Adam Torres and Jonathan Maxim discuss Viral App Launch.
Subscribe: iTunes / Spotify
Apply to be a guest on our podcast here
Show Notes:
How does split testing work and why does everyone talk about it? In this episode, Adam Torres and Jonathan Maxim, CEO and Viral App Launch, explore Viral App Launch and the strategies it uses to help founders succeed.
About Jonathan Maxim
Since 2016, launching 300+ marketing campaigns for over 150 tech startups.
Jonathan quit the rat race and left to launch a mobile app, then went on to run a growth hacking agency that serves clients like TikTok, Triller, UMG and Monster Energy.
Experience covers every stage of startup growth – from prelaunch, to launch, scaling, raising capital and exit.
To learn more, visit: Viral App Launch
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right, today I have Jonathan Maxim on the line, and he’s CEO over at Viral App Launch.
Jonathan, welcome to the show. Hey, Adam, great to connect. All right. So great topic today. How to get 10, 000 new users on your app and line up 20 investors. I mean, a lot, a lot of business owners, entrepreneurs, and executives out here that listen to this. And that that’s a big topic. Everybody just perked up a little bit.
Like what, what’d he say? So good to have Jan and we’ll start this episode, Jonathan, the way that we start them all with what we call our mission matters minute. So Jonathan, that mission matters. Our goal is to amplify stories for entrepreneurs and executives, and to get that, those stories out there and to get them heard that that’s our mission.
Jonathan, what mission matters to you? The mission that matters to me is empowering founders and putting the power back in their hands. Because as you’re the founder, you are the innovator, the risk taker. You’re the one putting your neck on the line to build something great. And it is really a shame when founders give that power up and maybe don’t even realize it either to investors or other.
Forces that be in the, in the world of many distractions for startups. Amazing. I love it. And you’re preaching to the choir over here on that one. So this is a great topic and a great mission. were you always an entrepreneur? Like how’d that start up for you?
Were you always entrepreneurial? Yeah. You know what? I started my first business at just four years old repairing bikes in my neighborhood. And I actually broke a profit with that. It’s ironic and I guess a bit surprising, but. I was also an app founder. I was an app founder twice. One of them, I learned the hard lessons of the hard way.
How old on the first one? How old were you roughly, roughly when you started that first venture? The not the bikes, the app. Yeah, the app. So it was an app that gave you rewards for working out. So you run two miles, you get a free bottle of water, free tank top, et cetera. And I started that in 2014 and I sold it out in 2017.
Now that was bootstrapped and I did not raise capital because I was. Following, I was chasing two rabbits at once. If you will, there’s investors telling me some telling me go business to business and sell a SAS type of solution. Other ones were telling me go B2C and don’t monetize. And I followed the latter route and that led me to burning through all of my capital.
Yeah, that’s a hard one to learn. And so that was the first app venture. What, what, tell me about the second one. So the second one was called Hey, pal, I became the CEO of this firm. It was a publicly traded company. And we grew that from zero to a million users in just six months.
So all the learnings that I applied that I that I have from the first startup and I applied them to this next one and we You know achieve some pretty amazing things there but that’s what drove the mission is is seeing the two sides of that coin and realizing that As a founder, I was at the whim of a lot of investors and other people and companies and partners, and the second time around, I promised to myself that I would be in the driver’s seat and I would not be at the whim of anyone else essentially, and do follow my vision and do what’s right for the organization and the mission rather than appeasing others.
Wow. I mean, what are some other things you learned just being a founder, going through all those experiences that I guess no one told you prior or like, cause this thing, entrepreneurship, it’s different for everyone. I always, I love going, getting into these stories because vary in the range and like where, what people take away from.
So like, what’d you learn like in retrospect, right? Yeah, some really great learnings. You can imagine. I mean, look, we learn more from the stuff that hurts. You know, you learn more from the mistakes. They are more poignant in your memory. If you just reference your memory and you say, what are the top 10 highlights?
It’s sometimes hard to remember them. If you think of the top 10 highlights. Lowest points of your life. It’s very easy to recall those. And so those are the moments that I meditate on more and I reflect on more. And the, the things that I learned from that experience is one, you got to monetize your app, right?
You got to be getting paid from those users. You can’t just dump money into this endlessly. Number two, The investors are passengers in the car, not drivers. A lot of times they want to take the wheel. They want to reach over and grab the wheel and sometimes they’ll jerk it when you’re, when you’re going and it’ll take you off course and it could cause a crash.
