Transcription
Apps that are in these massive categories are being disrupted right now by small teams that are using this pair of creator-led for you page content plus building out applications extremely rapidly using this AI technology. And in today's episode, I'm hosting this guy that got 100,000 downloads for his app in 15 days using this exact strategy. The app is called Focus Tree, and he's going to share all the tactics and strategies he's using to grow his applications with organic content.
You're going to learn how to think media first, product second, and specifically how to validate a product with media before you even go and build any of the application out. You're going to learn how to source creators, how much to pay them, the outcomes you can expect, and what you're looking for. And also how he's using offshore talent rather than US-based talent and seeing the same results, if not better results. Another thing we dive deep into is how to create an onboarding flow that gets buy-in from the user so that it creates a higher daily active usage, a higher weekly active usage of the product.
This episode is brought to you by Talent Fiber. Talent Fiber helps you hire the best offshore talent for whatever job roles you're trying to place, whether it's an AI automation specialist, a Facebook ad specialist, or a full-stack software engineer. They're going to interview 100-plus candidates for you, find the best three to five, and these individuals speak perfect English, work your time zones, and in full transparency are some of the best employees that I've hired throughout my career.
The reason that they're so good is because Talent Fiber isn't a headhunting agency; they function as a full HR department and offer the equivalent of 401ks, health insurance, etc., which allows for them to identify the best talent. Also, these employees aren't going to be working multiple jobs, which has been my experience in the past when I've used a headhunting agency. Go to talentfiber.com to learn more. Let's get started with today's show.
All right, let's go big dog. How you doing?
I'm good, I'm good. What about you?
I'm good, man. It's been a crazy week. Good though, get very busy, but good busy. So how about yourself?
Well, I mean the same. I mean, right now the the app is growing like crazy, so we are trying to catch up with everything.
Totally. Is everything just breaking, I imagine, with like the infrastructure?
So, so it turned out that my my co-founder and one of my best friends is actually a goat when it comes to tech, so yeah, he worked for like big companies before, so he knew already how to scale this kind of structure. Uh, but it's more like everything that is like around it, so like the feedbacks, for example. Like we were getting a few feedbacks back in the days, but now it's like every minute there is someone who's going to send us a message, right? So we need to handle this, you know, using AI and a lot of stuff.
How many users are you at now?
So, right now we just… Yeah, I can tell you. I mean, right now we broke 110K weekly active users, um, so yeah, I mean it's crazy. In two months, went from a few hundred to to this, and it's just growing every day, every day, every day. We're basically hitting all like new all-time highs like every single day.
Unbelievable. And uh, for the audience, uh, what's the app? Um, and then also, uh, you got 100,000 downloads in an ridiculous amount of time, so I'd love for you to share that as well.
Yeah, definitely. So the app is named uh, Focus Tree. You can find it on iOS and and Android, and it's a productivity app for students. Um, try to see it like Strava. I mean, do you know Strava, Cody? Have you ever used…
Yeah, absolutely. I do. So yes. So for the the people watching that don't know, Strava is like a a social app for runners, and so we are trying to build something similar but for studying. Um, and uh, and yeah, I mean we've been working on it for the past two years, but it's been growing like crazy just this past 3 months basically.
Unbelievable, man. I love it. We're going to get into all the details, kind of from an acquisition standpoint, but I think, um, you know, just to start, can we kind of lay out uh, the the landscape that's happening in mobile, uh, in particular, uh, like this shift that for you page content has created from an acquisition standpoint and what uh this has generated from like an opportunity? I I I don't personally, I'm looking at this as like this combination of both vibe coding or whatever you want to call it with uh the ability to make these mobile applications, uh, you know, kind relatively quickly uh with um this new AI uh programming technology and then combining that with this for you page. So anyway, just lay out the landscape for us of what's happening, why why this opportunity is existing.
So everything started when TikTok came out, like, um, they completely switched the game. Um, I believe that TikTok just built the most addictive product that was ever created on earth. You can just look at the chart; you can just ask a couple of friends. I mean, for example, my parents, they're using TikTok. Uh, they never got hooked on Facebook or Instagram, but on TikTok, man, like my dad spent 3 hours on it, my mom's the same. It's crazy; like they really changed the game, and the way you can explain it is that they switch from an algorithm that was audience-based to an algorithm that is content-based. Um, in other words, it's kind of like in F1, uh, you're only as good as your last race. Well, with TikTok, you're only as good as your last video, basically, and that's a big switch, right? And it's crazy. Now you can have creators that, you know, go viral after two or three videos, and that just changed everything. Um, and uh, and yeah, everyone is trying to catch up to it. Um, you can see now Instagram launched the Reels, like maybe like what two years ago. LinkedIn started to to launch their Shorts earlier this year. Now X also has shorts because they're all trying to compete with TikTok, right? They understand that if they're not going to adapt to TikTok, they're not going to survive, right? So yeah, everyone is reacting to to this new algorithm, and uh, and that opens a lot of opportunities for people like me and maybe people in the in the audience that are watching.
