Tolan · B2C · AI alien friend app
Improve conversations and add a shared planet until D7-D15 retention rises
D5, D7 and D15 retention went up; growth then started paying off
Workedproduct-activationretentionfeature-development
What they did
Over a few months after the paywall, improved conversation quality, animations and onboarding, and added a planet where the Tolan walks around as a shared space that grows with the relationship. The goal was to get more users to the activation moment (their first really long conversation). Tracks D7, D15 and D30 retention as the North Star, borrowed from games.
What happened
D5, D7 and D15 retention went up to levels that felt very healthy, which coincided with TikTok growth starting to pay off.
- Stage
- fall 2024
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Fueling Growth with AI and Viral Product Features — Ajay Mehta, Portola“As we did that, we started to see some of the classic numbers that you look at, right? Kind of like D5, D7, you know, D15, sort of retention start to go up because folks were just having better experiences overall with the app.”
“So, it was sort of a question of like, how do you get more people over to that activation moment of like their first like really long conversation with their Tolan where they actually like see the value?”
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 Tolan
All 13 Tolan tactics- Quiz new users, match them to an AI friend, then start a voice chatAdvisor credits it as a big part of their success; no numbers
- Show a shareable card of how the AI character's personality maps to yoursAdvisor calls it a viral artifact people share; no numbers
- Start with a 7-day free trial, then tune trial length to limit AI costs
More from this episode
- Tolan: Onboard with a fun voice quiz, then have the app bring answers up laterUsers call it a wow moment; part of what lifted early retention
- Tolan: Soft-launch the app for free to see how people really use itSome users talked 30-40 minutes a day right away
- Tolan: Put up a paywall 2-3 weeks after launch to cover AI costsGrowth self-funded; renewals give a clearer product signal than free usage
- Tolan: Hire a group of college-age creators to post lots of TikToks on their own accountsAbout 1 in 20 videos takes off; viral days brought 10-15K installs and #1 in category
- Tolan: Make videos of people using the app while studying, cooking or getting readyStudying ('up at 3am') took off first; a cooking video got ~10M views
- Tolan: Pay creators with about a million followers to post a video on their accountNewer effort; these do better on average than the small creators
- Tolan: Hire artists to make a bright, cute character that looks great in videosLow install costs even on paid; users show it to friends and post it unprompted
- Tolan: Make the AI companion a friendly, non-romantic alien instead of a human80-90% of users are women aged 15-25 with normal social lives
- Portola: Raise a small pre-seed first, then more from the same investor after launch$10M seed in total
- Tolan: Run small paid ads from day one to test retention and conversionLow install costs gave room to experiment; organic later beat it