Erly · B2C · push-up alarm clock app
Turn a plain app into a push-up alarm using Apple's new alarm API
Became the hook in every video; $50K/month within 4 months
Workedpositioning-nicheproduct-viralityfeature-development
What they did
The accountability MVP wasn't viral enough for influencer marketing, so Jake spent a day walking and writing out possible directions and chose an alarm feature: 'push-ups to turn off your alarm'. Timed it with iOS 26's AlarmKit API, which lets third-party apps use the native iPhone alarm (earlier alarm apps relied on unreliable sound workarounds). The app films you and checks you actually did the push-ups. The one-liner is pushed through all marketing. His rule: solve a painful problem simply, and if the idea isn't inherently viral, add a novel aspect that is.
What happened
The push-up alarm is the central hook of every influencer video; app reached $50K/month 4 months after launch.
- Stage
- early
This shipped together with other changes, so the result can't be credited to this alone.
“Uh thought influencer marketing could kind of maybe work with it, but it wasn't too viral of an idea. So I took a whole day just to kind of walk, think about it, write on the direction I was going to take, and I had a few paths, and decided on the alarm feature.”
“iOS 26 allowed you to connect your app to the native alarm system on iPhone using AlarmKit API, so you could build a real alarm app.”
“If it's not inherently viral with the idea itself, then add some sort of novel aspect to it to make it inherently viral.”
Related topics
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More from this episode
- Erly: Ship a bare app in 19 days, then test demand with one influencer videoPurchases from the first video; first $1,000 three weeks later
- Erly: Pay day-in-the-life creators to show your app in videos they already makeMain growth channel; viewers ask the app name in comments; $0 to $50K/month in 4 months
- Erly: Pay creators for 2-4 videos a month with guaranteed views, about $2-3 per 1,000Low-risk; most profit comes from rare 1M-5M-view videos
- Erly: Track each creator video's views and match view spikes to sales spikesFounder says it's good enough; judges spend in total, not per creator