Word of mouth was cultivated deliberately: fast, generous customer support rather than spending on ads.

“But given that we had a product people liked, we went all-in on customer service.”

Scott's own explanation is that people trust friends' recommendations far more than advertising.

“People don't trust ads; people trust their friends.”

Scott ran Reddit AMAs on r/IAmA and r/entrepreneur that hit the front page; one crashed the website with a signup spike right after the site launched.

“Scott went on Reddit and did an AMA, which crashed the website and once again created a huge spike in sign ups.”

He credits Reddit's niche communities and treats it as a two-way relationship: contribute genuinely (answering flight questions for free) rather than just self-promoting.

“First, Reddit is an incredibly powerful resource.”

A friend who worked at Business Insider passed the story to a colleague, who wrote a viral article linking to Scott's email list, taking it from 300 to 5,000 subscribers overnight.

“A friend of mine who worked at Business Insider flagged it for a colleague, who wound up writing an article that went viral. The article included a link to my rinkydink email list, and literally overnight it went from 300 subscribers to 5,000.”

Scott attributes the spike to a mix of preparation and luck rather than a repeatable PR strategy.

“Getting those early subscribers was equal parts skill and luck.”

Rather than test paid acquisition, the team deliberately chose to reinvest into customer support instead of ad spend.

“And instead of putting money into ads, we put money into hiring customer support folks instead.”