How to hit £5M ARR in 30 days

Kennan Davison just built a company called Icon that hit £5 million ARR in 30 days.

Kennan Davison

Thirty days.

And honestly, watching how he did it is like seeing the Think Like A Creator playbook executed perfectly.

Icon makes AI ads for e-commerce brands.

You feed it your existing video content and it spits out hundreds of new ads automatically.

They knew exactly what problems needed solving because Kennan had worked at Pinterest, Hulu, and legendary ad agency Wieden+Kennedy.

He'd lived the pain himself.

Basically, he embodied ‘understand your audience better than they understand themselves’.

But how Kennan launched it is genius.

Three months ago, Kennan posted on LinkedIn announcing Icon.

Got over 9,500 likes, which for a B2B product launch is absolutely wild.

For context, most B2B product launches get about 12 likes and 3 comments.

But Kennan's post was basically a masterclass in not being boring.

He opened with "Introducing Icon, the world's first AI Admaker" - immediately claiming category leadership like a proper creator would.

Then straight into the flex:

"We're backed by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund and execs from OpenAI."

Boom.

Why should you care?

Because these massive names believe in it.

And then instead of boring technical specs, he used an analogy everyone would get:

"Icon is like ChatGPT + CapCut, but for making winning ads with AI in minutes."

Suddenly everyone understands exactly what it does.

What's brill about Kennan's approach is how he nicked all the best creator strategies and applied them to enterprise software.

First, he gave away massive value for free.

Had this internal Google Drive with 1,000 winning ads from brands doing £20M+ revenue.

Instead of keeping it secret, he gave it away to anyone who commented "Icon."

That's creator thinking right there - give away your best stuff to build trust and audience.

Second, he addressed the real pain points:

"3-person creative teams make 30 ads per month. With Icon, they make 300." That's not corporate speak about "efficiency gains." That's "your life is about to get 10x easier."

Not "we optimise creative workflows for enhanced productivity."

Just "your team will make 10x more ads."

Third, he understood platform dynamics.

The post was designed to go viral on LinkedIn specifically.

He knew exactly what would get shared and commented on.

The Results:

Three thousand demos in the pipeline from one LinkedIn post.

£5M ARR in 30 days.

Backed by Peter Thiel.

All because he applied creator thinking to B2B software.

While his competitors were probably writing boring press releases about "leveraging AI to optimise creative workflows," Kennan was giving away valuable resources and talking like a human being.

To me, this is proof that even B2B buyers are just people who want to not be bored to death by corporate speak.

And that creator principles work way beyond content creation.

Kennan understood that even B2B buyers are humans who want to be entertained, educated, and given value upfront.

He built genuine relationships with his audience instead of trying to sell them immediately.

He shared his knowledge freely instead of hoarding it behind paywalls.

And he communicated like a person, not a corporate.

That's Think Like A Creator applied to enterprise software.

And it absolutely smashed it 👏

Remember, the creator mindset is all you need to grow 🌱

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