He shares his 5-Step Framework to build $1M/Month Mobile App

Join me as I chat with Hunter Isaacson, a successful mobile app builder who has created apps with hundreds of millions of downloads. Hunter shares his playbook for building million-dollar mobile apps, emphasizing the importance of simple experiences, strong branding, and creating effective growth loops. He discusses how to identify opportunities by adapting existing ideas to new channels and technologies. Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 01:56 - Examples of Viral Consumer Apps 04:35 - Hallow Deep dive 10:14 - Locket Deep dive 13:51 - NGL’s Deep Dive 15:08 - Don’t reinvent the wheel 17:27 - Hunter’s $1M/Month App Playbook 21:28 - Building a Brand People Love 24:44 - Creating a simple experience 25:26 - The importance of core action and North Star Metric 26:33 - How to create growth loops 31:28 - Additional Good Practices 33:13 - Opportunities in AI-enhanced app experiences 36:38 - Future technology trends Hunter is excited about Key Points: • Hunter Isaacson shares his framework for building successful mobile apps, including NGL (250M downloads) and Bags • The importance of creating simple experiences with strong branding that people can understand and resonate with • How to identify core metrics and growth loops that drive user engagement and viral sharing • Leveraging new platform features (like widgets, live activities) to create innovative app experiences 1) Hunter's framework for building viral, profitable apps is SURPRISINGLY simple: • Build a brand people love • Create a simple experience • Get users on quickly (even just 100) • Select ONE core action • Maximize % of users completing that action Let's dive deeper... 2) On building a BRAND PEOPLE LOVE: "Keep it short and find a slang term" - Hunter's secret sauce for naming apps. NGL = "not gonna lie" (obvious to Gen Z) BAGS = crypto slang for holdings The best names are OBVIOUS, resonate with your audience, and set the right vibe. 3) Creating a SIMPLE EXPERIENCE is crucial! Hunter designs ALL his apps himself (started with PowerPoint, now Figma) His approach: "What's the bare bones MVP that solves the problem?" Don't overcomplicate. ONE user flow is better than branching journeys. 4) The NORTH STAR METRIC changes everything. For each app, Hunter picks ONE metric that matters above all: • Wink: % of users getting a match on day 1 • NGL: % sharing link + replies • BAGS: % funding account + making first trade Aim for 90%+ completion! 5) GROWTH HACK: Build sharing into your core experience! "If you drop in 1000 people and 50% share, that's 500 people who've now shared your app" Hunter spent less than $10K marketing NGL to get 250M downloads! The key? Seed it just enough to activate the viral loop. 6) You DON'T need to reinvent the wheel! Hunter on NGL: "Anonymous messaging apps have been around forever" The innovation? Using Instagram's new link feature as a growth channel. Look for EXISTING IDEAS that could work in NEW CHANNELS. 7) On SEEDING your app: • Test content formats before launch • Work with creators in different niches • Pay small amounts ($50-100) to influencers • Look for that ONE viral video to ignite growth • Build an authentic voice on social 8) TRENDS to watch according to Hunter: • Live Activities on iPhone (underutilized) • Lock screen widgets (not fully explored) • AI + consumer apps (CalAI's approach) • Crypto going mainstream • AR glasses (future) Massive opportunities in each! 9) For YOUNG FOUNDERS, Hunter recommends: "Take a lot of swings. Have a lot of at-bats." Consumer mobile apps over B2B/SaaS when starting out: • More fun • Reach global audience • Better psychology understanding • Tools getting better every day Notable Quotes: "I think that it's more about looking for frameworks than it is for looking for ideas. The framework, I feel like, is more important because now it's really easy to just framework X with audience Y." - Hunter Isaacson "You don't really need to reinvent the wheel... it's a new channel, right? If anonymous messaging has worked on the internet, it's worked on apps, it's worked on different platforms, why wouldn't it work with Instagram as the growth lever?" - Hunter Isaacson LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/ BoringAds — ads agency that will build you profitable ad campaigns http://boringads.com/ BoringMarketing — SEO agency and tools to get your organic customers http://boringmarketing.com/ Startup Empire - a membership for builders who want to build cash-flowing businesses https://www.startupempire.co FIND ME ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/ FIND HUNTER ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://x.com/hunterjisaacson Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hunterjisaacson/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Greg Isenberg?

