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How Kleo Grew
AI-powered writing assistant for LinkedIn creators
How did Kleo grow?
Summary of the sourced claims below
Kleo grew primarily through organic LinkedIn strategies, including educational content and live webinars that demonstrated the product and engaged potential users. They built a waitlist and used email marketing focused on addressing AI content problems and sharing user success stories to attract and retain customers. The tool scaled to 70,000 users organically on LinkedIn, highlighting the effectiveness of their LinkedIn-native creator approach.
Channels
23 channels · grouped by how Kleo grows
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Organic social media
· 12 mentions · 12 sources“when people look at my posts, they see a thousand comments. Most of them won't even read the ones that are AI generated. But to me, it gives me more engagement and then increases the chances of someone liking my post. So I have no problem. People should, the people are doing it great. It's benefi...”
highShow 11 more quotes
“She’s one of the most lethal operators in the personal branding space and in this episode we break down how she launched products like Content Code and Creator Capital generating six figures in one single week using nothing but LinkedIn, a Stripe link and a simple landing page.”
medium“There's just so few people creating on LinkedIn. It's just like a wide open space... You create educational content three times a week... What is your lead funnel look like on LinkedIn?... the funnel is LinkedIn content to email newsletter that prints 70% of my revenue for two of the businesses i...”
high“Jake has grown his LinkedIn to 180k+ followers and Lara has 300k+. Their audiences are LinkedIn creators, providing the perfect target audience for a LinkedIn content creation tool. We used their reach to build a waitlist before launch.”
high“Kleo 1.0 (2022–2024) was a free Chrome extension that worked inside LinkedIn itself. You'd open a LinkedIn compose window, the extension would inject Kleo's interface into LinkedIn, you'd write your post there. That version reached 70,000+ users before LinkedIn intervened.”
medium“Creators posting on both LinkedIn and X who want a single tool that covers both without splitting their workflow”
medium“So we had multiple posts that drove demand to this wait list. So this is one of the posts, not from me and not from Jake, from our other account called The LinkedIn Creator. You can see that there is no call to action. There is no direct plug. It's simply educating. ... This leads them to sign up...”
high“we're all LinkedIn native creators. So we had multiple posts that drove demand to this wait list ... It's simply educating ... This is something that Jake called edu selling”
high“Jake, Jake Ward, my co-founder, him and I were growing on LinkedIn together and he ended up making a Chrome extension for himself modeled after what Taplio and TweetHunter were doing for X or Twitter, whatever you wanna call it...Nothing like that existed yet for LinkedIn.”
high“Then after you start writing on LinkedIn, there's like this network effect. We've built our connections for so long... And then when you start reaching out to these people that are engaging with this new content about this skill, you start talking to them...that's how you get your first client. A...”
high“Everyone says: “LinkedIn company pages don’t work” My company page: 1,000+ new customers EVERY WEEK. No ads. No outbound. Only content.”
high“The approach that we took was educating on LinkedIn because we're all LinkedIn native creators. We had multiple posts that drove demand to this waitlist.”
high -
LinkedIn
· 11 mentions · 11 sources“So where I would start, obviously, is building a personal brand on LinkedIn. And it doesn't have to be the most viral. You don't have to be an expert. You just have to be useful. So if you're a beginner that wants to start posting on LinkedIn … Your unfair advantages could be your story or the ta...”
highShow 10 more quotes
“So maybe an example, we've had the agency for four years, got the agency to over 100k a month. And then at that point, we couldn't push it up any further... But we only got to that point, after four fucking years of having the agency and having LinkedIn. And then we looked at Instagram.”
high“You create educational content three times a week. You add 20 people a day. One of them is going to buy from you because there's, you've already gained trust through content. People look you up a hundred percent. And so if you already have some decent content, some decent social proof and a good ...”
high“Jake Ward and Lara Acosta together have hundreds of thousands of LinkedIn followers in the exact target market for a LinkedIn tools product. This isn't a cold launch — it's a distribution-first company where the co-founders are the channel.”
medium“Jake and I have built and scaled 3 businesses almost entirely through LinkedIn content. Our agency crossed $300K per month in revenue using repeatable content systems. Kleo is the productized version of those systems.”
high“So I'm giving away the exact playbook that made me $1.5M on LinkedIn without a single sales call”
high“Jake, Jake Ward, my co-founder, him and I were growing on LinkedIn together and he ended up making a Chrome extension for himself modeled after what Taplio and TweetHunter were doing for X or Twitter, whatever you wanna call it...Nothing like that existed yet for LinkedIn.”
