Opal · screen time and focus app
Hire a user who posted about you to run her own educational channel for you
0 to ~700K followers and millions of views in a few months
Workedorganic-short-videougc-creators
What they did
Found a TikTok creator (Olivia) who mentioned Opal in a video and hired her onto the team. She runs 'Olivia Unplugged', a creator account (not the Opal brand account) making educational content on screen time and focus, from making friends offline to bedtime routines. Opal is mentioned in videos and linked in bio.
What happened
Went from 0 to about 700,000 followers across platforms and millions of views in a few months.
- Stage
- scale
“One of the ways we do that is we found this person who was mentioning Opal in a video on TikTok, and thought she was great. Basically, we hired her.”
“It's not your Opal brand account. It's like creator account that is powered by Opal. Opal gets mentioned in the videos. There's a link in bio.”
“It works really well because we went from 0 to I think now 700,000 followers across different platforms, and millions of views in a few months.”
Related topics
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More from Opal
All 29 Opal tactics- Judge everything by 8-day ad return; raise spend weekly while above 100%Near zero to $5M ARR in about a year, no separate marketing budget
- Show the paywall right after a report on the years lost to phonesDownload-to-trial rose from 7% to 17% across iterations
- Give a free year for 5 invites and lifetime access for 2080% more users sent at least one invite
- Ask new users where they heard about you, and split results by answerFounder calls it the most reliable attribution, beating paid tools
- Ship a new app version every Monday, without exceptionSet the rhythm behind 121 A/B tests
- Show a trial timeline on the paywall: reminder on day 6, charge on day 7Dozens of challenger paywalls never beat it
More from this episode
- Opal: Drop the hard paywall and give the core app away for freePaying share of users fell 20% to 9%, but organic growth, 1M+ DAUs and revenue rose
- Opal: Test how many app blocks free users get; settle where free users still love it3 free blocks gave free users a great experience while power users still pay
- Opal: Sell the app to schools as a phone policy after students asked for itGrew from one school to many US high schools; front-page LA Times coverage
- Opal: License a stranger's viral video about phone overuse and run it as your adSeen by dozens of millions; still running 1-2 years later
- Opal: Add focus streaks with an animated flame and gemstone rewards at milestonesBiggest win of the year for retention and growth; no numbers
- Opal: Let users tap to crack open a gemstone when they hit a focus milestoneThe app's most loved moment; users remember it and talk about it
- Opal: Buy a New York billboard saying "Scrolling Kills" with no app linkNo effect on downloads or revenue; helped close one school deal
- Opal: Hand out thousands of "Scrolling Kills" stickers that don't mention the app