And then third, from being in a publicly traded company it sounds glamorous to onlookers, but it’s actually an incredible amount of pressure. And I think that’s why people have even designated kind of like terms and labels for it because. You are the centerpiece that all the public shareholders are looking at.
So yeah, it’s a lot of, for example, Hey pal had over a thousand shareholders. So over a thousand people who could direct message me on Instagram, email me, you know, bark up my tree, talk to my employees, ask the things. And then they also volunteer to help too, which is great. But yeah, the stock’s down.
You’re automatically the bad guy at the stocks up. You’re a god. So that’s just a very interesting dynamic that I would say, maybe don’t glamorize it until you’ve been there and be ready for it. If you want that kind of notoriety. Oh, that’s some great insight there. so now that brings us in or I should say, let, let’s bring us to present day with viral app launch.
So how did the idea for this concept come about? Well, I’ve been an app founder. I’ve been an agency founder. I’ve also worked in software startups and a few other lines of businesses. And the ones that inspire me most are founders, because they’re the ones who are building, you know, groundbreaking technology.
That’s going to change the future. I mean, it really does. You look at these big apps and they have completely changed the way that we live. So it’s really exciting to be a part of those luminaries journey. Not all of them win, but it’s still inspiring. So that’s, that was my personal attachment to it. But knowing that I had made these missteps when I was a founder and I didn’t get to that critical mass, those 10, 000 users, that’s really what proves the business case.
It proves the product market fit to those investors. And then secondarily, monetizing. I mean, I really want to help these founders if they can. Get critical mass monetize, you know, turn this thing into a money printer where they put 1 in and they get 2 out and then they can show that to investors. If they check those three boxes, well, probability for success goes from from 20 percent up to 80 percent in my experience.
What do you find? Like, cause now that you’re so obviously you’re an app founder yourself and now you’re working with other app founders, like what do you find are some of the common challenges or things that hold people back from, you know, making their, idea a reality in terms of success for those three metrics you mentioned.
Yes, that’s a really good question. It’s a point that I ponder on often. I even have a slide in one of my decks that you call it client bingo or app launch bingo where we evaluated 23 app launches that we did in 2023 and 18 of them succeeded and five of them failed. And I looked at what the commonalities of the winners and the losers were.
And the winners were interesting. So the things that helped them win were at least two co founders. I noticed that was a consistency across all of them, at least two people. So those solo founders, secondarily people who had the capital to reach their goals, so they mapped out their six month goals and they had the cash on hand to do it.
So don’t go into this in a, in a deprived state in any way, if possible. And then Also, what all the winners had in common is they had a good product, but not a great product, which I found interesting because a lot of perfectionists, and they want to have a perfect product. But the truth is, it just needs to function, just need to get the, get the ball across the line, solve the problem for the user.
So those, those were, you know, the commonalities of the winners. And then the losers you know, are the, are the counterparts to that they were. Bootstrapping is this on the side, they spent too long and did not take enough time. You know, they took too much time to launch. They didn’t get to market and get that critical mass.
Maybe they got a few thousand downloads and then threw in the towel. That’s interesting to look back and I know as people are listening to this. Like they’re self identifying. I know that’s what I do. So I’m guessing that’s what they do too. They’re self identifying like I got that one.
I got that one. Oh that one. Wait a minute. Wait a minute This is a real The good the bad and the ugly so it’s good so looking at, I mean, let’s get into some of the mechanics of how viral app launch works and like how it helps and assist founders in general. So maybe just tell us a little bit more about the company overall.
Yeah, so we have a, an agency staff of about twenty two people who will go through and launch apps. That’s usually a better fit for the ones that are investor backed, which a lot of them are. And everyone should be encouraged to go and do that. But if not, then we have a done with you type of program with course and coaching.
And then also, of course, where you can just do it yourself. So the whole framework is mapped out into a very simplified blueprint. Now in this blueprint, first to learn how to plan the launch, right? How to set the goals, how to, you know, mock up the budget and the timeline and come up with a creative strategy and positioning for it.
And then stage two, they do what’s called split testing. This is where they take a bunch of different content. They put it onto social media platforms and they look at what content is resonating with their audience. Is their audience 18 to 34? Is it female? Is it west coast, east coast? So they’ve learned to find the perfect conversion recipe, the perfect fit of the product with their audience.
