Application — Growth
Your hero shows Zoro's Enma Katana Handle, yet the home title sells "Buy Katana Sword Online". The character pull is not doing the work.
Who I am
- Former COO of Tabs. Built its creator program to 100M monthly social impressions, and the paid ad engine alongside it.
- Founded Mainstreet, a consumer home-services platform: a team of 70, $25M raised (Greylock, Khosla, YC, Tim Ferriss). It failed.
- Before that: Quintessential Ventures, an early seat at a high-growth startup, and entrepreneur-in-residence at Prehype.
- I'm moving into growth specifically. The creative and top-of-funnel work is what I want to be doing every day.
What I noticed
- Inosuke Katana (Battle-Ready, SHARP) | 1045 Carbon Steel is $169.99, struck from $349.99. A steep markdown is a hook, but the title reads like a spec sheet.
- The banner says "FREE SHIPPING ON USA ORDERS $99 AND ABOVE", but the meta description says "Free shipping on USA orders." with no threshold. Two messages for one offer.
- Zoro's Wado Ichimonji Katana (Battle-Ready, SHARP) | 1045 Carbon Steel is $145.34, and Zoro's Enma Katana Handle leads the hero. Zoro runs through several products, one story to build ads on.
What I built
What I'd do here
- My KPI: scale ad spend, hold target CAC. Everything else follows from that, across a catalog of Battle-Ready replicas priced from $119.99 to $399.99.
- Week to week: launching a bunch of different experiments, losers killed early. One variable per test: the character, the steel or the markdown.
- Creators: anime cosplayers for Zoro and Kanao, collectors for the Historical Series, gamers for the Minecraft Iron Sword and Hand of Malenia.
- Reporting so you never have to ask. Daily CAC. Weekly what we learned. Monthly cohort payback, down to which Zoro ad earned it.
- Event tracking I'd spec and work through with your team. That part isn't me. Your free shipping threshold needs clean purchase events first.
Month one
| Metric | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Creators live | 0 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 10 |
| Creator videos / week | 0 | 14 | 28 | 42 | 56 | 70 |
| Landing pages live | 1 | 3 | 5 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
| New ads / week | 12 | 12 | 12–20 | 12–20 | 20 | 20 |
| Unique experiments | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 6 |
Two creators join each week until ten are live by week six, each posting seven videos a week. New ads and landing pages follow the creators, so every Zoro or Inosuke test gets its own page. Proposed.
Creator videos a week = creators live × videos per creator. Week 1: 0 × 7 = 0; Week 2: 2 × 7 = 14; Week 3: 4 × 7 = 28; Week 4: 6 × 7 = 42; Week 5: 8 × 7 = 56; Week 6: 10 × 7 = 70.
How I'd start
- Audit the free shipping threshold message across the banner, meta description and product pages, so every ad lands on one clear offer.
- Build a claims sheet from your own carbon steel descriptions, so every ad uses wording you already publish.
I'd love to chat if this makes sense. Grab a time here.
Danilo