Every YouTube strategy that worked for SaaS founders

Creator-partner apps (Loïc): Loïc works with more than 500 YouTube creators for his apps Minia and Drop Magic. Promoters are paid in cash or affiliate revenue, and some creators become co-founders with equity. To pick them he searches YouTube for his keywords, checks which creators competitors use, and wants views of at least 10% of the follower count, at least 100 comments per video and at least three past brand deals. [source]

Coding game: When blog growth stalled, the team gave FreeCodeCamp, a large YouTube channel that hosts free coding courses, an 8-hour course. Working with that creator was a cheat code that built trust and took the game from $10K to $30K a month. [source]

Packager: After a Reddit launch, Packager partnered with Microsoft MVPs who recorded video demos of the product, including on YouTube. Those demos still bring in long-tail customers years later. [source]

Discord channel-finder SaaS: The first 400 users came through Discord with no ad spend, and the owner of one Discord server made a free promotional YouTube video about the tool. [source]

Website built in three hours: The launch combined posts on X, a Hacker News front page and coverage from YouTubers. Since then the founders have grown it by building in public and sharing what they know. [source]

Puff Count (Steven): Steven downloads his videos and posts them on TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and X, and says X is especially overlooked. [source]

First app (Kian): Kian posted three times a day, reposted every video across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Facebook, and put his own face behind the brand from the start to build trust. [source]

One-website app: He runs three TikTok accounts posting three times a day, five days a week, and uses Repurpose.io to cross-post each video automatically to YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels and Snapchat. [source]

Four-app portfolio: After testing many things, funny short videos posted to TikTok, Instagram and YouTube worked best for one of his apps. Its sales came from 200 million organic short-form views across the three. [source]

FollowBuddy (Ben): Ben checks YouTube search volume with the Keywords Everywhere extension and goes after high-intent terms where competitors are weak or missing, such as 'best Instagram unfollower tracker apps'. His videos confirm the search intent straight away, list pros and cons, and get re-filmed in new versions until they reach the top listings. He says one channel can hold several top spots on YouTube, which is almost impossible on Google. His branded channel got 40,000 views in 28 days, mostly from search. [source]

AI SEO writing SaaS (Vasco): Vasco makes three kinds of videos he calls money-making assets: evergreen ones, ones tied to current news, and viral MrBeast-style software videos. On one of his videos, 65% of the traffic comes from YouTube search. [source]

Setter AI: The founders make long-format YouTube videos because YouTube is the second-biggest search engine and long videos build high intent and trust. They find video ideas with AnswerThePublic. [source]

One-website media business: Swim University, a pool-care education business, cuts one long-form video into three short-form videos a week, turns the scripts into blog posts and sends two or three emails a week. Its YouTube channel has about 225,000 subscribers. [source]

AI resume builder (Colin): Colin's advice is to make long-form videos and use AI to chop them into 10 to 20 second clips. [source]

Creator-partner apps (Loïc): Loïc says creators' long-form videos keep bringing organic traffic over time, and the same footage can be repurposed into shorts and ads. [source]

Tech Lockdown: Ben built a system to limit his own internet use while working from home, then shared it as a YouTube video and a Reddit post. People started messaging and emailing him for help, which became the business. [source]

FollowBuddy (Ben): Ben answered support questions about Instagram account bans, then published a video showing a safe workaround he calls the compare lists method. It went viral with over a million views and brought his first customers, and he followed it with 20-minute videos aimed at buying-intent searches. [source]

13-business portfolio (Jackie): When Jackie launched Local Rank, a YouTube video with only 1,800 views brought 80% of the $20K MRR launch. A tweet with about 30,000 views brought the other 20%. [source]

BulkMockup (Vikash): Vikash makes simple tutorials for long-tail problems his Photoshop plugin solves. They get few views but bring in customers every day, and each one keeps selling month after month. His advice is to stop framing it as a video meant to go viral and speak straight to the problem. [source]

FollowBuddy (Ben): Ben says the more specific a video is, the more likely YouTube is to believe you understand the problem. He grew his own channel with the same tactics he teaches. [source]

Creator-partner apps (Loïc): More than 60% of Loïc's new customers come from YouTube, which he calls a machine for conversion. He finds TikTok good for brand awareness but says it doesn't convert as well, and that YouTube's outcomes are more predictable. [source]

AI SEO writing SaaS (Vasco): Vasco took the SaaS to about $70K MRR fully organically on YouTube alone. He says it is the best platform for know, like and trust, because viewers see your face and hear your voice for a long time, and that it beats TikTok, blogging, Twitter and LinkedIn on effort for results. [source]

BulkMockup (Vikash): Vikash looks for videos in his niche with few views but many comments, a sign of unresolved pain, lists every objection in them, and makes a better video that answers all of them. He also collects problems from communities, onboarding emails and customer support. [source]

Late Checkout: The team uses the VidIQ Chrome extension for competitive analysis on YouTube, including pulling the top questions from comments. [source]

13-business portfolio (Jackie): Jackie posted long and short 'stream of consciousness' videos every day for two to three years before Google updates wiped out his content sites, and that audience saved the business. His first video got 30 views in 24 hours. He makes uploading part of his routine and works on strong five-second hooks, after an opener of taking a scoop of creatine made viewers leave at once. [source]

One-website media business: The growth strategy has not changed since day one: create as much content as possible and repurpose the long-form videos into short-form videos and blog posts. [source]

AI SEO writing SaaS (Vasco): Vasco moved his calls to action from the end of videos to the beginning and middle, and made them specific instead of generic. Because YouTube conversions are hard to track, each video gets its own UTM link in the description, plus dedicated coupons and a welcome survey that attributes new signups. [source]

13-business portfolio (Jackie): Jackie links a lead magnet of helpful documents and notes in each video's show notes. It captures viewers' emails so he can pitch products to them later. [source]

AI SEO writing SaaS (Vasco): To multiply output, Vasco runs several YouTube channels presented by people hired on Upwork who are comfortable on camera. He tried established creators first and dropped them as too expensive and too difficult to work with. [source]

Three cloned apps: Once paid ads have validated an app, he builds faceless YouTube, TikTok and Instagram channels that post daily UGC-style videos about the product, published automatically by a tool called Story Short. He says these channels bring big results over time. [source]

Breathwork app: The team treats X as an idea battleground. Posts that catch on there become short-form scripts for TikTok and Instagram, and the format moves up to longer YouTube videos last. [source]

Mobile app (two founders): The founders validate content on X first, replicate the winning posts as short videos for TikTok and Instagram, and turn the best of those into YouTube videos. [source]