How Conch grows

Found a video already going viral for other AI writing tools (a kid getting caught in class, ~10K likes, poor quality, no on-screen text). Swapped its sound for audio from a different clip of a teacher yelling 'No AI on this test' so it felt like a real student getting caught, added Snap-style captions ('How the f is this kid acing every exam?'), then zoomed in to show he was using the AI website: a straight hook then demo. Posted by the guest as a faceless solo creator on the brand's TikTok; it was then reposted on X by random accounts. He calls this 'Frankensteining': find videos that already went viral on your subject and stitch them together. Aim for one extreme: either obviously a cringe homemade ad or something that feels completely real; lower quality leans into realism.

The team was building Pandora (ChatGPT for Google Docs). When GPTZero launched, they decided the same day to build a bypass tool; a co-founder prototyped it in Figma that night.

The guest, a former influencer, made the videos as the solo, faceless, founder-led UGC creator for the brand account. Earlier, 1-2 weeks of videos for the predecessor product (Pandora) got ~100K views but few conversions; the pivot to the bypass tool is what converted.

Content leaned into the frustration the guest felt as a student: too much busywork that doesn't lead to a job. Example: 'ChatGPT just broke university' with a voiceover saying half the assignments students get are just busywork. Pick the side with the larger or louder emotion in an outraged group and act as one of that crowd.

The website used several schools' logos, and the founders listed Conch in their LinkedIn bios instead of building in stealth. Local news covered high school students using Conch to bypass AI detection.

Talked to three or four potential buyers; interest came from the margins and numbers. Some were competitors who pretended to want to acquire them and just took information.

Tested paid ads; no details on platform or spend.

Newer videos were made by UGC creators who filmed natively in the Snapchat app with Snap-style captions. Lower quality is fine: it leans into the 'realistic' pillar, since viewers recognize the frame rate and pixelation of Snap stories. The guest notes Snap captions were in style for a while but less so now.