The Superwall Podcast · 2026-04-04
Dillion Verma - 0 to $300k/mo in 45 days with my ai app (just copy me)
Dillion Verma explains how Halo AI, an AI photo editor built in 2-3 weeks, hit $300K MRR in 45 days and 1.2B views in 120 days with a math-first UGC program: revenue = views x conversion, views = creators x videos x posts x views/post. He recruits creators from Reddit/Facebook UGC groups, runs 5-day $100 paid trials, uses one prank-story format cross-posted to 4 platforms, pays $20/video plus view-milestone bonuses (29 of 30 creators chose it over CPM), and coaches via a Discord AI agent. Funded by a $100K personal loan after seeing ~6x ROAS.
Play the episode13 tactics
Numbers mentioned
| Subject | Metric | Value | Quote |
|---|---|---|---|
| Halo AI | mrr reached in 45 days of scale-up; then plateaued | USD 300K/month approximate | “You bootstrapped your first app to 300,000 MRR in 45 days.” |
| Halo AI | views social views in first 60 days | 600M views approximate | “we went from 0 to 600 million views on social media in 60 days, and also 0 to 1.2 billion views in 120 days” |
| Halo AI | views social views in first 120 days, all from one format | 1,200M views approximate | “we went from 0 to 600 million views on social media in 60 days, and also 0 to 1.2 billion views in 120 days” |
| Halo AI | count active UGC creators now (about 10 at start, 25 during initial scale-up) | 85 creators | “At the current moment, there are 85, and for this video, you see, or the GIF, there was 25 for the initial scale up.” |
| Halo AI | count posts per day across creators and platforms | 300 posts/day approximate | “We do a lot more than a million a day, and I think right now it's like 300 posts a day, or something.” |
| Halo AI | conversion rate video view -> download; stays constant for a given format (e.g. hook-and-demo) | 0.25–0.3% approximate | “then the rate is always going to be like 0.25% or 0.3% of people who would watch the video and go download the video” |
| Halo AI | share share of videos passing 100K views | 5% approximate | “It's always going to be, for us, like rough example is 5% over 100k, and like 1% over a million.” |
| Halo AI | share share of videos passing 1M views | 1% approximate | “It's always going to be, for us, like rough example is 5% over 100k, and like 1% over a million.” |
| Halo AI | count creator applicants from job posts in UGC groups (30-50 per day) | 500–600 applicants approximate | “So, we got like maybe 500, 600 plus applicants.” |
| Halo AI | count creator applicants per day from job posts | 30–50 applicants/day approximate | “Maybe 30 to 50 per day, and over a while it like very quickly snowballed.” |
| Halo AI | creator pay base rate per video (one video = 4 posts across platforms) | USD 20per video | “For us, our base rate per video, which we set, was $20 per video” |
| Halo AI | creator pay 5-day paid trial: 5 videos at $20, 20 posts across 4 platforms | USD 100per creator /one-time | “so creators were paid for five videos during the trial, so the full trial amount was $100” |
| Halo AI | creator pay view-milestone bonuses: $60 at 20K, $200 at 100K, $500 at 500K, $800 at 1M views; one post of the four must hit; not stacking | USD 60–800per video approximate | “in the beginning, we did 20k, 100k, 500k, and 1 mil views. For each one, we had like a different payout. For this, I think we did 60 additional, and then we did 200, 500, and then 800.” |
| Halo AI | cpm expected creator-pay CPM under base+milestone; actual is lower (unpaid views between milestones, only one of 4 posts paid) | USD 1 approximate | “It's around like $1 uh per 1,000 views like on average?” |
| Halo AI | share 29 of 30 creators chose base+milestone over a slightly higher-paying CPM contract | 29 creators | “we gave this contract to 30 creators, and you wouldn't believe it, but like 29 of them picked this one and one person picked CPM in the end” |
| Halo AI | count top creators' daily video output under uncapped posting (~80 posts across 4 platforms) | 20 videosper creator /day approximate | “Some of our creators are posting like 20 videos a day, or more.” |
| Halo AI | roas early UGC return (ROAS or LTV:CAC) that justified the loan | 5–6 x approximate | “we saw like um ROAS or or LTV to CAC of like 5-to-1 or 6-to-1 or something” |
| Halo AI | debt personal loan used to pay creators | USD 100K/one-time approximate | “So, personal loan, I think it was like 100k or so overall, which we used to pay creators in the beginning” |
| Halo AI | time to milestone time scaling at break-even before turning profitable | 4–5 weeks approximate | “Maybe like 4 or 5 weeks. The initial scale from 0 to 300k, it was break-even like for the first half of that or so” |
| Halo AI | margin | 50% approximate | “Like, I think it's 50% or so, approximately.” |
| Halo AI | profit host's arithmetic: 50% margin on $300K MRR | USD 150K/month estimate | “Like 150k a month profit.” |
| Halo AI | price default weekly plan with free trial | USD 8.99/week | “This one is specifically for $8.99 per week, and you can go ahead and try for free.” |
| Halo AI | conversion rate conversion of each paywall: skippable onboarding paywall and gated in-app paywall (both 16.5%) | 16.5% | “The the non-gated and gated paywall, both have 16.5% conversion rate.” |
| Halo AI | mrr target by June via paid ads | USD 1M/month goal | “we're going to scale it to a million a month, hopefully by June, that's our goal, and we're going to use paid ads to do that” |
| marketUS people with both Instagram and an iPhone (guest's TAM framing for UGC) | market size | 100M people approximate | “there's approximately 100 million people in the US who have Instagram and an iPhone” |
| marketmonthly active users of major social platforms (Facebook 3B, WhatsApp 3B, YouTube 2.6B, TikTok 2B) | users | 2,000M–3,000M users/month approximate | “there's 3 billion monthly active users on Facebook, also 3 billion on WhatsApp, 2.6 billion on- on YouTube, and 2 billion on TikTok” |