🪄 From $0 to $30M exit in 9 weeks

PLUS: Reply on Social Media automatically using AI

Hey,

The Spells Master is back!

Welcome to the 44th issue.

Today's topics:

  1. From $0 to $30M exit in 9 weeks

  2. A tool to Reply on Social Media automatically using AI

  3. One recommended video on The Psychology behind a Political App showing how your wages will change depending on your vote

From $0 to $30M exit in 9 weeks

TBH (short for To Be Honest), the app for teenagers to give each other anonymous compliments, was acquired by Facebook for about $30M — 9 weeks after its launch in 2017.

They were close to bankruptcy and had funds for only 2 weeks of work before they had their success.

TBH differed from YikYak and Sarahah (both went out of business) which were the 2 other anonymous apps but it had the potential of cyberbullying due to its anonymous nature.

TBH never allowed DMs like the other apps did. TBH only worked on polls.

The idea behind TBH wasn't new. It was tried by Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe (her app was called Merci - an anonymous compliment-giving app for adult women) and countless others but Nikita and his teams execution was the best.

1. Viral Design

The app was designed in a way to go viral.

They did it using a few tricks:

  1. Address Book - When you join the app, you need to give access to Address Book.

  2. Gems - Every account need to collect more gems to unlock more features. For that, you needed to either answer more polls or gain new followers. Remember, the address book feature access. That's the easiest way one could get access to more followers.

  3. 1-click Share - Every profile that joined TBH got a unique link which they could share on Snapchat. It is how they grew.

2. Reproducible Process for Penetrating Communities

Most social apps grow through PR but it is bad for a Social App as it gets people from all places.

All social apps need to grow using the age-old trick of needing people "within your radius."

Facebook grew by targeting colleges. They went from college to college before blowing up and going mainstream.

Tinder and Bumble did the same thing. They targeted colleges, parties, and events.

Nikita and his team discovered that teens would list their high schools in their Instagram bios. For example, "Sophomore at RHS."

So they simply crawled the school's place page and then followed all the accounts that contained the school's name.

However, they hit a roadblock: users would see their Follow Requests at varying times of the day so it derailed their efforts to get their attention simultaneously.

So they came up with a psychological trick:

  1. Set the app's Instagram profile to Private.

  2. Set the bio to something mysterious. For example, "You've been invited to the new RHS app—stay tuned!"

  3. Follow the targeted users.

  4. Wait 24 hours to receive the inbound Follow Requests. (They were curious about the profile so they requested access)

  5. At 4:00PM when school gets out (The Golden Launch HouseTM), add the App Store URL to the profile.

  6. Finally, make the profile Public

This notified all students at the same time that their Follow Request had been accepted and they subsequently visited the app's profile page, looked at their App Store page, and tried the app.

TBH Private Instagram

TBH Private Instagram App Store Link

3. Positivity, UGC and Constraints

The app was a hit among teens due to its positive nature. Who doesn't like compliments? Check out r/ToastMe on Reddit.

The app got so famous that kids would ask to like and comment on Instagram to get a TBH compliment.

It also had UGC so it got inputs from its users but they only approved the positive polls and not the negative ones. The poll creation which would've required a team was a 1-persons job now by only having to filter the positive messages and discard the negative ones.

They also used Gen Z Lingo like most lit, most woke, tbh, slide into the DMs so it felt like the app was built by one of them.

They carefully made the app addictive by using Time Constraints. The app only allowed you to answer 12 polls per hour so you never feel frustrated with it.

The app and its execution is a masterclass in psychology that can be replicated even if you are building other apps.

"While some of TBH’s methods are certainly too "scrappy" for a big company, there are analogous ways to employ these tactics at Facebook. For example, when using Facebook's Quick Promos (or QPs), we should avoid providing an instant download link. Instead, we should request push notification permission to alert the targeted users at a later date. That way, we can collect their interest and contact them simultaneously to ensure critical mass during launch hour."

~ TBH Team

It wasn't built like an app but like an addictive game.

A tool to Reply on Social Media automatically using AI

Reply Guy is an amazing AI tool that you can use to reply to influencers’ post automatically.

This is necessary in the age where your replies are needed if you want reach on Social Media. Its such an annoying game to play.

This tool solves it but I often wonder how much credibility hit it takes. Nonetheless, this is good for sock-puppet accounts that use Social Media to send Cold DMs at scale.

Nikita Bier is one of the best minds in Social Apps that understands psychology really well.

This video is his talk on TED where he talks about an app which would change every American's vote as they vote against their financial self-interest.

Tweet of the day

I used to hate domain hoarders but spending $10 to make $85,000 in ~8 days is an insane ROI for no work. And that too for chatgpt.com which could've been negotiated at a much higher price.

Funny thing is you can build a web scraper that watches popular apps or sites and then sends an alert if the domain's top TLDs like .com or .ai are available so you can decide if you want to buy it or not.

Rabbit Holes

  1. Jenny Hoyos Short-Form Video Playbook - Jenny Hoyos has incredible frameworks around Hooks and going viral. You can always use them in your marketing as social media continues to devalues followers.

  2. How TrueCaller built a billion-dollar caller ID data empire in India - What TBH did in USA with permission, TrueCaller did it in India without permission due to lax data laws. You don't have to consent to have your number being used on TrueCaller. If someone with your contact info installs it, TrueCaller will automatically add it to its database.

  3. 7 Expert & Data-Backed Trend Predictions for 2024 - This is where the puck is going. Pickleball is where its at now. If you want to get rich, build an empire around Pickleball. It is going to take off. Another trend is AI Video Tools. Good list.

Startup of the day

ReadReviews is a handy tool to read reviews easily.

Reviews are a goldmine of knowledge about yours & your competitors' customers and this tool lets you find the pain points & benefits using AI.

Here's how I'd grow this:

  1. Keep writing a Exploding Topics-like Newsletter. Just copy them. The people interested in such topics will also be interested in such tool that gives app ideas.

  2. Cover trends going viral like AI Girlfriends so it helps with SEO. Newsjacking works.

  3. The perfect audience for this tool is app makers. Find them through Google Play Store and Apple App Store Listings. Then send them lots of cold emails. Volume is key.

  4. 2x or 3x the price. It sells at $29.99 lifetime which is too low.

Until next time,

Your Spells Master!

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More Startup Spells 🪄

  1. Steal Old Ideas (LINK)

  2. Peak End Rule (with Real Life Examples) (LINK)

  3. One Avatar, One Product, One Channel (LINK)

Disclosure: Everything said in this post is for educational purposes only. Please follow the law. By reading this post, you accept full responsibility for your actions.

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