Tolan · B2C · AI alien friend app
Put up a paywall 2-3 weeks after launch to cover AI costs
Growth self-funded; renewals give a clearer product signal than free usage
Workedpaywallfeature-development
What they did
Because each long voice call runs several prompts at once (reply, conversation classification, memory lookup) across OpenAI, Anthropic and voice providers, heavy users became expensive. Two to three weeks after the App Store launch the team added a paywall and signed up for RevenueCat. Paid users then forced product improvements, and month-2/4/6 renewals became the signal for product priorities.
What happened
Revenue outpaces growth spend, so the team is not spending net money on growth; paying customers' renewals give a much clearer signal than free usage.
- Stage
- Launch (weeks after launch)
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Fueling Growth with AI and Viral Product Features — Ajay Mehta, Portola“being forced because of high token costs to monetize relatively early on has actually been kind of a real help to our both growth and then also product development, right?”
“Like we're growing at a pace that is we're outpacing obviously the money that we're spending on on growth.”
Related topics
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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: 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
- Tolan: Improve conversations and add a shared planet until D7-D15 retention risesD5, D7 and D15 retention went up; growth then started paying off
- 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