No, that's amazing. Um, is this only… I mean, I've gotten feedback, so I've talked to a bunch of people kind of in this in this space. My background is in B2B; that's what I've been doing for the last, you know, seven years, so I I I'm uh uh definitely not as like well-versed in this, but a lot of the people I'm talking to is, um, you know, self-service proumer applications. You can sometimes get traction with this when it's like a web app, but the best kind of funnel is basically using this for you page style content and then driving them to a mobile application because the consumption of the media is happening on mobile. Um, yeah, any any thoughts or or or you know, opinions on that of like the best types of companies or or I guess the the types of companies that should be thinking about this uh as a channel of distribution for them?
I mean, honestly, anyone. Um, maybe to to give a bit of context, it all started with ecom, right? Um, app founders like myself, we're not the one who invented that strategy. It started with ecom when TikTok Shop went live like two years ago uh in the US. Uh, it was available in other countries before, but it really took off when they launched it in the US two years ago, and all the ecom guys that, you know, were paying like a lot of money to Facebook and, you know, the drop shipping was kind of dead back then, they they went through basically a renaissance era with TikTok Shops. Um, and what happened is after, you know, maybe like a year doing TikTok Shop, a lot of smart kids realized that the margins are not so good in drop shipping and ecom, and they all started switching to mobile apps, and that's where you saw all these dudes coming uh building like study talk apps, um Cali type of thing, like all these guys, they come from the ecom background initially, uh, and they and now we are kind of living through… I think I tweeted about it like last week… we are kind of living through the renaissance of mobile apps. Uh, it totally feels like that, and it's really crazy. But back to your question, it can work for anyone. I believe that this strategy could also work for like B2B, uh, for example, on LinkedIn. Like I would love to try to apply the strategy on LinkedIn. I don't have the time, but if I had time, man, that's what I would do actually. Maybe I will build like a B2B product and try it out on on LinkedIn or something like that. That's I think it could 100%.
The thing I… I especially if it's some type of self-service application that fits into a workflow that's really common. I'm imagining like something that does… Yep, uh something in like webinars, uh that you know, very broad audience that is doing webinar-based content. I feel like there's probably an angle to do short-form content with influencers on LinkedIn that is going after that webinar category space. So 100%.
So I feel like that gives the landscape of what's kind of going on. Talk to me about your guys' development strategy because I feel, you know, you've been working on this for two years, but it sounds like in the last couple of months this unlock has happened. Was there a product insight or like something that that that that kind of changed that made this virality uh more possible, or was it really just, hey, this media on top of this this is actually what's driving the growth of this company?
Yeah, so it's a bit of both. Um, when you're doing consumer apps, the reality is that you're never going to come up with like a good product without having like decent traffic and and distribution, uh, because it's all about details, right? So basically, I mean, to be very transparent with you, we've been kind of struggling for about a year and a half. Like I've been trying a lot of different channels. I went viral on Reddit, but the problem with Reddit is that it's it's it's limited in terms of size, right? So you can only grow, you know, a certain amount, right? So for B2B it works, but when you're doing like consumer apps, you're really looking to to to appeal to millions of people. Reddit is not the right, you know, the right place. Um, and yeah, man, I was struggling, and so I was reading, you know, as much as possible, trying to learn from everyone. I look, you know, at ecom and everything, and then I just stumble upon… I think it was the Cali strategy from uh Blake. Uh, I think it was in November 2024 when I discovered that, and I was like, wow, that's crazy. I want to try it out, and and I did, man. Two weeks later, I was launching my first campaign with my creator and just went viral. I think the third video hit like 10 million views, and from now on I was like, "Yep, that's our that's our channel now." And uh, and yeah, I mean currently it's crazy. We we average between 12 and 14K downloads every day with like seven creators. And yeah, and also the cost… I think the the thing that surprised me the the most is the cost of this strategy. Um, I also did ads…
What do you pay for now? Just uh…
Yeah, yeah, yeah, or like your… I don't know if you have a blended CAC number, and maybe we can even get more into the weeds on it of like cost per creator and then also, um, like what's your blended CAC look like uh from a download perspective?
Yeah, um, yeah, I mean it's very, very cheap. So when we did ads last year, it was super expensive. Uh, I was very demotivated with the thing. I was basically paying $11.5 per per download, and with this strategy, uh, the cost went down by 95% plus. Um, we basically pay 10 cents per download or around in that range.
Unbelievable. I cannot give you the exact number, but you know, no need, but yeah, it's in that, you know, in that… it's amazing, and it's it's impossible for anyone to compete with us. Like it's just impossible, and it's going down because now we are also bringing some virality within the app. Uh, we're working with Nikita Bier on this, and you know, basically, you know, every person that we bring, they start to, you know, invite like one or two, three, four friends, and so the the CAC just keeps going down and down, and it's crazy.
No, it's unbelievable. Um, what what do you pay a creator on a monthly basis? What is that like the kind of the price point that people are coming in at? I've heard, you know, $800 up to 2K. Um, I guess what are you looking for, and then what is that uh what is that number?
