Bootstrapped to $6.7M ARR and an Exit to Quizlet in 2 Years – Brett Bauman & Zack Hargett, Coconote

Scoped the app down and launched a basic version quickly (April 2024) with a free trial and charging from day one, prioritizing early revenue over polish; founders watched the RevenueCat chart daily as the momentum signal. Accepted early bugs (lost recordings).

Reached out to creators via the email in their bio. Target: Gmail address in bio, ~5K-10K followers, good engagement. Skip anyone whose contact is an agency domain ('@sunsetagency.com') - agencies capture the alpha. Rationale: interest-graph feeds make follower count matter less than content quality. Tried ~30 creators in the first two months; kept the ~3 that drove results; creators are part-time contractors.

One contracted creator ran the main Coconote.app social account, posting short-form videos from early on.

Kept the creator team small (5-12; 'Navy SEALs, not the Navy'), founder met each creator 1:1 and shared which creative converts. Measured downfunnel impact on the days a 20-30M-view video went viral. Brief: show the product as the solution to a real problem, or tie it to identity (like Ladder/Strava for fitness); avoid novelty framing, which attracts low willingness-to-pay viewers.

Built pdftobrainrot.com: turns a long PDF/lecture into a voiceover over background 'brain rot' video (e.g. Minecraft parkour), intended to funnel users toward the main product.

Early creator videos used a 'My mom just changed my life' angle. Creator brief: imagine a student and her mom at orientation - the $130 purchase decision goes to the mom. Later de-emphasized, with overlap between audiences.

Asked customers 'How would you describe Coconote?'; answers consistently said it helps them 'never miss a key detail', which became the first App Store preview screen.

Launched at $99/year and $19.99/month, pushing the annual plan hard; positioned as premium partly to signal reliability, since users trust the app with exam-critical recordings. Ignored the conventional wisdom that students won't pay.

Early price test raised the price to $129 (from $99/yr per the launch pricing); kept it for most of the app's life. Team always had some experiment running.

Users can make one note for free, then must start a free trial; almost no free tier. At launch they also tested trial vs no trial (result not given).

Creators uploaded raw B-roll/unedited footage to a shared Google Drive; an outside clip agency cut it into performance-specific ad creative. Success bar was first-purchase profitability. Neither founder owned the channel more than part-time.

Test roughly doubled onboarding length (to ~15 screens) with more personalization questions and social proof, then paywall; aim is a trial start in the first session.

Removed forced login from the first screen and put it at the end of onboarding, after the paywall; App Store/Play purchases don't need an app account. Requires plumbing to link anonymous purchases to accounts (RevenueCat handles it).

Web (Stripe) cancel flow: ask why they're canceling, then test three save offers - discount (e.g. 30% off), pause for 3 months (students leaving for summer), and for users cancelling during a free trial 'Do you just need more time?' with 7 extra trial days. Shown in a web view in-app for Stripe subscribers; plans to bring to Apple/Google retention offers.

Each founder put in ~$10K upfront; afterwards reinvested App Store and Stripe revenue into creators; ran at ~50% EBITDA margins every month; used startup credit programs for AI costs early, optimizing costs only later.

Took an inbound call from Quizlet a few months in; spoke with a handful of companies; once serious, hired investment bank Accretive Partners (Chris Park) to run the process so founders could stay on building. Kept it between the two founders (team and spouse not told) until close; talked to other founders who had been through M&A.