Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtqEbgutSb4 Channel: Superwall (Superwall Podcast, host Joseph Choi / Consumer Club) Upload date: 20251221
Jack Frics has built four apps. One of them took eight months to make its first dollar. Then it made 15,000 in one month. Another one got a million-doll acquisition offer that he turned down. And his newest one hit 100,000 downloads in 10 weeks. But by far the most insane thing about all this is that he's not a genius developer. He's not a marketing savant who religiously studied growth hacking. The way I found like a Tik Tok to promote my stop scrolling app was by consistently scrolling every morning. [laughter] So, pretty awful how it worked out. He literally just scrolled Tik Tok every day for an hour, found what was working, and then copied it. That's it. Most people would think that's lazy, but what Jack discovered is that this approach actually works better than trying to be original. And when he found a format that worked, he didn't tweak it or optimize it endlessly. He just made it 400 times. >> I made that video like 400 times, but the first like 100 times I made it, um, I knew I noticed it got like a ton of views, so I just kept making and I put the call to action to download the app right in the comments and I pin it. The result was 5 million views, thousands of downloads,15,000 in a single month. And here’s where it gets interesting. When Jack built his newest app, Lovely, he found a completely different Tik Tok format. And this one converted 20 times better than anything he’ done before. This is the directly using the app. It’s like an 8 to 10 second video and it’s [music] just showing this is me using the app and at the end it shows directly the app. So this obviously converted like 20 times better than the 2x two slideshows. But the craziest part of this whole story isn’t the downloads or the revenue. It’s what happened on Twitter. >> I made this app. Someone’s now using it as a grocery list. And that got even, you know, 300,000 likes. That brought 40,000 downloads overnight. 40,000 downloads in a single night because someone used his app from something he’d never intended. And then Russia News picked it up, 10,000 downloads from Russia overnight. All of this before he even posted on Tik Tok. So, in this episode, we break down how Jack went from 8 months of making almost nothing to building a multi-app portfolio that’s generating serious revenue. From the specific 15-minute scrolling ritual that finds winning formats to why he turned down a million-doll offer down to the counterintuitive insight that sometimes copying really does beat creating from scratch. This is how solarpreneurs are actually building apps that make real money. [music] Let’s dive in. This is the Superall podcast and I’m Joseph Choy, founder of Consumer Club. The members in the Consumer Club Discord and the founders I interview on the pod build apps at a median of about a million dollars ARR. In my conversations with dozens of these founders every week, one thing I’ve noticed is most of them AB test their payw walls to increase their conversion rates and make more money. Now, most people know that one of the best ways to AB test payw walls is Superwall. But one thing you might not know is Superwall has a lot of data on the thousands of apps that use their payw walls. So recently they actually put together a tool that takes 422 profitable paywall experiments and put those into a paywall experiment generator where you can upload a screenshot of your own paywall and it’ll give you an experiment idea to increase your revenue. You can use it for free at paywallexperiments.com. All right, let’s get into the pod. How did you get started with Curiosity? Like describe Curiosity Quench. How much money does it make and what does it do? Curiosity Quench. I made it to solve my own problem of like doom scrolling on Tik Tok and Instagram. And then it kind of blew up in the first two months. I got like a thousand users. And basically all it does is like give people action plans to stop scrolling on their phones and like pursue one of their hobbies. And now it makes like I think 15,000 in one month. And that was because of quite a few viral simple videos I made related to it. And I just kept using that format over and over again. >> Yeah. Everyone’s trying to find like that magical like viral Tik Tok that somehow also gets downloads. So, how did you iterate to actually get to that like find that format and actually make short form video work? The way I found like a Tik Tok to promote my stop scrolling app was by consistently scrolling every morning. So, pretty awful um how it worked out. Obviously, um it’s not what I wanted to do, but yeah, [music] I would scroll on like my branded page or like a page in that niche and then I would just like see like what works, what goes viral, like like get a sense for it, like really a taste. Um cuz like you’re not going to figure it out just posting and not being on the platform. You have to be a user. So, I was scrolling every day and I would spend exactly like an hour on this marketing which would be scrolling and making a video. And I try a different video every day. I think I did that for like 100 200 days and I didn’t really see much and then I found this, you know, video on Instagram that was doing crazy. Like it had a million views and it was four pictures and it just had a funny caption and it just showed like most attractive hobbies, right? It wasn’t related to anything. It was just a fun Tik Tok and then I changed it to like just you know hobbies in my app. I used pictures from my app like the little widgets so they can tell it’s from my app. Um and I just changed the caption. And I made that video like 400 times, but the first like 100 times I made it, um, I knew I noticed it got like a ton of views, so I just kept making and I put the call to action to download the app right in the comments and I pin it. You know, 5 million views later, you still get a lot of downloads even though it’s not directly about the app because it’s so many views. And as you can see, yeah, I’ve used this format for like a year and it still sometimes hits, but it’s pretty much milk dry at this point. They these golden goosees don’t last forever. That’s interesting. you didn’t really use a ton of creativity. I think that might be a misconception of people like, “Oh, I have to like, you know, really understand TikTok and [music] just, you know, be great on camera and but you you basically just scrolled