Yeah, so it's much lower for us. So what I'm doing is that I'm only hiring creators outside of the US and outside of Europe. Um, there's a couple of countries that I really love. I think they're very talented when it comes to creating content in my niche. Uh, Brazil is one of them, Vietnam is one of them, and also Philippines. And so those people, what we do is we pay them per video. It's around $20 per video, and then if they perform, uh, we we're going to give them a a bonus uh on the top of that, which is much bigger than the the $20.
Fascinating. Um, how are you combating uh the like geography constraint? So, for example, they're in the Philippines. Are you seeing any challenges with that with like having videos getting seen US uh in the US from a traffic standpoint, or what what any strategies there or tactics?
Okay, so basically, there is a lot of uh theory coming into that that thing. So there are people selling like VPN, um reposter. There's basically two ways: either you do it yourself through VPNs and and proxies, or you actually hire a reposter in the US to to post for yourself. Me, I'm a complete outlier on this, and I I didn't do any of that, and I'm still able to hit the US and Europe. Like my first the first country that I'm I'm distributing in is the US, the second one is Germany, which is the richest country in Europe, then you have Italy, France. So I don't know why, but I'm… it's just working for me, man. I'm just put out content in in English, and it just goes viral everywhere in the world, and and that's it.
That's so… that's unbelievable. So the for the Ger… for Germany, is the English content going viral there? Are you doing language-specific content for those locations, like having somebody from Poland that knows German, or what does that look like?
No, for now everything is is being done in English. Uh, the app is fully in English. We didn't even have time to translate. I mean, we have to catch up on the product because, you know, you have to realize we're just getting so many feedbacks, you know, since like two months because we grew so big, but we we didn't have time to catch up; we were trying to catch up with the bugs. That's that's the reality of it. Um, but but no, everything is in English. Um, and yeah, depending on countries, they speak better English than others. Germany is really good; France, not so good, but but it works at the end of the day. It works.
Oh, that's amazing, man. Um, so for uh creator identification, are are there… how are you finding these people? Are you just like putting out job requests on Upwork? Are you are you in Discord chats? Are you just going to Twitter and you know, bulk DMing people? What does that look like to identify these people kind of for the initial outreach? And then uh another question for you is how uh you do the filtering process? Like who do you select to work with? Who do you decide is is is a good fit for what you guys are trying to do?
Yeah, so it's it's super important. I think it's probably the most important step uh of the process to pick the right creators because if you go with the wrong one, it's just going to go to [ __ ] , and trust me, I've tried it. But uh the way it works, so I I I go directly on TikTok. Um, by the way, this is probably one of the biggest advice is that you need to understand the media landscape of your niche really, really well. So if you want to launch a fitness app, you need to spend at least 3 days on TikTok just scrolling through content like for 8 hours straight just to understand. Um, and so we do the same. We just spend hours and hours on TikTok scrolling, scrolling, and at the end of the day, man, we know every every creator's like… we just have a list of like the top 400, 500 creators. Um, they're actually not that many; you will be surprised like when you spend that that much time like me on TikTok within a niche, you just know them, right? And and yeah, you you just uh basically you will decide which one are good, which one are not, and there's a couple of criterias uh that we can get into if you want.
Yeah, be super… I I think the audience would be… again, the tactical pieces of this is what everybody's like salivating for is how do you actually go and do that. So what does that look like on your guys' side? What do you use?
So, so what I do, so there's a couple of things. The first one is like I said, outside of the US, outside of Europe. Um, I try to hire people… again, from the US, from Europe, but it's just too expensive, just really, really expensive, and a lot of them are like overpriced for really what what they can provide. So yeah, the first thing that I look for is like, are they outside of the US or Europe? If they are from the US, Europe, it's just out right away. Um, then obviously I'm going to I'm going to look at the at the views that they're making. Uh, there's going to be two two things that I look at. It's the average low, so you know, when when like a video flops, how bad is it? Like is it 500 views? Is it like 5K? Is it 10K? Usually, if you're above 10K, that's like a really good creator. Between 5 and 10K, it's decent. Under 5K, I'm a bit worried. Uh, so that's the first thing, and for the views, the second one is how often do they go viral? Is it one video out of 20? One video out of 10? One video out of three, right? And that's that's going to impact, you know, the the, you know, the decision that I'm going to make. Right now, I kind of changed my strategy. Initially, when I wanted to scale uh the viral TikTok strategy, I was kind of hiring any like everyone and anyone, and now I realized that it's better to work with like a few very good creators and be very close to them, and they're actually going to they're going to dominate the the niche that you're in. I mean, right now that's really what I'm I'm doing, and what I'm looking for is to just dominate my my niche, right?
Be just category… yeah, basically. So you you rather have like 20 very good creators than like 100 shitty ones, to be honest.
Totally makes sense. Um, so the outlier creator, what is that uh based off the stats that you were just talking about? Like what is what is their hit rate? What are those those numbers where you're like, "Oh, this person, they're in the top 10%, they're in the top 1% of that." Um, is it like, you know, one out of 10 videos as an outlier, or what are those specifics that you're kind of looking for?
