Jenni AI · B2C · AI essay writing assistant
Hire young founders who grew their own apps to run your content
The hired founder built a 150-creator, 75M-view program in 3 months
What they did
What happened
- Stage
- Scale
In their words
Matt Gittleson - Our app makes $750k/mo thanks to this UGC strategy
JosephHow would you recommend finding someone like you to write things like this? Whether it's writing for the same text-on-screen format or it's like scripting UGC talking head concepts or other things, like is there an archetype of a marketer or writer who knows how to come up with these types of concepts?
MattI think I'm biased because of my own experience, but I think if you're a company large enough, I really believe in acqui-hiring young founders. Because I think if you go for a pure creator, which which I'm not, and, you know, David took a massive sort of show of faith in me, not just being a pure marketer, all of this, fundamentally everything we're speaking about, is the purpose of it is to drive revenue. And if you get someone that just understands being creative, and that's all that they kind of know, I think it can be hard to teach that element of conversion.
MattWhereas if you get a young founder that has had to do this for their own app, been super scrappy, a, they understand that whole flow, but, b, there's no kind of survival pressure like having to do it for your own startup. It's sink or swim. You either write good copy and your startup grows, or you don't and you don't get any views or or revenue. So, I really believe in that as a method.
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New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from this episode
- Hire creators from other niches who are fun to watch, ignoring follower counts150 creators and 75M views at under $2 per 1,000 views in 3 months
- Coach each new creator for weeks and treat them as part of the teamBest creator needed 25 videos to pass 10K views, then earned $5K+ in a month
- DM creators in casual lowercase, naming real results like '5-6M users'80 creators in month one, 150 in three; replies low but most calls closed
- Post a 5-second reaction clip with long text that splits viewers into two camps30M organic views on X after a screenshot; top quote tweet got 15M
- Write the app into the story as the fix, not just a passing mention1.5M views; host guesses more sign-ups than the 30M-view video, no numbers
- Film yourself explaining the tool, using the 'I made a website called...' formatFirst-ever TikTok got 245K views
- Scroll TikTok 30 minutes a day in your niche and 30 minutes outside itFounder credits it for spotting formats he adapted; no numbers
- Remake winning videos by improving one thing each time, not copying exactlyGuest says variations beat exact copies; no numbers
- Copy a rival's viral videos exactly, down to outfits and backgroundDidn't go viral
- Build a new study tool around a TikTok format spotted in another niche
- Answer a big startup's creator DM by offering to sell them your appCEO call the next day; acqui-hire closed 4-5 months later
Tags: acqui-hire, growth-hiring