high“The agency that I started hit six figures within 12 months, just because I started posting on LinkedIn.”
high“Build a personal brand on LinkedIn. No matter how much you think it's cringe, if you want to make money, LinkedIn is your best shot. Twitter is cool, Instagram is cool, but LinkedIn is so much better. There's just no competition at all...Build your personal brand. Educate on an important topic th...”
high“I grew my LinkedIn from 0-83,000 in 15 months. Quit my job, built and agency and reached 6-figures.”
high“But my LinkedIn Profile made my first $10k All I did was make it a landing page.”
high -
Email List Growth
· 7 mentions · 7 sources“And then if you're wondering about the step by step playbook on how to build a personal brand I have a framework called the 4 3 2 1 ... This could be lead magnets ... you give it out to people for free And the only thing that you ask for is their email You send them the lead magnet they sign up t...”
highShow 6 more quotes
“using AI to scale content that actually sounds like you, writing emails that sell without sounding like a sleazebag.”
medium“the funnel is LinkedIn content to email newsletter that prints 70% of my revenue for two of the businesses is directly from email. The 30% is from content. So email is quite powerful. So finding a way to get mass distribution towards content. So viral posts as much as I can to get top of funnel t...”
high“We used their reach to build a waitlist before launch.”
high“And the only thing that you ask for is their email. You send them the lead magnet, they sign up to your email newsletter to get that lead magnet, and over time, you just nurture them.”
high“So you should start seeing deals or sales come in from your early bird discount emails and the email sequence that you are already putting out. So once you launch, you obviously don't want to just send one email. You want to send multiple emails. ... You want to continue always emailing your list...”
high“You send them the lead magnet. They sign up to your email newsletter to get that lead magnet and all the time you just nurture them.”
high -
Webinars
· 6 mentions · 6 sources“Step number three, which is my favorite, is webinars. You can do two types of lives, a LinkedIn Live or you can do a Zoom webinar. For launch number one, we just did one LinkedIn Live, which is literally on LinkedIn. You're going live like you would on Instagram or X. You tell people that you're ...”
highShow 5 more quotes
“just make good content, get people to a webinar, showcase them that you can bridge the gap, and then just give them a product that’s going to help them.”
medium“Lara ran 3 pre-launch webinars, selling $5k+ on each one. She then conducted masterclasses with Jake to demonstrate Kleo's use.”
high“my background is both in agency and the info product businesses I took the marketing concepts from that business and understood the idea of FOMO building wait lists using emails and webinars and we took it to SaaS”
high“Here's what you can do inside. Here is the value that you get. You get an amazing discount. Here's a recording of a webinar, which we'll talk about in a moment.”
high“For launch number one, we just did one LinkedIn live, which is literally on LinkedIn. ... Then whoever signs up gets a notification directly on LinkedIn that you're going live. ... the next 20 minutes is going to be a walkthrough or a demo. And then the third bit is you're going to be pitching th...”
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Waitlist
· 4 mentions · 4 sources“So there's our poller. This is where we literally launched everything. ... you need to join a wait list. Why we did this was to build scarcity, FOMO, and also soft sell it to our audience. ... The first one was when we launched our original wait list, and the second one was when we relaunched.”
highShow 3 more quotes
“within day one of launch was because we built a wait list ... So even if you go to our landing page right now which I can show you here you cannot physically buy the product. You need to join a wait list.”
high“the way that we launch products is that we do a beta cohort of 500 people in the beginning...And then we redid a second beta cohort of another 500 people a month later.”
high“the way to guarantee your success is to have that waitlist in the background building. So when you want to launch something, when you want to offer something, you can.”
high -
Email marketing
· 3 mentions · 3 sources“So now, as you can see, we did over 10 emails before the drop. So then the actual email, when we went live, we actually told them, hey, Clio 2.0 is live. Try it now. ... So the emails that I was showing were literally the reason why we were able to get to 30k MRR and then 60k MRR.”
highShow 2 more quotes
“Emails focused on new features, user success stories, and building hype.”
high“So now as you can see we did over 10 emails before the drop. So then the actual email when we went live we actually told them hey Clio 2 0 is live Try it now ... So the emails that I was showing were literally the reason why we were able to get to 30k MRR and then 60k MRR”
high -
Lead Nurturing Sequence
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“So again, always trying to make this very actionable for the audience out there. Here's the exact email that we used. Pause this video right now, take a screenshot, steal our template. ... And then you're sending follow-up emails like this one to be like, there's only 300 spots left, 200 spots left.”
