Reflective Apps · B2C · app portfolio studio
Run your own creator team: train them, brief them, and automate hiring through payment
~250 regular creators, thousands of videos; drove tens of millions of downloads
Workedcreator-opsugc-creatorsorganic-short-video
What they did
After agencies failed to crack TikTok content, built it in-house: reached out to hundreds of creators and automated every step from first contact, interview and brief to video, editing rounds, invoicing and payment. Ran an in-house 'university' teaching creators how to make ads that convert and the metrics businesses target. Allocated thousands of videos across ~20 advertised apps based on ad metrics. Pitched it as a long-term relationship with regular income. Some creators later became full-time staff. Team: founder, one media buyer, one head of content.
What happened
Portfolio passed 50M downloads, much of it from TikTok videos in January/February peaks
- Stage
- scale
“we worked with like a lot of agencies over the years, but no then no one could really crack it internally uh for us. So, we just thought, "Why don't we just do it ourselves?"”
“we automated every step of the way from interview to concept or brief that we sent to them right the way up to video that they would make, editing, going back and forth, invoicing, payments. We did the whole thing in-house”
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 this episode
- Reflectly: Pay small creators in each country to read a script, then run it as Facebook adsDrove ~$3-4M ARR, but ad spend matched revenue
- Reflective Apps: Buy under-monetized apps and fix their paywalls instead of spending more on adsFirst deal paid back in 12-18 months; 30-35 apps bought over 5 years
- Reflective Apps: Post every video on your own TikTok first; put ad money behind the ones that take offCheaper testing off-peak; breakouts pushed four or five ways
- Reflective Apps: Test each video with $10-20, move winners to bigger campaigns, let the best 1-2 take 90%1-2 evergreen videos took 90% of spend; run by one media buyer
- Reflective Apps: Once a video holds a few hundred dollars a day of ads, have creators remake itSometimes compounded; the top viral video failed to copy across 20-40 creators
- Reflective Apps: Spend about 75% of the year's ad budget in January, when installs cost halfDone hit #1 free app in the US on Jan 2-3, two years running
- Reflective Apps: Test ads Dec 26-28, raise spend Dec 28-30, and 10x it on January's first SundayGuest's playbook from his ad accounts; no separate numbers
- Reflective Apps: Put a famous person's voice behind the video as the hookOne video hit 50-60M views, then a cease and desist; AI-voice copies partly worked
- Reflective Apps: Give creators strict briefs: 10-15 second videos, 25-27 cuts, POV phone shots, trending soundsSet a quality floor across ~250 creators; results still varied
- Reflective Apps: Recruit creators with 2K-20K followers by DM, send them to a creator page, then test them2,000+ creators on the books; ~10% became regulars, 1-2% of those went viral
- Reflective Apps: Pay creators $30-40 a video, raise to $100 for reliable ones, and add bonuses for hitsKept creators loyal long-term vs pure performance pay
- Reflective Apps: Hire agencies to produce creator contentDidn't work across many agencies; replaced with an in-house team
- Mindfulness App: Sell the app to employers, using stress tests to prove it lowers staff stress