until you found something that got a lot of views and then you just basically copied it.” Is was there any change that you made that you tried to make it more conversion friendly like to actually get more downloads for the app compared to like the original format that you found? It’s kind of a weird place. You’re if you’re making content that gets a lot of views, you have to also consider is this going to get downloads? Because otherwise, what’s the point? But I found with this format, like every like 20 or so videos, I’d put my app in one of the pictures. And some of those would get millions of views and that would get thousands of downloads. But overall, this format’s like very low converting. It’s [music] there’s like a trade-off between any video you make. It could be get 10,000 views and 1,000 downloads or it could get 3 million and get, you know, 100 downloads. It’s really like a weird balance. I feel like both are okay. Both are great. If you can consistently find something that’s going to bring in any amount of downloads, then I’m gonna like keep posting that video. And like the page on Curiosity Crunch, I use this format for like 400 videos. But before that, I was trying out like a bunch of different things and then like one just hits a bit and then I just kind of reused it because also it takes way more effort to make something new than something that you know that works. So, I just kind of kept going with it even though maybe it doesn’t convert. But like, yeah, as you can see, some of them I put the app right in there. Um, and then I just like pin the comment and try to get early on pinning the comment so people actually see it cuz the thousands of people would comment on how bad, you know, these hobby lists are cuz they’d be they’d be triggered or they’d be mad about it and that would make people look at the my comment that I posted, which is about my app. >> This was one of these magical videos. You got 1.8 8 million views >> and 47,000 likes. And you also included the >> uh screenshot of the app. So, this was probably decently high converting. Do you know how many downloads to expect from around this like performance? >> Honestly, I wish I had like any clue, but I just don’t because at the time, not I was running this page and another running the same format and like every week there would be a few that popped up to like a million or 2 million views. So, it’s really like impossible to track. That’s like the the killer part of mobile apps and making this content. You don’t really know what works too well. You can’t you can kind of guess, but you don’t know for sure. And then also, I’m making like YouTube videos and a bunch of other videos on my personal page of like different types of formats, me talking to the camera, and sometimes those blow up. So, I have no idea. I just know that this did do very well because obviously you see it. You see like this is the only video that hits a good amount of views and the app’s actually in there. >> [music] >> So this it’s definitely more converting. I don’t but I have no idea how much that’s the pain about um I guess this strategy. >> Was this generally around the time that you made your your 15k month like 57? >> Yes, it was. This was actually like I think this was the second highest performing month. September 2024 and then Octo October was the next highest. So yeah, it’s right around there. >> Gotcha. So, when you’re posting over and over again, especially when you’re posting stuff that’s not really about the app and you’re kind of just trying to build the page or get like a couple of downloads here and there from the bio and it’s like kind of performing but not really, do you have a decision-m framework for pivoting to a different strategy versus like sticking with it? Cuz I feel like everyone’s just like, “Oh, you got to just hustle. It’s all about volume.” But then like if you do that forever and it’s not going to work ever, then it’s like it can be discouraging. So is there a point where you wanted to quit and decided not to? >> I think at this point I didn’t have like that much experience to know like to even think about that. Like I was just thinking, oh my gosh, you know, this hit 2 million views and I got like 1,000 downloads in a single day. I was like I was freaking out. I didn’t like consider, oh, how can I scale this? Should I do something different? I was just like, “Okay, I got to keep doing this.” What? Like, because it’s working a little bit. It wasn’t working like crazy, but compared to my like eight months of like, I don’t know, 50 downloads a day, 60 downloads a day, and hitting 1,000 downloads a day from these like videos, I didn’t even think like, how long is this going to last? I didn’t think about that. I just kept pushing them out, and eventually it slowed down. Like, I think 3 months later, it slowed down. I also slowly transitioned of working off this app at the time because I had another project that was just doing like insanely well. So this kind of >> Let’s talk about that for a little bit. The elephant in the room is like how in the world did you post this many like how did you post this much volume? >> I was posting every day to this account to another account on Instagram and like reposting them with Tik Tok and shorts and it got really painful obviously like you know it takes like an hour and a hour of my day just to post these Tik Toks. Um, and then like I actually have to work on the app. So I ended up making a whole another app which took over my time to post that. It’s called PostBridge and it’s just like a social media scheduling tool. It was very simple, basic. Upload a video, post it to all the channels you want to post it to and then like forget about it. So I would schedule out like batches of content for like a week or two um of these videos or just like on the day of it. Then it would only take me 10 minutes to make it and post it versus if I posted it manually. And that ended up eating up all my time because it ended up doing so much better than what my app was doing at the time. Um, and it kind of blew up a lot easier. I guess there was like the second I launched it, it did well. So then I stopped working on the mobile app that I made, >> but I made the there’s a whole purpose. It was like a a weird life cycle there. But yeah. Yeah. So you’ve you’ve built two more mobile apps uh after Curiosity Quench, but then you you’re also building B2B, you know, helping people like post on social media more efficiently. But I want to stay on on PostBridge