Coconote · B2C · AI note-taker for students
Hire engineers who can also do backend or a second platform
Small engineering team ships a lot; with 50%+ EBITDA margins
What they did
What happened
In their words
Brett Bauman & Zack Hargett - COPY this ai app's $6.7m/yr marketing strategy
Joseph ChoiOkay, so we went back to the origin story, but uh we were talking about the product. You have this principle of like build for, you know, building Navy SEALs, not the whole Navy. Um and it seems like you apply that to the marketing side and the engineering side. Four engineers is like pretty a pretty small um team. How do you How do you accomplish building a great product with with a small team?
Brett BaumanZack and I have been doing this for a while and with AI being added on to it, uh we're able to get a lot done. We have a great team uh of engineers. Um and something that I always look for in hiring them is being able to flex uh across more than just their one uh like strength of ownership. So like what I mean by that is an iOS engineer needs to also be able to do some back end work, um or web engineer needs also be able to do some back end work, or maybe someone does iOS and Android. We have all native apps, and don't do any cross-platform stuff, but um that's been important for us to be able to get a lot done with a small team.
Joseph ChoiThat was really helpful. I think like seeing the inner workings of the marketing team, um it seems like that was like a pretty huge pillar of your success. Um and then on the other side, like, okay, so you get all this attention, you get a bunch of um people into the product, how do you actually make money? So, I'm You guys mentioned that you made your onboarding longer and that really affected conversion rates. Um, can we talk a little bit about …
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More from this episode
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- Post short videos that show the app solving a real student problemSeveral ~20M-view videos, ~99% organic, converting far better than viral novelty content
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- Keep a small team of 10-12 part-time creators, led by a proven oneLead creator drove hundreds of millions of views; founders say it worked
- Recruit creators who aren't influencers via Handshake, DMs, email and referralsA Spanish tutor with no content experience became a top creator in 9 months
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- Let people pay before creating an account; move login after the paywallFounder calls it significant; no separate number
- Let users record a whole lecture before asking them to payCalled a big win; no number given
- Put a little ad money behind organic videos that already went viralNot much success; ~99% of views stayed organic
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- When trial users cancel, offer them 7 more free daysKeeps 27% of cancellers in their trial; a smaller share later pay
- Hire an investment bank to run the sale so you keep buildingSold to Quizlet ~18 months after launch; bank ran it end to end
- Post creator-style TikToks and Reels to drive app signupsHundreds of thousands of signups for an earlier app
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Tags: hiring, small-team, native-apps, ai-coding