GlamUp · B2C · AI makeup glow-up app
Find a viral format on your own accounts first, then hire creators to copy it
Founder went viral first on all four apps; scaled GlamUp to 30-40 creators
What they did
What happened
In their words
Nicole Cheung - she makes $400k/mo from ai apps (while in college)
Joseph ChoiSo, you said you have 20 creators, like were you Did you hire all those people from the beginning and just have them create these these videos?
Nicole CheungSo, across all four of my apps, I'm the first one to go viral on on all of them. With GlamUp, I remember I had like three accounts, my co-founder, he had like three accounts. We would warm it up and try posting. And once we found a viral strategy, that's when we just scaled immediately. So, that's when we went to, you know, hire like I believe at one point, we had like 30, 40 creators. This for GlamUp like during that time, it's my first app. It's like a It's a huge scale for me during that time. Obviously, with Sprout now, we have probably over 1,000 creators now. But during that time, it was a lot for me.
Nicole CheungUm but yeah, we just started hiring. We did a training course for all of them, similar to what uh I can show later for Sprout as well. It's kind of like a course. We teach them how to create the account, how to warm it up, uh how to warm up a brand-new account for like the algorithm, what exactly to do for the content. So, for example, all the details I just told you about, like, make the size a bit small, don't make it center, make it on like, …
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More from this episode
- Post the same before/after makeup slideshow with one fixed hook, caption and audioFirst post hit 10M views; millions of views a day at peak
- Strip makeup off Pinterest photos, then add it back in-app for big contrastContrast made the slideshows go viral; founder claim
- Let users skip paying by inviting 3 friends with a code1.6M share/code requests; codes flooded TikTok comments; conversion barely dropped
- Put the app name in the copy-paste referral message so TikTok search ranks itSearching 'GlamUp' on TikTok shows only their content; founder claim
- Triple the weekly price from $3 to $9Conversion rate went up despite the 3x price
- Raise monthly and annual prices 20%, then test another 20%Conversion and revenue per download both rose; second +20% in test
- When people close the paywall, show the same plans at 50% off
- Limit scans per week by plan, and offer a bigger plan when they run out
- Show a fake 'analyzing' scan with blurred results, and run the AI only after payment
- Ask for a rating mid-onboarding; make users tap 'I rated' to continueOther founders who copied it say ratings improved; softer version still works
- After each onboarding question, show a screen on how the app beats the alternativesFounder says it primes users to convert; no numbers
- Skip the annual plan for a job-search app; sell weekly and monthly via Stripe
- Show the paywall right after onboarding, before users can open the app+50% conversion vs letting users try features first
- Put every new creator through a video course with a quiz after each moduleOver half go viral within 2 weeks; 100M monthly views at 200+ active creators
- Recruit creators in influencer-run Discords and on Handshake, then vibe-check them in 15 minutesMany top creators had no experience; founder claim
- Pay creators $10-30 per post plus view bonuses that shrink per view at scaleFounder says the decreasing tiers work best; no numbers
- Give creators line-by-line scripts with the emotion and camera shot for each lineTrained creators averaged hundreds of thousands to millions of views per video
- Film a 6.7-second 'War is over' clip flipping a job tracker cell to 'Accepted'Hundreds of millions of views and many conversions (not attributable)
- Rebuild a hit men's looks app for women, launching a rough MVP in a month1M users in 6 months; ~$150K MRR peak
Tags: tiktok, founder-led-content, account-warmup, organic-first