How Dub got its users

Take over the string, not the app. Nobody shares a Dub, they share a URL they were going to paste anyway, and Dub swaps it for dub.sh/xyz or d.to/xyz so its hostname sits in front of the destination in every tweet, email and DM. Find the one artifact your users already send to non-users and make your product the container it travels in. Then make the bare domain work: dub.sh with nothing after the slash loads Dub's product page, so anyone who truncates the URL or wonders what the prefix is lands on a signup page instead of a 404.

done whenPaste your product's output into Slack and read the raw text: your domain is visible before anyone clicks, and typing that domain with no path loads a page that sells the product.

Stamp the export and sell the stamp back. Dub auto-generates a QR code for every short link, downloadable as SVG, PNG or JPG, and its own docs say that for free users the Dub logo shows in the center by default and cannot be removed, with hiding it or swapping in your own logo starting at the Pro plan. That QR ends up on posters, packaging and conference badges, places a raw URL cannot reach. Pick your product's downloadable output, mark it on the free tier, and price the removal as the first upgrade rather than an enterprise line item.

done whenHand your free tier's exported file to someone who has never heard of you; they can name the tool from the file alone, with no caption from you.

Ship the internal view as a public URL. In Dub, a link's analytics page goes public with one switch called Enable public sharing, and the address is copied to your clipboard the moment you flip it. The recipient opens app.dub.co/share/dash_xxx and reads live click data inside Dub's own interface, with the Product, Pricing and Sign up nav sitting on top of it. Take the screen your users currently screenshot for clients and investors, give it a real URL, keep your nav and signup button on that page, and copy Dub's password and search engine indexing toggles so nobody is afraid to switch it on.

done whenCount the screenshots of your app that users pasted into decks, Slack or client emails last month; each one is a public URL you have not shipped yet.

Let other products emit your artifact. Dub's core is public as dubinc/dub under AGPLv3 open core, with a self-hosting guide, a REST API, an MCP server and native SDKs in TypeScript, Python, Go, PHP and Ruby. That means a company that is not Dub creates Dub links from inside its own app, and that company's users meet the artifact without ever visiting dub.co. Publish the smallest possible way for someone else's product to create your artifact programmatically, in the language your buyers actually write, and put the source where developers already look.

done whenAt least one of your artifacts was created today by code you did not write, running inside a product you do not own.

Run your own program on your own rails, in public. Dub sells partner program infrastructure and operates its own on it: partners.dub.co/dub is a live application page paying 30% per sale for a year to the partner and giving 20% off for three months to the person they bring. Customers' affiliates get links on the customer's own domain, like refer.dub.co/mia, and log into Dub's partner portal to check their numbers, so every creator one customer recruits ends up with a Dub account. Point your own referral motion at your own product, keep the application page public and linkable, and let the people your customers recruit become account holders instead of hiding them behind a white label.

done whenYour own referral or affiliate program has a public page a stranger can open, and it runs on your product instead of a third party tool.