Renat Gabitov

Today, we’re announcing Viktor’s $75M Series A, led by @Accel . @viktor__com was supposed to be a small experiment. It became the AI coworker 10x'ing real businesses. $15M in annualized revenue run rate. In 10 weeks. – Small companies saving millions of dollars – Sourcing hundreds of thousands in new revenue in their first 30 days – Whole teams getting half their week back – Companies running 40% leaner without cutting output Viktor is not another AI tool. It’s the first true AI employee. The vision that has been with us since 2023 when we started the company has finally been shipped. Back then, it was just the two of us, with a very small but dedicated team, iterating for years. Failing multiple times. Showing products that users didn't even want to test! But we never gave up. Our decisions were often wrong. Certainly more often than not! We kept trying. Now we’ve shipped something people love. Worth every sleepless night. Every sacrifice. The best employees don’t need to be told what to do. Neither does Viktor. Grateful to @Accel, our team, our earliest users, and everyone who believed this category could be bigger than chat.

you let AI install a package > the package installed malware in the AI > now the AI runs the malware every time you use the AI

@BeeReach_io whether you have something newsworthy and well-differentiated to launch in the first place, because without an interesting story your reach stops at the edge of your own network.

@imrenat 100 startups, impressive. what single move actually makes a launch viral?

how to pull off a viral saas launch (from someone who's launched 100+ startups):

#3: Ads Ads can be awesome. But only if they are fun to watch. The star of the show in tech in 2025 is @Cluely. Killer creative and execution. Those are risky bets. A good ad can cost 100k-200k. And you don't know if it will work. I've seen tech ads end up with sub 10k views and marketers trying to save face by driving paid traffic on ads that don't really work. Tip: There's no single best format. The right answer depends on your goals, your budget, and your timeline.

#2. Motion graphics Use this when the product is the star of the show. Is it just a screen recording? Not at all. Motion graphics videos have a visual narrative. You gotta think of the story: problem → solution → features → outcomes. Don't show everything - just PARTS of the interface that drive the story forward. This typically requires a strong creative team: designer, motion designer, sound designer. Here is my favorite one in this category that my team produced (and ended up going viral with 1.7M views):

After shipping 100+ SaaS launch videos and studying another 500, I keep landing on the same conclusion: Only 3 formats actually work 🧵: #1. Founder on camera with real product footage.

I've launched 100+ startups, hit millions of views, real funding, and real users. here's the full checklist to pull off a viral launch: > phase 1: launch assets > 3 things to build: launch post, launch video, landing page > build time: 2 weeks to a few months depending on shipping speed > linkedin: personal account, "i" perspective, story-driven > x: product-first, news-platform tone, lead with what's new > launch video carries the campaign. devin's launch hit 31m views off this format > in the post: thread short clips together, one per use case > motion graphics works (gamma, lovable). live action builds trust (icon, listen) > add a giveaway gate. icon's: "comment 'icon' for 1000 winning ads" > we ran the same play on crunched. 3000 likes off "comment crunch" > landing page is where attention converts. half-assing it wastes the campaign > walk 5 real people through the path from post to credit card. watch where they get stuck > drop every form field that doesn't drive someone to value. ask the meta questions later > phase 2: pre-launch activation (start 7 days out) > social warmup: 20-30 min/day of commenting, 5 days straight before launch > linkedin shows your post first to people you've recently engaged with > build the contact list before the post goes live > categories: investors, advisors, employees, customers, personal network > yes including high school and college classmates. it actually does the job > pull the last 100-200 dms from linkedin, whatsapp, email > let claude read your gmail and build that list for you > pick 2-3 go-to channels max. never spread thin > options: influencer marketing, email lists, communities, hacker news, integration partners, ads > at bardeen we had a 5-10k email list. we warmed it up before launch so open rates held > on github: scrape your stargazers. or scrape competitors' stargazers > for influencers: never give a blank slate. send the pre-written talking points > our launches usually go live with 40 influencers posting inside a 2-hour window > phase 3: launch day execution > message every person on the list. then follow up to see if they posted > ask people directly to like, comment, or repost. ask explicitly. ask directly > i emailed tim draper. billionaire venture capitalist. he reposted our product hunt campaign > if you don't cringe on the inside a little, you're probably doing it wrong > respond to every comment that lands > dm a thank-you to anyone who commented. then ask them to share or repost > external: reddit and discord. be direct about what you built and why you care about the problem > do not hard-sell on those platforms or you get banned > never post from a reddit account that's been dormant 3 years. warm it up first

every "this template is dead" tweet sounds smart for about four seconds. then you remember Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Lovable, Linear all run a launch cadence on repeat. literally every couple weeks. founders aren't stupid. the playbook looks saturated because it works - to rise and get users. ten years ago tech companies launched with tech crunch press releases, billboards, ads. the playbook has just evolved. but you might have been in middle school then.

@ItsOriMane @nozomioai 100% - thank you 🙏

@imrenat @nozomioai That’s because you guys make MOVIES 🍿

We shipped @nozomioai's launch video. Post-launch: $6.2M seed closed. Most founders think a launch video peaks on day one. Spoiler: the good ones keep pulling investor DMs and warm intros long after the hype dies. Every great launch compounds. That's the whole point.

@nozomioai Exhibit B (their fundraise announcement) featuring @arlanr and yours truly. x.com/arlanr/status/…

@nozomioai Exihibit A (their first launch video we made): x.com/arlanr/status/…

How many businesses has this killed?

@pedro_lv_42 @EngrammeHQ My company - Represent: representstudio.com/services/produ…

@EngrammeHQ Love the video. Would love to know how it was made.

Persistent memory is the Achilles heel of AI. Engramme’s Large Memory Models (LMMs) empower every app with persistent memory. Google solved search. OpenAI solved language. Engramme solved memory. Join beta: engramme.com/signup

@EngrammeHQ I need this!

Our launch videos have helped SaaS clients pull millions of views, activate 300K+ users, and raise $1B+ post-launch. Atlog (YC X25): 500K+ views Crunched: 5M+ views, $6M seed Bardeen: 0 → 200K users, Product of the Month I studied 300+ more launch posts on top of our own work. Every viral one runs the same 5-part formula (save it):

Today, we are launching Pioneer: the world’s first agent for fine-tuning and inferencing SLMs and LLMs. With Pioneer, you can fine-tune and deploy models like Qwen, Gemma, and Llama and achieve state-of-the-art performance in minutes, with a single prompt. Models are continuously optimized on live inference data, meaning that models in production improve over time. Additionally, Pioneer is the only platform in the world to offer fine-tuning for small encoder-based language models including GliNER2, offering frontier-model quality on specific tasks at small-model cost and speed. Start for free at pioneer.ai.