Team and process tactics

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).

Brain-dump features and competitors into a Google Doc, noting competitors' features, onboarding and UI. Sketch the app with pencil and paper, upload the sketches with the premise and feature list to 99designs, and get 50-70+ UI designs submitted. Hire a developer on Upwork (he recommends only Eastern Europe for quality at a lower price) after a 15-minute call checking vibe, excitement and whether they bring ideas. Pay per completed project, not hourly: paid when the app is live on the store with no bugs. A simple app like Puff Count cost under $5K; a ThemeForest template can get it under $1K. Keep the MVP simple.

Every day by noon, a data person sent the Disney+ president an email with exactly three bullets (up to two sub-bullets each): what changed yesterday and what to focus on, with context a dashboard hides (e.g. an EU sign-up rise came from a Netherlands promo that missed its target). The writer must be freed from low-value report requests and trusted to pick the right things.

Once a quarter (mostly when in person), a day where anyone on the growth team could run whatever experiment they wanted without buy-in from an engineering or product manager. Rules: don't remove a subscription upsell, don't crash the app, expose at most 10% of users. Teams still collaborated across design, analytics and engineering, and often ran ideas that had been deprioritized. Done less recently.

In-house influencer lead (a creator from Poland who made videos for Praktika before being hired) runs the program worldwide; in-house influencer coaches, also ex-creators, each run a country and a roster of 20-30 contracted creators, rotating angles. Rationale: knowing what good content is is the key skill; management can be learned. Creators stay contractors, not employees. Runs on SideShift plus internal add-ons for analytics and reporting.

George's first ever expense was a virtual assistant running the app's Instagram DMs, and he says it should be everyone's first hire. Before a sponsorship call with a smaller creator for FightAI, he noticed the creator's profile showed 'Followed by Cayden Henschel'. He cancelled the call and had the VA ask that creator to DM Cayden; Cayden replied, then answered George's email, they swapped numbers and became partners.

Built three AI skills from outside research and own experience that review all messaging: (1) platform guardrails - does the channel's policy (Meta, Google) permit it; (2) category rules - e.g. never call compounded drugs FDA-approved; (3) operating reality - claims like 'same-day shipping' must match what the pharmacies deliver. The skills flag issues; a human reviews each flag and either changes the copy or marks a false positive and runs as is. Run before uploading to the ad manager to avoid Facebook disapprovals and account suspensions.

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.

Automated email invites go to a varied sample: 2-3 year subscribers, people who started a trial a week ago and converted or didn't. They book a 15-minute feedback call that automatically lands with whichever team members have calendar availability, so everyone (CEO, co-founder, engineers, growth) does at least two interviews a week. Built with automation (team uses Claude) so it stays a habit, not a one-off. Also occasionally bring users into the office to watch them use the app.

Monthly competitions: prize (cash or voucher) for the assistant who contacts the most influencers, and for the one whose referrals (tracked by 'referred by' on signed deals) sign the most.

All ads fully AI-made for 2+ years, including screen-recording styles: ~4,000 video ads, hundreds of playable ads and thousands of statics per month. 6-person ads team mostly generates new ideas and prepares material; agentic video editing via Poolday once an angle is nailed; human video editors for one-offs, new concepts and taste; others build playable mini-game ads. Scaling volume required more diverse ideas, so the creative team grew 3x in 6 months.