Arise · B2C · anime-inspired fitness app
Post carousels about Solo Leveling fans wanting 'the system' in real life
Guest's fastest cold start besides Shepherd; ~$7K/month early
What they did
What happened
- Stage
- cold start
In their words
Daniel Kwon - He made $2.2M from building simple apps. Here's how (no-code)
Joseph ChoiThat makes sense. Do you do that, too, with the new products that you're working on with any of the apps? Like, are you leaning into founder-led content?
Daniel KwonI worked on two different apps after Dimension. One was a super hacky, scrappy app called Arise. It's a Solo Leveling-inspired fitness app. This was probably next to the the other app I'm going to talk about, which is called Shepherd, and it's the Duolingo for Bible study, but next to that app, I think it was the fastest cold start I've given an app. We just used carousels about fans of Solo Leveling
Daniel Kwonbeing excited about the idea of the system existing in real life. So like there were already a bunch of anime fanatics just posting, "We need the system in real life." So everyone already wanted an app, and there were already a couple out, but none of them were optimized. They had no long onboarding flow, no social features. They weren't optimized to convert, actually. Most of them were running ads,
Daniel Kwonwhich anyone in the app space knows does not generate much revenue, and it's probably the worst way to monetize your app. But yeah, we just basically milked that format, partnered with a couple different influencers.
Joseph ChoiThat's so interesting. It's like It seems like the framework for this was just like, find a large group of people that are really passionate about a thing and then just make an app that's sort of like based on that IP. So they're super fans of Solo Leveling, and that doesn't really exist in real life.
Daniel KwonI mean, it goes back to the point of building a movement. You're either building the cult or finding the cult, and it's definitely better to build the cult in terms of long-term or in terms of LTV, but with this, it was just such an obvious play with the season 2 finale of Solo Leveling coming out at the time, so we were kind of riding like a momentum wave. I like to say that pretty much every product or project I've worked on has stemmed from some sort of momentum
Daniel Kwonwave in an existing cult.
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
- Stitch an already-viral classroom clip with better audio, then demo the app15-16M TikTok views in a day, 100M+ across platforms; drove a $500K month
- Make videos siding with students against pointless school busyworkOne such video got ~4M views (host's reading); guest says the style still works
- Have a co-founder make all the videos himself, faceless and low-budget~220M lifetime views and ~$2.2M revenue, mostly organic
- Test paid ads next to organic videosMargins were worse than organic; dropped
- Build a tool to get around AI detectors the night one launches$1M ARR within about 30 days
- Have UGC creators film inside Snapchat so videos look like real stories
- Put schools' logos on your website without askingGot cease-and-desist letters from several schools and a legal fight
- Talk to three or four buyers when selling the appSold, but some competitors posed as buyers just to pull information
- Post a scrappy 'we made way too much, so it's on sale' videoHit every time creators remade it; brand had views but no sales before
- Put a flash sale on a TikTok Shop item to reach more For You pagesGuest says it automatically boosts the product and brand; no numbers
- Film shop videos in the founder's kitchen or bedroom, even as a funded brandBrand became #1 in food and beverage on TikTok Shop; not isolated
- Pack visible value into product photos and release limited flavor dropsGuest says it made organic storytelling much easier; no numbers
- Pay influencers and meme pages $1-2 per 1,000 views$6-7 revenue per 1,000 views; grew to ~$50K/month at 70-80% margins
- Build the app fans already ask for when rivals just run adsReached ~$50K/month alongside influencer deals
- Stitch popular faith podcast clips and farmed hooks onto a quick app demo~7 videos: 20M views, 100K+ downloads and $75K MRR in 2 weeks
- Pitch a God-first lamb against Duolingo's AI-first owl during its backlash~10K Discord members from the launch push; later fans rejected an AI feature
- Replace the AI chat with a custom devotional and drop 'AI' from the copy
- Pause creator videos and build invites for prayer and accountability buddies
- Build the app in two weeks while running a two-week content pushReached #10 on the charts and $75K MRR despite a buggy app
- Post about your app yourself; skip paid ads until five formats winGuest's rule from five or six cold starts; no numbers
Tags: carousels, fandom, momentum-wave, anime