Story Arbitrage (StoryArb) growth strategy

Posted a single tweet offering ghostwriting services for executives willing to pay $5–10k/year, asking interested people to DM him. No product existed yet — purely a demand test.

Manually matched early clients with two freelance ghostwriters. Set up a Slack channel as the entire operational infrastructure. No formal agency tooling or processes.

After 2–3 months of running clients through Slack with freelance writers, assessed whether there was enough traction and signal to justify hiring a CEO and formalizing the business.

Hired a full-time CEO to run the business day-to-day so Alex could step back to 5–10 hours/week. CEO compensation structured as $100–200k salary plus 10–50% equity with quarterly profit distributions post product-market fit.

Grew to 12 clients at $7,000/month each. Service model: monthly interview with client, ghostwriters + content strategist produce 12 pieces of content per week per client. Team is 2 full-time employees and 3 freelance ghostwriters.

Defined product-market fit as: (1) 50%+ of clients would recommend StoryArb to their network where their own reputation is on the line, and (2) average client retention reaches 10 months (vs. industry norm of 3–5 months). Actively tracking both metrics.