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Building HanleyLabs: The Complete Founder Journey

Latest Entry: 1st Aug, 2025

This is a living, breathing page that constantly evolves - I aim to update this page at least once a day depending on how interesting the day was. The aim of this page is to help not just aspiring newsletter founders, but I believe if we see success, we breath it, and if we breath it - we live it.

The Mission: Building What Actually Works

Most SaaS marketing advice is generic guru advice that doesn't work for real founders with real constraints. I'm building HanleyLabs to be different - a newsletter backed by real data from actual founders and a successful marketing career, not recycled guru wisdom.

Current Status (TLDR): 1 subscriber, first newsletter published, hunting for feedback and growing X/Twitter.

July 28, 2025: Foundation Day

TLDR:

  • Created Ghost instance on Railway
  • Started theme customization with Claude Code
  • Built conversion-focused modal (no more ugly Ghost defaults)

What is Ghost and Why?
In a nutshell, Ghost is an open-source (and can also be hosted if you aren't into that), but it's dev-friendly, beautiful, easy to use - extremely cheap (costing me about £4 a month), and works super well.

Would I suggest it... maybe. You should if you value owning your infrastructure (which so early on... probably not), but I'm using it from day one. As time goes on, with coding becoming more accessible (think claude-code, codex and gemini-cli), open-source is becoming cheaper AND easier to edit for your own preference (for example, I connect n8n heavily into this.)

What is Railway?
I love railway, a little more than I should as a marketer - it's basically a pay-as-you-go microservice powerhouse, it has tons of templates, can basically absorb any open-source project (meaning, you could host open-source, practically free a calendar + meeting scheduler app. I guarantee it'll be PENNIES compared to alternatives, and quality is not compromised.

example image of cal.com

Back to hosting my entire website (ghost) on railway, here it is:

example of railway, ghost + mysql

It really is that simple. I'd really suggest a quick 10 minute tutorial, like n8n perhaps (if you want to follow my strategies, get n8n.)

Claude Code & Sign Up Modal:
Very helpful tool, for example, I completely replaced the original sign up process with this so I could understand my audience more. The focus of my newsletter isn't the amount of subscribers - it's the quality of each person.

Image of 'Let me get to know you' sign up modal.

July 29, 2025: Backend Architecture

TLDR:

  • Built webhook system with n8n
  • Created multi-step onboarding wizard
  • Technical challenge: Ghost JWT + crypto libraries solution

N8N:
I haven't introduced N8N to you yet - I love n8n so much, I was 50/50 between doing a SaaS marketing newsletter, and a N8N one. I think I've ended up doing both at the same time.

When you 'subscribe' to my newsletter, it runs through n8n, for example:

(this isn't the finished backend... for security reasons - BUT, it shows the general functionality.) When a user 'subscribes' it calls the 'signup events', we generate a ghost JWT (little complicated but just message me if you need help with that), and we basically manage our entire ghost backend from it. This is how we are able to collect data on consenting users.

July 30, 2025: The Late Night Grind

TLDR:

  • Added Microsoft Clarity for heatmaps/session recordings
  • Built custom scroll CTA (70% article completion)
  • Facebook Pixel nightmare (banned, phone verification hell)
  • Mailgun domain connection still broken
  • Girlfriend intervention at midnight...
  • Added GA4 (google analytics 4)

Marketing Gold-Mine:
Okay, I'll break these down and why they are so useful (especially when you have ZERO subscribers):

1. Microsoft Clarity: Early on, if I spot the website doing weird things via session recordings (if user consents), then I can fix it instantly - great for early error catching. Heatmaps allow me to see most effective CTAs (call to actions).

2.Facebook Pixel: I plan to run paid ads (strength of mine), so providing Facebook with the data before i need it, allows my targeting to be more like you!

3. Mailgun: Mailgun is the tool that ghost uses to actually manage the newsletter. That's basically all I got at this point. I'm having tons of issues implementing my domain DNS, etc, but support is helping me with it.

