2 founders. 90 days. $1M ARR.

A full breakdown of the PMF or Die social content strategy

Tommy Clark
February 25, 2025

Hey!

Welcome to Social Files—your no-BS guide to generating demand for your B2B product using social & content.

Today I want to share a content play that is both completely insane and pure genius.

You might not want to ‘replicate’ it. Nor should you. But there is one lesson every founder & marketer should take away from this.

(And understanding it will set you apart from 90% of startups on social right now)

Shall we?

🔎 DEEP DIVE

2 founders. 90 days. $1M ARR.

A full breakdown of the PMF or Die social content strategy

These 2 guys got locked in an NYC apartment and aren’t allowed to leave until they hit $1M ARR. Insane premise. Great marketing. Here’s what we can learn.

First, some context.

‘PMF or Die’ is a content show produced by the same guys who run the Technology Brothers podcast (think Pat McAfee show for tech - their words, not mine). The show has one of the best launches I’ve ever seen.

Back in January, Jordi Hays, one of the Technology Brothers hosts, posted this to X:

Yes. This sounds insane.

No. He was not joking.

Two contestants were selected to get locked in ‘the cage.’ Blake Anderson, a founder who’s scaled 3 apps to $10M in total revenue. And Patrick Callaway, a 21 year-old founder who Blake recruited to join him in the series.

One month later, the show rolled out with this viral launch video on X.

The storytelling—more on this in a moment—is A+. In the video, Blake says “I’m pretty public about the fact that I’ve made millions in profit from my apps. But for my critics, anything I do is never enough.”

The copy also sets up the series well: “We’re about to find out what happens when you lock 2 builders in an apartment with $25K, an internet connection, and just 90 days to build a $1 million dollar business.”

Curiosity gap: created.

So yeah. Blake and Patty started from zero at 12pm EST on February 17th, and the cameras have been rolling since then.

As part of the show, they’re tracking:

Time left in the cage (as of right now, 7 days have elapsed, leaving 83 days to get to $1M ARR)
Capital spent ($750 of the initial $25K check has been burned so far)
Revenue (the company is pre-revenue as I’m writing this)

The broader content play around ‘PMF or Die’ gives us marketers a lot to be impressed by:

The branding is fire
Literally live streaming 24/7
Viral launch video with a $3000 budget
Tapping into the startup community on X
Branded social content to pair with the livestream
Using the distribution of the 2 contestants to get more viewers for the show
Adding Minecraft parkour brain rot footage to the stream to fry viewers’ dopamine receptors and keep them hooked. No, not joking.

Every day, when I log in to X, I’m seeing something from the series. It’s either a meme from the brand account. A post from Blake or Patty. A shoutout from a viewer. Something.

But if there’s one idea to take away from this and apply to your own content, it’s this:

Create a story with real stakes.

So much of B2B marketing is painfully boring. White papers with stats from 2017. Webinars nobody could give less of a shit about. HR-approved infographics for LinkedIn.

Even ‘story-based’ content like traditional case studies are pretty boring. “Startup A saved 17 minutes per week using this SaaS tool run by a founder they’re homies with.” Riveting.

Everyone does it—that doesn’t mean it works well.

The stakes make the story.

Stakes are why ‘building in public’ content from founders like Adam Robinson on LinkedIn and Tyler Denk in his newsletter is taking off right now. People within their target audience feel like they’re part of the story. For both of them, there are real stakes - will their company make it?

PMF or Die is building in public taken to the absolute extreme. Everything is public. The wins will be public. So will the failures. The audience has something, and someone, to root for. Will Blake and Patty actually hit $1M ARR in 90 days?

There’s literally a Polymarket bet open wagering on the outcome of the series.

Brandon Sanderson, a legendary fantasy & sci-fi author, has this simple framework for plot: Promise, Progress, Payoff.

PMF or Die checks all the boxes for a compelling story:

Promise: Will Blake and Patty successfully build a $1M business in the next 90 days?

Progress: Literally every second of progress—and obstacles—is being streamed to the internet.

Payoff: The co-founders either achieve, or fail at, their $1M ARR goal.

The series also does a great job weaving mini-stories into the larger story arc. An example of this would be the product reveal. Going into the cage, there was no indication of what type of product the two co-founders would launch. They made an event out of the reveal. Smart play.

And like I mentioned earlier, there’s also the angle of Blake ‘proving haters wrong,’ adding stakes to the story. If they fail, they not only miss out on the $1M business, Blake’s critics also get a win.

This conflict in the narrative keeps viewers invested. They want Blake and Patty to win. They also don’t know if it’s going to happen.

Now, I’m not saying you have to lock yourself—or any of your team members—in a 700 square-foot apartment for 90 days as part of your next content play. I’m not even saying you have to ‘build in public.’ There are downsides to that, too.

I am asking you to consider whether you are publishing content that deserves your customers’ attention. Most B2B companies are not. Be honest with yourself.

Here are some tactical ways to apply storytelling in your content:

If you want to full send this, you could also do some sort of challenge series tailored to your ICP. For example, a company like Unify might run a challenge to see if they can generate $5M in pipeline with their own product. Just an idea.
You could share more ‘building in public’ content, without necessarily having to livestream. Similar to how Adam shares his P&L every month and Tyler shares his investor updates via email. This works well if you are selling into other founders. If you're not selling to founders, be careful not to get wrapped up in this.
Use narrative in your ‘normal’ posts. Instead of saying “Hey we just launched this feature,” write up a story about the lightbulb moment that inspired the feature. Instead of writing a basic post about an industry myth, record a talking head video telling the story of how you learned it the hard way.
Just steal the ‘promise, progress, payoff’ framework and refer to it when you're writing your next post.

AI is driving the value to basic ‘how-to’ content to zero. Your stories are your moat. The smartest founders will:

Use their own stories in their content.
Manufacture new stories via creative content formats (like the one we examined today).

Hope this is helpful.

Let’s see if Blake and Patty make it to a million in the next 86 days. I’m taking the ‘Yes’ on the Polymarket bet.

🗃 FILE CABINET

Here’s my favorite marketing and business content I bookmarked this week.

How to get customers on LinkedIn (7 steps) by Tommy Clark 🎥
Plot Theory (Lecture #3) by Brandon Sanderson 🎥
Building a Fiction Empire, $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, and Unbreakable Habits feat. Brandon Sander by Tim Ferriss 🎥

Check these out.

BEFORE YOU GO…

As always, thanks for allowing me into your email inbox every week.