Cal AI · B2C · photo calorie tracking app
Make the 3 screens creators film (camera, loading, food detail) instantly clear
What they did
- Stage
- scale
In their words
Daniel Heintzma - I speedran a new app from 0 to $2m/year in 6 months (here's how)
Joseph Choi… with Cal AI? Like the there's some aspects of it where it like doesn't feel like a calorie tracker, you know? It like feels very sleek. The scanner itself, you know, is a a novel feature compared to uh the existing calorie trackers that were out before Cal AI existed. But are you Are you trying to be like on the edge in a in a way that you described with Robinhood Crypto, or are you trying to be more like minimal and not stand out like too much?
Daniel HeintzmanYeah, I think the way the main thing I'm thinking about like for Cal AI is like making sure it's like really simple to understand, because the main way that Cal AI grows, as you know, is like through influencer marketing. And so the app needs to be like really clear like what's happening. With every single video that influencers post, they show three core screens, which is like the the camera, the loading screen, and the food detail page. If you look at those videos, it needs to be pretty clear like what is the app doing and like how it works. And
Daniel HeintzmanI think that's like something that we have worked on a lot as well, which is like how do we make that like those three three screens as like easy to understand as possible.
Joseph ChoiSo the is this the three screens? It's like the scan, and then the home page where you see all the calories, and then the the logging where you adjust the the numbers?
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More from this episode
- Grow an Instagram account on Hinge prompt tips before building, with a preorder linkSome videos took off within weeks; audience existed before launch
- Charge followers $15 by DM for a manual profile review before buildingPeople paid before any app existed; proved willingness to pay
- Copy the text of a men's self-improvement account's most viral slideshows into your own designsSlideshows averaged 10-50K views; one hit 600K
- Make a month of TikTok slideshows in 1-2 hours from a spreadsheet and templateSeconds per slideshow; a month of posts in an hour or two
- Post unbranded slideshows until views come, then brand every slide with the appOne branded Christmas Day post got ~4M views and $5-6K revenue in a day
- Have one dating influencer make promo videos, then run them as ads from his pageTook revenue from $30-40K/month to about $2M a year; creative supply became the limit
- Open onboarding with short videos explaining the app before asking any questionsAdded after emails asking what the app does; no numbers given
- Ask for profile screenshots after the paywall, not before itSimple onboarding before the paywall performed a lot better; no numbers
- Sell extra analysis credits to people who rerun the profile checkAbout 11% of revenue
- Sell AI photo packs at $14.99 for one and $49.99 for tenBiggest upsell in the app; no spending cap lets big spenders pay more
- Preselect the yearly plan on the paywall to collect cash upfrontWeekly plan also tried; grew a lot slower
- Redesign the meal logging screens so people keep paying after the 3-day trial
- Let users join friend groups and topic groups with streak leaderboards
- Add daily logging streaks, copied from Duolingo
- Let users post progress photos, meals and streak badges to Instagram storiesA lot of users share progress and meals; no numbers
- Grow through fitness creators who sell coaching, so the app doesn't compete with themMain growth driver; guaranteed views vs hoping to go viral
- Ramp up paid ads once influencer growth is workingMarked Cal AI's big growth inflection point; no numbers
- Launch in a month with game-like branding unlike bank-style crypto appsWent really viral; idea to launch in about a month
Tags: tiktok, instagram, demo-friendly-ui, screen-clarity