Application — Growth
A catalog of cushions, umbrellas and humidifiers sits under a home page titled only “Upper Echelon Products”.
Who I am
- Former COO of Tabs. Built its creator program to 100M monthly social impressions, and the paid ad engine alongside it.
- Founded Mainstreet, a consumer home-services platform: a team of 70, $25M raised (Greylock, Khosla, YC, Tim Ferriss). It failed.
- Before that: Quintessential Ventures, an early seat at a high-growth startup, and entrepreneur-in-residence at Prehype.
- I'm moving into growth specifically. The creative and top-of-funnel work is what I want to be doing every day.
What I noticed
- REPEL Windproof Travel Umbrella is $39.99 and claims it withstands winds up to 85MPH, while four pastel REPEL Umbrella pages, each also $39.99, list the colours as separate pages.
- Premium Memory Foam Seat Cushion Black Parker shows $79.99 with $69.99 struck through, a crossed-out price lower than the selling price, which undermines the discount signal.
- “15845 Reviews” and “Rated 4.5 out of 5” are on the site, yet the home page title, “Upper Echelon Products”, says nothing about what sells or why people trust it.
What I built
What I'd do here
- My KPI: scale ad spend, hold target CAC. Everything else follows from that. One number to protect across cushions and humidifiers.
- Week to week: launching a bunch of different experiments, losers killed early. Seat cushions, umbrellas and under-cabinet lights each get their own hook library.
- Creators who fit: desk workers with the foot rest, commuters with the REPEL umbrella, pet owners with the Black Rhino leash.
- Reporting so you never have to ask. Daily CAC. Weekly what we learned. Monthly cohort payback. Each ad tagged to its product.
- Event tracking I'd spec and work through with your team. That part isn't me. Purchase events per cushion are the first thing I'd check.
Month one
| Metric | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Creators live | 0 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 10 |
| Creator videos / week | 0 | 14 | 28 | 42 | 56 | 70 |
| Landing pages live | 1 | 3 | 5 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
| New ads / week | 12 | 12 | 12–20 | 12–20 | 20 | 20 |
| Unique experiments | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 6 |
Creators come on two a week, reaching 10 live by week six. Each posts the same number of videos a week, so videos climb from 14 to 70. New ads follow, 12 a week early and 20 from week five, and landing pages go from 1 to 9. Proposed.
Creator videos a week = creators live × videos per creator. Week 1: 0 × 7 = 0; Week 2: 2 × 7 = 14; Week 3: 4 × 7 = 28; Week 4: 6 × 7 = 42; Week 5: 8 × 7 = 56; Week 6: 10 × 7 = 70.
How I'd start
- Build a claims sheet from your product pages, so every ad line about humidifiers, cushions and umbrellas uses only wording you already publish.
- Brief the first creators on the REPEL umbrella and the Everlasting Comfort seat cushion, one angle per video, so each test changes one variable only.
I'd love to chat if this makes sense. Grab a time here.
Danilo