  In this episode, Hunter Isaacson, the guy who's gotten 300 million plus downloads to his consumer apps, shares his playbook for how to go zero to $1 million MRR in a consumer app. How do you create mobile apps like him? He's created an app called NGL, which got 250 million downloads. He created other apps that got 60 million downloads, a dating app, crypto app. So he just breaks it down. It's really, really simple how he breaks it down. Obviously, creating a business isn't simple, and I'll never, ever tell you that it isn't simple. I learned a little bit from it, and I think you will too. I do believe that right now, there's a window with consumer AI and consumer mobile apps

• 0:46Greg Isenberg?

  that you can actually go and build a startup and start generating real revenue without raising venture capital. So I'm particularly interested right now in the consumer mobile app space. Hunter Isaacson is a great guy to learn from. Enjoy this episode, and let me know what you think in the comments.

• 1:11Greg Isenberg?

  We got Hunter Isaacson on the pod. You might not recognize him, but I'm pretty sure you recognize some of his apps. This is the GOAT who's gotten 250 million downloads for NGL? Is that right?

• 1:27Speaker 01

  That's right, yes.

• 1:28Greg Isenberg?

  And then another 70 million downloads for the new app you're working on?

• 1:34Speaker 01

  Previous apps I've built.

• 1:36Greg Isenberg?

  Previous apps you've built. And so this guy's got the sauce. And we have a thing on the Startup Ideas podcast, which is when someone has a sauce, you have to deal the sauce. So what I'm hoping for is, I'm gonna share my screen real quick. I saw this tweet where it's a bunch of these apps, mobile apps, 100K MRR, 300K MRR, Cal AI, Million AR, Riz 200MRR, CoupleJoy 300K MRR. Basically, a bunch of apps that are doing anywhere between 100,000 MRR, or actually 90,000 MRR and a million MRR. And how they've been able to grow organically through product-led growth and stuff like that.

• 2:21Greg Isenberg?

  And my goal today, Hunter, if you oblige to deal some sauce, is to help us understand how people are doing this in consumer social and crypto and AI. And by the end of this episode, I want people to basically have ideas for how they can go and do this themselves. Do you think we can do this?

• 2:41Speaker 01

  I think we can definitely do this. Absolutely, brother. We can.

• 2:47Greg Isenberg?

  Okay, well, where do you want to start?

• 2:50Speaker 01

  I mean, we can kind of start with just the obvious picks on that list. You know, Cal AI is a great example of how to use, you know, classic tools and AI that are publicly available to everybody. But then if you package it nicely, if you create a good onboarding experience, you create like a user investment in that onboarding experience. If you kind of package these simple tools the way that they did, that's why they've seen the success that they've had, right? You know, the reality is, anyone can go and make a calorie-tracking app, but they built an amazing funnel, right? So I think the key lesson in a Cal AI is they packaged it really, really nicely and made it seem even more valuable than it is,

• 3:35Speaker 01

  which I think is, you know, part of the genius of an app that's simple.

• 3:40Greg Isenberg?

  So what you're saying is basically, it's really simple. Like, it's stupid simple. That's how good it is.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:50Greg Isenberg?

  And they just figured out basically how to onboard, you know, I think it's been largely known, creators to take,

• 4:02Greg Isenberg?

  to create content around it, and then you marry creators with a stupid, simple app, mix with AI, and good things happen?

• 4:09Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 4:11Greg Isenberg?

  Cool. Let's move on. Like, what about, do you know anything about some of these lesser-known apps like Bible Chat? Like, I didn't heard of that.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  So I've seen, I've seen Hallow. I know Coco Note. I don't, I don't think I've seen Bible Chat.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Obviously, I know Pengu, you know, a couple of Joy Riz, Lockett, obviously, all those guys.

• 4:35Greg Isenberg?

  Let's look at Hallow for a second, because I didn't realize it, but it's the number one app for Christian and Catholic prayers. What do you know about this app?

• 4:48Speaker 01

  I know that it has some pretty big backers. I know that it's very built out. I mean, it's definitely super popular. I think that as young people can grow up and, you know, venture into religion, there needs to be, there need to be mobile apps, you know, for religion and for, you know, seeing these stories and kind of experiencing them in a different way. So I think that they took just like, yeah, they took the Bible, they made it mobile, they made it digital, they made it more colorful, adding push notifications, just kind of like making it young and making it appeal to not just, you know, older audiences, but also skewing towards, you know, millennials, Gen Z.

• 5:29Greg Isenberg?

