Massive · B2C · AI job application app
Scale creator videos from 500K to 3-4M views a week
No more conversions than at 500K views a week
What they did
What happened
- Stage
- growth
In their words
Dan Vykhopen - This app makes $2m/year using this ridiculously easy strategy
Dan… through influencers who already have consistent views on all their videos. Host: That's interesting. So what message did you find resonated with consumers when you tried influencers? Dan: One of the problems that I've seen a lot of people are having is like, people can do views. People can do conversions. But can you do conversions and views? And to be frank, like we're still learning. Like we're still failing at that sometimes, a lot of times.
DanSo like we'll do really, really well and then I'll be like, "Oh, my god. I figured it out," and then all of a sudden videos start performing super poorly on conversions. But I will tell you, I think we do maybe 3 to 4 million views per week roughly. Host: That's a lot of views. Dan: Yeah. So when we were doing like 500k views, we were actually probably converting as much. We just started to scale up on the influencer and UGC side a lot and test a lot of new stuff and it didn't work. So that's the position we're in now is like, we really wanted to get more views. We figured out what was getting views
Danand we thought we knew what was converting, and we tried to scale that up and it broke. So I think it's a constant game of like, there's no proven way to look at when you get a video and when you get downloads and views. Like early on it's actually great, because you're not getting that many viral videos. So when you do get one, you can clearly see in Stripe or in RevenueCat, whatever, that like is this converting. And you have to build that muscle early on, so that you can know when you're getting lots of viral videos like which videos are converting, cuz right now we're getting
Danthree, four, five viral videos a day kind of thing. And like, I don't know which ones are driving conversions, so you have to know that beforehand before you start doing multiple videos per day. What drives conversion? I think it's different for every company. It should be about problem and solution. Skits, for example, for us don't work, because they don't target the problem well enough. I think there's a lot of nuance here. General ideas for …
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
- Post 'if I built this, would anyone want it?' on LinkedIn before building8M impressions and 5,000 comments from ~500 connections
- Collect a waitlist with LinkedIn posts like 'top 200 companies hiring now'40-50K sign-ups, but only ~0.5% signed up at launch and almost none paid
- Post on Hacker News and send heartfelt personal messages to scraped emailsFirst 100-500 paying users; ~$20K MRR after 8 months of grinding
- Pitch the app as 'Tinder for jobs' instead of describing the AIFounder estimates 2-3x more views and better creator reply rates
- Check Stripe or RevenueCat after each viral video to see if it soldNow 3-5 viral videos a day and can't tell which ones convert
- Post comedy skits aimed at college studentsCollege students didn't convert at all; skits miss the problem
- Open with 'Stop using LinkedIn to apply to jobs', not 'Indeed'LinkedIn hook: ~1M views, high conversion; Indeed: 11M views, only ~$20K MRR
- Make 80% of videos remakes of formats already going viral; 20% new ideas
- Relaunch your stalled UGC creator program with fresh energyAn 11M-view video in 4 days, but only ~$20K MRR; program died
- Pay influencers a monthly retainer to post about the appGot views but few conversions; followers weren't job hunting
- Change your subscription pricing behind a hard paywallRevenue doubled; no details on what changed
- Use paid ads to learn what converts instead of guessing with organicRevenue up 50% from ads; method not described
- Copy a proven onboarding from another app and focus on ads instead
- Run ads that name a very specific pain, like 'run 10+ miles with tight hips?'Converted Dan after 6 ads despite a painful checkout; ads live ~2 years
- Film a friend 'discovering' the app, with two faces and a moving cameraGoes viral consistently with one or two formats; widely copied
- Have a creator repeat one format for weeks, building on any 6K-view videoSame format went from 382 views to 1.7M; founder says it converts very well
- Recreate real people's job-offer videos with actors; sell in the commentsDan calls it illegal; commenters caught on and videos are being taken down
- Grow a simple app purely on paid ads, without outside funding$200-300M a year, 30% margins, doubling yearly
- Sign up ~100,000 TikTok Shop affiliates for a product everyone can useDan guesses nine-figure revenue
- Front your bootcamp with an AI quiz funnel offering 100% scholarshipsRevenue tripled in under a quarter from a $50M/year base
- Sell the same note-taking app to older users instead of students~3x TurboLearn's revenue on 1/5-1/6 of the downloads
Tags: tiktok, view-volume, scaling