About Alignify and Me
Personal sharing from an AI/SaaS growth expert
Personal Introduction
I'm Kostja. Previously, I worked on growth at a global AI application team focused on image/video generation and editing, with two products:Cutout.proandPromeAI.
Cutout.pro's monthly visits stillremain stable in the top 50. This achievement is the result of my personal participation in the entire AI application traffic growth process since joining on August 1, 2022.
I joined my previous company on August 1, 2022. Before that, I spent five years studying and working in Germany; and five years before that, studying for my bachelor's in Russia. All were linguistics-related, and I once thought teaching would be my career path.
My previous company worked on CV and image processing. Although quite different from today's generative AI, I was still an "AI practitioner." In August of that year, Midjourney and Novel AI were emerging, followed by the open-source SD algorithm, until ChatGPT's release in late November focused global attention on generative AI. During this period, the already high-traffic website grew even more with market expansion, once approaching Leonardo AI. For many practitioners, it was just seeing AI-related websites surge in traffic; for me, it was personally participating in the entire process.
When I joined, I was in operations, first doing content marketing work. My mentor was an SEOer, so I was exposed to this field early (though she left after 3 months, and I had to learn on my own). Due to the startup's work nature and the company's high freedom for positions, I later worked on influencer marketing, social media (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn), communities (Discord, Reddit), EDM/Newsletter, backlinks, Affiliate/Referral, Customer Support, and even offline events and PR. You could say I've hands-on experience with everything except SEM.
By the end of 2023, in addition to professional work, I began consciously socializing and connecting with more AI and growth practitioners. I also started building my own IP, like on Jike (because Xiaohongshu didn't work out after a month, I recently restarted it). Through content and friend recommendations, I met more practitioners.
Jike sharing insights
Xiaohongshu recording visits to AI companies and meetups
In 2024, I was invited by friends to participate in several online and offline growth sharing events (introvert tears); I also started systematically recording methodologies, practical experiences, and know-how in Feishu notes. By the second half of the year, some friends started paying for consultations, with good results, making me think this was promising. So I officially left before October and registered my own company (another reason was not liking office work), mainly providing growth consulting and training services.
Thanks to my good reputation and the blue ocean market of AI/SaaS Globalization, business volume and revenue are growing rapidly (have served 80+ AI/SaaS websites, some written in customer cases). The recruitment post I posted earlier was based on this. I've also set two small goals for next year.
Growth business: Scale + standardize, transform from delivering services to delivering results. This means I need to convert personal experience into replicable methodologies and processes, enabling more AI/SaaS products to achieve business breakthroughs through standardized growth strategies.
Product business: Bootstrap and create an (AI) product myself. As a growth expert, I deeply understand the mutual promotion between products and growth. By personally building a product, I can combine growth theory with practice, providing more comprehensive guidance for entrepreneurs.
Some Thoughts on Globalization/(Going Global) and Growth
AI applications have high homogeneity, especially modal products (text/image/video/3D generation and editing) and certain industry vertical applications (companion/recruitment/marketing/productivity tools). At one point, four or five teams with very similar products approached me simultaneously, all targeting the same traffic market. And whenever there's a hot topic, everyone rushes in, like AI Hardware, Agents, AI Coding, etc. This homogeneous competition not only increases customer acquisition costs but also makes it difficult for products to establish differentiated advantages.
Conversely, products not focusing on these hot scenarios are quietly making money. Generative AI has the power to reshape all tools and services. Product selection is crucial. Products that find unique application scenarios and solve real pain points often find their survival space in competitive markets and even achieve rapid growth.
Of course, the above happiness/troubles don't matter to 90% of companies - they're out before that, without even a chance to compete at the table. In terms of going global, many companies' growth capabilities are even worse than independent developers. This reflects a systematic lack of growth capabilities rather than a single channel or strategy issue.
This is a result, not a cause, driven by many factors. For example, domestic growth often relies on founders' technical background, PR, and advertising. In other growth channels, domestic markets quickly entered the mobile internet era, with traffic entrances occupied by apps like Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and Bilibili, while globally, web and search engines are mainstream. This difference leads to domestic teams often lacking deep understanding of web-based growth channels like SEO and content marketing when going global.
More importantly, the neglect of growth positions. Check Boss for salary comparisons across positions: Algorithm > Engineering > Product > Sales > Operations. Without matching attention, don't expect impressive growth. If you believe technology and product power can ignore "good wine needs no bush," users and markets will give the most honest answer. Growth is not icing on the cake, but the infrastructure for product success.
Growth is the simplest thing – put your product in front of users, iterate or pivot when hitting bottlenecks to match larger markets and user groups; align supply and demand, do what users need, not find possible users for what you have. This seemingly simple logic is the core reason why many teams struggle to implement it.
Some Previous Speaking Events
Below are some growth sharing events I've participated in. Through these events, I've exchanged experiences with more AI/SaaS practitioners and shared growth methodologies and practical cases.