How Scanemon grows

Once the tips-slideshow format was proven in-house, they loaded it into Nois: 38 hook images, ~230 body images with captions, and a set of pre-written text hooks. Nois auto-generates a slideshow for each creator, who posts it on their own account; Nois handles attribution and payouts. The brand pays ~$1-2 CPM and Nois keeps half. Most posts get few views, but the volume adds up. The dashboard breaks results down by text hook and image, so the best hooks are visible. Nois put them in a Slack channel with advice. Earlier they tried paying creators CPM directly (a campaign on Growe, hiring via Sideshift, DMing people on TikTok) with a Google Drive of photos and pre-made hooks.

Took the Cardstock sports-card scanner model and built 'basically the same app, but for Pokémon cards' (Scanémon) in 2025. Had Cursor's agent generate essentially everything; MVP done in one day.

Jacob built a repeatable TikTok slideshow format of card-show/collecting tips, copied from other tips slideshows in the niche, with the app plugged into the slides. Pack posts it on an in-house account (Pokemay) whose profile picture is an AI-generated girl, because it appeals more to girls and guys don't mind. Once posts worked, they systemized the format (hook images, captions, pre-written hooks) so others could post it. Kyle's own slideshow attempts a year earlier had failed.

Pick a slideshow format, find which versions get views and which convert, and balance the two to drive downloads. Use Noise to send the slideshow template to creators, who post it and are paid per view. Cheaper start: post slideshows on your own TikTok account or a few accounts to validate before paying creators. Attribution is hard unless it is the only channel you run.

Instead of hiring an agency or an experienced TikToker, Kyle hired his friend Jacob, then working at Wendy's, to make videos. They sat down daily: Jacob made videos, Kyle gave feedback and suggestions, and Kyle wrote his repeated feedback into a strategy doc used as a checklist. They learned from Twitter and Consumer Club but chose to solve it themselves first. Later a second friend, Pack, joined. Kyle's reasoning: you have to learn enough to recognize someone great, and a bootstrapped company can't afford a wrong $5-10K agency bet.

Added the Cardstock logo at the top of the scanner. Scanemon has a hidden setting, used by the content team, that shows the app promo/brand name and marketing text in the scanner for videos and slideshows (not shown to normal users). Idea copied from Fig and Cal AI's scanners, even though it breaks Apple's design guidance. Rationale: conversion from organic content is almost impossible to measure, so make every small tweak that should raise it.