Brett Bauman & Zack Hargett - COPY this ai app's $6.7m/yr marketing strategy

About 8-9 months after launch, Coconote built pdftobrainrot.com: paste long text and it turns into a Minecraft-parkour 'brainrot' video. Creators on the content team posted videos (text a long message, go to the site, paste it in, reveal the brainrot video) on TikTok and Instagram Reels. The site was a 'Trojan horse' meant to route students into the real study app.

Early (March-May 2024) videos on the @coconoteapp Instagram page used a quick hook plus product demo: e.g. hook 'My mom just changed my college life forever', 2-3 seconds of a lecture hall, then straight to a phone recording the lecture ('all I do is hit record... it listens to the professor, starts taking notes'). Framed Coconote as a solution to a real problem for the target audience. Mostly made by one creator (Joao). Guest says this 'lazy' shock-hook + demo format works while the product category is new and novel.

While experimenting with study games, they built a 2048 game with study questions between moves and promoted the URL 2048buthelpmestudy.com (redirects to Coconote) in a creator video on the brand page. Creator Allie handled hook, script and fast-forwarded sections.

The recording and transcribing screens seen in top videos are not real product screens: they are hidden screens only content creators can access, designed to be eye-catching (e.g. a giant rainbow audio wave with 'coconote.ai' in huge text). Creators sit in Slack with engineers and the product team and request these screens.

'Navy SEALs, not the Navy': at most 10-12 content creators, all part-time contractors with freedom over what they make. A creator with hundreds of millions of views (Alison) leads a group of contractors, so the lead has the team's respect. The founder interviews every creator (decision within 15-30 minutes). Content coaches (1 per 12 creators) review content and walk creators through metrics. Screening pyramid: wants to win (engaged in Slack, on time, camera on) -> can study other content and predict which videos went viral with view counts hidden -> can create original scripts and trends. Creators split roles by strength (on-camera vs editing) and sit in Slack with engineering.

Treat creator recruiting like talent scouting for undiscovered people who see themselves as marketers, not influencers. Sources: Handshake (student job board), Instagram and TikTok DMs, email outreach, referrals, and chance encounters: the founder asked his online Spanish tutor to make content 15 minutes into a lesson; she now makes native Spanish content for LATAM (and some English).

After iterating one or two onboarding screens at a time (small wins, hard to make big progress), they made one big jump: from ~5 to ~13 screens ending in the paywall. Added screens include login, notification permissions and mostly personalization (what the user is studying). Login was moved to the last screen, after the paywall.

Moved login/account creation to the last onboarding screen, after the paywall, using Superwall so users can pay before creating an account.

Users can record an entire lecture (an hour-plus of use) before seeing the paywall or starting a trial; the paywall was moved from before the audio recording to after it, so users are invested first.

Put some money behind top organic posts like the 18M-view video; kept it minimal after little success.

Leaned into ADHD from the start in content. The first App Store screenshot says 'Great for ADHD', and screenshot copy like 'never miss a key detail' repeats phrases users wrote in App Store reviews or said in conversations.

Most customers start on a free trial, and it is hard to win them back once they turn it off. In the cancel flow, besides showing the value they would lose and asking questions, offer to extend the trial by another 7 days.

Strategic acquirers emailed from when Coconote was a couple of months old; they took calls with companies they respected and pushed for a ballpark price range after a couple of conversations rather than investing heavily. Once they committed to selling, they hired a bank (Chris Park at Accretive Partners) that handled outreach and conversations through closing, so the lean team kept talking to customers, building and marketing.

Hire engineers who flex beyond their main area: iOS engineers also do some backend, web engineers some backend, or one person covers iOS and Android. All apps are native (no cross-platform). AI tooling adds leverage.

At Scout, the music fan app Crew was one of the first apps to use UGC-style content, going viral on TikTok and Instagram Reels. This experience later shaped Coconote's content-first launch.

Tried five or six tools to measure content creators' success and was disappointed in all of them until Viral App (viral.app), now used to track, manage and optimize the creator program.