4. GA4: Google Analytics 4 is basically essential, just gives vital information like users, bounce rate (how many people instantly leave your page), devices, locations etc.

5. Scroll CTA: You may have noticed this as you are reading any of my content on the website. This basically isn't going to get anybody - but it actually isn't for that. This is the gentle reminder 'hey, I actually do this as a newsletter.. not a blog'.
It reminds the reader of the options available to them, to continue receiving content like mine, priming them at the end of the content to subscribe.

Example of Scroll CTA for Subscription

August 1, 2025: First Ever Organic Subscriber & The Emotional Rollercoaster

TLDR:

  • Published first newsletter: "Is your SaaS worth building? Here's how to know."
  • Reddit reality check: 24 hours of silence on r/newsletters
  • Breakthrough moment: First genuine comment "this issue kicked major major ass"
  • THE WIN: First real subscriber ("looking forward to next week")
  • Twitter launch: Follow + comment within 2 hours (zero followers)

The Newsletter Launch:
Finally hit publish on "The Shark Method" for SaaS idea validation. Posted to r/newsletters and then... crickets. For 24 hours. Watching AI-generated posts get engagement while real work gets ignored was a proper gut punch.

The Breakthrough:
The same reddit 24 hours later and got my first real comment: "this issue kicked major major ass". Complete stranger, genuine reaction. Was checking Clarity and GA4 obsessively - seeing real session recordings of people scrolling, clicking the AI tool links, engaging with the content.

Reddit Thread

THE MOMENT:
Got the notification. First real subscriber. They said they're "looking forward to next week." This is everything - the hardest barrier most founders never cross. All the backend work from the last few days suddenly made sense.

Twitter Strategy Begins:
Started the "Megaphone and Peers" approach. First thread with ZERO followers got a follow AND comment within 2 hours. No X premium, no reply farming yet - just solid content proving the methodology works.

Yes... I tried asking a question but got ignored - no worries, all part of the process!

Total emotional whiplash. Went from feeling like a complete failure to getting the best validation possible.

August 2, 2025: The Manual Grind & First Case Study Gold

TLDR:

  • Continued 10-20 daily outreach activities across Reddit/Twitter
  • Game developer gave detailed breakdown of 5000-player launch strategy
  • Multiple founders engaging with systematic marketing insights
  • Reality check: 1 quality lead from hundreds of activities (but that's normal!)

The Outreach Reality: Spent the day doing what I said I'd do - 10-20 activities across Reddit and Twitter. Replied to founders struggling with design vs. messaging, engaged with growth stories, hunted for case studies. The conversion rate is brutal but expected. Maybe 1 quality founder connection from hundreds of interactions, and zero subscribers today.

Probably worth mentioning though, this sort of high quality content is evergreen (or at least, much more than paid ads), today I got 1 more website viewer than yesterday, and that is sometimes what growth looks like, it lags, it doesn't follow effort, and it's unpredictable.

The Case Study Breakthrough: The game developer came through with absolute gold. 60-person Discord pre-launch, Reddit post on r/AndroidGaming driving initial traction, and the anti-monetization approach actually working better than typical mobile games. Industry people telling him it's "far beyond what a typical launch looks like."

His quote: "I almost don't feel worthy of it, but they must be enjoying it to do that" - exactly the founder humility that makes great case studies.

What I'm Learning: The manual grind sucks, but it's building something. Founders respond when you demonstrate systematic thinking rather than just cheerleading. The game dev story proves ethical approaches can outperform predatory ones - perfect newsletter material and a great message for me to have the privilege to push to all two subscribers! (as i wrote this, my girlfriend subscribed)

The Reality Check: One engaged founder from hundreds of activities feels impossible, but apparently this is month 1 normal. Most people quit here. The compounding won't kick in for months.

(also, found a bug where on phone version, in my menu 'subscribe' doesn't do anything.. I also have 'login' without actually having anything to log into)

Tomorrow: Draft the game developer case study and continue the grind.