for a little bit cuz you got an offer on Twitter a few months ago for like a million dollars for this SAS. Like could you tell that story a little bit? >> Yeah, I think that was like April last year. I was actually um in Mexico at the time by the pool and like I saw that in my um saw that kind of tweet and I talked about it like I it was like a whole big thing. I think that was the best month for you know my SAS actually like the most customers coming in but um Sahil from Gumroad casually offered like a million dollars saying he’d buy PostBridge for a million dollars but then like I realized I didn’t want to sell it at the time cuz it was doing so well. Not sure if that was the best decision considering it was only making I think like 12,000 a month at the time. So, it’s kind of an insane offer. I don’t even know what to say about at this point because obviously um it was a cra it’s a crazy offer and probably a crazier offer to decline at that point, but I just like didn’t really want to stop working on PostBridge yet. So, I didn’t want to I didn’t want to sell it. It’s crazy how that happened cuz at the time everyone was saying telling me to sell it. Um but I just like I didn’t want to. So, >> what was the what was kind of like the the reasoning at the time? >> I mean, the reasoning was like it was also at it was at its all-time high. Like, >> right, >> it’s been grow it was growing like 30 40% over a month. Um, the growth obviously slowed down and maybe it was silly to decline it, but like can’t I mean, I’ve been having fun working on PostBridge. So, I’ve been trying to optimize for that. Um, that’s probably why you’ll see some of my apps could make more money like if I had like hard pay walls, but I just I’m also trying to have fun when I’m building stuff. Um, and I think that’s kind of overlooked a lot. Like I know there’s obviously you want to make more money, you want to have like a higher converting pipeline of all the things you do, but I think fun for me is like it’s just like the best part of it cuz if I’m going to be, you know, working for myself and building, I want to make sure it’s enjoyable. And that’s why I didn’t like I didn’t sell the time because I was having I was enjoying myself and it was making money. Like it was still doing, you know, a lot of money every month. So, and it’s still like making money at this point. So, it’s doing good. Yeah, looks like it’s still making around 20k MR. So, you’re getting the cash flow. And if you had done the acquisition, who knows, maybe it wouldn’t have even gone through and taken a ton of energy and time away. But >> instead, you just continue to make, you know, a bunch of money each month and >> yeah, >> you know, some flexibility to work on other stuff. Let’s look at Curiosity Crunch for a little bit because this is your one of your first apps ever and you’re >> um was this your first app ever? And then like how did you think about >> you know building the actual like user experience and the monetization? >> It was my first app when I originally made it. I didn’t like think about um making money too much. I was like very much just like I wanted this idea to come to life. That’s kind of how all the things so far have went. And I can show you the figma I have of how bad it looked originally. What was the monetization strategy? How did you make your 15k month like onboarding, pay walls, trials? Yeah. What were some of the most important things that you kind of >> learned making my first app? >> Basically, I just wanted to see an idea come to life, which was like a new way to stop scrolling. Instead of putting time blockers up, I wanted people to have hobbies, you know, hobbies that they enjoyed and be able to get action plans to do those hobbies. Um, so you’re going to see here, this is like my original payw wall. I wasn’t thinking about like too much about how monetization worked. I had like credits, these quench credits and they were confusing and users didn’t understand it at all. So that didn’t very work very well. Even when I launched the desktop app originally before mobile app, um people were kind of confused on how it worked and it not many people ended up buying it. U but a few people did which was pretty crazy for me. It was like my first money on the internet and then I realized slowly if I want to get people off their phones, I need to make a mobile app version. So that’s what I ended up doing. It ended up looking kind of okay. basically like you add a hobby to your list and then you can use a quench credit to get a plan for it. And this was like when chatbt was kind of just first coming to the mainstream like and you could do cool things like this like get custom plans for any topic. That’s how the idea came to life and then like I redesigned it. These are kind of some of the example plans. I ended up like trying to market it on YouTube for like many many months because I didn’t this is my first app. I don’t know how to get users. Um, and the only way I was getting users before this was YouTube and like making talking head Tik Toks. I had like 400 days of me just showing the app demo and some of those blew up too, which was very nice, but it was very inconsistent um to get any downloads. And then this is like before and after kind of interesting of I guess what my pay wall, if you call it that, looked like and how I was monetizing. before on the left here and then after when I like I used uh Super Wall and I could make like something a lot nicer and then that helped my monetization a ton. Um just having a trial alone and using Super Wall to like make these pay walls and test things was like kind of my light bulb moment for making money with this app after like 5 months of I think 1,000 with my poor payw wall. And then after that it kind of started going up to like you know two to three to 1,000 a month to 4,000 a month. What about this payw wall do you think made it higher converting? So, I guess the main thing was realizing that payw walls exist. Like before I like kind of ran into a super wall. I didn’t really realize that this standard was like to have a payw wall. I just had like a shop where you could buy the premium access. So, it would just say you need premium and they’d have to go find the premium access themselves, figure out how to get it. I added the payw wall first with revenue cap, but like you can’t I couldn’t customize anything. It was like very clunky. And then I migrated to Superwall and I could like test, you know, I could test the headers, I could test