Masterschool · B2C · tech bootcamp
Front your bootcamp with an AI quiz funnel offering 100% scholarships
Revenue tripled in under a quarter from a $50M/year base
What they did
What happened
- Stage
- scale
In their words
Dan Vykhopen - This app makes $2m/year using this ridiculously easy strategy
Dan… Minutes AI, and they're doing 30k downloads and 300k a month. And do you know what I mean? TurboLearn I think is doing a tremendous amount more views, like 170k downloads. They're just targeting an older audience and they're making three times more money with like 1/5 or 1/6 the amount of downloads. So there's a huge lesson in there, like if you just literally like For them, it's the same freaking app just targeted towards a different audience.
DanConsumer example is like Masterschool. It's like a random bootcamp that services mainly German students. So they were doing decent, right? Like $50 million a year. Took them a while to get here, too. And then immediately they tripled in like in a quarter. And what changed? They had this thing called Maestro. This is actually not the product. This is like a a funnel to get you to apply to their bootcamp, but I think they figured out a way to give a lot of people scholarships,
Danand they leverage that with this explosion of like now vibe coders who like, "Oh, I can build stuff." All those people who are like, "I want to build stuff, but I actually have the gap of not knowing what to what to do," they now found out about Maestro and they're like, "Holy shit, I can get 100% off. It's completely free, but want a real degree," and their parents are like, "This is insane and you can get a 100% scholarship?" Of course, their …
Dan… and it's an uncomfortable thing cuz it feels like you're chasing this like, is this it? Is this going to make us more money? But it's important, cuz it can really make the difference. You can make an impact for yourself, for your company, for the people around you, for your users. Always take shots on goal. Host: What is the AI pivot? Dan: Previously, what they were doing is they were- They had bootcamps, I think, mainly for software engineers,
Danand then they would try to place them at companies. This is mainly a marketing positioning, because when you first go here, like you think it's like, oh the like this is the AI product, and like what do you want to do? What do you want to be? Like there are a few options. Like so mainly now it's software engineer building the next gen apps. Awesome. Pretty much every answer you answer here will lead you to this call to action, so this is the main product. Host: And then do they make money on the scholarships or is it like government-paying or?
DanMost likely guess, they're probably getting money from the government. They figured out a way to get money from the government. I remember like a company like MainStreet did this with R&D tax credits, and they figured out how to get free money from the government and then they could just had a lot of people sign up, a lot of companies sign up. And they, you know, killed it for like a year or two until the government closed that loophole. So it …
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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
- Scale creator videos from 500K to 3-4M views a weekNo more conversions than at 500K views a week
- 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
- 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: ai-positioning, quiz-funnel, scholarships