Sunflower · B2C · addiction recovery app
Build everything around the one simple thing users do every day
Timer is the most important feature; AI chat alone had poor retention
What they did
What happened
In their words
Koby Conrad - I speedran an ai app from 0 to $1m/yr in 10 months
KobyAnd then you like feed that in with like courses and community and all that stuff. Just like segment out the human existence and you can make like an AI companion for like any segment of that, and it's way more effective than anyone realizes.
KobyThe other piece of this is that the AI companion isn't the entire story. If you take our app and you only do the AI companion, the whole thing is horrible. The engagement is horrible, the retention is horrible, no one is actually going to pay for the thing. The AI companion is just like one piece of the overall like product uh set, and that's the same no matter what you're building this for.
KobyLike if you're building it for like depression, cool, like having companion is great. Um but there's like tools, and skills, and resources, and community, and content, and all this stuff you can bundle up to make a product that's so much better. But yeah, we get this level of feedback just constantly. Not just like great app, five stars, but dude, this thing like literally saved my life.
JosephThat's awesome. This is so cool. Was there anything surprising to see which features people found the most helpful between like the social things, the AI part, and like some of the other features that you put in?
KobyThere's two big surprises that I've discovered by building Sunflower. Um it's this: The most important feature isn't the AI sponsor, but it's the timer. It is the core job to be done that 1.2 billion humans on this planet have, which is, if you're trying to stay sober from anything, you need to track how long you've been sober for.
KobyAnd it's the most basic feature. Uh it's super, super simple, um, but it's kind of like an exercise of like, how do you do something super simple, but in the best way? And I think that oftentimes, people, when they're building products, they're trying to make these big, complicated, grand things that are technically super, super hard, but in reality, is like you need to find like, what is something that people do every single day, and then how do …
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More from this episode
- Hire the biggest creator in your niche as a salaried team member with equity50-100K link clicks a month from one creator; founder calls it the core of go-to-market
- Get the best-known expert in your field to be the face of the companyGiven as an example of the approach working; no numbers
- Ask conferences what they'd give you for double their top sponsor packageFounder says it beats small test buys: better treatment and brand effect; no numbers
- Launch a bare-bones first version with three features, then keep improving itUgly v1 grew into the current product; no early numbers given
- Start free like Duolingo, then add a monthly paywall once AI costs pile upFree model failed: investors wanted revenue and AI costs hit hundreds of thousands
- Add a yearly plan and pre-select it on the paywallAdding annual brought some annual revenue; defaulting to it brought 'a lot more'
- Default to paying now, with a toggle to switch on the free trialMade more money than the default-annual paywall; no numbers
- Lower your prices when your users have little moneyLower prices made more money; no numbers given
- Before the paywall, promise to remind people before their free trial ends+48% revenue, +70% annual revenue, +46% trial conversions, +30% trial starts
- Let the in-app AI coach follow up on its own and reply in the community4M+ messages handled in a year; users say it saved their lives
- Pitch investors with revenue growth and a future vision, not user countsFirst user-focused deck failed; the revenue-and-future deck raised post-YC
- Put in your own money, then ask people you made rich to invest$100K of own money plus ~$350K from his network after years of no funding
Tags: core-habit, sobriety-timer, bundle