I won’t pretend 2025 started confidently.
Moving countries. Taking on a bigger role. Managing huge personal and professional changes.
It was overwhelming. Not gonna lie.
I kept coming back to this line by Jimmy Carr:
“You cannot overcome self-doubt by shouting affirmations in front of the mirror. It comes from creating irrefutable proof that you are who you say you are.”
So instead of sulking into doubts, I decided to ship. Scrappy, Imperfect, Mistakes – No rebounds, keep going.
If you are new, I’m Lakshmanan – I head the growth at dadan.io and create content under Common Sense Tamil on Instagram. I currently live in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and love talking about SaaS, Marketing, Startups and growth (not just the marketing kind). Subscribe to my newsletter if you’d like to receive updates on my weekly experiments.
A new country, a new chapter
By April, I moved to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and joined Dadan, an AI video platform.
New country. New company. New expectations.
Settling in wasn’t easy – different culture, different pace, different ways of doing things.
I’ll keep this part short. What mattered more was learning how to execute before feeling comfortable.
Building a marketing team (without job titles first)
One of the first things I did was build a marketing team.
But I didn’t follow the traditional:
“Let’s hire for roles.”
Instead:
If you have the skill, we create the role around you.
That’s how the team came together — freelancers and full-time folks — structured around capability, not titles.
One of the earliest lessons I got about hiring was to look for FSO people (Figure Shit Out). In startups, no one has the answer to all problems which is why you need people who don’t know things, but who can figure it out.
Less friction. More ownership. Faster execution.
July: AppSumo, chaos, and customer conversations
July was intense.
We went live on AppSumo.
For the first two weeks:
- 20-hour workdays (not exaggerating)
- 2–3 hours of sleep (with my laptop next to me)
- 1,000+ users on chat
- 200+ customer calls
No scripts. No assumptions. Just listening.
Last week, Dadan was announced AppSumo Tool of the Year 2025.
Not just for sales — but for reviews, support quality, and community feedback.
Avoiding the AppSumo hangover
AppSumo can be a double-edged sword.
So while the launch was running, we made sure:
- Traffic didn’t stall
- Content kept shipping
- Affiliates stayed active
- Partnerships didn’t pause
The result?
The MRR chart over the last 6 months tells its own story.
Short-term spikes didn’t come at the cost of long-term growth.
Working directly on the product
This was also the first time I worked deeply on product features.
The rule was simple:
We build what users ask for.
Almost every feature shipped at Dadan came directly from customer conversations.
No roadmaps built in isolation. No “we think this might work.”
The public roadmap is where I spent a lot of time in, going through comments, most requested and connecting with users to understand the request better before blindly copying the dev team.
Just requests → priorities → shipping.
Personal lessons I’m carrying forward
I’ve spent the last 4 years in the video industry, so context helped.
But this was my first role as Head of Marketing — and the hardest part wasn’t strategy.
It was building trust in a new ecosystem.
One piece of advice that stayed with me:
Always keep a few quick wins up your sleeve.
Don’t wait for momentum. The obvious path of a new website, better branding, need more budget can wait. You should be able to deliver those quick wins through your experience.
This helped me build trust with the founders, investors, and get the momentum up overall for a great 2025.
Don’t rebuild everything from scratch. Use what you already have — and convert it into proof.
Getting hands-on again (and having fun)
After a few years, I got to do everything hands-on again:
- Writing posts
- Designing creatives
- Shipping content
We focused only on LinkedIn.
And we made a conscious choice:
We’re not market leaders — so let’s not try to sound like one.
Instead, we aimed to make people smile.
You can never go wrong with that.
How I think about writing content now (didn’t change much)
When you write:
- Forget SEO
- Forget templates
Your only job:
The first line should make me read the second.
Answer every question a user might have — inside the content itself.
Our presence on AI recommendations is increasing and compounding. Over 500 users in last two months referred by chatgpt. What did we do? the basics but right.
I know you might hate me for saying this, but our DR soared from 19 to 43 over the last 5 months. Not that it changes things, but any win is worth mentioning right?
SEO can wait. Clarity can’t.
What’s coming in 2026?
I like audacious challenges.
If we spend 4–5 years on this, we’ll be huge. That’s obvious.
The real question is:
Can we do it in two?
And while doing that:
Can we create a new marketing playbook?
Everyone on the team already has AI tools.
So the mission for 2026 is simple:
No silver bullets. No hacks.
Just executing the boring, mundane work faster — and better — than everyone else.
That pace will decide everything.