No, usually it's a bit more. It's usually one out of five or or better. It's like a 20% hit rate, which is insane, and then the average is like maybe 30, 40, 50K views. Like usually the lowest video… sorry… it's like 30, 40, 50K views. Um, so yeah, pretty crazy. And there are a couple of other things also you look at is like, do they understand the niche? It's stupid, but like there is like certain codes that you need to understand. That's why you need to spend time watching TikTok in your niche to understand like the different things. So for study talk, for example, it's mostly 80% of women; they are very focused on aesthetic, and there is like a couple of colors… like it's very important the the color palettes that you have in your video, right? And so when you're looking for those creators, you can just tell some of them they understand how it works, and some others don't. Um, so so yeah, that that's one of them.
No, that makes total sense. I I have so many questions about this, so I'm just going to rattle them off. Should it… should it… but before we do that, uh, I we had a bunch of questions that came from the Twitter thread uh where I asked people like what they wanted to know. Um, the one of the main one or one of the ones that kept getting asked over and over again is how you guys think about monetization and what that funnel looks like. Is it hard paywall? Is there a free tier? How are you structuring it? Uh, you guys are bootstrapped, so I imagine there's some type of uh hard paywall or or that built in, or but what what does that look like?
No, we're not we're not… we we are actually VC-backed. We raised…
Oh, you are? Oh my god, I'm sorry. I…
No, that's fine. No worries, man. I mean, I never talk about it. Uh, I don't… I mean, it's great, but it's not an achievement at the end of the day. Um, but yeah, no, we raised more than 2 million. So I mean, to be very transparent, monetization is not really like the central piece of what we're doing at the moment. Right now, the the goal is to really go after the 500 million students in the world and just build the biggest thing ever.
Totally. No, I mean, yeah, your game of cheap uh signups makes total sense then, where it's like, okay, if we can get them at 10 cents, we'll do this all day long indefinitely.
100%. And and once we really crack virality, it's it's game over from that basically. I I'd be curious about your raising process. Did you have uh an idea for this application uh like when you initially did that round? Was this something that you brought to them that after you already had traction? What did that look like from a um uh from a capital standpoint? Was this landscape… I can imagine is just like chaos, right? There's blood in the water; nobody knows what's going on, so I I imagine uh getting, you know, getting institutional capital to come in and and and do an investment is super, super hard. Um, so what what did that look like from a from a process?
Honestly, it was a long process. Uh, also, you have to realize that me and my co-founder, we are first-time kind of first-time founders, more or less, so that's even like 10 times harder than than you you know, because if you already sold your company, it's it's a it's a completely… it's it's a different topic. But when you haven't done it like ourselves, then it's different. So it took a lot of time. However, I think they really believe in the vision that we had. Um, it's funny because when we did this 2 years ago, it was only a vision, but now it's really shaping up to to be to be true. I mean, I mean, even us, we had doubts, like we are like like… is our analysis good on focus apps? Like should should we go… Okay, I think I think there is an opportunity, right? And so we worked, we worked, and now it's kind of showing up that yeah, yeah, yeah, there was a huge opportunity, and it's and it's there, and nobody saw it. By the way, were only us… I can get back to you… I mean, I can explain it if you…
No, no, yeah, I think that I think it it gives a high level. I I'm more curious on like the the the decision of what product to work on. Um, again, another question from the thread was why did you choose this over everything else? Was there early signal? How did you think about that early signal and this…
Probably relates to you guys going and raising as well, of like, okay, we saw kind of this initial trend that we could ride. Um, why did you decide on Focus Tree and this category of study talk rather than something else?
Yeah, so the—so I think—so the initial story is that I just wanted to build something with my best friend. Like, to be very—to be true with you, like we always wanted to build something together. And then we just sat down and we're like, what do we have in common? And the reality is that we met during self-development events back in Paris, like 10 years ago. We always talk about this; we are obsessed with it, you know, the cold shower thing, like all of this—that's—that's—that's what we do. So Focusry just made a lot of sense for—for who—who we are as persons.
