Launched Carrd to his own Twitter followers on March 7, 2016.

“I excitedly launched Carrd via”

The audience was not cold: it was the following he had already built years earlier through his template and theme design work, and it converted well into Carrd's first users.

“the followers I'd gained from that translated pretty well to Carrd”

A follower posted Carrd to Product Hunt on March 1, 2016, before AJ's own planned launch; it was then featured on March 16, 2016 (9 days after the Twitter launch), driving 1,000+ upvotes and the #1 spot in tech for the day.

“1000+ upvotes and the #1 spot in tech for that day”

Compared with the Twitter launch, the Product Hunt feature operated on a different scale entirely, and AJ says its effect kept feeding new users and sites long afterward.

“getting featured on Product Hunt was on another level entirely”

Every site built with Carrd (on the free plan) carries a small 'Made with Carrd' link at the bottom; that badge is removed only on the paid Pro plan, so every free site is a passive referral for the product.

“All sites built with Carrd carried a small, unintrusive "Made with Carrd" link at the very bottom”

AJ describes years of Carrd's growth as running almost entirely on word of mouth, explicitly with zero paid advertising or marketing spend, funded instead by continuous product improvement.

“I've done zero advertising or marketing”