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 five 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? Go 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 seems like a lifetime ago, I was a founding engineer at an ad tech startup that served the world's biggest brands. We built an enterprise-focused unified ad management platform across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram. Aside from Facebook, I was the first API integration for all the other platforms, helping guide them to build what we needed to run ads effectively at scale. After we sold the company, I spent over six years at Snapchat building their marketing platform from scratch and helping the company transform 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 get into consumer mobile apps. It was pre-AI coding tools, so 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. Felt that amazing rush, that top-of-the-world feeling. Woke up the next day and got punched in the stomach again by zero users.

That's when it hit me:

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

So I called Steven, who had been with me on the whole journey through the startup and Snap. He is one of those extremely special people: 50% product, 50% engineering, and 50% taste. A rare talent. He'd felt the pain too, many times over the decades before. The pitch landed, and 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, your aesthetic, your ideal customer. Automatically.

We recommend a stack of layers. Not a vague strategy: a set of actions tailored to your product.

We execute. With your permission, we research and generate content, distribute it to TikTok and Instagram (and soon YouTube Shorts, X, Reddit, and more), analyze performance, and feed what we learn 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 hand off decisions at whatever level you choose. Elle is available on the web and over iMessage and SMS.

Paid, when the time is right. We'll suggest launching and optimizing ads for you across Meta, TikTok, Apple Search Ads, and Google.

Need UGC? A couple of clicks is all it takes. We source, manage, and optimize creators for you.

If GitHub is connected, we go deeper: PRs for ad network SDK integrations, attribution tracking setup, and 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.