Um, at the end of the day, man, like it's such a struggle to build like a billion-dollar app. Like, you just have to wake up every day, put 15, 16 hours of work, sometime, man. If you don't believe in what you're doing, it's just not going to work out. Like, it's just, you know, you need some kind of passion, or you're just dead. And—and that's really what—what is saving us at the end of the day. And you know, seeing those com—like right now we have some crazy reviews every day, people saying, "Oh, you just saved me! Like, I just succeeded college because of you guys. I'm doing it with my boyfriend. We—we wouldn't talk at night before going to bed because we're on our phone, and now we just set up Focus Tree together, and it's just much better." And—and you—this is no [ __ ] every day we receive those reviews; we have like a Slack channel, so it arrives automatically to the chat, so everyone—every employee can see it. And I just—I don't know—just made us feel good, man, like. And yeah, that's the passion. But we also saw—we also saw the opportunity; I'm not going to lie; we—there was also—
No, for sure. For sure. I—I—I imagine it. It's interesting. I feel like validation more and more is coming from the trends that are happening on social. Um, I just made a YouTube video—uh, or we filmed it yesterday—and it was around—bag—what do they call them?—um, bag—um—charms is the keyword phrase. Um, it went viral on TikTok, so huge search category, but about—looks like 6 months ago it went viral on TikTok. Okay. And the search volume has tripled; it went from like 100,000 a month up to 300,000 a month. Um, and so for like companies, I feel like more and more it's like the identification of these trends that are occurring and then betting on them is kind of this like, you know, strategy for product development. So you're basically coming—you know—market first—um, based off of what you're seeing and what's crazy is you basically have the social listening tool just like—go engage with—communities on—Yeah, TikTok as an example, find study talk, identify, okay, what are they trying to accomplish, their goals and outcomes, and then you build a product that basically helps service them on their goals and outcomes. And it feels like a lot of what you guys did—maybe, you know, that's a very linear way to describe it; there's probably way more wandering around in the woods to—to identify this.
But so we went through the—the—um—the—the road of competitors. So basically what we did is that we look at the—like the landscape of focus apps. And if you just look at it, it seems like there is too many products already. Every 3 days there is a dude who's going to launch a focus app on—on X, like—so it's always the same type of guy. So it's a dude living in the—you know—in the valley; um, he—you know—he used to work for Google or—or whatever, but he has no meaning, so now he decided to launch his focus app to save—save the world. That—that's kind of like the pitch that you get every 3 days on X. Um, but the problem is that those apps, they are made for people like him. So it's made for founders—usually you look at the product—is very black, very boring, very minimalistic—exactly. And—and you know, we used to—to actually show those type of apps to—like—uh, students in the beginning, like when we were doing user interviews, and one out of two they will tell us, this was made by millennials, right? But like, you know, in their head it was like, what the [ __ ] is—no, I never use that—like, this is such a—no way to build apps. And that's when we realized, we're like, wait, there's so many products being launched every 3 days, but on the other side there is this app called Forest, which is our direct competitor, who's been here for 10—they haven't updated anything; it looks [ __ ] old, but everyone is using it. How come? Like, there's so many new apps, however, everyone is using that thing. And that's when we realize there is two audiences to this: there is the cold shower, the dev guy from the valley who is—you know—using focus app and like trying to optimize everything, and there's like the mainstream people, mostly women—uh, Gen Z, 17, 18 years old, 16 years old—and they don't want to use those productivity apps; they want to use something cool, something like Duolingo, something that is gamified, something with like flashy colors, right? And there is no offer; there is no offer; nothing is happening. So I just built a design; I—I—I put it on like a Reddit post; it was completely fake; uh, I put it on my phone and I just took a picture and just—it went crazy on the post on Reddit. Everyone wanted to know the name of the app, and that's when we realized that, wait, wow, okay, there is a different audience here, which is much bigger, and they have no product. And that's when we decided to keep going with Focus Stream.
Okay, so a couple things I want to unpack there. One, it—it's funny to think about the mobile app business being so old that it's now like there's a—like software has aged out basically. So like in email marketing, this is a classic, right, where it's like every 10 years email gets more sophisticated; you have a Claio enter the market that like totally disrupts the e-commerce space, etc. Um, feels like here the same thing is happening.
Yes, it was made 10 years ago.
Yes, exactly. Exactly.
Um, and so a part of what it feels like you're doing is you're taking this already proven category and you're going and you're remixing it, which is in my experience the best businesses to go and create is—it's—you're not inventing anything new; you're just—you know—putting basically a new—new skin on it. So—um—that—that's one piece of it. I think the other thing that's fascinating is like you didn't even have a product and got strong signal from the audience that—that is something that—like—they want. And I think that this is this new way to do validation of product that previously was impossible. Um, I mean, you would be kind of—uh—uh—in the dark building this thing, and—and—and now it's the total opposite where it's like, I'm going to float—you know—a UI or a—literally a Figma design that's interactive, see what the response is from the community, and then if they add legs then we go and build the product because we product so quickly we can actually do this now from a—from a—um—a velocity standpoint. So anyway, I just—when you said that it feels like those dots connected, so I was like, "All right, we got to—I want to synthesize—you know—outside of me." But—um—talk to me about—a crossover of—of like creators sharing the things that are working for them. How are you managing that on your team of creators? So like you see an outlier happen with creator one, how do you communicate, oh, hey, this outlier happened? Um, what—what does that look like? Is it a Discord? Like, what are the—the stack that you're using to manage it? Is it a big WhatsApp chat that—it's—it's going in? What does that look like?
