where the proof lives: at the bottom of the walkthrough, in the thread under the testimonial, inside the how-to that question spawned.

My main goal is to make the product great for me. And then show how it fixes your problems. Then as I lean more problems. Fix those in return for testimonials I can use to show others how it helps.

More people in. More problems. More solutions. More testimonials. More people in.

How I would run your next launch.

• Start warm, not wide.
  Pick your most forgiving audience (customers, email list, private community). Ship there first. Ask two questions: “What nearly stopped you from buying?” and “What made you say yes anyway?”
  

• Turn objections into headlines.
  If the sticking point was “we don’t trust AI to match our voice,” your next post is “How we force AI to sound like your brand (and prove it).”
  

• Extract receipts, not adjectives.
  “Great tool” doesn’t move the needle. “Cut our pitch-to-publish time from three people to one and doubled the acceptance rate” does.
  

• Build a rolling launch.
  Think in waves. Wave One = insiders and testimonials. Wave Two = public channels with proof. Wave Three = polished pillar assets and walkthroughs.

✌️ Tim "Proof or it didn’t happen" Hanson
CMO @Penfriend.ai

Same brain, different platforms: X, Threads, LinkedIn.

P.S. Anyone that grabs a plan now also get’s Wave Two and Wave Three Bonuses. You just gotta stick around for them :D

Penfriend.ai
Made by content marketers. Used by better ones.