I’m Sunil Joshi, designer, frontend developer, and digital product builder.
For the past 15 years, I’ve been building and running digital products. And one thing I’ve learned: Growth isn’t magic. It’s structure.
Recently, we launched Shadcn Space, a niche Shadcn UI library built specifically for developers who want production-ready blocks and landing pages.
In the first 28 days after launch, we generated:
- 102,000+ page views
- 18,000+ sessions
- 1,700+ organic clicks
- 300+ GitHub stars
- 500+ waitlist signups
- 151K+ Reddit Views
No paid ads.
It was the result of years of building digital products, making mistakes, understanding distribution, and applying those lessons intentionally.
In this post, I’ll break down exactly how we achieved this step by step so other builders and founders can apply the same principles to their own products.
1 – Build curiosity before launch
Most founders build privately for months and then expect a single launch post to change everything.
That rarely works.
Before launching ShadcnSpace publicly, we created momentum intentionally.
We:
- Built a waitlist landing page
- Shared preview videos of real UI blocks on Twitter and Reddit
- Showed actual product quality, not mockups
- Posted consistently for 3 – 4 weeks
- This helped us get 500+ users joining the Waitlist
This early phase was not about traffic. It was about positioning.
When people repeatedly see progress, they subconsciously assign credibility. They feel part of the journey. By the time we launched, we weren’t introducing a new product, we were releasing something people were already expecting.
Social Proof:
Waitlist reddit post
One of preview reddit post
Waitlist tweet
One of preview Twitter post
Key Insight: Don’t build in silence. Build in public.
2 – Open Source as a Trust Engine
On January 26, we released the open-source version.
Within 3 weeks:
- 300+ GitHub stars
- High-quality developer feedback
- Organic shares within dev communities
Open source does something powerful for developer tools: it removes skepticism.
Developers do not trust landing pages. They trust code.
When someone can inspect your repository, evaluate the structure, and understand implementation decisions, the barrier to adoption drops dramatically.
Instead of asking people to “trust us,” we let them verify us.
That credibility didn’t just drive GitHub stars; it also amplified SEO clicks, Reddit conversions, and direct traffic.
Social Proof:
GitHub Repo
Key Insight: Open source reduces trust friction.
Read more here.