the payoff
A channel-by-channel playbook for launching both AI products, grouped by phase and ordered by priority. Priority follows the evidence: each channel's hit rate and breakout share across the 112 cases, weighted by effort. The rule: run everything that is high value or low effort, and skip only what is both low value and hard. The five phases run in sequence; within each, items run highest priority first. Where the products diverge, the AutoResearch and ARCA notes say how.
The surfaces you control. Stand these up before any announcement; the repo and the result are what every channel below points back to.
The one distribution surface everyone uses, and your real landing page. The README is the pitch: result up top, one-command install, reproducible benchmark. 97% of cases
One page, the headline result above the fold.
Documentation is both onboarding and the most-used owned growth channel. Write for the exact questions developers search. docs-as-SEO 79%
The most common owned channel and launch venue. Home for the launch post and every deep-dive after. 83% owned / 62% launch
Set up both now. Alan posting personally carries more with this audience than the brand handle. 75% brand / 70% founder
Make first use frictionless. PyPI 64%
Somewhere users land and stick. Can start minimal. 69% run one
Low effort, and a free cross-post target later. 57% run one
Fire these the week you go public, in this order. Most carry the same headline and asset.
Lead with the falsifiable result. If the first post is flat, repost with a sharper headline: Unsloth went 3 to 385 points doing exactly that. 52% launch / 17% breakout
A single strong demo travels: Devin launched on a video that hit 31.4M views. Pair the post with a short capture or the hero number. 24% launch / demo tactic 29%
Near-zero effort: cross-post the same Show HN or X content. Marginal alone, free to add. 6% launch
The citable, credible version of the method and result. 21% launched with a paper
Low effort, marginal value. Schedule it the same week. 12% used it
Cross-post the launch; costs nothing. 12% used it
Slow, date-bound, and rarely what breaks a project out. Later for credibility, not at launch. 6% launch / 1% breakout
Low impact for a launch moment. Pursue podcasts later for founder credibility. 1% launch
You cannot force a share, but a result worth sharing earns one. Pursue in this order.
The top amplifier by far. Pitch a falsifiable result, not a funding line. 71% landed a piece
Get the result in front of them; you control the number, not the repost. Recurring names: swyx / Latent Space, Simon Willison, Karpathy, Andrew Ng. 38% peer founder / swyx 12%
Usually earned by being useful to a model or hardware launch (see the recurring engine), not by asking. 24%
Cheap to submit; do it for every milestone. AlphaSignal, TLDR, and peers. 15%
Good for founder credibility. After launch, not during. Latent Space and peers. 14%
Small but compounding. Get listed wherever your category lives. low effort
The single biggest breakout in the data, but a product and partnership decision, not a marketing campaign. Flag it for Michael, DevRel, and BD. Marketing's job is to make saying yes easy.
A clean SDK, an OpenAI-compatible endpoint, drop-in docs, and a one-line install, so a partner can ship in an afternoon. OpenAI-compatible 25%
Aim for high-traffic hosts, not long-tail directories. Being one option among fifty does little; being the default inside something people already run is the breakout. distribution-by-integration 26%
Being one undifferentiated option among many moves nothing. Embed where you are the default, not a checkbox.
The ongoing work after launch, on a cadence. This is what separates a one-week spike from a standard.
Build in public on a steady cadence from Alan and the brand account. Yes, tweet regularly. build-in-public 35% / milestone 79%
Add a how-to for every new capability and rank for the exact queries. Docs are the top owned growth channel, so yes, keep writing them. docs-as-SEO 79% / SEO engine 43%
Newsjack the big moments. rode a bigger drop 49%
Stars, versions, downloads, records. Each is a post and a press ping. milestone-marketing 79%
Whatever goes on X or the blog, cross-post to Reddit, LinkedIn, and the newsletters. reuse, do not recreate