Virality and word-of-mouth tactics

Message signed creators monthly: 'Do any of your friends want brand deals?' Pay ~$100-200 to the creator if a referred friend signs. Referred creators send a personal phone number, so you call the influencer directly, sometimes bypassing their management.

After the (blurred) scan result, the paywall offers two buttons: 'View results' (-> paywall) or 'Invite 3 friends'. Inviting leads to a share-your-invite-code screen; results unlock free once 3 friends download, finish onboarding and redeem the code. Friends get no benefit beyond helping. Target users are 13-25 and don't want to pay, so they post codes in TikTok comment sections. Branch was used for attribution/referral links. Repeated on Sprout and the newest app.

Posted offers on Reddit and Indie Hackers to make free Supademos for founders: they posted their product URL, Joseph built an interactive demo of their product himself and replied in the thread with it, so they could sign up, duplicate the demo and use it right away. Doing it publicly meant people who hadn't commented saw all the demos, clicked them, and either asked for one or signed up to make their own. Repeated variations across many channels.

'Group Picture' inside Lobby's video hangouts: anyone presses a button, everyone sees a 3-2-1 countdown and their phone vibrates, and the app captures a boomerang of the whole group. The output is watermarked and gets shared to Snapchat and Instagram Stories. The button lights up every 5-10 minutes to hint it's time for a picture, and leaving a chat prompts a goodbye picture. It must be a shared moment everyone knows is coming (posing, silly faces), not a secret screenshot. Two effects: more sharing out, and friends who weren't in the hangout feel left out and join next time.

Built almost 50 free tools, each related to the main product so its users are likely SiteGPT customers (e.g. PDF-to-markdown converter, chatbot name generator). Each tool has a CTA below it pitching the main product in context, e.g. for a chat-with-PDF tool: 'You have tried chatting with one PDF. What if you can create a chatbot with all of your business content? Try SiteGPT.' New tools are built in under five minutes by telling Cursor to look at the existing free tools and create a similar one for a given keyword.

In the app: 'If you invite three friends, you'll get a free makeup look.' Viewers downloaded the app, saw they could share a code, then came back to the TikTok, rewatched it and posted their code (or asked for codes) in the comments. Non-payers kept returning to engage with the post, which boosted it in the algorithm. Combined with an anchor download link added at ~500K views.

Onboarding takes 15-20 seconds and drops users on a two-step home screen: copy your link, then share. Share shows animated GIFs: tap the sticker button, tap the link sticker, add it to your story, frame it. NGL auto-creates a share image with the user's profile picture. Received messages can be answered by replying straight onto your Story, which spreads the link again.

Existing program: invite 5 people and get a free year. Redesigned the referral screen to look better and added tiers: 5 invites = free year, 20 = lifetime subscription, 50 = special prize, shown as goals in a clear UI.

Trained an in-house model that predicts a speaker's origin from ~10 seconds of speech and launched it as a separate web app (accentoracle.com): no download, no gate, no trial; record your voice and get results instantly, then get invited into the BoldVoice app. Shared it in the monthly investor update; a Korean angel investor posted it on Threads. After it spread, invested in accuracy and stability.

Not an affiliate program and no kickbacks (instructors don't want to look like sales reps). Instructors get the app free and their students get a discount. The team works closely with them: webinars, collecting feedback, instructors as beta users who get every new feature first. Built instructor-requested features, e.g. an in-app three-point fix for when GPS fails, which no competing app has. Signed American Sailing for the US. Similar programs with chandleries/boat shops, using in-store presence and QR codes.

During the first-time user experience in Simply Draw, AI animates the drawing the child just finished. Kids run to show parents, who see the app as positive screen time worth paying for.

Launched the first digital program in January (New Year's) as a 30-day group challenge: day-1 and day-30 photos, prize (~$100) for the winner, daily coaching in a Facebook group. Repeated monthly (Feb, March...). Used participants' before/after photos as organic marketing to a ~5K-follower Instagram. No paid media for years; growth spread by word of mouth.