| Readwise URL | https://read.readwise.io/read/01kt2kt47mfggpm7ea64zj4tc3 |
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| Readwise ID | 01kt2kt47mfggpm7ea64zj4tc3 |
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| Category | video |
A few weeks ago, I came across a tweetthat blew my mind. This app got 100,000 in revenuein just three months.In the first month, 32K; and in the third month, $27K.So, in typical fashion, I reached out tothe founder to see if I could uncoverhow, and he responded with somethingthat I couldn’t believe. Once westart getting a lot of sales,it happens immediately.He and his friend Yini did it all fromtheir bedrooms in Europe with a singleTikTok account.In the beginning, we didn’t expect thatthis video would reach 4 million views.I had to know more. So, I brought themonto the channel to share everything.
In this video, we’ll go over the AIapp that they built, their step-by-stepTikTok marketing playbook that madethem $100,000 in three months, andthey’ll break down their most viral TikToks and share the special sauce thatgenerated millions of views. This one’sgoing to be fun. I’m Pat Walls, and thisis Starter Story.[Music]All right, real quick guys, before youmeet Yavghini and Nikita, I just want tomention that this was the first timethat they were sharing their story onany podcast. English isn’t their firstlanguage and they were a little bitnervous to come on here, but they workedreally, really hard to give you guys asmuch value as possible, which I think isreally cool and hopefully you guys enjoythe video.
All right, Nikita and Yini, welcome to the channel.Tell me about who you guys are, what you built, andwhat’s your story.
I’m Nikita based inSerbiaand I’m based in Poland.Together we built an AI writing toolcalled Natural Write,and in just 3 months we took this appfrom zero to $100K in revenue and we didit all from a single TikTok account.
All right. So tell me a little bit moreabout Natural Write. What exactly is itand who’s using this?You know the concept is super simple. Soa user just pastes a generated text, clicksthe humanize button, and receives 100% humanwritten text. This text usuallybypasses most AI detectors, and mostly it’spopular in schools and universities forStudents, but it’s also used inbusinesses for marketers. The mostinteresting thing here is that we cameto that idea a little bit randomly. During our research, wenoticed that there are so many videosabout humanizers, and I just thought that
okay, we can do the same. It’s much easierto promote it on TikTok because it’s ahot topic. We decided, “Okay, let’s gofor two weeks, we’ll make a product, startpromoting it,” and it worked out. Yeah,I think that’s really cool finding an idea from a growth firststrategy. That’s one of the bigreasons I wanted to bring you on thechannel is that you really did all thisin the last three months. I’d love to hearmore about that growth story. How do yougo from basically no idea to gettingsomething with serious traction?
Uh, firstly, we tried hiring influencers and paying them to makevideos for us, but it was an unsuccessfulexperience because they generated justsome views and almost no conversions. Soafter that, we decided to create our ownaccounts on TikTok, and we startedfilming ourselves. We started postingvideos every day.
In this video, we got the first sale. But afterthat, things started to snowball. So,in the first month, we made 32K,and in the third month 100K in revenue.Nice, I like that. You guys reallyfocused on growth. You really focused onTikTok and you had a pretty uniqueapproach to tackling TikTok from aprogrammer’s mindset. Can you tell me alittle bit more about your strategy?
So, our approach is pretty simple. First,you properly set up your account.Then, you find viral videos fromyour niche. After that, you make copies ofthose videos and post one video perday. Finally, once you go viral,you start testing your own unique ideas. Ilike that strategy, but I think for alot of people watching this, and I’malso curious to know; let’s get intothe details on this. Can you reallybreak down this TikTok marketingstrategy in full?
Uh, yeah, sure. Step one: do your nicheresearch before you even start coding,because you need to find proof. Proofthat you have competitors on TikTok andthat these competitors have viralvideos on TikTok as well.
Search is your best friend and creator.Search insights, also on TikTok, are yourbest friend too. Step two, create a TikTokaccount. If you are not in yourtarget location, you need to buy a VPN.You need an iPhone, a phone number fromyour target location, a new email, and anew Apple ID. It is very important that yourfirst TikTok account should be registered on your phone number.
Step three, warm up. You have to spend50 to 30 minutes a day for three to five daysengaging with content in your niche.Like videos, leave comments, followcreators, and use search to find videosin your niche. Step four, recreatewhat works. Start by making one to onehigh-quality copies of viral videos inyour niche. It is very important to addcaptions in the TikTok editor as well.
