Team and process tactics

A core content team of under 10 people produces 5-10 assets a day, brainstorming freely and riffing on whatever goes global (Squid Game honey cake as the Subway Surfers logo, The Last of Us with game characters, a guard post about Justin Bieber's new album, rivalry posts with Duolingo, a new hire dancing in the guard mascot costume). They balance gameplay-relevant clips (so people know it's the game) with pure-fun viral content. The team is autonomous: brand checks by the head of play experience and head of brand rarely say no; the CEO has vetoed only twice in 12 years; trends judged off-brand (e.g. Skibidi Toilet, too many fart sounds) are skipped. All creative is in-house, not agencies.

Outsource editing as early as possible (low-leverage task) but keep scripts in-house: outsourced script writers weren't good. Hire one editor per whole video, judged on making it entertaining rather than on captions or motion graphics; you send the script and idea. Upwork gave few gems; better sources are a Twitter post asking for editor referrals, friends' editors, and Discord servers where people seek gigs and will do a free sample video.

Posting daily to two accounts and reposting to TikTok and YouTube Shorts took about an hour a day. Jack built PostBridge, a scheduler where you upload a video once and pick every channel, and batched content for a week or two at a time (or scheduled on the day).

Bought a solo founder's music entertainment app at ~200K MAU (seven-figure deal, closed in two months). Hired a GM from Spotify to run it and grew the team from 5 to 15 people.

Bluesky had a 10-person team with no iOS or Android developers and a tight timeline. One engineer (Paul), with no prior React experience, learned it on the fly and built the first version of the app for iOS, Android and web with Expo in four months.

Creators supply the on-camera talent (angle, lighting, pacing, tone, captions), while the CMO, Kiran, and his team act as the creative strategists deciding what high-converting content the algorithm will push.

Keeps headcount low (~80 at end of 2025 on $60M revenue) and pushes people to grow with the business. Internal benchmark is at least $1M revenue per headcount. Culture treats failure as a chance to grow.

New products (Guitar, Sing, Draw) start as separate apps built by multidisciplinary 'pods' that move fast and independently, using the same early customer-discovery and growth playbooks. They grow in parallel with their own acquisition rather than being pushed from Simply Piano.

Rather than hiring a pure creative, acqui-hire a young founder who had to grow their own app with scrappy content. They understand the whole funnel through to revenue and are used to sink-or-swim pressure, so they write for conversion, not just views.

4 dedicated outreach hires plus the team send the same DM on TikTok and Instagram (100+/day, 1,000+/week). First line: 'Paid promo / affiliate deal?' then a short app pitch and fit with their content. On reply, ask for their number, move to WhatsApp/iMessage and call immediately. Two marketing managers (friends trained by the founder on his own playbook) run calls, deals, contracts, payment, code/link setup and the video guide; founder takes calls with bigger creators. Outreach hires are briefed on exactly which creators to target.

A manual Google/Excel sheet with one row per phone/account: account status and health, whether it's online, content type, notes, posts per day, plus daily views and likes; performance checked on day 2. A 1-hour team meeting every morning reviews it. Winners go back into the AI playbook; unhealthy accounts get recovery attempts, then are ditched and replaced. He avoids auto-tracking tools for own accounts because they make you stop looking at each piece (tools are fine for UGC at scale).

In the Feb 2026 LBO (~EUR 100M valuation, investor took ~25%, all money secondary), every employee could sell 100% of their equity, including those staying. Investors usually want stayers to roll ~half into the next cycle; Fleet refused that as unfair and instead created a new 5% ESOP pool for the next cycle. The founders now tell candidates 'your equity is real money' and that a liquidity event within 5 years is near-certain.