"Sometimes One Follower on X Takes 60 Minutes": How We Grew Our X Account from 0 to 1,500 Followers in 6 Months

When we started working on Unicorns Club, we chose X.com as the channel to share our product development journey publicly. Our goal was to introduce the startup community to our product before its official launch.

In November 2023, I took charge of my empty X account. It took a month to reach our first 200 followers. I tried various strategies, and once some started working, my colleague shared the effort with me.

Today, my X account have 1,500 followers. I receive a lot of supportive comments and likes every time I post a new milestone. But let's look at the hard work behind each new number. This text will help you decide if #buildinpublic is worth the time and effort.

Account Growth Dynamics

On average, our account grows by 9% weekly. We experienced rapid growth at the start, but we couldn't maintain that pace as more time was needed for product work. The growth rate fluctuates from 1.5% a week to 25%.

The screenshot shows that about half of our growth is organic—users who find our account through posts. While this seems positive, many of these accounts are bots or not our target audience: see the Organic (Non-targeted Users) column.

📛 Relying solely on organic growth isn’t effective if you want to build a relevant audience.

Cold Outreach

We use a strategy typical of any social network: identifying users who fit our Ideal customer profile and engaging with them. This involves following the user’s X account and sending a message or comment.

We address multiple goals here. As we develop our product, we test various hypotheses about necessary features and the marketing positioning. Our comments and messages reflect our current inquiries, asking potential users for their opinions and experiences. It’s similar to customer development, sometimes yielding unexpected results.

Time Investment for Each Targeted Follower

Sometimes, acquiring one follower on X takes us 60 minutes. On good weeks, it takes half that time. The time on the screenshot is only for cold outreach and doesn't include time spent writing posts and replying to comments, which also takes significant time.

On average, we spend 16 hours a week on cold outreach. Adding 4 hours for posting (as a minimum), we total about 20 hours weekly.

What We Gain

45% of the users who visit unicorns.club and fill out the waitlist form come from X.com. In this sense, we see tangible results—our daily efforts on this channel directly influence the interest in our product from our target audience.

Simple math shows that you need to spend at least 3 hours a day working on your X account every day to grow to 1.5K followers in 6 months. With these figures, you can decide whether dedicating 3 hours daily to X is worth it or if that time is better spent working on your product. What's your choice?