  And they charge $69.99 for a yearly plan. They charge $120 for a friends and family plan, which includes up to six members. That's actually kind of cool.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  That is.

• 5:42Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah.

• 5:44Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, I feel like that's a, when it comes to like health, spirituality, stuff like that, including a friends and family plan, makes sense.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. Yeah, I fully agree with that.

• 5:56Greg Isenberg?

  Do you think that there's opportunities, you know?

• 6:02Greg Isenberg?

  In the like, okay, Hallow's crushing it. I think pray.com is also crushing it. There's a, you know, is there, is there more opportunity to create spiritual apps for, for example, Christians?

• 6:15Speaker 01

  I think there's, I mean, across all religions, yeah, there's a huge opening for this. You know, I, I mean, I, I was raised Jewish. I'm not very, I don't go to synagogue as often as I used to. There's other religions that I've been interested in, you know, different, you know, more spiritual, you know, or Buddha, you know, Buddhism, things of that nature. I don't see apps for those types of religions. Right? So I think there is an opportunity here to kind of look at what are the denominations and faith that people have around the world? And like, how many of those have been turned into an app? And are you passionate enough about the subject matter to go and build, build the app for those people? Right? I feel like that's the, that's the question on the builder's side.

• 6:56Greg Isenberg?

  I'm laughing because it's two Jews talking about if there's an opportunity to build something for Christians.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  It is kind of funny.

• 7:04Greg Isenberg?

  We're gonna get so roasted in the comment section, it's gonna be insane.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  At least we can recognize it though. We're, we're calling ourselves.

• 7:12Greg Isenberg?

  Totally. Dude, 4.9 on 284,000 ratings.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  That's wild.

• 7:20Greg Isenberg?

  Seeing this?

• 7:23Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah. Um, I'll, I'll, I'll just say one thing on this before we move on from spiritual apps is I think what they did really well here is it looks like they have a really good, um, like daily use case. So like daily prayers are in there. And it's just like a really good single player experience, meaning like you could, there's, it just seems like there's a ton of content, like they got a bunch of content and they structure in a way that you're gonna open this up daily, um, which is, which is kind of like what you want, right? Because they have the daily prayers, they have sleep meditations, they've got minute meditations. Um, and then they've got like, kind of a multiplayer experience

• 8:07Greg Isenberg?

  around community challenges. So I think that if you're creating a spiritual app, think about it as like, single player first. How do I create the best daily driver, single player? And then how do I add multiplayer? How, how would you think about it?

• 8:21Speaker 01

  I mean, I think that in an app like this, like this is very much single player first. I think you look at the multiplayer side as like a way to leverage like a different growth lever. Right? So if you have, you know, you have a really good single player app. It's easy to then add like some kind of multiplayer experience or some kind of social experience. Where you're porting in contacts, where you're connecting socials, or they're sharing something to socials. I feel like all that is like great growth levers. Uh, once you have an amazing single player experience, once you have some kind of habit that you formed. Then, you know, you can add a little gate, right? You can, you know, you can gate monetization with some kind of share mechanism. You can, you know, encourage them to invite their friends and family for a discount. A lot of things that you can do in that realm, but you do need to crush that core experience before you can do this.

• 9:07Greg Isenberg?

  Okay, I have a question for you. So we talked about Cal AI in the beginning. They took something that pretty much existed before calorie tracking. And then they made it AI first. Is there, is there like an AI first version of Halo that could be created?

• 9:26Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, there totally could be. Um, I think that, I think that, you know, more with GPT vision. Think will be interesting, right? Being able to, to look at things, to take pictures of, you know, beautiful scenery. And then it overlays and creates some kind of beautiful, you know, religious or spiritual video. Maybe with some kind of Bible quote, you know, things of that nature, right? Content creation here could be interesting for AI. Um, you know, generating, uh, you know, answers to, you know, complex questions using, you know, different religious texts. I feel like there's a lot that you could do here. It just, we're still pretty early.

• 10:02Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah.

• 10:04Greg Isenberg?

  Cool. So someone could be experimenting. Um, okay, moving on from two Jews in a.

• 10:11Greg Isenberg?