the copy, like what actually works better, what converts to more dollars per user. I could like gate certain features and like just playing around with all those things over the course of like 3 to 4 months let me get like the average user way more likely to actually buy the app. Like just all these little things testing and doing. And I think initially what really helped was the free trial, like having an option. Um, and SuperWell kind of made me realize that’s like a standard, just the standards I guess there that I didn’t know of and wasn’t aware of cuz it was my first mobile app. And then Superwwell kind of has those baked in like they have the standards baked in. I didn’t have to think about it. I realized after the stand what the standards are, but just putting the payw wall up and now I could do it on my new app in like, you know, 5 minutes, set it up, it just like increased the chance that someone’s going to buy cuz it looks like legit. But [laughter] this is I mean I don’t know if you’d buy from this left one. I would. So >> yeah, it looks a bit crazy. Was this a pure template that was like one of the defaults on Superwall for the payw wall or did you have to use Super Wall to kind of like AB test a bunch of variations and variables of of this payw wall? Is this like the or is it just >> these are both So the main two pay walls I used were were templates. Yeah. And I just added my logo and I changed the colors basically. For one of them I added like an asset that I had but yeah basically just the templates. Um templates are really good. So I mostly just use those. >> So let’s talk about your next two apps. You made DOF and then you made Lovely. So um what made you want to go from Curiosity Quench to DOF and then Yeah. How much money was DOF making? I went from making Curiosity Quench to my social media scheduling tool to then doing another like challenge to make a mobile app in 30 days and get it to 1,000 within 30 days. The main marketing was Instagram and Tik Tok and then obviously um Twitter. And the reason I made it was just cuz like again, this is a common theme with all the things I make. I wanted it to exist. I wanted to see it. At the time I was trying to eat, you know, less junk food, trying to cut out my sugars and kind of try out a new way of eating, like log how my foods make me feel. And if they make me feel good, log it. If they make me feel bad, log it. And then like also have some tools to like flip a coin. You can kind of see it in the features to flip a coin. So like if you’re tempted to eat something, you can adjust the odds. If you guess the coin right, you can eat it. If not, you can’t. And it was just a fun app that was an idea in my head for a while before that I I wanted to see. And then yeah, I mean, I got it to like 1,000 in revenue, I think, in the first month. And again, I just used a super wall template. I didn't think too hard about the pay wall. was kind of the standards were set up for me and then after that month I don't think I've worked on it since honestly mainly just because again my other business it was more profitable more easy to work on more fun in all those ways but this account so you were you doing the same format like the slides for this one >> so for doof I ended up reusing cuz I was pretty lazy the same format I tried a few things before I went back to this like triedand-rue format but like I couldn't get any videos to pop like do super well in the first week but typically I think I should probably have went back like some one of them hit 5 million views on the left there and like it kind of blew up and that got like a bunch of downloads for that month um to the app because all it really takes is one good video and one good video that brings downloads in. This did bring quite a bit of downloads cuz 5 million views is an insane amount of views but not like as much as maybe a direct app promotion but yeah like do still I could make videos on it again and find formats that work in this niche because there's definitely a market for it. I think that's a big thing for consumer apps is you have to like it only really works with consumer apps and this format because people don't want to see ads. So all the videos I try to make they try to make them look not like ads. That's like the main goal I guess with organic format cuz people aren't going to watch it if it's an an ad. You're not even promoting the app at all. You're just mentioning it very casually in the caption. You say feel good today by downloading doof heart emoji and then like the actual content is just a meme. people who eat like this feel good, sleep good, and poop good. And people are just it's just funny. Like it it's like, you know, 5 million views of just casual random people who just thought it was funny. And then like a few% of those people are like reading the caption and being like, "Okay, this is a meme about eating well." And then like, "Oh, there's an app that helps you feel good while you're eating. Like, okay, maybe I'll try it." Would you try to replicate this strategy where you don't mention the the app at all? Like are you is it worth it to try to like go mega viral or is it just kind of like complete luck? >> No, I think it is worth it, but I don't think it should be at this point the only bet. It's like a bet. Like you're putting your chips on one format. I don't think that's the best option. But every app's going to be different too cuz different like you know this food app and my Curiosity Quench, it's kind of the same format. I think the type of person who's going to download Curiosity Quench, the first app, is probably higher performing even though it's the same format because like kind of it's more niche, I guess. So, it really depends. But at this point, like I made a I just made a new app and it's got 100,000 downloads in I think 10 weeks and I didn't use this format because one, it's kind of outdated. Like it's been overused, but two, but yeah, like you said, it doesn't convert as well and I think there's better formats out there. This is like a piece of silver, but there's like pieces of gold you can find. Most of these viral organic strategies come back to finding and tweaking formats that are already working. And it's not that hard to find viral Tik Toks. You can just scroll the for you page. But it is hard to find viral Tik Toks that actually promote apps in a subtle way. So, a consumer club member actually built a tool that does that. It's called Spy Talk. Basically, it brain rot scrolls Tik Tok for