Tolan · B2C · AI alien friend app
Hire artists to make a bright, cute character that looks great in videos
Low install costs even on paid; users show it to friends and post it unprompted
Workedproduct-viralitypaid-socialword-of-mouth
What they did
Worked with outside artists they admired online to design and animate the Tolan characters and onboarding; render the Tolan in real time in a Unity canvas inside the native iOS app. Iterated on details (eyebrows, how human-like, starting as a baby vs adult). Chose a cute, non-humanoid, non-anime alien to keep it friendly.
What happened
Bright, visual characters gave a relatively low cost per install from the start, even on paid; users show their Tolan to friends, and unaffiliated user TikToks started appearing (one got 30-40K views).
- Stage
- Pre-launch (pre-launch and ongoing)
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Fueling Growth with AI and Viral Product Features — Ajay Mehta, Portola“because the Tolans are so bright and visual, we were able to like have a relatively low cost per install from the get-go, eve- even on paid.”
“Like people will pull up their Tolan and show it to the people around them in a way that I don't think is happening with the more like romantic-oriented AI girlfriend, boyfriend sorts of things that are out there.”
Related topics
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
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: 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: 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