  Christian App. Okay, Lockett. Let's talk about Lockett. So, okay, well, I've used Lockett actually with my wife. Yeah, like as a consumer. Tell people what it is, why it's interesting, and how they've been able to grow.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I've been using Lockett for a long time. The founder is a very, very smart guy. And the general premise is they were the first ones to really take the widget functionality on the iPhone and make it social by just taking a picture and it goes to your other, goes to your friend's home screen. It's a very simple concept, and I feel like it really popped off with, you know, kind of like people on TikTok who are in relationships, like the relationship talk side of TikTok, or the, you know, best friend side of TikTok, this, you know, skewing super young, right? Like, kind of, how do you build a social app that's, you know, Snapchat-esque, but it lives in a different place? I feel like Lockett was like amazing at figuring out how

• 11:10Speaker 01

  to do that. I mean, I've used the app. It's a great app. Absolutely.

• 11:16Greg Isenberg?

  So it does feel like it's one of those apps that saw that, like widgets started to become more, like was a thing, right? They saw an opportunity. To me, it was like the first widget that I was using as a daily basis.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:36Greg Isenberg?

  Is, okay, we're sitting now in 2025. Like, what is the equivalent of, I think this, you know, they built this probably in 2022?

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, around there.

• 11:47Greg Isenberg?

  Around there. What is the equivalent of, okay, the widget store just opened in 2025? Like, you know, from an Apple perspective, you know, does this exist? Like, where is the Wild West in terms of, you know, new opportunities within the Apple ecosystem?

• 12:07Speaker 01

  You know, I think that like, yeah, I mean, every year we have a new version of iOS and there's sometimes they give us something new, like new real estate to play with. I really think live activities is a cool thing that very few people are playing with compared to what they should be. Which is when like on your lock screen, it like shows some kind of cool graphic, like your Uber is on the way, right? And it's like, it shows, you know, the distance, things of that nature. I feel like live activities is like, that's a super interesting piece that no one is really like, really dominated, like the way Locket dominated the widget functionality. I also think like lock screen widgets have not been fully played out. Like, you know, I use them a lot, um, you know, to kind of customize my lock screen. I wish there were more.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  I'm sure there's like some social experiences that we could use there, but um, yeah, I mean, every year there's something new that Apple gives us. Yeah, exactly. Things like this.

• 13:00Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, it's true. Like, the lock screen widget, you stare at it every day, you know, and all the time.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:09Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah.

• 13:12Greg Isenberg?

  So, the thing with, with the thing with this sort of stuff, when, when Apple opens up something new is,

• 13:21Greg Isenberg?

  like Locket looks obvious now, but realistically, like they were one of the first, if not the first mainstream use cases of a widget.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:33Greg Isenberg?

  So, I, I, I can, you know, my prediction over the next six to 12 months, live activities and iPhone lock screen widgets, like we're gonna see one or two really big,

• 13:45Greg Isenberg?

  bangers, basically.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I could see it happening for sure.

• 13:50Greg Isenberg?

  By the way, you know, you've grown, you've grown your, um, your apps to millions of users, like Guillaume, this guy on X who, who, who's, who's really good at sort of sharing a lot of these examples. He, he's like exclusively talks about like creators, um, driving the growth of them, the organic content, like.

• 14:13Greg Isenberg?

  Is this something that everyone needs to pay attention to? How have you grown your apps? Can you talk more about that?

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, the way that I've really grown my apps is using creators and using TikTok and that kind of content just to seed the app, to get enough people to download it within a tight amount of time in order for them to then kind of activate a growth loop where everybody shares something. This is what I did on NGL. You know, we spent less than $10,000 marketing the entire product to get the quarter of a billion downloads that we got. And really, the purpose of the marketing was just to seed it, right? Just to get enough people to download it quickly. Because it's one of those apps that just, once enough people do it, it just goes giga-viral, which is what happened for us. It just took some time to seed it properly.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  And we used TikTok and Instagram to do it.

• 15:09Greg Isenberg?

  And what do you say to people who say, "I've seen this app before. This isn't a new idea."

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's not a new idea, right? You know, anonymous messaging apps have been on the internet for a long time. You know, there was Ask FM, there was YikYak. There was a bunch of different ones, you know, in between. Really, what made NGL special for us is we launched it right when Instagram, you know, unveiled the link feature for everybody. You used to have to have 10,000 followers to post links. In October of 2021, they just randomly switched it. Within a few days, me and some friends were already building NGL. We shipped it in a few weeks. And then it took about six months after that point for people to start using it, just because it took time to seed it.

• 15:53Greg Isenberg?

  So for like people listening, you don't really need to reinvent the wheel, it sounds like?

