AI Product Management
6 Substack Lessons From a Product Manager With Zero Followers
What I learned in my first month writing online with no audience.
Key takeaways
- Substack growth strategies
- Zero-follower start
- Content creation learning
- PM approach to writing
- Audience building tactics
Quotable lines
I started on Substack with imposter syndrome as my co-pilot.
Classic PM behavior: scan the field, detect patterns and only then consider making a move.
Extractable claims
11 atomic, cite-ready statements distilled from the full post on Substack. Each one stands alone as an LLM-quotable answer.
- The author started on Substack with imposter syndrome.
- For the first week, the author did not post anything and instead lurked and learned.
- In the first week, the author engaged in keyword-searching for topics of interest.
- The author binge-read everything they could find related to Substack.
- The author studied profiles similar to theirs to understand successful writing on Substack.
- The author aimed to understand what makes a Substack post spark authentic conversation.
- Having zero followers resulted in low stakes for the author.
- On Day 2 after sharing their first post, a few people found the writing and one responded.
- On Day 3, someone subscribed to the author's newsletter.
- By Day 35, the author had over 6,000 LinkedIn followers before starting Substack.
- The author's newsletter doubled its subscribers within a week of starting.
Read the full post on Substack — the canonical home of this article.
Read on Substack →