And then in phase three, we do optimize and monetize. That’s where we, of course, optimize the campaigns, cut any waste on the launch, reduce any marketing spend. It’s not necessary in the monetize, it’s bringing in the revenue, right? So get a free trial, get a premium going. And help them start getting profitable for every user that comes in.
And then lastly, it’s going to get those three items buttoned up the product, the marketing and the sales. Then we move to virality. And that’s where we build in the K factor. So for every one user who comes in, they invite two friends. So if we can get that K factor right through building a referral campaign in app features and marketing features that encourage people or even require people to share, to get the most value from the app.
Then that’s the bee’s knees. And then they go to stage five, which is the capital raised. And that teaches them how to line up 20 investor introductions guaranteed. How does the I should say, is there, is this like industry agnostic in terms, I should say niche agnostic in terms of the apps, does it work across like any type of app or is it fitness or any other app or is this for certain, certain niches?
Yeah, that’s another great question because apps really isn’t a niche. It’s a category. Yeah Categories. There you go. I was I was trying to find the word categories. Yes Exactly sector category something like that. But it doesn’t you know, this framework works best with what are called micro SaaS companies.
So companies who are selling very low ticket, let’s just say seven, 10, 20 bucks a month subscription services. That’s where you can get profitable most confidently and you can reach those numbers. This also works with social apps. You know, one of my former launches, I launched TikTok in 2019 through 2021.
And then I launched Triller thereafter. There were clients in mind. So we’ve done a lot of social apps with this process. And it works well, but of course, it’s harder to monetize. So if you’ve got an app where users can pay 10 bucks for a premium and they have a two week pre trial, something like that, I can tell you right now, your chance of success is 80, 90 percent plus on that using the viral app launch framework.
Wow. how many apps have you, have you worked through like with the company? Like roughly, it doesn’t have to be exact. In 2023, we launched 34. Wow. And then since 2016, we rebranded and, and last year we were changing growth hackers before, but up to that, we launched over 150 since 2016.
Man, that’s amazing. Is there anything interesting that you’re seeing in the, in the overall app market in general, like any, cause you, cause you’ve been doing this for a long time. So, I mean, your, your vantage point is a little, is obviously very unique and having now worked with that many other founders and companies and all this, like, like what interests you right now?
Like, is there anything interesting you’re seeing in that market? I mean, I would be remiss to not mention AI. I would say I speak to about five tech startups today. And I would say 2 3 of them are AI companies. So you’re talking 40 50 percent or more are AI. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they are building original products.
A lot of them are Chad TPT bolt ons and things like that. But obviously there’s a lot to be done with AI. Investors are very excited to get their dollars behind AI products. And there’s a lot of flexibility because most of it’s open source. So engineers and developers can get access to base code and so on.
So I, I would, you know, scratch my whole history, make, you know, take my whole company and everything away. I would probably start an AI company. I’m probably something in the marketing space. Cause that’s what I know. But I think that’s always a great foundation is a, an industry that is got a groundswell building beneath it.
Similar to crypto, but crypto has just been a lot of up and down. Well, Jonathan, I just want to say it has been great having you on the show today. And I learned a lot. I’m sure my audience did as well. That being said, if somebody wants to learn more about viral app and they, they got a project they want someone to look at what’s the best way for them to do that?
Yeah, I appreciate you having me on the show. And I always want to help founders regardless of whether, you know, they have the capital to work with me. So I have a lot of free resources. You can find me on Instagram at Bible app launch or at it’s J Maxim. But if you’re an app founder and you want to get involved in one of the programs, either the course, the coaching or the agency done for you, you can just head over to Bible app launch.
com. Click on the link for book a call and I’d be happy to connect with you. Amazing. for everybody listening, we’ll put that in the, in the show notes. So you can just click on the links and head right on over. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with mission matters or engaging in an episode, we’re all about bringing on business owners, entrepreneurs, and executives and having them share their mission.
Thank you. Reason behind their mission, you know, what, what, what makes them tick and what we can all learn from that together. So if that sounds interesting or exciting to you, hit that subscribe button, because this is a daily show. So each and every day we’re bringing out new founders, new entrepreneurs, and new content.
So we don’t want you to miss anything. Hit that subscribe button. And Jonathan thanks again for coming on the show. Awesome, Adam. Appreciate it. And best of luck to you and all the other founders out there.
