Sidekick Browser
Head of Marketing & Growth (2022)
01 / Context
Sidekick Browser was built for people who work fast: engineers, founders, operators, anyone running five tools at once and bleeding attention. It wasn’t “a browser,” it was an operating environment for focus—session isolation, app pinning, resource control, and workspace-level context. I joined to build the story, build demand around that story, and turn early love into repeatable growth.
02 / What I Walked Into
The product was ahead of the story.
We had:
A technically great product that power users were obsessed with and couldn’t quite explain.
Word-of-mouth in founder/engineer circles, but no clear positioning.
Multiple disconnected voices (founder voice, landing page voice, in-product voice, emails—all different).
No repeatable acquisition motion. Growth was happening, but it wasn’t directed.
No retention narrative. People stayed because they felt relief, but we weren’t naming or reinforcing that relief.
We also had zero paid engine to lean on. Everything had to be organic, owned, or community-driven.
That’s the environment I work best in.
03 / What I Actually Did
My role sat across brand, growth, and community. I was responsible for:
Building the brand voice and positioning from scratch, then pushing it everywhere so it felt like one company speaking with one mind.
Designing and running the launch motion that won Product Hunt Product of the Day and Product of the Week. That launch drove a 600% increase in users in under 8 weeks.
Owning community activation: listening to our earliest users, feeding their language back into the messaging, and turning them into evangelists instead of just “beta testers.”
Building our core lifecycle and onboarding flows in real language, not generic SaaS copy, which directly contributed to ~90% retention in those early cohorts and 3x higher engagement during onboarding.
Partnering directly with the CEO to shape founder-facing story: fundraising decks, investor narrative, and ghostwritten external content that supported the $2.6M pre-seed raise.
I wasn’t “helping marketing.” I was the marketing, the community, and most of the growth engine.
04 / How We Did It (The Work)
Step 1 / Sit in the product, shut up, listen
Before touching copy, I paused external noise and went into observation mode. I watched users work in Sidekick over screen share. I sat in Discord and Reddit for hours. I read the frustrated messages, not just the praise.
I wasn’t collecting generic “feedback.” I was looking for emotional patterning:
“I can finally work again.”
“It’s quiet.”
“Chrome makes me feel scattered. This doesn’t.”
That told me our angle wasn’t “better browser performance.” It was cognitive relief. The product protected mental focus. That was the story.
Step 2 / Nail the identity in one line
I rebuilt positioning around a blunt, useful frame: Built for builders.
It wasn’t fluffy branding. It was a filtering statement. We weren’t for casual tab-scrollers. We were for people shipping things.
Internally, that gave us alignment:
Who are we talking to? Builders.
What do we promise? A workspace that protects their focus.
What are we allowed to say no to? Anything that dilutes that.
Externally, it gave us language that people could repeat without needing a deck.
Step 3 / Make the voice consistent everywhere
The worst thing an early product can do is sound like five different companies. I wrote and enforced one voice system and rolled it out across:
Product UI and microcopy
Onboarding emails and activation nudges
Landing pages and feature pages
Release notes, founder posts, and public announcements
That voice system did two things:
It made complex features legible. I turned technical benefits into practical outcomes (“stay in flow,” “lock into one task,” “no more tab chaos”), so users didn’t have to translate.
It made the experience feel intentional. You weren’t just downloading a browser. You were joining a tool built for how you actually work.
Step 4 / Launch like a movement, not a product
The Product Hunt launch was not “throw it up and hope.” I architected it like a campaign.
I:
Recruited and primed our earliest power users and builders as advocates instead of “beta access.” They weren’t asked to upvote. They were asked to tell the truth about what problem Sidekick solved for them, in their own language.
Built staggered teaser moments pre-launch to warm the audience instead of dropping cold.
Shipped founder narrative that sounded human, not corporate. I ghostwrote and edited founder-facing posts and replies so they carried authority without ego.
Coordinated timing between Product Hunt, email, social, and our in-product announcement so it felt like a single wave.
The result: Product of the Day, then Product of the Week, and a 600% user increase in under two months with zero paid spend.
Step 5 / Build retention into onboarding, not after
Acquisition only matters if people stick. I built multi-touch onboarding and lifecycle flows that were direct, behavior-based, and respectful of the user’s time.
Examples:
If you pinned workspaces and isolated sessions in the first session, you were far likelier to stay. So we started nudging that action early and reinforcing the “you’re in control now” moment right after they did it.
We used language that mirrored what users had already told us they cared about, not what we wished they cared about. That’s how we got the 3x onboarding engagement lift and ~90% retention in those first cohorts.
Step 6 / Close the loop fast
We ran fast A/B copy tests on landing pages, subject lines, and hero messaging—not just for CTR, but for quality of activation downstream. That work alone improved conversion by 27% and dropped bounce by 18%.
We treated copy, flow, and funnel like product, not like “marketing assets.”
05 / What Moved (Impact)
600% user growth in under 8 weeks from a product-led, community-fueled launch with no paid budget.
Product Hunt Product of the Day and Product of the Week.
~90% retention in early cohorts, with 3x higher engagement during onboarding once we rewired the first-touch experience around “focus, not features.”
Conversion lift of 27% on key landing pages and a drop in bounce of 18% through message clarity and narrative framing.
Supported a successful $2.6M pre-seed fundraise by shaping founder narrative, investor decks, and positioning.
But the metric I care about most: users started repeating our language back to us. Once the market starts telling your story for you, you have leverage.
06 / Notes + What I’d Do Next
Sidekick later evolved, restructured, and ultimately shut down operations in 2024, with key members of the team moving on to build Comet at Perplexity. That outcome doesn’t change the core lesson for me: the playbook worked. We proved that you can turn a technically strong product into a movement by telling the truth about what it gives people, then building systems to reinforce that truth at every touchpoint.
If I were running this play again at a new company, I’d layer two things earlier:
Creator/influencer partnerships built around POV, not promo. The “built for builders” frame would translate well into opinionated YouTube/TikTok creator content where founders walk through their stack and literally show Sidekick in use.
Deeper segmentation in lifecycle. We knew engineers and founders used Sidekick slightly differently. I would split that activation journey sooner so each group feels like the product was built for them, not for “power users” in general.
