Practitioner pattern · Daniel Kwon (Conch, Dimension, Arise, Shepherd)
Post about your app yourself; skip paid ads until five formats win
Guest's rule from five or six cold starts; no numbers
What they did
In their words
Daniel Kwon - He made $2.2M from building simple apps. Here's how (no-code)
Daniel Kwonkind of get past that initial excitement, that's kind of where you're seeing whether there's actual cracks in your product's capabilities and like the product story itself, in a sense. But if I was just like a technical founder that was able to build good products, I would say the fastest way you can find content-market fit is just by posting about your products. Like don't get lost in the sauce of figuring out a specific format. Just share
Daniel Kwonyour product on TikTok, on Instagram, to start, and just gather data points around what kind of content's working. Also, look up phrases that are loosely related to the problem or the problem you're solving or the community you're targeting, and stitch those videos. Start a conversation with the community you're going against or building for, your app, brand, whatever it is. And that's where you'll learn whether you're good at [chuckle] sales or closing.
Daniel KwonYou have those two different approaches, and with the influencers, you should be able to convert them into full-time UGC creators, meaning they're running an account, posting purely for your brand. But you basically have those three different frameworks you can use to build a viral engine for your company, and don't touch paid until you've cracked at least five winning formats. You're likely not going to see high ROI on your time.
Joseph ChoiThat's a really cool way of thinking about it. Thanks so much for being on the pod. I learned a lot.
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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
- Post carousels about Solo Leveling fans wanting 'the system' in real lifeGuest's fastest cold start besides Shepherd; ~$7K/month early
- 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
Tags: tiktok, instagram, content-market-fit, winning-formats, paid-threshold