How Clay got its users

COPYABLECommunityscale-upb2bno ads

A certified expert program where consultants sell services around the tool. The service providers do the distribution because they earn from it.

Read from signals. Consistent with what is publicly observable, but nobody confirmed it. Check before you quote it.

Can you run this?

COPYABLE

You could start this on Monday. No budget, no audience, no permission needed.

Your time

12 to 18 months

Your money

Program management

First signal

6 months

Upside

A support channel that doubles as the sales demo, public instead of a private ticket queue
A layer of businesses whose revenue depends on yours, implementing and selling without being on your payroll

Price of entry

The stomach to churn your existing base on purpose when you narrow the positioning
A founder doing unglamorous community work, plus the budget to hire an existing community's founder

Community in 2026

Excellent for retention, slow for acquisition. It does not create the first wave, it amplifies it.

6 steps, in the order they ran them.

1
Search an existing community's archive for your keywords, shortlist the sharpest posters, email each one by hand.
done whenEveryone on your shortlist got a message written for them alone, not a blast.
2
Re-aim the product at one narrow buyer, let the customers who no longer fit churn, then relaunch with that pitch.
done whenYour site, pricing and sales calls speak to one buyer, and you let the rest go without chasing them.
3
Join the sales and marketing Slack groups your buyers use, set keyword alerts, and hire someone who runs a community.
done whenAlerts fire on your keywords, someone replies in the thread, and the community hire is on payroll.
4
Shut down email and in-app support, run all of it in one shared public Slack so customers watch each other get unblocked.
done whenNo private support path is left, and customers answer each other before your team gets there.
5
Pay B2B creators to post about the product on LinkedIn, and run a creators-only Slack alongside it.
done whenPaid creators post without chasing, and new signups name those posts when you ask how they found you.
6
Turn the agencies already reselling your product into a public filterable directory, then open your round to them.
done whenBuyers can filter the directory themselves, and partners got the same terms as your other investors.

read from clay.com, live

“Build systems to grow revenue”

from $54/mofree tier~17k public pagesGoogle Analytics

In your chat

Carries the play above, and is written to tell you no when this channel is out of reach for you.

In your editor

The same twelve channels as an agent skill. It reads your repository and eliminates what you cannot run. Open source, MIT.

curl -o ~/.claude/skills/howtodistribute/SKILL.md https://howtodistribute.com/skill.md

Very fast B2B growth

Describe it. You get back the channel I would run in your place, the 30-day plan, and the number at which you stop.