Cal AI · B2C · photo calorie tracking app
Ramp up paid ads once influencer growth is working
Marked Cal AI's big growth inflection point; no numbers
What they did
What happened
- Stage
- scale
In their words
Daniel Heintzma - I speedran a new app from 0 to $2m/year in 6 months (here's how)
Daniel Heintzman… like the slideshows or the create your own content, it's harder to scale, right? You can only create as much content as you can push out yourself, as opposed to doing influencers, you can just keep stacking up um influencers to create posting videos. And then you're also The key with influencers is you have guaranteed views, as opposed to doing UGC, you're hoping and praying that you get a month where you go viral. And so it's less consistent.
Daniel HeintzmanI think I mean, paid ads also is when Cal AI took uh had a like a big inflection point is when we started like really ramping up on paid ads. And same as the app I was working on before. It's like once we started doing paid ads is when it really started scaling. And so, I mean, if you can get paid ads to work, it's the best option, but it's also kind of hard to do, right?
Joseph ChoiI get your point about organic. Like you if you're If you're the one posting your own videos, you're limited by how much you can post and how many accounts you can create. And that's why people create like all these other accounts. Um, but if your content strategy is is not fresh across every account, then you're you saturate your your own format like pretty quickly compared to like influencers. They have all these built-in audiences. Um so if …
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
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
- Make the 3 screens creators film (camera, loading, food detail) instantly clear
- Grow through fitness creators who sell coaching, so the app doesn't compete with themMain growth driver; guaranteed views vs hoping to go viral
- Launch in a month with game-like branding unlike bank-style crypto appsWent really viral; idea to launch in about a month