The validation signal and pre-launch audience came from a tweet to his existing following.

“In November 2018, I tweeted my goal to help 1,000 people start writing in 2019.”

He credits the built-in audience and lack of direct competition with letting him skip paid marketing entirely.

“with a built-in audience and without a lot of competition, so for the first year, I didn’t have to pay for marketing.”

Both founders emailed their own lists directly to announce the course rather than running ads.

“Tiago told his alumni about the course and I emailed my email list of ~5,000 people about it.”

His personal site drew well over a million visitors in the launch year, mostly to long-form essays.

“More than 1 million people visited my website in 2019”

He frames trust, built through student experience, as the actual driver of referrals for a premium-priced product, not paid marketing.

“For high-end products like Write of Passage, word-of-mouth is the best advertising channel there is.”