• 16:00Speaker 01

  No, it's a new channel, right? You know, it's like, anonymous messaging has worked on the internet. It's worked on apps. It's worked on different platforms. Why wouldn't it work with Instagram as the growth lever? So that was kind of our thought process by time building the app. It also because like, nobody had ever posted, you know, links on Instagram. The average person had never done it. So we really had to train, you know, a couple hundred million people on how to, you know, tap the link sticker, paste the link, position the link. Sounds really easy, but it's super, super hard at scale to getting everybody to fully comprehend, like, a new feature that they hadn't used prior.

• 16:36Greg Isenberg?

  Totally.

• 16:38Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, I think it just gets you, it gets you thinking that you can kind of like go back to old ideas that have gotten popular in the past.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 16:47Greg Isenberg?

  And now it's like the new economics of like, it's cheaper than ever to build, distribution, you can build stuff on social, you can work with creators, there's new channels, like something that might have worked for mobile

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 16:58Greg Isenberg?

  might also work in a, in a widget form, widget first.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Totally, absolutely. Yeah, looking for like, you know, existing ideas that could work in a new channel, I feel like that's a great way to just find good ideas because you don't have to come up with fully original, fully fleshed out thoughts. It's more of just like finding a little opportunity of, hey, something's not optimized on this platform, it's not built for this channel, let me just go and do that. And it worked for us very well.

• 17:25Greg Isenberg?

  So I gotta ask you, you know,

• 17:31Greg Isenberg?

  if you're trying to, you know, create an app, let's say, I, what's Hunter, basically, what's Hunter's playbook

• 17:42Greg Isenberg?

  to build a $1 million a month

• 17:50Greg Isenberg?

  app business? You know, how do you think about that? I just want to like brainstorm with you live.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:59Greg Isenberg?

  Around like thinking about what makes, because you know, you, you could be working on a million different ideas, right?

• 18:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:06Greg Isenberg?

  How do you think about what to work on and then how to structure your apps so that you know that it's going to do at least a million dollars a month?

• 18:16Speaker 01

  I mean, the main thing that I focus on is building like a really simple experience. So, you know, I start with like figuring out what the features are going to be for like a V1, like what's like my bare bones MVP version of this concept that is, is good enough to solve the problem I'm trying to solve, but it's probably not optimized, it's probably rough around the edges, but it's enough to kind of solve that issue. I then like to get users on pretty quickly, right? So. Just it could be a couple hundred, could be a couple thousand. So, you know, once you have kind of built this core concept, you have like some kind of MVP for it. Um, just testing content, right? You know, and this could be even when the app is in pre-order stage, right?

• 19:01Speaker 01

  It doesn't even have to be live for you to do this. Um, you can test content on TikTok or on Instagram reels. And you'll see are people responding to these formats that, you know, your app is, you know, kind of, the, the premise of the app is around these formats or the formats working or not. Um, once you drop some people into the app, then really what you're looking for is you need to get a high percentage of people to complete a core action. So you select a core action and then you kind of orient your decisions around a core action or like a North Star metric. This is like something that I'm really bullish on, like always having that one metric that matters more than the other ones. It makes it really easy when you're doing like conversations of trade-offs, right? Because it's like, do we sacrifice this?

• 19:45Speaker 01

  We sacrifice that. If you have a North Star metric, it's kind of obvious what the decision would be. Um, because you want to just increase that. For example, Yeah. I can give you a couple of examples. So for, for Wink, which was a, an app that I built, is a, one of the largest make new friends apps in the world. You know, North Star metric we had was like, um, what percentage of users get a match in their first day, right? How, how do we make sure that, you know, it was a, it was a swiping, you make new friends slash dating app? How do we make sure that everybody gets a match? You know, what does that mean? How do we use the out matching algorithm in order to sort people who swipe a lot, you know, to the right with new users, for example, right? How do we just maximize, um, that percentage? Um, with NGL, um, our North Star metric was

• 20:27Speaker 01

  the percentage of users that are sharing the link and sharing a few replies. We figured that, you know, sharing the link was already pretty hard because it was a four-step process. You had to, you know, go through a tutorial. If we could get as many users as possible to share the link and then share a couple of replies, that then made it where people became more comfortable to actually, um, to actually like send messages, right? Because you see your friend posted a link, then you see that your friend got replies. So now you as the viewer are more willing To send a message because you know that it's cool. So we kind of figured that this was like the core metric. Um, and then with, with bags, right? With my, with my latest app, the core metric is how many people are coming in that are funding their accounts?

