Growth hacks of a SaaS solopreneur: leveraging AI for marketing with Mike Strives @Upvoty

saas.unbound is a podcast for and about founders who are working on scaling inspiring products that people love, brought to you by https://saas.group/, a serial acquirer of B2B SaaS companies.

In episode #49 of season 5, Anna Nadeina talks with Mike, founder of Upvoty and CopyPaste Lab.

Some founders start with a college degree and a plan. Others start in a garage printing t-shirts. The journey described here began the latter way: early ecommerce led to running an agency, which eventually turned into a marketplace called Vindy. Vindy solved a real problem — lead generation for local contractors — and evolved into a subscription product that reached seven figures in ARR with a tiny team.

But success didn’t remove an important lesson: passion matters. As one founder put it,

“You have to be passionate about the problems you’re solving.”

That realization drove the next pivot: a small internal tool used to collect product feedback became the seed that grew into Upvoty.

Turn internal tools into products — and validate before you build

If you’re sitting on an internal hack that actually improves how you work, it might be a product. But need does not always equal market demand. The validation strategy used here is refreshingly simple and repeatable:

1. Ship a landing page with a clear value proposition and a signup form or buy button.
2. Share it where your target audience already hangs out — Facebook groups, Reddit, Slack, LinkedIn.
3. Talk to the early signups. Ask questions, collect pain points, and iterate.

Result: the landing page pulled in roughly 500 signups within weeks, with an early conversion rate of around 25–30%. Some beta users even upgraded to paid plans during the beta period because they hit usage limits. That early revenue paid for development and validated the idea long before a polished product existed.

MVP strategy: beautiful and narrowly focused beats broad and feature-heavy

There’s a debate between shipping a scrappy MVP and shipping something beautiful. The middle ground is the useful one: ship a small product that solves one problem exceptionally well. A few practical points:

• Start with one use case. Make it solve a single job-to-be-done for a very specific audience.
• Make visuals and onboarding acceptable. You can build a pleasing MVP faster than before thanks to tooling and templates. Don’t ship ugly if you can avoid it.
• Iterate with early users. If users churn, you still learn what to build next. Relaunches are OK — you can launch again and again as you iterate.

Targeting a single niche also simplifies copy, marketing, and product prioritization. As the founder summarized, once you narrow the audience, your messaging becomes easier: “your copy gets better because you know exactly who you’re speaking to.”

Leverage AI for marketing — not as a creative crutch, but as a force multiplier

AI has become central to the growth stack — especially for solo founders who need to scale marketing without growing headcount quickly. Practical ways AI is being used:

• Custom GPTs for brainstorming and optimization. Feed your website, competitors, and customer chat history into a custom assistant and ask for landing page improvements, feature priorities, or marketing angles.
• Automated content generation. Tools that produce AI-written blog posts can be tuned with strong prompts to sound human and be useful. When paired with SEO and internal linking logic, this approach can scale organic traffic quickly.
• Voice-to-text for ideation. Use Whisper-style tools to capture spoken ideas, then clean and send as emails, drafts, or outlines.
• Internal tooling for scaling content. Build or adopt tools to automate keyword research, internal linking, and on-page optimization (example: a tool that generates humanized AI blog posts tailored to rank).

One practical tip: a small subscription to tools like ChatGPT plus well-crafted prompts and feeding real customer data (support transcripts, competitor pages) will outperform generic prompts. The AI can analyze your whole corpus and suggest specific help articles, content topics, and roadmap priorities.

Solopreneur operations: how to scale without becoming a bottleneck

Running multiple products as a solopreneur requires a careful balance: keep control of strategy and vision, but delegate execution. The playbook used here includes:

• Build a trusted contractor pool. Keep a roster of reliable freelancers for development, admin, and outreach. Repeat hires are gold.
• Use the camcorder method for delegation. Record yourself doing a task on Loom, send it to a contractor, and have them turn it into an SOP. This flips the efficiency equation: contractors often improve the task after taking it on.
• Hire through networks first, then Upwork with filters. If sourcing externally, prioritize higher-priced freelancers with strong reviews and good communication. Ask for a Loom pitch to evaluate product thinking, then do a quick vibe check call.
• Focus on what you love and what moves the needle. If you enjoy creating strategy and content, keep those; outsource repetitive or low-interest tasks.

Growth hacks that actually worked

Here are actionable growth tactics that generated traction:

Email every signup

Send a personalized email to each early user and ask about their problems. Those conversations do three things: they refine product direction, create early advocates, and sometimes convert one-time beta users into long-term customers.

Be where the conversations already happen

Instead of blasting Reddit with product mentions, join Slack communities and set keyword alerts. When someone asks for a tool or an alternative, jump into the conversation and help. This non-intrusive approach builds trust and converts better.

Monitor brand keywords across platforms

Use tools that watch LinkedIn, Slack, and niche communities for conversations about your product category. Jump on threads where people ask for recommendations and provide value first. One well-timed response landed a sizeable customer for this founder.

CopyPaste Lab: a product studio built to scale launches

CopyPaste Lab is an operating model for rapidly creating and scaling SaaS products with repeatable technology and marketing playbooks. The concept is simple:

• Copy-paste boilerplate tech. Reuse base templates, components, and architecture to build new apps fast. Vibe-coding and AI accelerate this.
• Copy-paste marketing playbooks. Maintain a template roadmap and launch checklist that includes directory submissions, backlink tasks, outreach sequences, and promotional steps.
• Acquire or join existing products. Sometimes growth is faster by partnering with or acquiring small products and applying the studio playbooks to them.

This blend of building, acquiring, and repeating a proven launch checklist creates efficient velocity while keeping risk manageable.

Biggest mistakes and the single biggest win

The common early mistake: trying to win the whole market at once. Chasing every competitor and every segment dilutes focus and slows progress. The corrective move is crucial:

“Start with a small target audience and nail it for them first.”

Nailing a niche improves product-market fit, simplifies copywriting, and sharpens feature prioritization. From a growth perspective, it also creates a playbook you can replicate into adjacent niches later.

Key takeaways you can use today

• Validate before you build: a landing page with a buy button or signup form plus outreach is fast and cheap validation.
• Narrow your audience: one niche, one problem, one great solution.
• Make MVPs purposeful: smaller and beautiful is better than broad and cluttered.
• Use AI strategically: automate marketing and research, but keep your creative spark for strategy and storytelling.
• Delegate with intent: record how you do things, turn them into SOPs, and let skilled contractors improve the process.
• Be present in niche communities: Slack, LinkedIn threads, and monitored keywords are high-signal channels for product demand.

Lean solo founders can compete if they focus on the right problems, validate quickly, and use modern tools smartly. Combining a tight niche-first approach with AI-accelerated marketing and a repeatable launch playbook creates sustained momentum without needing huge teams. If you want to move fast, pick one problem, build something human-centered, and use automation to amplify — not replace — your judgment.