Tolan · B2C · AI alien friend app
Onboard with a fun voice quiz, then have the app bring answers up later
Users call it a wow moment; part of what lifted early retention
Workedonboardingproduct-activation
What they did
Onboarding is framed as a story: every person has a unique Tolan on planet Portola, and to find yours you complete a voice-AI personality quiz with an animated 'Oracle' character. Questions are deliberately fun, like an Enneagram or astrology reading ('what oddly specific part of TikTok do you get stuck on?'), not functional ('what workout do you like?'). The app gives an output ('here's what we learned about you') and matches a Tolan. The quiz context carries into the first chats and is stored as memories, so the Tolan later says things like 'the Oracle told me you are really into cooking pizza right now'.
What happened
Guest describes it as a wow moment for users; improved onboarding was part of the changes that raised D5-D15 retention.
- Stage
- Launch (post-launch iteration)
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Fueling Growth with AI and Viral Product Features — Ajay Mehta, Portola“We tried to make it like, "Hey, what kind of like oddly specific part of TikTok do you get stuck on?"”
“So, you might tell us something about yourself or what's on your mind in the onboarding quiz that then your Tolan might also bring up to you and say, "Hey, the Oracle told me that you are like really into cooking pizza right now" or something, right?”
Related topics
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More from Tolan
All 13 Tolan tactics- Quiz new users, match them to an AI friend, then start a voice chatAdvisor credits it as a big part of their success; no numbers
- Show a shareable card of how the AI character's personality maps to yoursAdvisor calls it a viral artifact people share; no numbers
- Start with a 7-day free trial, then tune trial length to limit AI costs
More from this episode
- Tolan: Soft-launch the app for free to see how people really use itSome users talked 30-40 minutes a day right away
- Tolan: Put up a paywall 2-3 weeks after launch to cover AI costsGrowth self-funded; renewals give a clearer product signal than free usage
- Tolan: Hire a group of college-age creators to post lots of TikToks on their own accountsAbout 1 in 20 videos takes off; viral days brought 10-15K installs and #1 in category
- Tolan: Make videos of people using the app while studying, cooking or getting readyStudying ('up at 3am') took off first; a cooking video got ~10M views
- Tolan: Pay creators with about a million followers to post a video on their accountNewer effort; these do better on average than the small creators
- Tolan: Hire artists to make a bright, cute character that looks great in videosLow install costs even on paid; users show it to friends and post it unprompted
- Tolan: Make the AI companion a friendly, non-romantic alien instead of a human80-90% of users are women aged 15-25 with normal social lives
- Tolan: Improve conversations and add a shared planet until D7-D15 retention risesD5, D7 and D15 retention went up; growth then started paying off
- Portola: Raise a small pre-seed first, then more from the same investor after launch$10M seed in total
- Tolan: Run small paid ads from day one to test retention and conversionLow install costs gave room to experiment; organic later beat it