• 21:09Speaker 01

  And making one trade uh in the first day, right? How do we maximize that number? And so if anything that you're doing is going against the North Star metric, then it's just not the right decision. I feel like it's super important that you have to pick one of those and kind of go all in on, you know, orienting the business around it.

• 21:28Greg Isenberg?

  I think you're missing one key piece of this framework that I've noticed you do, which is um, you call it build a simple experience, but it's build a brand people love. So I've noticed that all the apps that you create, Wink, NGL, Bags, they all have like pretty simple uh names with brands that people can resonate with. Bags is, it's bags.fm, right?

• 21:57Greg Isenberg?

  So like when I just look at bags, like first of all, surprisingly, no one had built a crypto app called Bags.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Shocking, right?

• 22:07Greg Isenberg?

  Shocking.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:09Greg Isenberg?

  Like, couldn't be more shocking, right? And, and it's, it's so smart to take the um, like the slang of a community and make it, and basically coin it as the name of your app.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, 100%. That, that, that was the thought process behind it. And uh, we did something similar with NGL, you know, NGL is not gonna lie. So it was like really easy for young people to understand like what the NGL link is, you know, and then being, oh, it's an anonymous app, you know, makes a lot of sense. But that's actually a good idea. Like, yeah, build a brand people resonate with, and I think a brand that people understand. Like people are able to look at your app and have like some idea of like what it is, or kind of get some, get something from it, right? And I think with, with my apps, I try to be pretty like on the nose with like what it is, just be very obvious with it. Um, and that's something I just learned over time. Just, I've done it so many times. I've seen good names and bad names. I've seen if I go too complicated, people get confused. So

• 23:10Speaker 01

  now I stick to short names.

• 23:12Greg Isenberg?

  Is that something that is just intuition? Or like, how do people, how do people actually come up with a brand that people can understand and resonate with? Is it as simple as keep it short, find a slang term?

• 23:27Speaker 01

  Keep it short and finding a slang term, I think are two great ways to do it. I don't know if there's like a, you know, a full, a fully fleshed out framework. A lot of it is like how you feel the vibes of the brand are. And I think that, I think the, by using slang, by using like, you know, words from a specific community, it can kind of set the vibe and the tone to be more like young and like comfortable and like colloquial and like, we're just friends talking and hanging. And that's why the app is called what it is. And sometimes I, you know, I, in the past, I would like move some of that, that language into the app, like into like, you know, different pop-ups and different, you know, into the copy to kind of also skew young, stay relevant, make them feel comfortable, right?

• 24:10Speaker 01

  Like make them feel like they're almost, you know, it's like the app is like, uh, that understands them because it understands their language.

• 24:18Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, we have, um, we have a saying for, uh, we actually made it our slogan for our design agency, stay a while. It's like, how do you, how do you, uh, how do you make people feel like when they're in an app experience that they want to stay a while, like they don't want to leave?

• 24:37Speaker 01

  That's, yeah, that's actually very true. We, we, you definitely want them to stay a while. So making them feel comfortable is a big part of that.

• 24:44Greg Isenberg?

  And then from a design perspective, so, you know, do you hire like one designer? Like, how do you, do you, you know, how do you, how do you do, deal with that?

• 24:55Speaker 01

  So I, I, I design everything, um, for all my apps. I've like, I, I've solo designed every single app I've built. So like a dozen apps at this point, including the branding, including everything.

• 25:09Greg Isenberg?

  And what do you use, like Figma or?

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I use Figma.

• 25:13Greg Isenberg?

  Cool.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  I started out, my first app, I, my first app, I was designing it on PowerPoint and then I learned Photoshop and then I learned Sketch and then Figma. So I've kind of used a lot of different tools.

• 25:26Greg Isenberg?

  Awesome. Okay. So build a, step one, build a brand. Step two, build simple experience. What does this look like bare bones? Step three, get users on at least a hundred. So testing the content, figuring out what the format is, picking a platform. You select the core action as number four, high percentage of people doing it. You know, I'm guessing this, Matt, you know, this, this is different depending on what your core action is, but can you give a range of what a high percentage? Is?

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, so when I say like a high percentage of people sharing the link in multiple replies, I mean over ninety percent.

• 26:04Greg Isenberg?

