Photogenic · B2C · AI photo app
Let the creator decide what to post instead of sending her ideas
Founder's ideas performed terribly; hers drove 35M views
What they did
What happened
In their words
Canyon Pergande - The Secret Behind Weirdly Viral Apps
Canyon Pergande… things. Uh, first thing, this is the the girl he ended up hiring. If we If we check out her TikTok, like, a, she had just, even on her own TikTok, had a history of going viral, like has had a ton of posts perform well, hasn't even posted a ton, but just has seen, you know, some really strong results. So that was, obviously, a huge indicator. Um, second indicator is like when he actually had a conversation with her, she was extremely responsive.
Canyon PergandeShe was like wanting to run strategy on the account. She's like, "I have a ton of ideas that I would love to experiment with." And it's funny cuz he was like, "Any time I would throw an idea at her to try it out, like it would perform terribly, so I ended up just letting her run things fully." And I think that's like one of the fine lines between like giving people just enough information on kind of what your product is and who you're targeting, and then letting them run free. Obviously, you know, not every creator's built the same, and some people need to be You need to be a little bit more hands-on with.
Canyon PergandeUm, but, yeah, just like in her case alone, I think it's good to like figure out how hands-on or hands-off they want to be with everything. But, yeah, we can pull up how this account performed, and it's just absolutely insane. Um, 40 46 posts on this campaign, and doing 35 million total views. Like, that's almost a million views per post, which is insane, especially for for his first crack at it,
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from this episode
- Have 5 creators post twice a day on new TikTok accounts; copy the first hit10K to 150K+ users in 3-4 months on ~$10K; 16-20M views in one campaign
- Post about the tough job market and slip the app in at the endWinning format; videos at 84K to a few hundred thousand views
- Have creators reply to comments and name the app when people askGuest says comment plugs convert to real users; no numbers
- Visit 25 college campuses in person to sign up the first usersFirst 10-20K users; strong word of mouth among college students
- Tell student creators the gig can grow into a strategist or growth roleGuest says it drives stronger results for brands; no numbers
- Give creators a short brief with a Loom, target persona and proven videosSeen across SideShift customers; long briefs get skipped
- Pay creators a base retainer, $15-20 per video, and big view bonusesCommon rate across SideShift; bonuses get creators working the comments
- Warm up each new TikTok account for 3-5 days, acting like your target user
- Test an app idea with a few creators for 2 weeks before doubling downSeen across studios; two weak 2-week rounds mean rethink the product
- Hire one creator who already went viral on her own TikTok35M views on 46 posts; weekly downloads up 10x
- Post the AI's funniest mistakes, like a photo with a third legDrove heavy engagement; part of a 35M-view run
- Turn the organic TikToks that already worked into paid adsBoth apps in and out of their category's top five for weeks
Tags: tiktok, creative-freedom, creator-led