Yeah, yeah. So on terms of organization, I hire two coaches that are working full-time with us—uh, and so those people are basically the best creators that we had, right? We—we pick them from—from the—our batch of creators—uh, so there are people outside of Europe and—and—and—and the US, and we just pay them like a very fair—uh—price, and they also keep producing content on the site, so they don't lose foot with what's going on. And the coaches are responsible for hiring new creators and also making sure that, you know, the communication is working right—uh, and making sure that, you know, when there is a new format, everyone knows about it. Um, so that's why it works. And concretely, so we have—two WhatsApp groups—one WhatsApp is where everyone posts—the video, so it's only for that; you just post there. And so it allows us to do the tracking and everything. And then the second WhatsApp group is more like to talk with one another, right? So give feedback and stuff like this. Um, I also have one-on-one channels between coaches and each creator because I realize that some creators are very shy and they don't like to talk within big groups. It's very hard to keep like the community alive, especially since they don't know each other. Um, so I—I also found out that people are not so comfortable talking in groups, so I have also side—side—uh—chats with each of them—uh, and I realized that they are much more vocal on those chats. And in the back, I also have a school.com—community for free, and every time we onboard a new creator, we—we tell them to—to go on—on the school and—and ask a request to join, and there they will find—like—an—a one-hour course on what to do, on the format to use, how to get the Capco templates, because every time we have a winning format, we will create a Capco templates link to it. And—and yeah—and—and then yeah, basically they onboard through school, and then we just WhatsApp them like, did you watch all the video? Is it good for you? Did you make your first video? Send—you know, it's like you need to be behind their ass all the time, but at the end of the day, it just pays dividends.
So—it makes so much sense. I—so you—it sounds like you've got top of funnel locked in right now; you guys are going full steam. Uh, are there any like push notifications, email, SMS, any of these—kind of follow-up things that you're doing once—a user signs up for the app to get them back into it to create that active activation? Uh, what do you—what are those layers that you're adding to—to get them back into the app to increase that—your—your MAU and also your weekly actives?
Yeah, great question. So completely different thing than distribute; now we are talking more about the—the product. Um, well, there's many things you can do. Uh, notification is really, really big. Um, we also try to add like a social layer to the app—uh, so we have like a feed—we are very inspired by—Strava again—because I mean, I don't know if you ever talk to a Strava user, but something amazing about—they're obsessed, because the thing is that a Strava user did a long-distance run around—like—her whole life; they will—they will never run without Strava, because Strava—there is all their analytics; it's also the social—like—the social layers, right? So when they run, they can show it to their friends; they will never run without Strava. It's—it's almost like if you run but you don't have Strava, you didn't really run, in a way; it's really strange. And so we are trying to build that habit, the same with Focus Tree is like if you study, you just have to turn on Focus Tree, like—it—like—it's—you didn't really study if you didn't turn on Focus Tree, right? Because it—it's going to log all your stats; you're going to show it to your friends that you did study. And so we are trying to create that bond—uh—between people and the app and—and—and—and the crazy thing is that we onboard people who are like 13, 14, 15 years old, and they're going to use the app until—you know—end of college and maybe beyond, right?
Years. Totally. Yeah, totally.
Um, but you know, if we go into specific, obviously emails, like notifications, a lot of things like that.
Yeah, yeah. Any—any—any stuff that you're seeing being outliers? I know SMS is becoming huge in—you know—to do drip nurturers within the—the iOS space. Um, what's a—like—again, just a—go down to the—get in the weeds—like, do you immediate onboarding text, and then, you know, what's your cadence for follow-ups? What does that look like from a structure?
Yeah, I mean, if we go back to the onboarding—yeah, we strongly advise to do it through SMS. Uh, we used to do it through email, and that's like a big rookie mistake—uh, I think when we show it to Nikita it was just like, what the [ __ ] are you guys doing? Uh, this is—you have to change this as quick as possible. And the reason why, man, is that—so if you do—so we do a lot of Gary testing, so we basically go at—like—on the streets or—like—in McDonald's, and then we just find high school people, and we just—you know—give them the app and we just look at them trying it, right? And something you're going to realize is that when they sign up and they get this—six-digit code to their email, they cannot remember it, right? So they're going to get your app; they're going to put their email first; they're going to have to leave your app, which is never good; they're going to have to get those six digits, and they're going to come back to the app; they cannot remember—they cannot remember the six digits; it's too many for them, right? So that's why you need the SMS, and then the copy—the copy paste automatically—uh—within the—the suggestion with an iOS—yep—that they don't have to leave the application—they don't—
Break down for—
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just to break this down for the listener, the setup for this is: user sees—a short-form piece of content on TikTok; they go and Google the app; I'm assuming they see—the iOS link within Google; they click that; they install the app from there—uh, as soon as they get dropped into the app, they—you ask for their phone number—SMS gets dropped with the six-digit code; they hit six-digit code; they drop into the app; what's the first thing after that that you try to get them to do that—like—helps on the activation side? Are you—for most companies it's like one action increases the—the likeliness that they're going to reuse this in the future, so it's a good question.
