Product & Growth Marketer. Exited Founder.

Josiah Lau

I bootstrapped three apps to global top 10 rankings, without reliance on paid ads. Our portfolio was acquired in early 2026.

Post-exit, I've been drawn to physical AI. I'm now looking for an early-stage startup in this space hiring their first marketer, to dedicate the next stage of my career to.

If you know of one building physical AI products that make the human side of work more thoughtful, not redundant, I'd love an intro.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

Shipped as a business

Shopside SaaS

Bootstrapped 3 Shopify apps and exited via acquisition in early 2026. I was the non-technical co-founder who owned everything outside of code and design: Positioning, GTM, Sales, Marketing, Customer Support, and Finances. We hit global top 10 App Store rankings within 12 months on a content and community flywheel — no ads, affiliates, or discounts. We also had first-month profitability for every paying customer.

Hot Pot ClubeCommerce

Australia's first end-to-end DIY hot pot kit delivery, built with my two friends during COVID lockdown. We bootstrapped and sold out all kits at full price without any discounting. We broke even our initial investment, but winded down when COVID costs spiked across the board.

Beyond MondayseCommerce

Deep question cards for team building. This was a side project I did to learn how to design and manufacture a physical product from scratch. I successfully sold out my first shipment during early-COVID, and kept the original Shopify site for testing our Shopify apps later on.

Personal projects

Shopify Compatibility Auditor

Shopify doesn't always play nicely when merchants run multiple features together and we often get the blame. I built this to get ahead before merchants submit a support ticket. I paste new installs from Slack, it runs a pre-defined compatibility audit, and returns a prioritised list with the specific conflicts and the merchant's contact email.

View on GitHub

CV Chatbot

I built this interactive chatbot with logic trees and multiple choices, so potential employers could explore my background at their own pace. I built this in 2018 before AI chatbots were mainstream, as I thought static resumes were a terrible way to stand out as a candidate. (It's now offline.)

Proposed to my gf via Facebook Ads

I built a Facebook page around DIY crafts (one of my gf's interests), made a video of someone "teaching" how to make a magic cube with my wedding proposal message hidden in it. I then ran an ad campaign using Custom Audiences to propose to her. She said yes and it was the best ROAS and ROI of any campaigns I've ever run in my career.

Read the story

Network Index Toolkit

I built a script for querying my LinkedIn contacts to make warm intros in my network. Each person has their own markdown file with real evidence (messages, meetings, notes) instead of a computed relationship score. The keyword search tool is based on synonym expansion, and surfaces a list for me to review. Names and companies in the screenshot are fabricated for demo purposes.

View on GitHub

See more on GitHub

What people say

"Josiah brings more than just his excellent results and admirable work ethic. He is the person you want in your team that brings a huge amount of joy and positivity to any situation. He's able to see past the difficulty and motivate those around him to keep going and remember to laugh. Jo's personality and results made his a stand out member of our team who is respected by everyone who works with him."

Rachel Khoo — Head of Digital Experience, Domino's

"Jo's meme game may be strong, but his respect for his co-workers and role is even stronger. Jo is as much of a learner as he is a teacher; his dedication, passion, enthusiasm and eagerness to do more for not only his role, but his peers, is absolutely genuine."

Anna Howard — Head of Content & Social, The Lottery Corporation

View more recommendations on LinkedIn

Thoughts

Is distribution really that hard, or are you just playing the decay game?Pick your channels for fit and play the compound game instead. Bootstrapped to exit. Now what?The parts they don't tell you about your first exit. Five questions to ask before joining a startupAfter three redundancies where marketing was an afterthought, I built my set of criteria.

All posts on Substack

Say Hello

The best founding marketer is one who's built and exited their own startup.

Hiring your first marketer or need a hand with GTM? Let's jam.