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How to go from 0 to $5M ARR profitably (step by step)

Here is every growth hack we used for each of our distribution channels:

  • Organic Short-form content
  • Influencer Marketing
  • SEO
  • Paid Ads

Organic Short-form content

The most important thing to remember in this new age of social media is that follower counts don’t matter at all

I would unironically sponsor a fresh account made this week vs a YouTuber with a million subs if they had similar views and I don’t even think it’s a controversial opinion

(especially when you consider that the famous YouTuber will charge you potentially 30x more for less results, but I would maybe even choose the new account if they were the same price)

The reason being that new accounts are highly volatile and if you put out a great engaging piece of content then it could easily go viral regardless of how many followers you have

But rather than finding and sponsoring these new accounts in your niche, you can just create these accounts yourself

You just need to follow this basic format:

  1. Find a face for your account
  2. Craft a viral video 'series'
  3. Multiply your accounts

What would happen if BTS made a new TikTok account and started posting?

All videos on the new account would immediately go viral because the algo would push the videos back to their fans

Despite having zero followers, this new TikTok account will ‘behave’ as though it has hundreds of millions of followers

One great hack is to find someone who already has an audience of people that you know will convert, then ask them to create a completely new account to posts videos about your product

This is an amazing hack because creators are usually very open to this idea because it doesn’t dilute their main page, it’ll be way cheaper to pay for 20 videos on a new account every month vs 20 sponsored posts on their main account, and it’ll get way better results

For example we found a creator named Mengmengduck whose entire account at the time was teaching students how to write to employers and we paid him $4000 for 20 videos/mo

In our first month we got 7 million+ impressions, just as expected the videos on the brand new account were being pushed to the followers on his main account

When you get a new creator just follow this basic guideline:

  • Repost vids on all platforms (Reels, TikTok, YT Shorts)
  • Post 1+ videos per day
  • Initially, post vids similar to what the influencer posts on their main account, then start experimenting with videos that feature your product
  • We paid $4000/mo for MMD who had 500k followers, but you can get someone cheaper for similar results!

The entire goal when working with your creator is to find a viral “series” because a video that goes viral once will go viral again

You want a video that you can basically tweak slightly and repost multiple times a week that is still fun for the audience

Once you find a viral series, you can start creating new accounts but this time you don’t need to work with big creators, you can just find charismatic UGC creators because you’ve found content that is engaging and poised to go viral

Currently, we have about 5 different Jenni AI accounts all posting similar content

Many of our accounts have tens or sometimes just hundreds of followers and they just repost stuff from our main account

In some cases, the account with 48 followers gets MORE views than our main account with 55k followers...even when posting identical videos

Examples of viral series:

  1. A guy tries to see how many sticks of spaghetti it takes to hold his weight. Then he tries to see how many coat hangers. Then he tries to use sheets of paper. Etc etc. All the same video, minimal effort but will go viral every time.
  2. A guy drinks a cup of milk for every 1000 followers he has. Everyday it’s the same video where he drinks milk but people continually tune in because they want to see him suffer and drink hundreds of cups of milk. Will go viral every time.
  3. For us we had “POV you have an essay due” and it was just a ridiculous plot of someone realising they have an essay due while they are taking a shit or right before they sleep or w/e and it always ended with them using Jenni AI to help them write their essay faster. Same video, slightly different 10 second intro each time.

Thinking of new viral video ideas are so hard, so just try to think of tweaking your few winning videos into “series” and just think about prolonging the lifespan of your content

The order of virality:

  1. Have one account on each platform (TikTok, Instagram, YT shorts) and experiment with a ton of hooks and video ideas
  2. Eventually you’ll get a video that goes viral after enough experimentation
  3. Experiment and somehow turn that video into a “series”
  4. Start tweaking and posting this “series” on multiple accounts
  5. Translate and create the same video with creators that speak Chinese, Spanish, etc
  6. Take the really mega-viral videos and sponsor other pages to repost them
  7. Use the mega-viral content for paid ads
  8. Eventually enough copycats will copy your video series and it’ll get played out and you restart at step 1

Our video series "POV: You have an essay due" has probably generated 300 million+ views overall

It was essentially the same video over and over, multiple times a week, yet they consistently went viral

That one video series made us over half a million dollars, and it was one of several video series’ that we were able to cook up

Influencer Marketing

Find influencers

  • Go to your users' Instagram and see which influencers they are following. This should be easy if you’ve done user interviews correctly, if you have no social media handles of your users you should actually befriend your users and get to know them on a deeper level or you’re not going to make it
  • Do this for several users and eventually you will find some influencers that are ‘popular’ among your target user demographic. Find these influencers and follow them all, it’s okay you only need 1-3
  • Go to these influencer's profile and click "suggested similar accounts" and you'll get an easy list of hot leads that you can sponsor (you can continue to do this recursively for each new influencer that you find)
  • Also, be sure to see what hashtags these influencers are using when they post and then follow those hashtags as well
  • Once you have a list of influencers, create a new Instagram/TikTok account and manually follow & watch their videos all the way through and the algorithm will start automatically showing relevant influencers to you that you can then reach out to (this is a great way to lower the risk of getting scammed because the videos that show up organically on your FYP are less likely to be accounts that have bought followers/views)
  • On your new account, you want to be on the hunt for smaller influencers, if a new-ish account has multiple videos with 100k+ views, it's absolute GOLD
  • Once you have a list of influencers who you are ready to partner up with, you can begin reaching out to them

Reach out to influencers

  • DMs > emails = higher response rate (at least for us)
  • All messages need to be as detailed and tailored as possible, but most importantly as CONCISE as possible. This balance is hard but you’ll get a better feel for this as you notice what gets ignored and what doesn't
  • Demonstrate that you’re genuinely a fan of their content and that you’re excited to partner up. This is such a low bar but few founders actually put in the effort.
  • Why should they partner with you? Why will their audience love your product? Don’t talk about dumb shit like how many employees your company has or what round of fundraising you’re at (I suggest not talking about those vanity metrics in any situation, but I digress)
  • Make sure to indicate somewhere in the message that this is obviously a PAID promotion, influencers are constantly inundated by people who are begging them for free shoutouts or weird affiliate partnerships
  • Expect more than 50% of influencers to not respond, but this % is very volatile depending on what industry you’re in, and how cool/well-known your product is
  • The good news is, as more influencers talk about your product it gets easier and easier to convince them to promote your product because they have heard of it before (unknown products could be risky or straight-up scams)

Negotiate

  • The highest priority is to align the incentives between you and the influencer. You should both want a banger video that converts
  • Never pay upfront for videos (pay half upfront at most). Most influencers are fantastic people but some influencers will just try and drop a half-ass video once they get their check
  • Try to split the payment so that some % comes from the number of conversions that they bring (you can track this via coupon code or UTM link). If they don’t want to do that, try to at least have some affiliate bonus
  • Ask for their viewer demographics see which countries are viewing their content and compare that with the conversion rates of those countries for your product
  • See previous sponsored content that they’ve posted and see how those videos performed vs their usual content
  • Negotiate the deal so that either they only receive some/all of the payment if it reaches a certain # of views (or a certain # of coupon code redemptions)
  • Don’t listen to these absolute garbage articles that tell you to pay based on the number of subscribers/followers that they have. The sole question you should be asking is, will they convert or will they not (at least in the early stage of your startup).

Post content

  • You can’t use a general content strategy for all of your influencer partnerships because each influencer has a certain type of content that their audience likes. Your content can’t deviate too far from it or else it will have terrible watch times and you’re basically paying for a dud
  • If you don’t have experience with social media or making engaging content, just l