How Brawler grows

Same format in all three apps: educate (show the main feature, e.g. film analysis that circles mistakes, drills, stance mode, weight-class fueling), social proof ('Join over 100,000 wrestlers' with creator footage), 'How did you hear about us?', then personalize: style, go-to attack, best position, pain-point questions ('what's costing you most matches', 'hardest part about making weight'), training frequency, height/weight plan, optional match-schedule upload, a stat screen, projected-growth graph, optional match upload. Then the paywall ($9.99/month or $59/year on Wrestle AI, ~50/50 mix) showing a generic example breakdown as a taste of the magic moment.

Paid a boxing creator with ~1M followers $4,500 for three videos as a mindshare play, aiming to recoup only 25-50%. Idea: boxers see someone they trust using the app, then get hit with the paid ads, which should lift all paid metrics.

On the third app open, a pop-up asks 'Do you want to talk to one of the founders?'; users enter their number and the founders call random sign-ups, aiming for about an hour a week.

For complicated features, play a screen recording or a creator explaining it the first time the user taps it, then never again (e.g. the punch-counter 'compete' challenge, then 'I got it. Let's go'). Creators record these for free because they like being in the app. Prompted by a sponsored creator who filmed a scripted video using the wrong feature because the pad-work button wasn't clear; they track usage in PostHog.

The whole ad just shows how the Brawler app works (pad-work mode with targets coming at you), a raw screen recording with no thought put into editing or the CTA.

Whenever an ad works, create a bunch of variations. Tried scaling spend fast; CAC rose until results evened out, so they increase spend slowly. Bottleneck is creative volume: they think they need ~10x current creative output to scale spend fast.

Calculate the break-even CPA (e.g. $40 per purchase on Brawler) and judge ads purely on whether CPA moves up or down. Works on AbMax because it runs only paid ads; the new clipping campaign will muddy it. Hired Cal AI's back-end/ads person as a contractor to fix attribution. Onboarding also asks 'How did you hear about us?' to help track attribution.

For the boxing app, look for creators making content for people who want to get good at boxing (can box well, explain clearly, tell a story), not highlight accounts for people who like watching boxing. Few such creators exist, which limits volume.

Inspired by Ladder, paid a coach who trains many pro fighters to record boxing instructionals. Users go through them and the live vision model checks they actually hold a proper boxing stance before unlocking the next lesson.

Went all out several times on 'really sick looking' visuals for ads.