Alex Heiden's first ever Instagram reel got 2 million views and added almost 20,000 followers overnight.
He'd never made a reel before. Never made a TikTok. He filmed three of them off the top of his head as a favor to a friend's podcast.
The timing was wild. He'd sold the majority of his first company, Closify, just a week or two earlier. He'd built it to $1.5M a year and exited at 22, with zero plan for what came next.
(Selling a company with no idea what you'll do next? His words: "a pretty dumb thing to do.")
Then that one video changed everything. Today his personal brand makes more than his SaaS ever did. 250,000 followers crossplatform. Five figures a month.
I sat down with Alex on the Profitable Founder Podcast. Here's the full playbook.
The accidental viral moment
His friend Presley asked him to do a podcast. Presley had basically no following. There was no strategic reason to say yes.
Alex did it because he liked the guy. After recording, Presley offered him three free clips. So Alex made three reels on the spot, fast, no thought.
The first one hit 2 million views. Almost 20,000 new followers from a single post.
Here's the part that mattered: he'd just exited Closify with no offer, no product, no call to action. Pure traffic and nowhere to send it.
"Oh my god, I'm getting all this traffic with no place to send them. This is bad." So he whipped up a newsletter.
How he creates content fast (and never scripts a reel)
Alex doesn't script his reels. He thinks of a hook in his head and lets himself flow. No camera setup, no fancy edits, often just a selfie video on his phone.
The whole engine ran on batching. When he had a team, he'd shoot twice a month.
→ Each shoot: 14 to 28 reels (reposted as TikToks)
→ Plus 2 YouTube videos
→ Scripting the two YouTubes: about an hour each
→ The reels he doesn't script: roughly 30 minutes total
→ Whole month of content: about 5 hours of work
He scripted on Sundays because he enjoys writing, then recorded one day midweek. That rhythm let him post one or two reels a day, almost every single day, from March 2023 into 2025.
His secret weapon? He learned copywriting on Twitter back when the only people who saw your tweets were your followers. No For You page. You had 240 characters to make someone care.
"A reel is basically a thread that I'm just now saying out loud on camera."
The hook trick: steal other people's audiences
Alex's view on ideas is blunt: the audience you want already exists on the platform. They're already following someone. So go grab their attention by name.
His first viral hook was about Iman Gadzhi shutting down his agency to go all in on SaaS. The moment you say a known name, you hook everyone who knows that name.
He'd point out something the audience hadn't noticed (these gurus are all secretly running software companies in the background), and people would think "this guy makes a good point" and follow.
For a topic nobody understood, he reached for analogies instead. In 2023 nobody knew what no-code was, so he'd open with "have you ever built a website before?" then explain you can build software the same drag-and-drop way.
This idea of finding what's working and building a similar variation runs through everything he does. It's the same logic behind building a micro-SaaS by copying a proven playbook instead of inventing from scratch.
How he turned attention into five figures a month
The money came from a few stacked channels. Every brand deal was inbound. He never did outbound. They'd hit his DMs or one of his four email inboxes.
→ YouTube sponsorships: routinely $4K to $5K per video
→ Reel deals he'd only take as packages: around $4K/month for four or five reels
→ One unusual deal: one video a day handed off to a brand's own account
→ A development agency built off the inbound leads, two to three high-ticket deals a month
→ Affiliate income (Beehiiv, Go High Level, ClickFunnels, payment processors)
Why did brands chase him? He was in the tech niche. "These tech companies have more money than they know what to do with." They're great at product, terrible at distribution, and his videos were how-to, so products integrated without feeling salesy.
Then there's the newsletter. Just shy of 40,000 subscribers. It went from zero to 20,000 very fast, back when he was waking up to 10,000 new Instagram followers a day. His bio said he'd send free tips on starting a software company, and he added over 1,000 people a day.
One email crushed every single time he sent it: three to five software ideas, each with why he picked it, how he'd go to market, and how hard it is to build. At the bottom: "if you want my team to build it, book a call here." It booked calls like crazy.
The exit: why the biggest offer is rarely the best one
Closify grew entirely from outbound sales and SEO. Alex started with Twitter DMs and Facebook groups, layered in cold email, hired an SDR for LinkedIn, added cold calling.
Once they crossed $20-30K a month, they hired an SEO agency. It took three or four months to see ROI. To this day, search "hire commission only sales reps" and Closify is the number one organic result.
At its peak the machine was booking over 200 sales calls a month with two closers, around five SDRs, and a sales manager.
He listed it on Acquire and got plenty of inbound, but most were private equity with ugly terms. The dollar number looked good, then you'd find a two-year earnout most sellers never collect.
His lesson: "The best offer is rarely the one that's just the most money up front." He went strategic instead, reached out to his friend Loot, closed faster, on better terms, and kept some ownership.
What he did after (and the advice for anyone post-exit)
Here's the honest part. Alex didn't build something new right away because he didn't know what to build. The viral video and the agency just filled the gap.
For a year and a half it was heavy cash-flow businesses and brand deals, all off the back of his brand. No new startup.
His advice for the in-between: don't force it. He's tried forcing himself into a new company just to have one, and it doesn't work.
"Your first company, it kind of doesn't matter if you like it or not. You just have to make money." After you can breathe, the next thing has to interest you in some capacity, or you won't go the distance.
Now he works at Whoop, surrounded by people aged 20 to 26 who mostly ran their own businesses. He calls it the college education he never got. "Sure, I've built companies that do a million, 1.5 million a year. That's baby numbers." So he dropped the ego and went to learn.
I interview founders like this every week → Watch the Podcast
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Alex Heiden?
Alex Heiden is a founder and content creator who built his first company, Closify, to $1.5M a year and exited at 22. He grew 250,000 followers crossplatform, made five figures a month from brand deals, and now works at Whoop after building his personal brand by accident.
How did Alex Heiden make money from his audience?
Mostly inbound brand deals. YouTube sponsorships paid $4K to $5K per video, reel packages ran about $4K a month, and his development agency closed two to three high-ticket deals monthly. He also earned affiliate income from tools like Beehiiv, Go High Level, and ClickFunnels.
What was Closify and how did it grow?
Closify helped companies hire commission-only sales reps. It grew entirely through outbound sales (Twitter DMs, cold email, LinkedIn, cold calling) and SEO, ranking number one for "hire commission only sales reps." At its peak it booked over 200 sales calls a month before Alex sold to a strategic buyer.
The lesson Alex keeps coming back to: find what's already working, make your own variation, and just keep throwing it at the wall until something sticks.