you and then finds Tik Toks in your niche that promote apps. Let me show you here. Spy talk found this viral outlier slideshow in the love and relationships niche that promotes the lovers widget. So it shows you the exact slides, the engagement metrics, the AI tags that describe what kind of video it is and then you can bookmark and save them for inspiration. Yes, this is a sponsored segment. I partnered with Spy Talk to bring this tool to the Consumer Club and the Superwall audiences. It's used by top consumer app teams like AMO, Voodoo, 11 Labs to fuel the creative research for their organic social growth. This isn't one of those tools that promises you'll generate thousands of videos with zero effort and just go viral overnight. But in my opinion, creative research is the bedrock of all organic growth strategy. So, I actually highly recommend spytalk.com. Let's look at your piece of gold. What is your new app? Yeah, so my new app is lovely. It's a app for couples. Again, I made it for myself cuz I wanted it to exist for me and my fianceé. Um, one of my friends mentioned it to me. He's like, "You should make a couple's app." And I I originally made this app actually so I could go on and then used my other SAS Postbridge to kind of show like how do I use this to promote my mobile apps. But this is blown up like insane, crazier than I thought. The main premise behind it was originally just a a widget, like a widget on your home screen. It's in [music] one of those. You send a doodle. It's like and it ends up on the home screen. And on Twitter it blew up like three different times for three different reasons which kind of made me realize that this is like something really good. And then after I found even in the last I think it was only in two weeks ago I found a format that is basically a direct ad for the app but still gets millions of views which is kind of insanely lucky. I'll be honest, but it's because I was doing kind of scrolling in my niche for couples and watching other apps like competitors even seeing what content they're posting and then the second I caught wind of something that's going like doing really well where it's basically just a feature of the app, I remade the whole feature in my app in the day and then I posted videos about it the next. But I don't know if you want to go that far ahead or go back to like the beginning where we got like uh a few thousand downloads in the first day without any Tik Tok. >> We'll get to the Tik Tok in a bit. What was the tweet that made you realize this was a pretty interesting idea? >> Yeah, so I had a launch tweet that I basically just said, I'm working on this app for the rest of the year and I got 12 I think 10 weeks. I wanted to bring it from0 to 5,000 a month from my brand new app in 10 weeks. And then the second thing being this app is actually kind of cool. Like I can actually send love notes to my like to my partner on their home screen. And like those two things were really interesting as like a story, as like a piece of content, I guess, even on Twitter. And the tweet kind of blew up. Like the launch tweet kind of blew up. I can try to find it. So yeah, I launched the app with like a really basic tweet just like for fun, like, hey, I’m I’m growing this app. Um here’s what it does and this is what I’m trying to do. And then I showed it in context like so it’s clear like what it does. Um, it’s a love note app and there’s like a love note on the home screen, which is basically what I said here. Uh, and then this tweet did really well cuz I kept adding context. I used a bunch of of quote tweets. People would also post things like replacing the love note, which one of them blew up insanely. Uh, they replaced the love note with a grocery list. Um, and then that got like 16 million views. Um, 33,000 likes and it’s basically pointing people directly to my app. And then I added more context to this tweet and I said, uh, basically what’s happening like I made this app, someone’s now using it as a grocery list. Uh, and that got even, you know, 300,000 likes. That brought 40,000 downloads overnight before this happened, like a week and a half before, cuz this is a week and a half after the launch. I tweeted this out, the launch tweet, and Russian news picked it up, and like 10,000 people the next day after I launched it downloaded the app from Russia, which was kind of insane to begin with. And then like that obviously I tweeted about it, people looked at the tweet, people saw the app, and like it was like a neverending cycle of like interesting things that are happening and they’re all about this app. So thousands of people downloaded it just from seeing this like what is going on on Twitter. And then a week and a half later, this happens, which is like, you know, 20 million views to basically my app tweet. >> Yeah, that’s crazy. So many downloads from Twitter. Like, I feel like most people wouldn’t expect that. And then Instagram or you did Instagram and or a Tik Tok for this one, too, right? >> Yeah. So, I started promoting on Tik Tok about a week after these tweets went kind of viral. Um, and and it kind of started slowing down like the downloads per day. that added, I think, 2,000 MR or 3,000 MR just from that, like the Twitter tweets and the Russian news. Um, and then I changed the app to Fremium from a hard payw wall cuz I got a lot of bad reviews about the hard payw wall and I wanted more of my friends to be able to use it as well. Uh, and then I started posting on Tik Tok. The first Tik Tok I’m using like a USVPN on my old burner phone. I have it here. Um, and just posting one a day, trying new formats, as I said, scrolling in my niche, and I found some that I could probably apply. Uh, my second one I posted hit like 150,000 views at the time. The day I posted it, it’s like a Tik Tok about relationship, so it ties into the couples app, but this probably brought, I think, like 100, 200 downloads. So, this is one of these formats that is not a piece of gold. It was a piece of like silver or copper. Lots of views, but it didn’t convert. And then I kept um trying that format to see if I could make it convert better by like being in the comments, but again like nothing noticeable in downloads. And then I saw a competitor, another couple’s app, making videos that look like this. Very basically exactly like this. I made the feature in a day and I put it out there and I started making videos the next day with this format. It’s like a shared whiteboard. It’s not a lock screen. It kind of looks