Founder-led marketing tactics

Brands paying a creator effectively fund format experiments. Gelato (print-on-demand) booked ~5 videos; the best got ~1M organic views (24K likes). A week later Casper reused the exact hook and structure for Payout, changing only the number: 'Watch me make up to $900 in just 30 seconds. First I go to Google and search class action... or an easier way could be using an app where you select a bunch of companies you've used... Here's up to $500 from T-Mobile, 250 from Mitsubishi, and 147 from Cash App... Just comment claim and I'll send you the app.'

When the pure how-to format dried up, Casper made a skit: 'Hey Temu, is it true that I can make $1,000 from your lawsuit?' / 'Yeah, and some people can make up to $5,000.' / 'How can I apply?' / 'Fine, but you didn't hear this from me.' The 'company' character then walks through the steps: 'First, you go to this app, find the Temu lawsuit... click claim... fill out a simple form... Just comment claim and I'll send you the app.' Skit is the first ~30-40%, the rest is how-to. Swap in any sued company.

End Instagram videos with 'Just comment claim and I'll send you the app.' ManyChat auto-DMs the App Store link to everyone who comments; the unread DM notification pushes them to open it. On the how-to video ~13,000 people requested the link.

On YouTube Shorts and TikTok (no ManyChat), cut the video shorter with no CTA and pin a comment: 'There's many apps you can use to do this, but the one I use in the video is called Payout.' Viewers search it on the App Store. Tried 'click my profile / link in bio' on YouTube and people didn't do it. CTAs reduce retention on these platforms.

No creators: the founder made all the content himself, sometimes with clips of friends and family. His first real TikTok (after five meme posts) was him talking into his phone, adapting an existing format: 'Made a website called I have an essay due at midnight and ChatGPT won't stop giving me fake citations .com...' He named the pain, explained the tool (upload ChatGPT citations, see which are fake, get real replacements, helps with AI detectors like Turnitin) and said 'I'll put a shorter link in the comments.' Advice: early on, don't invent formats; imitate and adapt. Filming yourself beats carousels, and it teaches you what to tell creators later.

On launch day a team member (then a college junior) pointed a camera at a computer screen and showed features working in real time, at a desk and in actual lectures, then cross-posted TikToks to Instagram Reels. The December 2023 hit opened on the lecture hall with caption 'I thought finals were supposed to be hard', panned down to the laptop recording the lecture, and showed notes generating automatically. Guest credits the novel features, posting time and some luck; says it is reproducible only if the product is genuinely original.

For the first ~3 months the two founders made nearly all content (only 1-2 influencers tried). Michael ran a Korean account learning Korean from scratch; Morrie ran a Chinese account. Every video: holding the iPad in a dorm room talking to Pingo, trying different hooks. First viral hook: 'POV, your Chinese teacher on Sundays used to hate you so now you seek validation from an AI', with English and Chinese captions so non-speakers could follow. With founders as the only channel, a user spike could be attributed directly to one video.

Developer (Connor) builds and runs product/paywalls; creator (Casper) owns distribution, 50/50 equity. Make it low-effort for the creator to say yes: build it, ask for one video, no expectations. Casper's suggested pitch to other creators: 'We built this app for you based on this ad or brand deal that went well for you. Here it is. I want to give you 50%. All you have to do is make these videos over and over again,' plus proof a friend did it; optionally 'try one video, I'll give you 100% of the revenue'. Equity keeps the creator inventing new formats when old ones dry up and supplies free ad creatives.

On his personal TikTok (a couple hundred thousand followers), Rafael posted 'Day X of making a DaBaby mobile game' devlogs showing new characters, and added features commenters asked for. He A/B tested hooks, words and frames in early videos to find what worked; the main driver was that the topic was trending, as long as the video wasn't boring. The game was built to look good in a TikTok video. About nine videos, 100K-1M views each.

Doof was built as a public challenge: make a mobile app in 30 days and take it from $0 to $1,000, marketed on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. After a week of trying new formats with nothing popping, Jack went back to his tried-and-true slideshow format with a food meme ('people who eat like this feel good, sleep good, and poop good') and the app only mentioned in the caption ('feel good today by downloading Doof'). Goal: content that doesn't look like an ad. Used a standard Superwall paywall template.

Jack launched Lovely with a simple tweet: what the app does (love notes on your partner's home screen widget), shown in context, plus the goal of taking it from $0 to $5K/month in 10 weeks. He quote-tweeted it about six times with updates and context; each one got more views because it was a story (can he hit the goal?) and a cool product. When Russian news covered the app, he tweeted about that too. When a user posted the widget used as a grocery list (16M views), he quote-tweeted it with 'I made this app, someone's now using it as a grocery list'.

When the app was done, Kyle posted in r/baseballcards as the founder: 'I made this baseball card scanning app; a few months ago I posted about it and got a good response; now it's built and it's $4.99 on the App Store', with a link to the app and to the original post. Referencing the validation post made it feel like a community member following up rather than an ad. He kept posting updates for new features. A friend who later did marketing posted in r/footballcards and got banned for self-promotion.