highShow 1 more quote
“You need to nurture your customers. Most people just launch things and they forget about them and then just go celebrate the MRR. What we're doing actively at Kleo is we're keeping in touch closely with every single one of our customers.”
high -
LinkedIn Content
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“you create content five times a week on LinkedIn. And LinkedIn is specific for people watching this because you don't need to be a pro at video. You don't need to be a pro on camera. You don't need to be the most charismatic speaker. You just need to learn how to write. And that's essentially it....”
highShow 1 more quote
“And the easiest way to do this right now is by building a personal brand on LinkedIn. I’ve never had a stronger stance on this than today. I’m not just saying this because I’m the “LinkedIn girl” I’m saying this because I just proved it.”
high -
Online Community
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“We maintained a private Slack community for beta users to talk directly with us.”
highShow 1 more quote
“Kleo 3.0 launched in 2026 with a second-brain framing (store knowledge, train writing style, define identity, automatic memories) and a focused, paid creator community.”
medium -
Word of mouth
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“he made a Chrome extension, used it for himself, was extremely useful. He sent it to me and a few other friends and we were like, yo, this is incredible. We started sending it to other people and basically the validation came from the fact that people started using it, it was very organic.”
highShow 1 more quote
“They gave us an amazing testimonial and then they became Clio evangelists”
high -
Lead magnets
· 1 mention“We want to double down on like newsletter content and so you need a team...”
high -
AudioPen Prime Beta Testing Recruitment
· 1 mention“We go deep into building high converting content without burning out, creating launch systems without over-engineering, using AI to scale content that actually sounds like you, writing emails that sell without sounding like a sleazebag.”
medium -
Twitter
· 1 mention“We do a lot of content on LinkedIn and on X. Lara has a YouTube channel but we want to get Jake on YouTube. Obviously like I'm trying to get going on YouTube.”
high -
SEO
· 1 mention“We pulled off an SEO heist that stole 3.6M total traffic from a competitor. We got 489,509 traffic in October alone.”
high -
Cold Calling
· 1 mention“when I was like 19 or 20 years old I did a cold calling and it was like this I sold uh you know the little like flyers that go out on the tops of pizza boxes and they have like the little ads on them I would cold call people and just sell that and that was actually a really great learning experie...”
high -
Testimonials
· 1 mention“And then of course, you want to turn them into superfans so that they are telling their friends, you want to get great testimonials that you can put on your landing page and have case studies and testimonials to use as social proof.”
high -
Newsletter
· 1 mention“you're building that rapport with them every single week through newsletter and then eventually when you're launching they'll buy from you a hundred percent. That's the easiest funnel and that's what I've done this entire time.”
high -
Influencer partnerships
· 1 mention“$62K MRR in 12 weeks via creator distribution.”
medium -
Product Hunt
· 1 mention“With Clio, we did two beta launches. And then on the 22nd of January, we're doing our public launch...every launch you're using these strategies that I'm talking about where you're building hype, you're creating scarcity, you're creating urgency and you're getting customers onto your platform. La...”
high -
Content marketing
· 1 mention“We leveraged our personal brands built of the back of expert-led content. We just applied the same personal branding principles I’ve been teaching for years…But this time, to a product.”
high -
Founder-led sales
· 1 mention“I have always done sales for the businesses that we own...I was also the chief operating officer of another like media company. And I worked my way up in that organization by just getting on the phones, being eager to go and sell and drive revenue for the business.”
high -
Personal network
· 1 mention“luckily for me, I had built such a strong network of people that really cared for me. One of them being my mentor, Richard Moore. And he was like, don't get distracted. Stay focused, focused, focused. So every single opportunity that to me felt like, oh my God, this parcel is paying me attention....”
medium -
Public speaking
· 1 mention“What this means is that if you were to go to the Clio website, and you go to the Cl... It's just where it's a repeat. And so I'll give you an example. With Clio, we did two beta launches. And then on the 22nd of January, we're doing our public launch.”
high
How 2,735 businesses grow
Of businesses with mapped growth channels, the share using each —
Kleo’s highlighted.
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Referral/Word-of-mouth68% ◀
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Social media60% ◀
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Search/SEO57% ◀
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Email48% ◀
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Community35% ◀
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Content/Inbound33% ◀
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Partnerships32%
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Paid ads24%
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Events24% ◀
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Press/PR18%
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Outbound/Sales17% ◀
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Marketplaces/App stores10%
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Product expansion2%
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Influencer partnerships2% ◀