like a lock screen. It’s a shared whiteboard feature I already had in my app. I just made it a presentation mode. And then um yeah, I mean you can see here that I think the fifth video really blew up 490,000 views and then the next two also kind of kept like I posted at this point two a day and then I scaled it up to three a day and now a bunch of them have hit like 500,000 million you know 10,000. and it’s kind of slowed down. But then also I started posting these on Instagram when I started doing this format and as you can see here the first one I posted had like 300,000 views and a bunch of them hit like um you know a few million a million a million and this is all in the last 2 weeks. This so this is the directly using the app. Um it’s like an 8 to 10 second video and it’s just [music] showing this is me using the app and at the end it shows directly the app. So, this obviously converted like 20 times better than the 2x two slideshows. And this is kind of where I’ve iterated to at this point. I haven’t gone past this format. I don’t It’s not going to work forever. Um, but so far between the Twitter viral post and this format, finding this gem, we’re at like a 100,000 total downloads. Yeah. [music] So, 102,000 users, 10,000 proceeds, and I think the MR is about 4,200. So, Wow. So, it looks like you’re about to hit your your 5K MR goal by end of year, maybe. >> Yeah, that’s hopefully, fingers crossed. >> Um, yeah, >> that Instagram format is like Yeah, like that’s the gold because it’s relatable. It feels very organic, authentic, but it’s also like completely showing the app. >> And it’s even like it’s a video of demonstrating the app of the shared whiteboard feature, not just a screenshot. Like with the Curiosity Quench, >> you at least showed the like >> the app store screenshot >> and that was like, you know, a little bit um of an ad, but this is like a complete ad, but it it’s like in a familiar organic format. Why do you think these go viral? The format is just doing so well on Instagram. Is it the caption? Is it purely just the concept of like the whiteboard? I noticed that a lot of your like text on the screen captions are also like the the copyrightiting on that feels very organic and it feels like >> kind of like oh like you know I’m looking at this one. It’s like tag the one or may this type of love and care find you. And I think that type of language is like kind of native to the audience that you’re trying to to reach. >> Yeah. I mean, I’ll be honest, I don’t think I’m that again creative here. I don’t I didn’t like try to figure out or engineer a new format. I saw this on Tik Tok. Um, not on Instagram. Like I don’t think anyone’s really posting that too much on Instagram. Even months ago, I see people have posted something similar, other couples apps. And but recently, I saw it going viral on Tik Tok. This exact format. some other app posting it. I knew if it’s going viral for them, I can make it go viral for me. So, I didn’t have to think about why it’s working. I just needed to get the video out and see what happens. Um, so I didn’t like think about why is it going viral, why is it doing good. I just said, okay, if it is, I’m going to trust the algorithm and I’m going to try to post something very similar for my app. And that’s kind of exactly what I did. That’s kind of how I got here. >> It went viral on Instagram and Twitter. On Twitter, it was also the app interface. So, it was like one of those gold formats again where you’re showing the app on and like the app itself is kind of like what’s going viral. Like, have you changed the way you think about organic marketing and content marketing through this experience versus Curiosity Quench? Cuz the format’s very different. Like, if you’re to build a new app in the future, are you only focusing on apps that like look good on TikTok? I think honestly um I did just get better at like spotting what I could possibly make work for formats, but I’m not sure if I would like necessarily know a better way for certain apps to market than like what I did for Curiosity Quench. And I think I’d still make apps that are like harder to market. Um if the idea is there, I think I think the idea is the biggest part like can you make something out of your niche, out of your idea that is like interesting, is is kind of grabbing and that’s what I tried to do. I think with most of the things I make like I think you can basically make any app interesting by the way you frame it or like viral and approachable through a different type of format. It’s just that’s when the creativity comes in I think and I don’t think there’s like any one answer to like do this you get that. It’s like very iterative. It has to be just everything has to be tested and you have to try things and get a sense for what people like cuz even on Tik Tok and Instagram usually the two platforms don’t correlate. I got lucky that this video is doing good on both, but usually it does good on one and not the other. So, um like I could not have predicted this, right? So, I don’t even know what to say to someone making a mobile app other than like get it out there and see what happens. Start making videos, start doing something and like you’re like going to be 10 times ahead of the person who you know been sitting on their hands and knees wondering. >> So, what is what is that process? cuz it sounds like the digging for gold process is actually just scrolling Tik Tok or scrolling Instagram like you said and then trying to find a format. So, do you have a process for that? >> Set I set a timer for 15 minutes and then I just like go on my phone. Really? That’s like the whole process mostly. And I’d save things like use a save feature on Tik Tok and Instagram and save things. So then when I set aside 30 minutes to an hour to make a video in the day, um I have things to draw from. But some days I don’t like some days I will be like I’m just gonna make a shitty video. I’m just gonna try something. And sometimes those shitty videos actually do really well. Even if I don’t have like a super great feeling about some posting something, I usually would still try in the early days to like try something new every day and get it out there. Do you feel like there’s a lot of content out there that you can copy or get inspiration from? Like in that 15-inute session where you’re just scrolling and trying to find something to bookmark for later, are you finding like a gem every session? >> I would say I think I find a gem every session and then I realize it