Hey 👋

I’m Mike, founder of Layers.

I’ve been coding since the 90s.
For nearly 30 years, I’ve built product after product, shipped them, launched them, celebrated them.

And I know that feeling.

Launch Day

🚀 You’re on top of the world.
Your product is finally live.
You know people will love it.

The Next Morning

📉 Zero users.
No installs.
No signups.
Just… silence.

It feels like getting punched in the stomach.

The Problem

Developers don’t struggle to build.
We struggle to get users.

Whether it’s:

• A mobile app finally approved after 5 rejections
• A B2B SaaS solving a real, painful problem
• A side project you know deserves a shot

The pattern is the same:

We ship.
We wait.
Crickets.

And what do we do?

• ❌ Build more features, because code is comfortable
• ❌ Pivot to something else
• ❌ Launch again… and repeat the cycle

I’ve done all three. A lot.

Why This Is Personal

What feels like a lifetime ago, I was a founding engineer at an ad tech startup serving the world’s biggest brands.

We built an enterprise unified ad management platform across:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Instagram

Aside from Facebook, I was the first API integration for every platform. We helped guide them to build what we needed to run ads effectively at scale.

After we sold the company, I spent over 6 years at Snapchat building their marketing platform from scratch and helping transform the company from IO-based brand takeovers into a programmatic ad powerhouse.

I’ve built the machinery behind growth at scale.

Then I went back to startup land.

This time, I wanted to build consumer mobile apps. It was pre-AI coding tools. I was still banging out character by character like a caveman.

After a bunch of App Store rejections, I finally got my first app approved.

That rush. That top-of-the-world feeling.

The next morning?

Zero users.

Punched in the stomach again.

That’s when it hit me:

Developers don’t need more features.
They need marketing, done for them.

So I did what any good friend would do.

I called @jimobrien.

Jim is an incredible engineer and technical leader. He was with me at the startup, then at Snap, and later led engineering teams at Coinbase.

I convinced him to build a mobile app.

After a bunch of rejections, he finally got approved.

The next day?

Punched in the stomach.

I told him:

“I know it sucks.
I needed you to feel that feeling again.
Let’s go solve it once and for all.”

Then we called @stevenspaced.

Steven had been with us through the startup and Snap journey. He’s one of those rare people who is:

• 50% Product
• 50% Engineering
• 50% Taste

Our pitch landed.

He’d felt the pain too.

Our founding team was in place.

What If Marketing Was a Layer?

So we built Layers.

Layers is the easiest way to turn your code into customers.

The name is deliberate.

Every marketing tactic is a layer:

• Some long-lived: Google Ads, Meta
• Some opportunistic: UGC waves, Shorts trends
• Some deeply technical: SDKs, attribution, data loops

The only constant is that there will always be new layers to try.

Instead of handing you a marketing plan and saying “good luck”…

We act.

How Layers Works 🚀

🔗 Connect Your GitHub (Optional, But Powerful)

We analyze what you built, who it’s for, your tone, aesthetic, ICP, automatically.

🎯 We Recommend a Stack of Layers

Not a vague strategy.
A concrete set of actions tailored to your product.

⚙️ We Execute

With your permission, we:

• Research and generate content
• Distribute to TikTok, Instagram, and soon YouTube Shorts, X, Reddit and more
• Analyze performance and extract insights
• Feed that data back into future content

📈 When Content Wins, We Scale It

Our agent Elle, your CMO, suggests next steps.

Stay in the loop as much as you want.
As you build trust, you can defer decisions at a granular level, if you choose.

Elle is available on the web and through iMessage and SMS.

Paid, When the Time Is Right

We’ll suggest launching and optimizing ads across:

• Meta
• TikTok
• Apple Search Ads
• Google

🎥 Need UGC?

A couple clicks.

We source, manage, and optimize creators for you.

🧠 If GitHub Is Connected, We Go Deeper

• PRs for ad network SDK integrations
• Attribution tracking setup
• Closed-loop performance optimization

For every layer, you’re always in control:

• Post yourself
• Send to drafts
• Or let us schedule and post

Who Is Layers For?

• Indie hackers
• Mobile app builders
• SaaS founders
• Developers who want distribution but hate marketing

If you love building but don’t love pulling marketing levers, this is for you.

Why We Built Layers

We want to solve that emotional roller coaster developers face once and for all.

Not every product will succeed.

But every developer deserves a real shot.

Layers exists to give you that shot.

We’re Live 🚀

We’d love your feedback.

Ask me anything about:

• Ad tech
• Snap
• SDKs
• Growth loops
• UGC
• Attribution
• Or the ugly emotional side of launching

Let’s turn code into customers. 🚀