🌸 How Glasp.co Scaled from 0 to 2 Million Users – A Startup Growth Playbook
Published on 2/15/2025
Reading time: 4 minutes
Most startups dream of hitting a million users. Few ever do. Fewer still grind their way there without massive funding, viral luck, or paid ads.
But Kei Wantabe, founder of Glasp.co, did exactly that—building his knowledge-sharing startup from zero to 2 million users with sheer hustle, smart strategies, and relentless execution.
It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t glamorous. But it worked.
This is the inside story of how Kei hacked user acquisition, scaled without a massive team, and turned Glasp into a global success.
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🌼 How to Scale a Startup from 0 to 2 Million Users
📌 Want a growth playbook? Here’s how Kei did it:
Start invite-only
and manually recruit early adopters.
Talk to every user
—founder calls improve retention.
Invest in SEO early
to drive organic traffic.
Leverage content marketing
(guest posts, community outreach).
Jump on trends fast
(e.g., ChatGPT plugin).
Have a mission bigger than just growth
—make users care.
🌻 1. The Invite-Only Growth Playbook: How Glasp Got Its First 1,000 Users
Most founders launch too fast, hoping users will magically show up. Kei did the opposite.
🌿 He started invite-only, giving access to friends, early adopters, and power users. 🌿 He joined niche Slack communities (some with 100,000+ members) and personally engaged with users. 🌿 He targeted product managers—his ideal audience—who needed knowledge-sharing tools.
🌸 Lesson for Founders:
🌼 Forget "going viral." The first 1,000 users are earned, not given. 🌼 Find your early adopters manually. Talk to them. Engage. Sell them on your vision.
🌻 2. 700 Founder Calls: The User Retention Hack No One Talks About
🌿 700+ onboarding calls.
Most startups automate onboarding. Kei did the opposite.
📞 Every new Glasp user had to book a call with him.
Why? Two big reasons:
It crushed churn.
Users felt personally invested in the product.
It was a feedback goldmine.
He learned what features mattered most.
📌 Lesson: 🌼 Talk to your users. Not with surveys. Not with analytics. Call them. Listen. Learn.
🌻 3. Best SEO Strategy for Startups: How Glasp Used Content to Scale
Scaling beyond early adopters required a shift from manual acquisition to organic traffic.
🔍 Kei optimized Glasp’s website to rank for productivity and knowledge-sharing searches. 📝 He wrote guest posts on Forbes and other major publications to boost credibility. 📈 He made SEO a priority, ensuring that users searching for “best AI knowledge-sharing tools” found Glasp.
📌 Lesson: 🌼 SEO isn’t an afterthought—it’s a long-term investment.
🌻 4. Jumping on Trends: The ChatGPT Plugin That Exploded Growth
🌿 When ChatGPT launched, Kei built a ChatGPT Chrome extension. 🌿 It became the most-used GPT-based plugin at the time. 🌿 He then launched a YouTube summary plugin, which went viral.
These micro-products funneled thousands of new users into Glasp.
📌 Lesson: 🌼 Trends come and go. The winners are the ones who act first.
🌻 5. The Bigger Vision: Why Glasp Exists Beyond Just Growth
Kei’s mission?
📖 To preserve the knowledge we consume so that, when we pass away, it doesn’t disappear.
Glasp isn’t just about storing information—it’s about creating a lasting record of what you learn, so future generations can build on it.
📌 Lesson: 🌼 Growth matters. But having a bold mission makes people stick around.
🌿 Final Takeaway: How Kei Wantabe Scaled Glasp.co
✅ Recruit your first users—Slack, communities, personal invites. ✅ Do the hard work that doesn’t scale. 700+ onboarding calls = better retention. ✅ Invest in SEO early. Free organic traffic compounds over time. ✅ Jump on trends quickly. The ChatGPT plugin move was a game-changer. ✅ Have a bold vision. Users don’t just buy products. They buy missions.
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