Ross Morsali
Founder
How a bootstrapped WordPress founder turned LinkedIn from sporadic product updates into a build-in-public engine — with engagement jumping from ~20 likes per post to consistent 70–114 like, comment-heavy posts in a few months.
The story isn''t a smooth climb — it''s a clear inflection.
For the first stretch of our work together, posts hovered around 20 likes and a couple of comments. Engagement actually bottomed out right before the turn (6 likes, then 2). Then the recent run jumps into the 24–114 range and stays there.
That dip-then-surge is more credible than a clean upward line. It reads as a real before/after, not a vanity curve.
What actually changed
Cadence. Early posts were months apart. The recent labels (2wk, 2wk, 1wk, 1wk, 5d, 1d) show posts going out far more frequently. More frequent posting and higher per-post engagement is a stronger claim than either alone.
Angle. We moved off "here''s a new feature" and into Ross''s actual point of view as a bootstrapped founder building in public — his decisions, his trade-offs, what he was learning in real time.
Audience. We stayed close to the WordPress core that already trusted him, and started running deliberate experiments aimed at a broader founder audience beyond it. Both layers compounded.
Why the comments matter most
Comments scaled with likes at roughly 3.5x. That''s the harder, higher-signal metric — it suggests the recent posts are landing, not just getting drive-by likes. People are stopping to respond, not just tap.
That''s the shift we were after: from solid-but-forgettable updates to content the right people actually want to engage with.
The challenge
Ross was posting inconsistently and mostly about new product features. He stayed inside his comfort zone, didn't lean into his own POV, and there was no clear path connecting what he shared to who he wanted to reach. Engagement reflected it — flat, low, and quiet.
The work
We locked in a 2–3 posts per week cadence, surfaced Ross's unique approach as a long-time bootstrapper, leaned hard into build-in-public, and stayed close to his core WordPress audience while deliberately experimenting with posts aimed at a broader founder audience beyond the WordPress world.
Results
- →Per-post engagement moved from a ~20-likes baseline to a sustained 70–114 likes per post within ~3 months.
- →Comments scaled roughly 3.5x alongside likes — the higher-signal metric, suggesting posts are actually landing, not just collecting drive-by likes.
- →Posting cadence shifted from months between posts to multiple posts per week, compounding distribution.
- →Positioning is now read as confident and clearly placed — multiple people told Ross he comes across well-positioned, not like someone emerging from the corner.
"You didn't come across like someone coming out from the corner, you came across positioned well and confident."