Solid Starts · B2C · baby feeding app
Hire people obsessed with the problem
Credited for product quality; no numbers
What they did
What happened
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In their words
Make Ugly Ads to Grow Your App – Yuliya Lennox (Solid Starts)
Yuliya Lennox… actually super, I would say, almost religious about what they do. In Replika, when you have people that were like ML, and ML wasn't a super popular thing, we will think of LLMs, we will test that, we will know what to do. And you're like, "Okay, you have a super great app on the market because of that." Because at that point, we literally got millions of messages saying that you have a person in Ohio that is responding to me, this is not real.
Yuliya LennoxBut no, it wasn't LLM that was that good. And with Solid Starts, that's 10 times higher because everybody on that team is keen on baby led weaning and on feeding babies. And I know they're all stories and it's crazy to think that each one of them messaged the founder being like, "I'm so passionate about that, that I want to be on your team no matter what." And this is where you see the results being so amazing because if I'm just doing my job, I'm just doing my job. I clock in, clock out. If you have a person that is passionate about it, that is already a super beneficial thing for your team. But if you have 20 people that are just about that, this is why Solid Starts is actually changing the whole baby-led weaning, not even category, the baby-led weaning in the USA in the world.
Yuliya LennoxThey're changing the way that people start allergens and therefore there are less allergic people in the world. That is super, super important. And when I grow up, I really want to have a team of people that will be super interested in what they're doing. I think what the market is actually lacking because I'm a little bit in a mental health space right now, the market is lacking an app, for example, that will be made by actual doctors, the team …
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More from this episode
- Keep testing new ads until one sharply cuts costs, even if current ads work
- Run ugly ads that show the product and the pain in the first secondOne ran for years; called 'the best ad ever'; no numbers
- Run a trendy AI 'fruit babies' ad for a doctor-backed baby feeding brandBacklash: parents questioned whether to trust the brand
- Have the founder join every marketing meeting and write the ads himselfApp reached #2 after Duolingo; link to this is loose
- Win your home market first, then add languages one by oneLiked locally, then expanded; later #2 after Duolingo
- Test new ads at $10/day in Indonesia, not $1,000/day in the USSame test signal at ~1% of the cost
- Fully translate and adapt an app for Japan with a Japanese speakerDidn't work at all; harder than expected
- Run paid ads from the start alongside organic growthOrganic-only apps plateau; paid added late often ate into organic
- Share test results across apps and with a weekly peer group
- Make the paywall's continue button blinkRaised conversion, secondhand; no numbers
- Sign a celebrity like Hilary Duff for brand adsBig influx almost at once, secondhand; ROI hard to measure
- Have the core team work ~17-hour days, six days a weekSaid to lead the field now; no numbers
- Translate the app into many languages with AI and test nearby marketsHer biggest win of the year; Turkey converts well; no numbers
- Sell a $1 plan after a 60-question quiz, then stack add-ons to ~$350Buyer got half back after demanding a refund; invites regulation
- Run three apps at once with one teamBiggest fail of the year: attention spread too thin
Tags: hiring, mission-driven