Cal AI · B2C · AI calorie tracker
DM a founder who has already built apps to join as co-founder
Workedteam-process
What they did
Zach, with childhood friend Henry, sent a DM to Blake, who had already built AI apps, and they formed Cal AI; later offered a COO role to Jake after seeing his work at StudyBuddy. Blake says he would not have replied to a copycat pitch.
- Stage
- Pre-launch (Pre-launch, then early scaling)
“Around that same time was when I initially sent a DM to Blake to meet him.”
“I knew Jake was doing great work at StudyBuddy. So I offered that he join us.”
“If Zach's initial DM to me had been like, hey, I created a copycat of this, I wouldn't have responded and we never would have worked together.”
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All 51 Cal AI tactics- Have 25 hired assistants each email 100 creators a day~220K creators contacted, 2-3K signed; roughly 1 signed per 1,000 emailed
- Move the app mention earlier in videos until views start to dropSweet spot 20-30 seconds in; a friend's app peaks at 60 seconds
- Open 20 brand accounts so each outreach person can DM hundreds of creators dailyHundreds of creators contacted per account per day
- Pay big lifestyle creators to scan their breakfast in day-in-the-life vlogs, 4 times a monthMost profitable content; one video drove hundreds to thousands of promo code uses
- Show a spin wheel that lands on 80% off instead of just showing the discountDouble-digit conversion lift vs a plain discount screen in an A/B test
- Match download spikes to each creator post while volume is still lowEarly on every video showed a clear spike; gets murky at scale