Flamme · B2C · couples app
Relaunch the date planner as an AI relationship coach right after ChatGPT came out
Day-30 retention rose from 0.8% to 4.2%, still too low; press but no traction
What they did
What happened
This shipped together with other changes, so the result can't be credited to this alone.
In their words
An Nayal - Full App Growth Guide 2026 - How to Make Viral Content to Get Users & Make Your App Retentive
An NayalAnd being in the consumer social space, we we really found it hard to raise money with 0.8% retention on day 30. So we pulled the app down, we rebranded it as Flamme, and then we also realized something. We talked with a lot of couples, and we tried to ideate, what was that one thing they would do every day? What was that one thing they would repeat on a regular basis?
An NayalThis was also coupled with the times, ChatGPT came out. So it was December 2022 when it was released, and we decided to leverage this opportunity to build an AI-first product, which was Flamme AI.
JosephSo ChatGPT came out, you said, like late 2022, and then you immediately hopped on the kind of like GPT wrapper wave, and then how did that go at first?
An NayalDay 30. Day 30, and uh we had to do another pivot, man. Just to be very honest with you, this Flamme, this AI wrapper, was enough to get us in the media, get us published. Like you see, we had another article in TechCrunch, February 14th, Valentine's Day. We came out as the AI product for relationships. We also featured on LA Times, on a lot of other places.
An NayalBut we realized that it wasn't working. Like, even though we could get media presence, even though the retention went up to from 0.8 to 4.2, it was still dismal, and we realized we had to do something else. What we did is, this product had AI as its main feature, but along with that, we also launched something called the daily question, where we would give couples a daily prompt they could answer together.
An NayalNow, I know it's really common right now, and almost every other app does it, but back in that time, we were one of the few, like I think Paired was the only one apart from us which was doing it. We realized that people were coming back not for the AI coach, but for that daily question feature. They were coming for a daily way to connect with their partner, and we took that nugget, we extracted it from the product, and we made it the mainstay in …
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More from this episode
- Make the daily question for couples the main thing on the home screenDay-30 retention went from 4.2% to ~30%, then 50%, with streak reminders
- Send a friendly morning reminder, then an evening 'your partner will be sad' nudgeDay-30 retention went from 4.2% to ~50% alongside the daily-question redesign
- Hide your partner's answer until you answer the question yourselfCreated a back-and-forth loop credited with lifting retention; no separate number
- Add a home-screen widget showing distance to your partner and days togetherWorked well, per the founder; copied from a competitor; no numbers
- Launch alongside a TechCrunch Startup Battlefield feature800% organic growth in one month; stopped by a trademark letter
- Start charging in a free app when the money runs outBarely survived; the early '15% conversion' counted renewals, so it was inflated
- Pitch big investors on great retention before you have a way to get usersFailed; top firms asked about distribution and no term sheets came
- Scroll TikTok 4 hours a day for 2 months to learn what worksGot the first account getting views, then copied the approach across accounts
- Run 20-30 TikTok accounts on numbered iPhones, 3-4 accounts per phone~50M organic views; host cites ~150K users
- Use one Apple ID on every farm phone to skip repaying for the proxy appFailed: TikTok linked the accounts, one flag hit all; lost 120 work hours
- Under 300 views means a broken account; 300-1,000 means fix the contentTheir working rule for which accounts and formats to fix; no numbers on impact
- Judge app videos by likes and question slideshows by shares and savesLow-like videos rarely drove downloads, even at 1M+ views
- Post slideshows of '5 uncomfortable but healthy questions to ask your partner'Shared a lot, but only 0.05-0.2% of viewers downloaded
- Post videos that show the app in use, not memesApp demos convert 0.5-1% of views vs 0.05-0.2% for memes and slideshows
- Give AI a 10-page brief with product details, winning scripts and a master promptTeam posts ~200 pieces a day from it; winners are fed back in
- Log every post by hand in a spreadsheet and review it every morningForces the team to study why posts fail; no numbers given
- Copy only formats that went viral on small accounts and get 'what app?' commentsAdopted after 50M views brought few conversions; C part learned late
- Run real 'what do I text back?' Reddit screenshots through the app on videoJust started; guest expects 0.5-1% of viewers to download
- Design the app's screens and loading animation to look good on TikTok
Tags: web-app, pivot, ai-wrapper, chatgpt-wave