How Unroll.me used Sharewall instead of Paywall for Viral Growth

Jojo Hedaya built Unroll.me without a technical degree, a résumé, or outside funding.

He started with a frustration, listened to users, took risks most founders avoid, and turned a simple email tool into a viral consumer product.

His journey offers practical lessons for early-stage founders navigating constraints and trying to build something that sticks.

Jojo was studying philosophy at Brooklyn College and thought HTML was something you needed to get vaccinated for. He lived with his parents, didn’t finish college, and came from a small Jewish community in Brooklyn.

He didn’t know how to code, but he wanted to build for the internet because of its reach. He believed anyone could start a company if they cared enough about solving a real problem.

His First Business Was Built on Email and Hustle

In high school, Jojo ran a simple ad service with a friend. They manually collected email addresses from community yearbooks, conferences, and events, then sold ad space to businesses who wanted to reach those lists.

That early experience with email lists and a hands-on understanding of what people actually read would shape his future product thinking.

A Miscommunication Sparked the Startup Idea

Jojo and his friend Josh had planned to build 12 startups in 1 year following Pieter Levels infamous 12 Startups in 12 Months. Their first attempt failed.

As they brainstormed more ideas over email, Josh wouldn’t respond to Jojo’s messages. This created real friction between them.

Jojo eventually yelled at Josh, “You want to start 12 startups in a year, but we can’t communicate because you’re not answering my emails!”

Around the same time, someone at a conference told Josh, “Help me unsubscribe from my emails.” That moment gave them their first real product direction.

Naming the Startup Took a Full Month of Work

Every obvious domain name was taken. They wanted a dot-com domain.

After running through countless options—UnsubscribeMe, Unsubscriber—they hit on “Unroll.me.”

Jojo explained their thinking: “You enroll in emails, and you unroll from emails.”

The name captured the reversal of “enroll” and added personality.

It was simple, verbal, available, and gave users a sense of control.

He Built the Product for His Technophobe Mom

Jojo insisted that his mom, who struggled with basic tech tasks, could use Unroll.me without needing help.

That constraint forced the product to stay dead simple. If she could navigate it, anyone could.

Jojo's mom has trouble turning on her computer, but she is a power user of Unroll.me. When she filed a support ticket during a bug, he knew the product needed fixing fast.

Competitor Analysis Revealed a Mobile Opportunity

Unroll.me wasn’t first to market. Unsubscribe.com had raised funding but only worked as a browser plug-in.

OtherInbox offered folder-based sorting. Jojo noticed that Unsubscribe.com only worked on your desktop which meant they missed the shift to mobile email.

This gap pushed Unroll.me to be mobile-compatible from the start, without requiring installation or configuration.

The Alpha Launch Used Scarcity and Exclusivity to Attract Press

They didn’t launch to the public. Instead, they created a waitlist and made access invite-only as invite-only was the cool shit back then. This let them offer exclusive entry to journalists at TechCrunch, Mashable, and Lifehacker.

Each journalist got codes for the first 1,000 readers, which drove urgency and click-through.

The first thousand people that come via the TechCrunch article got in for free and cut the line.

This strategy generated wide media coverage and created viral demand. Their servers crashed under the traffic.

They Won a Major Tech Conference With Toilet Paper and Costumes

At NY Tech Day, Unroll.me set up next to hundreds of startups. Most handed out stickers or business cards.

Jojo decided to stand out. He replaced all the toilet paper at the conference with Unroll.me branded toilet paper.

Friends dressed as trash cans (Mr.Spam) and Captain Underpants to promote the idea of killing spam.

The stunt got them attention from every judge, investor, and attendee—and they won the event.

They probably spent the least amount of money on that event and bought just 20 rolls of toilet paper to grab the win.

This unconventional tactic became the main topic of conversation at the event, helping them stand out despite being one of the least impressive startups there.

This event generated 40,000 people on their waiting list.

Investors Rejected Them Repeatedly, But Feedback Fueled Iteration

Jojo pitched more than 15 VCs and got the same answers: the product couldn’t scale, the team lacked a technical co-founder, and it was a tool, not a product.

One VC told them directly, “Your startup sucks. You can’t make money. This will never grow.” Another said, “You’re not going to scale past 100,000 users.” He used the criticism to focus.

The team didn’t quit—they just stopped trying to please investors and started solving the problems they were told they couldn’t.

Jojo made those issues their new priorities: grow fast, build engagement, and make the product indispensable.

User Behavior Inspired the Rollup Feature

Early data showed users only unsubscribed from 30% of their emails. Jojo was surprised.

People said they were overwhelmed, but they weren’t removing all the clutter.

The reason: fear of missing a deal.

The Rollup (another product) solved this. It bundled promotional emails into a single daily digest, removing inbox noise while keeping content.

Instead of getting 50 emails, you got one. This pivot turned Unroll.me into a product that solved more than one pain point.

The “For Share” Wall Drove Unroll.me’s Viral Growth

Jojo understood that most users don’t share a product just because they like it. To solve that, the team introduced a “share wall” instead of a "pay wall" inspired by Dropbox or Uber — a deliberate friction point that required users to share Unroll.me in order to continue using it after a few interactions.

Instead of hiding features behind a paywall, they asked users to post about Unroll.me on social media or invite friends.

This simple mechanism unlocked access while turning each user into a distribution channel. It created a viral loop that scaled user acquisition without spending on ads.

Advisors strongly objected to the idea. Many warned it would kill the product.

But Jojo and his team trusted the data. They carefully tested when to introduce the share wall and found that after unsubscribing from 5 emails, most users had already experienced the core value. At that point, 90% of users chose to share.

The feature became Unroll.me’s most effective growth engine. It amplified every press hit and allowed the product to spread quickly through users’ personal networks.

Facebook Sharing Outperformed Twitter by 150x

The team tracked referral rates.

Twitter sharing brought in 1 new user per 100 shares. Facebook brought in 80 to 150 users per 100 shares, depending on timing.

So they switched up the design which brought them from 50% sharing on Facebook to over 80% sharing on Facebook.

They redesigned the UI to prioritize Facebook as the default share option, which multiplied returns.

The product surged during media spikes, like TechCrunch and Today Show features, because the viral loop was timed and structured.

This approach helped Unroll.me reach 3.7 million users, process 125 million emails daily, and stay alive through every phase of startup life.

Jojo advises others to find what specifically incentivises their users to share. For a free product, this might be unlocking features, and for a paid product, it could be instant gratification like a discount or credit immediately upon sharing, rather than waiting for a friend to sign up.

Unroll.me was later on acquired by Slice and had its own share of controversies for selling email data to companies like Uber. But you can't deny the growth tactics they used to get there.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

Someone with actual influence moves markets. Hard to get Taylor Swift though unless you are a world-class social engineer.

2/

Start curating your own prompts. They are the smallest unit of knowledge right now.

Good prompts generate exceptional results that only need little bit of tweaking.

3/

Lots of people still underprice their product without testing. Can easily 2x MRR by testing and optimizing their pricing strategy. One example I saw recently with cheaper pricing is ChatPRD AI which everyone loves but still cheap.

Rabbit Holes

1. The Prompt is Becoming the Product by Nate B Jones

2. Pattern Matching Beats Narrative Reasoning by Scott Stevenson

3. I Tried Vibe Coding: How I Created GTA with Artificial Intelligence by Tomáš Bencko

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