Cal AI · B2C · AI calorie tracking app
Share your growth wins and failures publicly on X, even if it invites clones
Clones and 'Cal AI clone' threads drove traffic back; founder claim
Workedfounder-brandword-of-mouth
What they did
The Cal AI team shared successes and failures on Twitter while building. This invited copycats, but Jake believed clones lacked the obsession behind many small compounding improvements. Viral threads about Cal AI clones' revenue kept pointing people to Cal AI.
What happened
Jake says the clone discussion drove traffic to Cal AI; no numbers.
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · How Cal AI turned creators into a growth machine — Jake Castillo, Cal AI“We were very public about Cal AI as we were building. We would share all of the successes and failures on Twitter, and with that came a lot of copycats.”
“And even on Twitter, there was always a new Twitter thread being posted like, "These Cal AI clones are making X amount of revenue. Is this the best app opportunity out there?" And all that stuff, it would just drive traffic to Cal AI.”
Related topics
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More from Cal AI
All 80 Cal AI tactics- Pay $350-450 for four posts plus view bonuses that stop at 1M viewsKeeps the upside of viral hits; founder gives no numbers
- Price a creator on the average of their 5 worst of 20 recent videosMost deal videos land nearer the mean, so the rest is profit
- Agree with a creator's view boast, then guarantee 700-800K views when they claim 1MGuaranteed a profitable CPM on every deal; creators couldn't back down
- Have 25 hired assistants each email 100 creators a day~220K creators contacted, 2-3K signed; roughly 1 signed per 1,000 emailed
- Pay creators $100-200 when a friend they refer signs a dealReally helped; got direct numbers and deals around talent agents
- Run a short ad with a one-line hook, the app in use, then the store linkAd has run about four months, which the host reads as a winner
More from this episode
- Cal AI: Ask fitness creators to scan their food with your app in their what-I-eat videosConverted very well and scaled across creators; founder gives no numbers
- Cal AI: Test many video angles with one willing creator, then copy the winner everywhereFound the format that worked, which was then copied across fitness creators
- Cal AI: Give creators an app version that shows your name and logo on screenFounder says it made the message clearer; no numbers
- Cal AI: Keep popups out of creator videos so the core demo plays uninterruptedKept the scan-analyze-result sequence clean; founder says it worked really well
- Cal AI: Add a 'tracked with' caption only when the app appears subtly in the videoCaptions helped subtle videos; left off obvious ones because they cut views
- Cal AI: Sponsor UFC fighters who count every calorie to promote a calorie trackerNo download spike after thousands of dollars; viewers don't want to track
- Cal AI: Have mukbang creators scan their giant meals with a calorie trackerDidn't work; viewers treat it as a cheat-day treat and avoid calorie info
- Cal AI: Pick creators whose comments thank them for help, not ones full of fire emojis
- Cal AI: Sign funny, charismatic creators on cheap deals before their views take offOne creator went from ~10K views to a 7M-view video, then never under 500K
- Cal AI: Pay creators a flat rate set to break even on their average viewsViral hits become pure profit; founder says that's where the real money is
- Cal AI: Never pay creators more per 1,000 views than you earn per 1,000 viewsMeans turning down many creators; no outcome numbers
- Cal AI: Decide which creators to renew with a score built from many metricsHelped untangle attribution with 50-70 creators posting a day; no numbers
- Cal AI: Send creators surprise bonuses when they crush it, even without a bonus clauseFounder says creators referred their friends; no numbers
- Cal AI: Meet a creator's asking price but ask for more videos in return
- Cal AI: Manage hundreds of creators from one automated Google Sheets systemFounder calls it instrumental; avoided a bandwidth bottleneck
- Cal AI: Message creators every day, by the thousands, for a year and a halfLow hit rate, but it built the creator machine; no exact rates given
- Cal AI: Start paid ads by running your influencer videos as adsSome results, but well behind dedicated ad creative
- Cal AI: Make separate hard-sell videos for ads instead of reusing subtle organic onesPerformed far better than recycled influencer videos
- Cal AI: Get ad videos from creators paid a share of the ad spend behind themBiggest win since the acquisition; faster sourcing, great ad quality
- Cal AI: Repeat the pain points from your ads in onboarding, then show the price
- Cal AI: Charge about $30 a year so your app is the easiest to buyFounder credits it with mass popularity; price tests run but no numbers
- Cal AI: Let anyone sign up in the app to earn $10 per paid signup