Tolan · B2C · AI alien friend app
Make videos of people using the app while studying, cooking or getting ready
Studying ('up at 3am') took off first; a cooking video got ~10M views
Workedorganic-short-videougc-creators
What they did
Base video angles on how real users use Tolan: studying late for an exam ('Up at 3:00 a.m. studying with my Tolan'), nursing-school revision, cooking, doing makeup, picking outfits, and relationship advice ('I'm at the talking stage with this guy in my class'). Keep trying new activities and see which catch in the algorithm.
What happened
Studying/homework was the first niche to take off; a video of a girl cutting a squash with her Tolan watching hit about 10M views.
- Stage
- Growth (post-launch growth)
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Fueling Growth with AI and Viral Product Features — Ajay Mehta, Portola“And then it was like, you know, "Up at 3:00 a.m. studying with my Tolan." Like those sorts of things actually worked super well.”
“there's people like getting ready and doing their makeup with their Tolan, picking outfits. One of the more recent ones is like relationship stuff.”
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: Onboard with a fun voice quiz, then have the app bring answers up laterUsers call it a wow moment; part of what lifted early retention
- 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: 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