So initially we thought that having the—the shortest onboarding was the way, and now we realize it's not really the case, because if you have like a short onboarding, people will not understand the fundamentals, and you're going to pay it later with like a lower retention. So now we are trying to have a bit of a longer onboarding, but at least make sure that people understand the concept, make sure that you resell the value proposition of the app, and then they can move on to use the app. But basically what we do is once they sign up with their—their—their phone logging, we're going to ask like the—b—like their names, their age, and we're going to build that social layer, so we need all the basic info like—uh—what school are you going to? So we have like—man, we have like a crazy school picker, so basically we're—are able to—we have like—we created our own API—um—with all the school in the world—uh—because it's something that does not exist. Um, anyway, but let's not go too much into detail, but it's something crazy. And so people can just enter the school right here—uh, and then they can add their friends; they usually—what's called the content contact sync, so this is very important as well—uh, if you want some virality within your app, you need to have the contact sync—uh—at the onboarding. And then once we do all of this, we just explain the—the basic of the app, and we get them to—yeah—to use the app and to create their garden. I mean, I didn't go through the concept, so it doesn't make sense for people watching right now, but basically you focus, you earn a tile, and then you create your garden; that's how it works, and then you drop the tile on your garden.
So that makes total sense. The school of play is so interesting. So you're basically—you're almost brainwashing people to think in a specific way, and then the app is the vehicle to—like—accomplish that—like—outcome where it's like, oh, you're being distracted by social; you need to—you know—basically remove that as even an option for you to start—um—and then basically getting them to buy into the idea, and then once they're bought into the idea, okay, now here's this app that you should use. And once they're mentally bought in, it's like—it's a way higher likelihood that they're going to turn this into a—you know—a daily—or a weekly—uh—product that they're using within their—their—their—their kind of their life.
So yeah, yeah, exactly right. I think in terms of usage, we're like a similar use case to Duolingo—um, so we are not like a daily product by definition. Like, usually when you want to learn the language, you're not going to learn it like every day—like—seven days a week; you usually do like 5 days a week, and that's really good. And so the old game for apps like Duolingo or us is to try to push that daily usage—um, and so yeah, it's—it's a real game. Uh, social apps like, for example, Facebook or—or X or—or Instagram, they are daily usage, but like people—you know—they go there every day to see what's happening. We are just a bit above—a bit under—nuts. It's just crazy to say that out loud that you're at that level of—of where Duolingo's at after they doing this for like 10 years. It's a wild—
Man.
Well, we're going after them. I mean, I mean, it's not the same niche, but—
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Same—same audience—for sure. Talk—okay, so you built this—um—I—I know everybody in the audience is like, "Fuck, I want to do something like this." Are there any niches that you guys have stumbled upon during your process—uh—of building out this company that you feel like have the same biology—uh—that you saw for Focus Tree for—to kind of build an application within it? Uh, anything that jumps out at you or that—that like if you weren't doing this, what would you be doing?
H, I don't [ __ ] know what I will be doing, man, to be honest. Like, I'm very driven by—by the company that I'm running now; I don't know what I will be doing; I don't—but I think I'll be lost in my life—probably experimenting around, maybe B2B just for fun, but I mean, man, like if you—if you're looking to build into consumer apps, what I will do is I will just look at all the biggest apps for each niche—uh—and I will try to learn from it. So there is like many—cuz if you look at the niches on iOS directly, it's very broad categories, so you need to go a bit under, and you will find subniches that—like—crazy. For example, there is this one that I'm—I thought is really funny is astrology—um—I mean, so the reason why—there's Co-Star, have you heard of that app? It's in this category.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did—I did—I did.
Uh, it has a social mechanism where it's like who you're friends with; it basically—like—tells you what's going on in their astrological life and then how—like—whether you should—like—interact with that. Anyway, sorry, side—side anecdote, the only reason I'm bringing this up is I knew this—I knew this person when I lived in SF where—like—you know, running a massive company, and they lived by this—like—would they—like—talk to this friend, for example, was based off of this. So I—again, very—very—the people that are deep in that niche, they—they—it's almost a religion. So I—again, it feels like it has that biology as well for a product like this.
Yeah, and—and you got to realize like the—the sort of strategy that I'm doing on—on viral—viral TikTok—like—there's so many niches that nobody hit—like—it's very new—like—what we're talking about—it's so new, man; it's like 3 months old. I mean, look at the—I believe that the niche—like—the—sorry, the—the app niche is going to be as big as ecom some point. Like, if you look at ecom, you have like 20 conferences in the US, but if you look at the app niche, how many conferences do you have in the US? Zero. Nobody—there's nobody—none that are active anymore. It's—it feels like all of the—you know—all of the talent exited away from it just because it got so saturated.
Exactly. Exactly. But now again, with this change with—for you page, with this change—the ability to build product way faster—that renaissance moment is 100%—I—it's happening. If people are trying to get into this space, they want to go consumer—what—what—what are the best resources—like—h—how—you know—are there communities? Are there resources? Um, anything to point people at that—that will give them—like—even a high level of education or to get them—you know—some type of knowledge on what's going on in the space, or is it just all happening on Twitter? Like—that's—is what it feels like more and more.
