🦅 400K Followers in 100 Days

In this issue, you’ll find:

• 400K followers in 100 days: Roberto Nickson’s tips

• News creators should know

• Which platform will be the best place to grow an audience in 2026?

400K Followers in 100 Days: Roberto Nickson’s Tips

I spent the week digging into the smartest growth ideas for 2026 and beyond. I watched a great conversation between Greg Isenberg and Roberto Nickson. 

Greg has built communities worth billions and advises top tech companies.
Roberto spent a decade building media brands, primarily on Instagram. Recently he added more than 400 thousand new followers in one hundred days.

Here are my favorite tips and how you can apply them.

TIP 1: Play the ten year game

Before his recent surge, Roberto spent a full decade building media brands, testing formats, improving visuals and learning how audiences behave.

Most creators quit too early. They expect results in weeks when the people they admire have been posting for years. When you think in ten year horizons everything changes. Instead of comparing yourself to others, you start focusing on steady progress.

How to apply it:

• Treat content creation as a long term craft

• Focus on small improvements every week

• Study creators you admire and notice how many years they have been consistent

• Aim for momentum not perfection

Creators who commit for ten years always outlast the ones who quit after ten weeks.

TIP 2: Build an ALT account

Nathan Lands built a joke persona account called Boris that went from zero to nineteen thousand followers in a few weeks.

Roberto uses this structure in his ecosystem:

• His personal account is thoughtful

• His media accounts test more experimental or high volume content

Platforms are changing fast. Creators need more than one voice, and an ALT account gives you space to experiment without risking your main brand.

ALT accounts let you:

• Test ideas safely

• Publish fun or edgy content

• Increase output without burning out your main audience

• Build extra distribution that does not depend on your personal brand

How to apply it:

• Start a second account for experiments or content that feels off for your main profile

• Share only what performs well back to your main brand

• Use your ALT to reach new people before they discover you

In a multi-platform world ALT accounts are growth engines.

TIP 3: Focus on users not competitors

One of Roberto's strongest lessons was how he handles competition in a crowded creator landscape. His approach is simple. He ignores it.

He follows the same principle Jeff Bezos used at Amazon. Do not let your decisions depend on competitors. Build based on what your users need.

This matters even more in 2026. AI tools evolve fast. Platforms change weekly. You don’t have time to waste on your competitors.

How to apply it:

• Spend most of your attention learning what your audience wants

• Use analytics to see what people respond to, then double down

• Ship improvements fast, momentum beats perfection

• Build for the people already following you, they are your strongest signal

Creators who obsess over serving their audience, not chasing competitors, grow faster and with more stability.

You can watch the full conversation here:

The State of AI

OpenRouter’s 100 trillion token study shows a clear shift: developers are moving from simple chat prompts to multi-step, agentic workflows where models plan, iterate, and use tools. Reasoning models like o1 and fast-rising open-source systems (DeepSeek R1, Kimi K2) are capturing more usage as coding and creative workloads dominate traffic. The takeaway is simple: AI is becoming an active operator, and products built around reasoning and long-horizon tasks will define the next wave.

→ Find out more

Google Preps AI Glasses for 2026

Google will launch its first AI glasses in 2026, including audio-only models powered by Gemini and versions with in-lens displays for navigation and translation. The company is partnering with Samsung, Gentle Monster and Warby Parker as it races to catch Meta’s surprisingly successful Ray-Ban Meta lineup. The devices run on Android XR, marking Google’s full re-entry into smart glasses after years away.

→ Find out more

Threads Adds Quick Access to Liked and Saved Posts

Threads introduced a new composer shortcut that lets users instantly pull up their liked and saved posts and quote them with a tap. The feature aims to spark more posting by making it easier to reuse content that previously inspired users. It’s live on iOS and rolling out to Android soon as part of Meta’s broader push to boost engagement on the app.

→ Find out more

Last poll: What's Your Prediction for 2026?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 💸 𝕏 Money will launch (41.18%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 😎 Digital glasses will be the next big thing

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📈 Threads by Meta will be bigger than 𝕏

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🛍️ TikTok livestream shopping will go mainstream

That’s it for now, everyone! We’ll meet again next week to discuss some more of this!

Don’t forget to try Hypefury (for free) if you haven’t yet.

Feel free to reply to this email. It goes directly to me.

Cheers,

Yannick Veys
Co-founder and CMO of Hypefury