  Oh, wow.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, vast majority. You need to aim where everyone's doing the same thing.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  And then also, it's like, you want to have one flow, right? Because if you have branching user journeys, then it gets also complicated. You want like everyone to go through the exact same flow. And then you can see, you know, was I successful in getting them to do this? Or was I not? Because it's very apparent, because everyone has to do the same thing.

• 26:33Greg Isenberg?

  So, once you've done that, say you've got close to ninety percent or ninety percent or more, what do you, what's next?

• 26:42Speaker 01

  Um, at that point, then you want to continue seeding it, right? Because now you've, you've, um, you've proven that you can get enough people to complete the action in the app. So now you need to seed it with like a really, like you're gonna, you kind of did the test content, you got users on, you iterated. Now you need to kind of take all those learnings and then apply more pressure. And then just start trying to seed it in different audiences, in different niches. Um, you know, work with creators in different countries, um, in different time zones that have different kinds of audiences. Um, you just really like push. Like, once you know that you can get people to do the core action, your job is now just to get more people onto the app. Uh, and what I like to do is like, part of the core action,

• 27:24Speaker 01

  I do like to have some kind of sharing or inviting in that, in that core action, right? You know, um, you know, we've seen apps like, you know, uh, that have hard invite gates. We saw that with, uh, with Laps, for example, very viral photo app. You would invite, I think, three to five friends to get in the app. Um, so a lot of people would, you know, hit that wall and maybe not go over. But if you got over the wall, you were an extremely valuable user because you brought in all these people with you. So it's like, if you have some kind of loop in the app or some kind of way of inviting people, whatever it is, I would put that in the core experience. Because then if you just drop in a thousand people and fifty percent of them share, that's five Hundred people that have now shared your app or they've invited their friend.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  So it's like your K factor is going to increase because you have that in there. And you're not fully reliant on the TikTok or the Instagram reel or the ad that they came from. Because you kind of have this extra little growth lever that some people or most people are going through. In the case of NGL, it was almost everybody.

• 28:30Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, so I've noticed you've done that with pretty much all of your apps. So with NGL, it was you were posting the link, the NGL link on your Snap or Instagram. With Bags, I first learnt about Bags, I didn't even know it was you, to be honest. I first learnt about Bags because I saw people sharing their Bags link on Twitter. Can you talk about the the social aspect of Bags?

• 28:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, so when we started Bags, we didn't really know what it was going to be. We kind of had this idea for like what we wanted to build. We knew that we wanted to build a really good consumer crypto app that could get anybody into crypto, but also have them understand what's going on. And at the same time, still have people who are crypto natives be able to enjoy the app, right? So it's a pretty hard problem. So we started with just like, how do we create like a really cool brand? How do we create like a great community of people? We had the idea to kind of start building growth loops. This was really early days of the company. We didn't have any followers on social media. We hadn't made any money. We hadn't really built anything substantial at the time. So we started with just a couple of loops. One of the loops we had was, you know, you were logging with Twitter. You claim your Bags link and then you share it.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  And then if people joined from your link, we would mark those people as like one of your invites. And then we had like a leaderboard of all the people that we're inviting. And we had like lots of the top people on Solana, you know, like Raj and Toli from Solana were on there. A lot of other people that are big in crypto were on there. And then we basically just kind of kept building growth loops. And that kept growing the followers and it kept just growing the hype and the buzz about the app. And it allowed us to kind of get to that, you know, that hundred thousand follower mark on Twitter. And then we really just focused all the efforts on backing that up, backing that growth loop up and that hype up with building a really good product.

• 30:22Greg Isenberg?

  And when you're talking, okay, once you've got a thing that's working and you're continually seeding it, are you paying to seed it? Like where, you know, is this organic or is this paid basically?

• 30:37Speaker 01

  Sometimes it's organic, sometimes it's paid. I think that in the case of NGL, we were paying, you know, $50, $100 here or there to influencers to just post the link on their story. You know, in the case of an app, a different kind of app, right? Like with Wink, a lot of what we were doing was we were paying tech talkers, we were paying people to make videos. But like, I think that you don't want to, you don't want to pay a lot, right? Like you wanna, you kinda wanna just test and build things that can scale, that like work on a small scale. And that way, all you really need is like that one viral video to kinda get the, get the traction going. But it can be paid, it can be free.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  It just depends honestly, your relationship with an influencer, your relationship with creative agency, whatever it may be. There's not really like a go-to answer there.

