Glam Up · B2C · AI makeup and glow-up app
Build the women's version of a hit looksmaxing app for men
1M users in 6 months; peak $150K MRR
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What they did
Inspired by Umax, a looksmaxing app for men built by founders in the same HF0 batch as her co-founder, they built a glow-up app for women focused on makeup, after checking that no app like it existed on the App Store yet.
What happened
Glam Up reached 1M users in 6 months and a peak of $150K MRR
- Stage
- Pre-launch (Idea)
“One of them was Umax. It's a looksmaxing app for guys, and we loosely got inspired by it, and we wanted to build a glow up app for women and makeup, and we realized that there's no apps like that existing on the App Store yet.”
Related topics
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from GlamUp
All 20 GlamUp tactics- 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
- Let users skip paying by inviting 3 friends with a code1.6M share/code requests; codes flooded TikTok comments; conversion barely dropped
- Triple the weekly price from $3 to $9Conversion rate went up despite the 3x price
- Rebuild a hit men's looks app for women, launching a rough MVP in a month1M users in 6 months; ~$150K MRR peak
- Strip makeup off Pinterest photos, then add it back in-app for big contrastContrast made the slideshows go viral; founder claim
- Put the app name in the copy-paste referral message so TikTok search ranks itSearching 'GlamUp' on TikTok shows only their content; founder claim
More from this episode
- Sprout: Move from beauty to job-hunting students, who have more money to spend$250K MRR within 8 months
- Glam Up: Post faceless slideshows and videos on TikTok and InstagramPeak month: 40-50M TikTok and ~200M Instagram views; 1M users in 6 months
- Glam Up: Try each social format for 2-3 weeks, then pour everything into the winnerFounder credits it for all four apps; no per-format numbers
- Sprout: Vet each creator on a call, then train them with a course and quizzesOver 50% of trained creators go viral within their first 2 weeks
- Sprout: Train 2-10 creators until one goes viral, then scale to hundreds200+ active creators; 100M views a month, peaking at 400M in one week
- Sprout: Find creators who fit the format through application forms and VA outreach
- Glam Up: Lock every app behind a paywall with weekly or monthly plansUsed on apps peaking at $150K and $250K MRR; no test reported
- Glam Up: Design welcome and onboarding screens to warm users up to payingFounder calls it half of her growth approach; no numbers
- Glam Up: Run the same creator playbook on each new app you launchTwo new apps at ~$200K MRR combined within 3 months