Runify · B2C · ranked running app
On launch day, tease on Instagram Stories, post on Reddit, and tweet a demo video
Founder's X demo got ~50K views; mostly exposure, not core users
What they did
What happened
- Stage
- launch
In their words
Caleb Dean - I speedran an ai app from 0 to $100k exit in 26 days
Caleb Dean… but it was just a matter of like I the way I was doing it is I was pushing it back like every 2 or 3 days, and I just completely forgot. Like I was just like so focused on building the product, I forgot to push it back one day, and then it launched. So yeah, I had to deal with that, but in terms of actual launch day, we had a couple strategies. So like obviously we had Instagram. We I think we had probably almost 2,000 followers on Instagram,
Caleb Deanso like we really like leveraged the like the story like Instagram Story feature um to build kind of like what you would see in like a info sort of like approach to how you might offer like a course or something like really building the scene. And then we we pretty much did everything. We posted on Reddit, I posted like a launch video on my personal profile, which was like a demo on Rotato, which I made on Rotato, which I actually, again, got off Blake Anderson. He did the same for 10x, and that performed quite well.
Caleb DeanAnd this was just more for exposure. Like I knew my core user like probably wouldn't be on X, like it might get a couple like founders who are runners, but at the end of the day, like any sort of traffic's good. And then we sent out our email to all our email subscribers. I personally messaged every single early adopter, cuz that's one thing we had to do is like as part of the early adopter $5 payment that they gave us is they had a lifetime …
Joseph ChoiSo that was launch. You got some users. You got some revenue from that, but then it sounds like you like your your launch video, it did do very well on Twitter. You got 600,000 views, and it wasn't really for users though. But then it sounds like you also got the the DM from the potential acquirer. Um, was it like
Caleb DeanSo that video didn't get 600k. That video got like 50k. The reason it says 600 is cuz I quote-tweeted that with me selling my company, and that's the one that did well. So if you go to like just my profile, you'll see my pin. So you see how I've I've like reposted Yeah, this is the one. So that got 586, so you can do the math on what I think it was like 60, 70k we got, which some of that has been like flow-on effects through um that post. I think, from memory, we got like 40, 50,000
Caleb Deanviews from that post in the first couple days.
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More from this episode
- Copy a proven app's viral Reels format for your niche before buildingMillions of views; one copy hit 2M; ~50 videos drove the whole waitlist
- Charge $5 for early access on a one-page site before writing any code2,000 waitlist emails and 90+ paid $5 in about 2 weeks
- Post 9 Reels a day on Instagram instead of flooding TikTokInstagram held 5-10K avg views, 1 in 10 over 500K; TikTok views fell to ~5
- Build a tool that turns one video template into thousands of versions10,000 variations in a minute; fed ~5M views in month one
- Put your app up for pre-order so thousands download it on launch day3,000 pre-orders in ~2 weeks; leaderboard hit its 1,000 cap in an hour
- Rewrite onboarding to promise a result (becoming a better runner), not just ranksChanged because first onboarding converted poorly; no after numbers given
- Email your waitlist two updates, then a launch video with a half-price codeDiscount codes brought most launch-day revenue; 32% of emails hit spam, 20% opened
- Message every paying early adopter yourself and make them your beta testers~20 testers on WhatsApp; founder says their feedback was invaluable
- Ask your Instagram followers in Story polls which features to buildTracking answers split evenly across Garmin, Apple Watch and Strava, so they built all three
- Tweet openly and confidently about your app's goals, even from a tiny accountCold acquisition DM 1-2 weeks after launch, from a ~200-follower account
- Sell a month-old app at ~5x yearly revenue but keep 30% of itSix-figure sale ~26 days after launch, plus 6-month earn-out and cash bonus
- Design every screen and button in Figma before developers startCore design done in 3 days; CTO built it in about 6 weeks
- Rank in App Store search for a rare condition's name (shy bladder)Most users and revenue came from search; 30%+ conversion; $5-10K lifetime
- Pick a space where 1-3 apps already make $100K+ a month, then twist the ideaLiftoff at $200-300K/month led to Runify; sold within a month of launch
Tags: instagram, reddit, x, launch-day, instagram-stories, rotato, demo-video