Momo is an app for people who can’t start things. You sit down with a small raccoon, pick something off the pile you’ve been avoiding, and do it. I built it because I missed a family trip over a visa form that takes an hour to fill in.
It went live on the App Store three weeks ago and did nothing, because a new app with no install velocity doesn’t surface in search. So the only distribution I had was content I made myself. Two videos, posted on consecutive nights.
The two videos
Neither one is an ad.
Both are short explainers about ADHD, the kind of fact that makes people who have it go oh, that’s what that is. No app footage. No screen recording. No “link in bio.” No mention of Momo at all.
That wasn’t a growth-hacking decision, it was closer to instinct. I’d just published a post about not wanting to market a diagnosis carelessly, and a video that opens with a fact about executive function and closes with a subscription pitch is exactly the thing I said I wouldn’t make.
A question that I will not be able to answer for now is whether these videos actually drove installs. There was no link for people to click, so there was no way to track installs from these videos. The only evidence that I have is timing – videos went live and installs started to roll in a week or so later. And a profile that people could tap through from the video.
The numbers
|
Video 1 |
Video 2 |
Total |
|
|---|---|---|---|
|
Views |
1,406 |
2,247 |
3,653 |
|
Likes |
147 |
203 |
350 |
|
Saves |
38 |
103 |
141 |
|
Shares |
14 |
14 |
28 |
|
Comments |
5 |
1 |
6 |
|
Engagement rate |
14.5% |
14.3% |
14.4% |
TikTok engagement generally runs 4–5% of views. Both videos came in around 14%, roughly triple baseline.
The funnel, end to end:
- 3,653 views
- 45 installs – 1.23% of views
- 1 subscriber – 2.2% of installs
In terms of hard numbers, neither video cracked 2,500 views, so what I can report is association, not attribution, given the videos were viewable but not linkable. So 45 or so folks searching for an app that doesn’t currently appear in App Store search found it this week while 2 videos totaling 3,653 views were all the others with the exact same problem space had to offer.
Why I think they worked
I’m treating n=2 observations as hypotheses that I need to test with about 10 more videos.
My guess is for specificity – the videos describe one very specific situation. The videos I would make would describe a situation where someone takes an hour to do something, and they haven’t done it for three weeks, and they can’t even explain to themselves why they haven’t done it. People who have experienced that situation will recognize it immediately and go to the video. People who haven’t will scroll past it. The videos aren’t a pitch for anything. A narrow hook is better than a broad hook on a platform this large, because the algorithm only needs to find a small matching audience for you.
The 14% engagement here represents people recognizing themselves in the video, and then going to look for the app themselves (i.e. without being asked to download). This is a stronger signal than click-through rates, and indicates that the problem has landed with sufficient impact for people to do the work of going to look for the app themselves.
The first sale
Someone I have never met paid $9.99/month for a raccoon that sits with them while they do their taxes. It is not a business, it’s the first evidence that the thing has non-zero value to a stranger, which is a different category of information from anything I had last week.
Momo has no free trial. There’s a free tier and a paid one, and that’s it. That was deliberate. A trial is a countdown: use the thing, then on day seven it stops and you decide. For most apps that’s fine. For this one it’s backwards. The core loop, sitting down and doing the task, is the part that actually helps, and putting an expiry on it means the app eventually becomes one more thing that lapsed while you weren’t looking. That’s the exact experience I built it to avoid. So working sessions are free and stay free. The paid tier unlocks co-working with other people, not the work itself.
Which makes 1-in-45 a free-to-paid rate, not a trial conversion. For freemium that’s inside the normal band and with n=1 it means almost nothing. One person is not a conversion rate. It’s one person.
The number I keep looking at
141 saves, 28 shares. 5:1 to 7:1 on the better video.
Momo’s paid tier includes co-working. So I assume he thinks that this is a social problem that can be solved by bringing in a friend to work with you in a session. However, strongest signal I have is that people keep this sort of thing to themselves rather than passing it along to others.
Saving a TikTok video to watch for yourself later and inviting a friend to co-work with you are two very different things. There’s a big difference between not sharing an ADHD video with followers and not asking close friends for something that makes you feel vulnerable.
Removing the invitation to confess, not moving the paywall for the ask. The first session with someone will no longer reveal the task for which that session was scheduled. Thus one can sit with someone without ever having told them what it is that you are sitting with.
Only if both the shares and the invites move subsequently will I have solved the problem that I don’t yet know that I’m trying to solve. If neither happens, then the paywall is the problem and I’ll have learned something new.
What’s next
Three things, in order.
More videos. Two isn’t a strategy, it’s an accident. A proper batch, same no-CTA format, different hooks to find out whether 14% was the format or the luck.
Instrumentation on the paywall. I can’t tell “nobody wants it” from “nobody saw it.” That’s the most expensive gap in the funnel.
The invite experiment. Take the task confession out of the first session, see if shares and invites move together.
I’ll publish all of it, including the install-source breakdown. If it turns into a repeatable playbook for launching with no audience and no ad budget, that’s worth more than the ten dollars 😄
Shipaton closes 30 September. Two TikToks and one subscriber isn’t a company, but it’s the first week the numbers said something back, and now I know what to ask them next.