was 8 months ago and no one wants to see that type of content anymore. But still, I can learn a lot in 15 minutes for like even if I see a video that’s not in a related niche, my brain can kind of figure out like how this could be connected to my thing. It could be a video about some completely different thing, but it’s the format that’s there. There’s like a listicle or there’s a certain 6second background video with this overlay of caption. You do have to stretch some existing something that’s doing well. There’s something to it. And if you can try to get some of what’s working for an existing viral video rather than starting over from scratch, I think that’s the best way to go. You said your brain just makes the association and sees how this gem that you just found could apply to the app that you’re working on and how you could use it for marketing. I think that brain habit that you kind of unconsciously do is basically the core of marketing and like creativity in marketing. Did you have to train that? Do you like do you think it’s trainable to as you’re going about your day in your life, you just see a billboard or you see a Instagram post and you just think, “Oh, I could take this piece of this and then use it in marketing.” Like, did you always have that? I didn’t always have it. So, when I’m trying to market like a new app, I’m on Tik Tok scrolling and even when I’m not on TikTok, I’m like, it’s in my head. like I just can’t stop thinking about how could I make something interesting that’s related to my app as a piece of content and like that people want to watch and it results in downloads back of my head that’s like the thought that’s recurring but I didn’t always have that um I think it’s just over time I just like my I put like a thought into my brain like this is what I want to I kind of figure out a consistent habit I think helps a lot like I have like this set aside time to reach to do this goal and [music] now my brain is going to be thinking about this even when I’m not in that set aside time. >> Is there any other way to train it? Like what was your past? I’m just curious like even before the apps, like were there other marketing things, any like business things that you were doing? >> Before I learned how to code, uh I think like 2 and a half years ago now, I was like trying for 3 years a bunch of different businesses. Print on demand, um Amazon KDP, like selling books, selling t-shirts, designs, crypto. I got a crypto YouTube channel. I guess over time it led me to realize that I need to make stuff for myself and figure out how to bring people to them. So that was like the two things I started off with newsletters and like you’re talking about something, but you don’t make money from newsletters unless you are selling a product. And then slowly, I guess, I built up the skill of being able to make something interesting or sound valuable because when I first built my first app, I figured out quickly like people don’t want to buy something unless you give them a reason to, unless you’re solving a problem or making something unique or like taking a new angle at it. Over like five years of just like trying different things, I picked up a bunch of different accidental habits that basically ended up me being a bit obsessed with like certain marketing creatives without even thinking about it. I guess like it’s just like it’s all towards one overarching goal, which is like to make the thing I’m making make money and how do I actually like do that? And the only answer is like getting people to download or use it. Then my brain just thinks about the videos that could get people to download or use it. That’s a good learning. Everyone’s trying to find that idea. You’ve basically tried everything [laughter] like Amazon, book selling, like crypto, YouTube channels, newsletters. Newsletters is interesting because that’s like pure writing. What did you learn about how to make people see value in in something enough to pay or even like to sign up for something from newsletters? I feel like it’s like a such a abstracted skill or like thing that I’ve learned over so many years because I was writing the newsletters not really to make money just because someone told me you could make money making newsletters. It was kind of a weird venture and then I was a personal painoint business. >> No, no, it wasn’t like that. So before that time I was just doing trying things that are random like I didn’t really have any thought about what a business should be. And now I realize that a profitable business is something that solves like a problem. But that didn’t enter my consciousness until like 2 or 3 years into me trying to make money on the internet. Interesting. Does that ever feel limiting at all? Like you know I I need to solve like something personal to me. Like a a trap that some people get into is okay, I need to solve something that’s personal to me and then they just think of something that’s a problem in their life and then they try to think of a solution. But it seems like the way that you ideulate is not 100% like that. It’s like you you have an idea of, you know, a problem in your life or something that feels personal to you, but then the app idea ends up being something that is more of a twist on something that already exists. So it’s like you’re almost like prevalidating the problem and then for the solution, you’re also like prevalidating that a little bit instead of just inventing a completely new invention. You’re like finding something that exists. Does that like sound accurate? >> I guess when especially when I think about it more, everything that I’ve made has a successful counterpart. Even my first app, even though the idea was completely different to like anything existing out there, the marketing part I still took from existing apps in that niche to see what they’re doing and to push like that painoint. So everything I’ve made, not only a personal like I guess solution, but like a revamp of something that is already extremely working and successful and making money. >> Right. Right. Another thing is like Curiosity Quench was a single player app. It’s something where you’re trying to get unaddicted to your phone and screen time. Doof is also like solving press. Lovely was like it’s like a two-player app. There’s two people. It’s not quite a social app like Instagram or Facebook or whatever. the dynamic of trying to grow that app feels like slightly different or at least the the the way that you build the app is a little bit different. Are