Paige Finn DohertyFounding Partner, Behind Genius · Founding Partner at Behind Genius Ventures

The Wildest Marketing Hacks James Evans Pulled Off for Under $5K (That Actually Worked)

3 Jun 2025 · 1 min

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In this segment, James Evans shares a series of ultra‑low‑budget guerrilla marketing stunts he executed to generate buzz for his company. He describes hiring a group of people via Craigslist to stage a mock protest outside SaaStr for about $500, renting a prop plane to fly a banner over conferences, and wrapping his personal car with the company logo for roughly $1,500, turning it into a permanent billboard in San Francisco. While he admits the ROI of these tactics wasn’t formally calculated, he emphasizes their creativity, low cost, and the attention they garnered.

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What were the expensive and hard marketing things you did? We did have like a, just a do easy creative cheap stuff at SaaStr. We like hired a bunch of people on Craigslist to protest our company outside of SaaStr. And we, you know, really cheap. Like it was like $500 and everyone was like, oh yo dude, people are like protesting your company. I was like, yeah, I know, bro. And now you're here talking to me. Stupid thing. It's like we didn't calculate the ROI on that, but it costs $500. Oh gosh, wait, that's amazing. Just easy. And like, we had a plane, uh, at a couple of conferences with a banner. Turns out that's not that expensive to hire like a prop plane. And then you get a cool banner you can put in your office. That was cool. Stuff like that. Just, I was going to wrap my car at the end with our company's logo. Just cost $1,500 or whatever. You get a permanent billboard in San Francisco.