Yeah, yeah, that's really how it is. Um, you can follow me on X; I'm also—you know—sharing a bit of—of alpha there—uh, but no, it's very new, man. I mean, if you look at how many profiles on X are talking about this, maybe 20 guys, that's it. 30—totally—max—max. It's—it's really, really small; it's really small. So yeah, there is a couple of—So I'm part of a couple of Discords—like—private Discords, but you know, it's still very early—some of them you have to pay; some other you don't; it's very scrappy, man; it's the early days. And that—that's where they—that's why it's such a big opportunity; there's everything to be made. Also, in terms of SaaS, you know, it's not just about—you know—you can also sell the—the—the shovels and the picks and the axes.
Totally. Totally.
Um, what am I not asking you about in relationship to this whole kind of—um—I guess business structure, business strategy that I—I should be? Is there—is there something that you feel that—you know—haven't brought up today that is really crucial or important to—to win within this space?
Well, I mean, I think the—the—the most important step after finding the right creators is—like—finding the winning formats, and that's something that I've seen a lot of people struggle with. Um, the strategy that I'm using is—is not the most—the easiest thing to—to do; I see a lot of founders trying, and they just kind of give up pretty quickly. And the reason why is because they're just unable to find any winning formats. So I guess, yeah, that will be—that's—that's like the—the—the second most important step after choosing the right creator is—how do you find that winning format? Uh, and then once you have it, it's pretty easy; you just have to scale it and burn it to the ground for like one or two months. But—uh—you need to find—
How long do those formats typically last? Is it again that two-month period you're kind of seeing that, and then a new one comes up?
Yeah, so it's a great question; it depends how saturated your—
Niche is, uh, sadly, in my niche study talk, there's quite a lot of people. Also, I've been sharing a lot on X, so now a lot of people are following what I'm doing. So what happened is when I found a winning format, everyone started copying it, um, and so usually it lasts for like two or three weeks, and then you have to move on, um, so so yeah. But I think if you go for a niche that is untapped, and there are many men, I mean, you can spend like maybe three months without people realizing, like other competitors. So you're just going to burn your niche, I mean your format, sorry, just by yourself, and it can last maybe two months, three months—it's insane.
So you almost have to have, like, with the creators, I'm just thinking about the coaches, like are you—they almost have to be practitioners that are on the forefront, constantly looking for like what is the next thing? Um, is that their focus, and then they're kind of distributing that knowledge out to the rest of the creators that are on your team, or how are you kind of delegating the activities or doing that format discovery? Is that something you're—you're in the weeds with, or is that a team—you know, team members that are doing that for you?
No team members. Um, so, so the thing is that I don't really—I'm not a creator myself; I'm not the typical user of my app. I'm like a 32-year-old man, uh, so, you know, so I need to rely on people that know what they're doing. And so all my creators and coaches, they are all women between 18 and like 23, basically. So they know the niche better, and they are the ones responsible for the research. Just like you have people in, you know, for like in VCs or investment firms doing research, we have people doing research, but in terms of media landscape, and they just spend their day going on study talk and looking for what's working and what's not working. My biggest advice is read the comment section; the comment section is really where the gold is. Uh, that's—that's where you're going to find the best insight on what's going to be the next format.
Fascinating. What—what—what uh—what would be an example of that, like from a comment standpoint, that would like be a signal, "Oh, this is going to be the best format"? Is it just people commenting on it, or are they giving feedback to it? I guess how—how is there like a tactical thing that you're doing to identify that format, that next format?
Yeah, yeah. I mean, um, okay, there is one example, but I don't want to give it because we're milking it right now, like crazy. Um, man, just check your niche, and you will see there is like the—like comment—like there is always like top comments, the ones that have the—the most like pain points. Is that typically what the comment is signaling, or I guess just like—yeah, it could be like, for example, there was one—I remember—so it was on—on one of our videos, and it was like, "I would like to focus, but my friends don't let me." Right? So that's kind of an insight for the next hook that you could build, you know, this type.
Yep, yep. No, that makes total sense. Um, amazing, man. This is—we could probably spend the next like two hours talking about this, but um, before you—before you bounce, um, uh, and where—if people want to reach out or connect with you, where's the best place to do that?
100% X. Uh, I share everything for free; I will not sell the course. I put it here; this is not my goal, so I just share things for free. Um, I also learn the wrong way because I share a bit too much. Like, for example, I share my template, and 20 other [__] starting using the same, and and my creators, you know, send me a message like, "It's weird; I'm receiving the exact same messages that you sent me when you hired me," and I'm like, and I check it out, and I was like, "Yep, yep, it's the same messages." But anyway, if you want to reach out to me, go and ask. I think I put my name—yeah, I am Lauren. It's done. Yeah, it's right here, uh, in the bottom, so we'll include that in the show notes as well, so it'll be easy to find. Thank you again, man, for coming on. We'll—we'll have you back at some point, too. I—I mean, I know the space is evolving really quickly right now, so I think—
Yeah, exactly. So I mean, maybe—maybe three to four months, we come have you back, do a state of the union of what's going on within the short-form space for social apps.
So for sure. My pleasure. My pleasure. Thanks for having me, man. Listen.