you finding any niches of apps that you would want to pursue next that like do you think that it’s it’s a good idea to stay in kind of like the single player AI space or are you pretty open with like the types of app ideas you’re interested in? >> I think like any app that sounds fun to make I’d make it. I can’t even think far ahead enough to be like what do I work want to work on next because I’m just so I guess focused on the thing in front of me right now. Um but I don’t I don’t really think it matters too much like is there two people in the app? Is there one? Is it social? Like I guess the premise of the app just has to be inviting enough and clearly has success that you can recreate in some way. So that’s why I’ve stuck to I guess the more like single player apps and even lovely I think I got very it’s very interesting because I didn’t realize how effective it is to have two people in an app in this sense for couples apps are really good for making money in a way because the boyfriend if the girlfriend asks them to buy the app they’re probably going to pay for it and [music] it’s like oh you don’t love me you didn’t pay for this couple’s app so it’s kind of it’s kind of funny but but I feel like it it does have like an effect I think there is something there and also If two people are using something and they’re enjoying it together, they’re more likely to talk about it, to be like happy about it because it’s like this thing that’s connecting them. So that that’s something I just lucked out on mostly by this app niche. There’s like good and bad parts of every app niche, I think. And that’s the good of this one. I don’t know what the bad is. I can’t think of it right now, but the good of a single player app might just be that like there might just be like a really painful problem you need to solve and you solve it. But I just know that um if an app solves a problem or if an app is like interesting enough, it it can make money, especially if it’s in obviously a proven niche, a proven like there’s other apps like it. And then that’s where I usually go from. >> I like that insight though. It’s like you should think about who’s the buyer and why are they buying. >> Yeah. >> And boyfriend I I I’ve never thought about it. It just kind of happened. >> Yeah. Yeah. Is there anything that has changed about your mindset after making money? Cuz I feel like as you’re telling your story, it’s like very relatable like you’re grinding. Like you start from the goal which is okay, I want to make money presumably like in a way that feels like I have freedom and I’m my own boss. I’m, you know, I’m able to be experimental. And you’re trying and trying and trying and it’s like not working out. And then you kind of come across a Eureka moment for you. It was like, oh, I need to build something that’s more personal to me. and then you start making a bunch of money. Has your mindset shifted at all in your approach to building? >> I think my mindset has not shifted from when I started making money cuz when I started making money, I realized I needed to make something that’s valuable. Um, and now I think that’s still true. I’m just happier about building those things. Before I would stress more. Um, so I think that’s the only thing that’s a bit less stress. Like it’s a bit less beating myself up if I don’t work like every day for this many hours. Um, I think that’s the really the only thing that’s changed. I still try to like to do everything myself at this point. I am going to like reinvest the money that Lovely has made and like back into the app. I haven’t done that before. Usually I don’t reinvest the money like and hire people to kind of scale marketing and just see what works. But my mindset’s basically the same. It’s just like being curious, trying things, doing things myself, and trying to learn as much as I can and trying to have fun along the way and be profitable. Like profitability is everything I think especially for at least me as a I want to stay solo. I want to stay very small. So profitability is like the number one metric to be able to keep going and that’s still the mindset I’ve put in from like 3 years ago to now. You said something that made me want to ask about this a little bit. So you’re reinvesting in marketing to scale. So you’re at 4K a month right now with Lovely and you want to reinvest to do even more distribution and just double down. And so like what are your plans for that? >> So the app’s premium right now. So paid ads don’t really make sense. Like maybe they do. I’ve never really used paid ads. Um maybe I’m silly. Um so don’t take that to heart. But reinvesting money into Lovely basically right now means hiring some people to help me post that format that’s winning right now. Instead of one, two accounts like 20, 30, 40, I’m posting like a lot more volume like hundreds of videos a day. Not sure if it will work if the you know algorithms will detect it. I think Instagram is probably the best bet there. I’ve already paid like I think a,000 bucks is like what I’ve paid so far reinvested and then the accounts are getting like set up now. So that’s what I’m doing right now for Lovely. I’ve never done that before. It’s always been me, but we’ll see how it goes. I don’t know. Like we’re still in the testing phase. >> So you’re trying to like 100x the volume. How do how do you find those people to help you post? >> For me, it’s been Twitter. like I just like obviously posted about the app journey and I see um people in my feed like talking about it and then also I have some like friends who are kind of in the same space as me who have been using like these other people to try stuff. So um just through like word of mouth basically in Twitter and I found people who want to try to help me out too and like they see what I’m doing and they like it. >> So yeah >> that’s awesome. I will be very curious to see how it goes. So you guys can follow Jack on Twitter and to follow along the scaling journey. But thanks so much, Jack. This is really good. Um, I learned a lot and thanks for thanks for being on the show. >> Yeah, thanks for having me, Joseph. >> Awesome. Something you might not know, most of the founders I cover on this podcast are hanging out right now in the Consumer Club Discord, sharing with each other what’s working now for consumer apps. So, you can apply to join Consumer Club if that sounds interesting to you. And this is the Superwall podcast. Of course, you got to check out superwwell.com. We have more videos on the channel.