Step five, posting. Start with posting justone video per day at an optimal time foryour target audience. So, usually itwill be the second half of the day.Step six, innovate. When your videosstart going viral, you figure outhow everything works on TikTok, so youcan probably begin experimenting withyour own ideas and your own formats on TikTok.
Step seven, scale. Once youHaving success and getting views, youcan scale your operation by creatingmore accounts and hiring creators.
Before we keep going, I got to call outsomething I’m seeing with a lot offounders right now. You’re moving fast,maybe close to product market fit, oryou’re prepping for your next round.This feels amazing, but then enterpriseprospects start asking about securitycompliance, and suddenly everythingslows down. The reality, well, in 2025,especially with AI, securityexpectations hit earlier and harder thanever. You can either get ahead of it orlet it become the thing that kills yourmomentum.
And that brings me to Vanta,today’s sponsor, which basically solvesthis entire headache. Instead ofspending months figuring out SOCK 2compliance, Vanta’s automated workflowsgets you audit ready fast. And here’swhat I think is really cool. It’s notjust a one-time setup. Vanta keepsmonitoring and updating as you scale.Fast-growing startups like Langchain,Writer, and Cursor trusted Vanta tobuild their security foundation early,which meant they could focus on growthHell. Right now, Vanta’s offering $1,000off for Starter Story viewers. If youwant to check it out, you can go tovanta.com/starterstoryor click the first link in thedescription. Over 12,000 companies arealready using Vanta to scale smarter.
Huge thanks to Vanta for partnering withus. I love what you guys are doing. Allright, let’s dive back in. That’s a verynice playbook. What I’d love to see fromyou guys is the actual examples. Wouldyou be able to pull up your mostsuccessful TikTok videos that led tothe most downloads and customers?Yeah, sure. The first one is you have anasset to submit in 5 minutes and youknow is just from a popular Americancomedy with Jim Carrey. There is thegreat video that exactly shows theproblem to users like, “Okay, you have just1 minute; you need to submit your essay,”
and show them the solution in a very funnyway. This video took a couple of hours tomake, and in the beginning, we didn’texpect that this video would reach 4million views. This format was alreadyproven by other creators, so we justcopied it, and it worked really well. Hereis another example. In this case, weShow exactly the problem, like you have100% generated text. You do this, and youhave like 100% human-written text. Onceit goes viral, we start getting a lot ofsales immediately. Funny stuff here.
That original video has around 150kviews, but the copy from Yuini gets 1.5million views.
Thank you, guys, for showing those twoexamples. I think it’s super cool to beable to see what actually worked for you.So, I appreciate you guys showing those.You came up with and executed this TikTok strategy just acouple of months ago. Break down some ofthe numbers for me.
Yeah, sure. Uh, total views on TikTokis around 9 million views from all ouraccounts. Total visits around 300K.Signups, 250K. Also, the conversion rate fromvisit to sign up is around 80%. That iscrazy, and revenue 100K. Yeah.
Wow, that’s insane. An 80% conversion tosign up ratio on your website isabsolutely nuts. So, congrats on that.
So, I’d love to hear how you guysactually built this app and what kind oftech stack you’re using to build this.First, we’d like to mention that wehave a third member of our team,Alexander, who takes care of all techstuff. Our stack is pretty simple:NextJS, Postgres, Coolify, Next AI,plus Resend, and our server costs 20 per month. Andnext, we have a VPN, so 5per month per phone number. So otherthan the cost of our time, the cost torun this business is very low.
Thank you for sharing that. The lastquestion that I want to ask both youguys, Nikita and Yini, is when it comes tofiguring out TikTok marketing, if youcould stand on each other’s shouldersjust three months ago, before you had asuccessful app while you were trying tofigure this out, what would be youradvice?I would say that you need to start yourTikTok journey by yourself. Try to findout what works, and only then startthinking about delegating or hiringother people. So just try it by yourselfand also don’t overcomplicate it. Soskip inventing your own TikTok formatand just replicate what’s already goingviral. I just want to say thank you
again to Nikita and Yini for coming ontothe channel. I know they were a littleNervous and English wasn’t their firstlanguage, but I think their TikTokstrategy is awesome, and hopefully you dotoo. Before I sign off, I do want toremind you to check out Starter StoryBuild. It’s our program where in just afew weeks you’ll build a real workingproject, and you’ll build it using onlyAI coding tools. Hundreds of people havejoined Starter Story Build and launchedtheir first projects. So if you’re readyto get started, just head to the link inthe description to join Starter StoryBuild. Thanks again for watching. We’llsee you in the next one. Peace.