Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
Run paid ads from day one
Content writing, podcast appearances, and user interviews take much longer to show whether an idea sticks. Paid runs alongside them as a faster engine of validation. Brand and organic content still matter, and the paid side tells the answer in days.
The model is ecommerce, where every single cent has to equal a purchase or an add to cart, hundreds of UGC creators supply variety, and many channels share the load. At Superhuman, the resistance was real, since SaaS then ran on PLG, referral, and word of mouth without paid. The same motion was applied there before the Grammarly acquisition and then at Wispr Flow, where it put the product on the map.
How do ad platforms run experiments so fast?
Online experiments split visitors randomly into groups, with each group seeing a different version. Ron Kohavi, who ran experimentation at Microsoft and Amazon, wrote in his book Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments that large companies run thousands of such tests a year. Ad platforms offer this split as a built-in feature. The speed comes from traffic, since a paid campaign can buy thousands of visitors in a day.
Why did early advertisers measure with coupons?
Claude Hopkins's 1923 book Scientific Advertising argued that ads should be judged by measurable response. Mail-order advertisers of his era put coupons and codes in each ad so they could count replies per placement. John Caples's 1932 book Tested Advertising Methods built on that approach with split tests of headlines. Online ecommerce brands inherited the habit of tying every ad to a purchase.
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