How Citesure grows

No creators: the founder made all the content himself, sometimes with clips of friends and family. His first real TikTok (after five meme posts) was him talking into his phone, adapting an existing format: 'Made a website called I have an essay due at midnight and ChatGPT won't stop giving me fake citations .com...' He named the pain, explained the tool (upload ChatGPT citations, see which are fake, get real replacements, helps with AI detectors like Turnitin) and said 'I'll put a shorter link in the comments.' Advice: early on, don't invent formats; imitate and adapt. Filming yourself beats carousels, and it teaches you what to tell creators later.

Citesure solved a narrow slice (fake citations) of the problem Jenni AI solves, so Jenni understood it instantly. Jenni's account DMed the Citesure Instagram (which showed clips of a friend) to recruit the 'creator'; Matt replied with an eyes emoji offering 'one better' if they wanted an acquisition, saying Jenni had been an inspiration. The CEO offered a call right away; they spoke the next day and he made a first offer on that call. Closing took 4-5 months of lawyers and UK tax work. Advice: pick the acquirer on the founder and culture you'd learn from, not the product.

Prescribed 'doom scrolling' to build viral sense (judging whether a video will go viral): half an hour a day on content in your niche (for him, studying) and half an hour on content outside it, then adapt what works elsewhere. Don't rely only on outlier-finder tools, because you also need to see what fails. Judge principles, not just view counts, since outcomes are noisy.