Attention first, revenue when?

If distribution is the most important thing, then how do you communicate your growth narrative to investors when you're just getting started?

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Everyone Thinks They Are Underfunded

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Every founder dreams of going viral.

Of having that magical moment when you wake up and all anyone can talk about is your product.

Just take a look at Cluely. Their recent string of viral clips, crazy parties and unhinged posts on X has the tech community in a chokehold over whether this is actually a legitimate business or just buzz created by college dropouts for fun.

As reported on by Sourcery

While viral moments can create overnight sensations, they rarely build lasting companies. The startup graveyard is filled with companies that confused attention for traction.

So far, Cluely has found a formula for consistently capturing audience attention. Through user-generated influencer content to consistently pumping out high quality viral clips, the company has built a strong growth lever that’s resulted in securing multiple seven figure enterprise contracts.

They’ve been able to do what many founders aren’t able to do on a consistent basis. Most founders can create one-off moments of growth, whether that’s through a viral post, a great month of sales or something else entirely. Very few can turn these into a true growth lever that can consistently drive growth on a daily and monthly basis.

At its core, a true growth lever is a specific, high-impact and repeatable action when successfully executed can acquire, activate and retain your core users. It must be three things:

• It is repeatable

• It is scalable

• It is sustainable

Let’s break down how Cluely’s strategy evolved from a viral moment to a real growth lever:

1. The team launched with a high production video on X. This generated a lot of buzz and if they stopped here, it would’ve just been a one-off viral clip

2. They then developed a viral content strategy, with planned controversies (parties, viral X posts), a full user-generated content (UGC) motion and regular high-production clips all designed to capture and retain attention

3. From here, they’ve been able to convert this to revenue as the consistent buzz has given them the brand awareness to secure enterprise contracts

This motion is showing signs of a growth lever:

• They’ve been able to repeatedly go viral at will as they snowball attention from one move to the next

• They’ve scaled revenue significantly with enterprise contracts, versus sticking to just servicing consumer

• So far, this motion has been sustainable as they scale, however, this is also where things might go awry if they get ahead of themselves.

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Breaking Down a Growth Lever