Launching a software business has never been easier, and never felt more brutal. Templates, no-code tools, and AI copilots slash the time it takes to ship a product, yet the moment you press “publish,” you step onto a battlefield where attention is auctioned off to the highest bidder.
Aleksandr Shelestov knows that tension firsthand. He built HypeDesk because he was tired of watching brilliant products drown under the rising tide of ad costs and competitive noise. His story is a study of finding leverage when you have more ideas than dollars and in turning personal frustration into a platform that thousands of tiny teams now rely on.
What HypeDesk Does
HypeDesk “Helps to promote startups with no budget.”
At its core, HypeDesk is a growth copilot for lean teams. It bundles three thorny tasks —discovering leads, sending cold emails, and building backlinks —into one interface, then adds social posting, directory submission, and a Chrome extension for on-the-fly outreach.
Crucially, these workflows are gamified, featuring daily streaks, milestone badges, and progress bars that reward founders for consistent action. Where other tools overwhelm newcomers with knobs and metrics, HypeDesk turns marketing into a sequence of small, winnable quests.
For developers, solopreneurs, and seed-stage SaaS teams, the shift from open-ended “go market yourself” to structured “do this next” is the difference between shipping updates into a void and seeing tangible upticks in traffic, signups, and backlinks within days.
The Spark Behind the Idea
“Building a startup isn’t that complicated anymore. But with so many people launching startups, it’s getting harder and harder to promote and find your first clients.”
“Nowadays, it’s normal to pay $10–$15 per click on Google Ads. But who has that kind of budget?”
Aleksandr’s light-bulb moment did not arrive in a tidy epiphany; it came through repeated sticker shock. Each time he ran a small Google Ads experiment, the CPC inched higher until spending $100 for a trickle of clicks felt like setting fire to rent money. Meanwhile, Twitter brimmed with founders celebrating launch weeks, only to go silent when paid acquisition failed to scale.
Seeing that pattern, Aleksandr asked a blunt question: if paid ads are pricing everyone out, why not build software that helps the rest of us win organically without demanding hours of manual prospecting? By fusing lead generation with cold outreach and backlink distribution, HypeDesk became his answer to the affordability crisis every bootstrapped founder faces.
The Cold-Email Engine That Powers Daily Signups
The headline number, ten to fifteen sign-ups every single day, matters because it demonstrates product truth: the tool Aleksandr sells is the same engine that fuels its growth.
“Leads and cold emails are key. I use HypeDesk’s lead and cold email management system, and it brings me 10–15 signups per day with a solid conversion rate.”
His workflow begins on Product Hunt, a perpetual stream of freshly minted SaaS and AI projects. Instead of combing through each launch page by hand, Aleksandr built an AI-assisted filter inside HypeDesk that spots listings tagged B2B, SaaS, or AI and then pulls founder contact data into the lead pool.
From there, HypeDesk’s email composer steps in. Every template is stitched with AI-driven snippets: the product’s tagline, a nod to the day-one pain point, and a soft invitation to “get featured in up to 400 places.” Because each line references the prospect’s public launch, the message feels timely, specific, and human, not like a mass blast. The results show up the next morning when Aleksandr opens his dashboard to a fresh batch of onboarded users.
A Friction-Free Offer Designed for Cash-Strapped Teams
Aleksandr’s pricing logic echoes classic wisdom: when money is tight, minimize the downside and highlight the asymmetrical upside. The free tier lets founders see firsthand how quickly backlinks accrue; the $19 lifetime upgrade removes recurring anxiety altogether. By benchmarking that against the $200 many directories demand a single listing, Aleksandr reframes the purchase as almost irresponsibly cheap.
“The offer is simple: get featured in up to 400 places and start growing backlinks from day one.”
“It’s free to try, and $19 is a one-time payment for lifetime access and updates…considering that many directories charge up to $200 for just one listing with a single do-follow link, which seems a bit crazy to me.”
Psychologically, this matters. Founders who have been burned by marketing gurus or steep subscription tools carry skepticism; a low one-off payment signals that Aleksandr is betting on word-of-mouth rather than lock-in. And because every new paying customer effectively subsidizes future feature development, the community becomes a feedback-funded R&D loop.
Hitting the Wall: Free-to-Play Conversion
Growth seldom unfolds in a straight line. Once daily signups turned reliable, a new bottleneck emerged: plenty of founders tried HypeDesk, enjoyed a bump in exposure, and then churned before paying. Aleksandr diagnosed two root causes. First, some users achieved their immediate goal of listing a launch across directories and then paused their outreach. Second, others wanted deeper analytics, channel suggestions, and automated follow-ups, but the free tier had a cap.
“For me, the focus is on converting free users to pro. Right now, I’m building more features to add even more value to the product.”
His counter-move was two-pronged. He shipped additional modules, including a Chrome extension that allows users to clip potential leads while browsing, and a “campaign health” dashboard that identifies which backlink sources drive the most traffic. He layered progress indicators on top so free users could see, in visual terms, how much further their campaigns could stretch with the pro tier unlocked. Early data suggests the nudge is working: paid conversions have begun to catch up with the top-of-funnel pace.
The Listening Habit That Keeps Roadmaps Honest
“The key to growing a product in the right direction is to listen to your users and ask the right questions.”
This listening habit is not just a good practice, but a crucial strategy that ensures HypeDesk continually adapts to meet the evolving needs of its users.
Aleksandr refuses to guess what should land in the next sprint. Every feature starts as a support ticket, community DM, or X thread, which he tags, tallies, and reviews each Friday. A request that surfaces three weeks in a row becomes a must-ship item; one-off curiosities wait their turn. The discipline shields him from the “cool-idea trap” many solo builders fall into, shipping flashy features that dazzle on launch day but gather cobwebs after.
Impact in the Wild
“What drives me is the positive feedback from clients and the impact HypeDesk has on helping indie devs grow.”
Scroll through Aleksandr’s mentions, and you’ll find founders posting screenshots of newfound referral spikes, backlinks from previously unreachable sites, and, most rewarding of all, early revenue from customers who discovered their app through HypeDesk-driven outreach. Each win fuels the next cohort: testimonials become social proof, which in turn drives the next wave of signups, compounding growth with no ad spend.
The Road Ahead
HypeDesk’s roadmap aims to deepen automation while sharpening guidance. Aleksandr is exploring AI-generated “next best action” prompts so a solo founder can open the dashboard and know exactly which outreach task will yield the highest marginal return that day. There’s also talk of a marketplace where power users share proven campaign recipes, giving newcomers a running start.
For Aleksandr, though, the mission remains unchanged: tip the scales back in favor of builders who have more grit than cash. In a landscape where paid channels continue to inflate, a tool that translates hustle directly into visibility feels less like a nice-to-have and more like a survival kit.
Where to Follow Aleksandr and Try HypeDesk
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/justonedev.co
If your SaaS or side-project is stalling because your marketing wallet is thin, spend a few minutes inside HypeDesk at hypedesk.io.
The free tier will show you whether backlink momentum and AI-powered cold email resonate with your niche; the one-time $19 upgrade is there when you’re ready to accelerate. And if you’re curious about the product’s evolution, or want to nudge the roadmap, follow Aleksandr’s build-in-public threads on X and Bluesky. Your voice may well shape the next feature you didn’t know you needed.