• 31:28Greg Isenberg?

  And what else are we missing from this list, if anything?

• 31:35Speaker 01

  I mean, just, I would call like additional pointers, more of just like general, like, you know, good practices. It's like authenticity in the way that you present the app, like just present it how it is, right? And like be very real with how you, you know, communicate publicly. Like within the case of NGL and Bags, like, you know, NGL has 2 million followers on Instagram. You know, Bags has over 100,000 on Twitter. You know, very active posting on the Bags account every day. You know, we have an intern that's constantly, you know, making sure that people are, you know, seeing Bags, having seen, hearing an authentic voice, you know, being meme-able, being funny, being relatable. You know, not being just like a brand that just kinda like sits there. In the case of NGL, you know, we don't push it as much now on Instagram as we used to.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  But you know, the Instagram has like meme formats and like, you know, the funniest, you know, messages from people. And like, you know, just a bunch of like, you know, fun, young, skewing things that make it feel more comfortable to young people. So like an authentic voice, an authentic stance, it's probably part of the brand aspect, but I feel like that's really critical.

• 32:42Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, I agree. I mean, it just, it makes, it makes everything work better. Like, it makes people love the product more, it makes them want to share it more.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 32:52Greg Isenberg?

  It makes them, uh, just increases affinity and trust with the brand. So I, I agree, and it's an unfair advantage for people.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely agree.

• 33:06Greg Isenberg?

  Anything else?

• 33:08Speaker 01

  I mean, that's pretty much the core of it, I'd say.

• 33:11Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, cool.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:15Greg Isenberg?

  And just curious, like, are there one, two, three apps that you can think of that you look up to, that you're like, they've done these things that people should look at as like a, uh, inspiration for, for, for, you know, mobile app ideas?

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Um, I think that, you know, if you want to look for consumer social inspo, I'd hope that people look to, to some of my apps, specifically MGL. I think on the AI side, I do think that Zach and Blake and the guys at CalAI crushed that. Really did an amazing job on the AI app side. And then I'd say like, um, I mean, there's lots of apps that I respect. You brought up Locket, that's a great example of an app that crushed on social. And, uh, we didn't talk about them, but also Pangu. I, I know those guys well, and I think that what they're doing with, you know, character animation and AI and kind of creating this more, this like human experience between an AI is very interesting and like definitely worth exploring.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  I feel like we're going to see a lot more of those things for different like contextual based use cases, um, you know, not just like an AI friend, but like different, you know, kind of personalities to help you on the way. So Pangu is a great one to look at. Yeah, I mean, those are the ones that like just jump out to me just from my pure, uh, memory, but, uh, very, very impressive apps.

• 34:42Greg Isenberg?

  So Pangu, for, for people who don't know, it's, it's essentially like a virtual pet, right?

• 34:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:52Greg Isenberg?

  So this is a great example of,

• 34:58Greg Isenberg?

  it's not like they invented virtual pets. You know, when I was a kid, I remember getting a Tamagotchi like OG from the 90s. You know, and even then that was like, that was a new form factor of the time. It was like the first time you'd be able to have like essentially a portable computer. And, and then, you know, a lot of kids had them. Now, this is, virtual pets on mobile has, has existed for a while, but they haven't existed with the degree of AI that's been injected into them, right?

• 35:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 35:34Greg Isenberg?

  So one way to think about startup ideas for in general, like, you know, I love your, your playbook, but I think also thinking about it like NGL for X, Cal AI for X, Locket for X, Pangu for X. Thinking about what, you know, what other niches? Like, how can you take that format and just apply it to other niches?

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Totally. Yeah. I mean, I think that like, you know, Pangu is a great example of that for sure. We talked earlier about like Hallow, right? And like, you know, you know, these like spirituality apps, you know, it could be interesting like a hybrid of a Pangu type app with a spirituality type app, right? Like, that's a, that's an interesting niche that I don't think people have explored fully. Or, you know, rather than, you know, a calorie tracking app, be using, you know, you know, GPT vision for something else that, that maybe is a novel experience, right? I do think that like, it's more about looking for frameworks than it is for looking for like ideas. The framework, I feel like is more important because now it's really easy to just like, framework X, you know, with, you know, audience Y, you know?

• 36:39Greg Isenberg?

  You mentioned, uh, GPT vision. We talked about widgets. What, what technology are you interested in right now?

• 36:53Speaker 01

  Well, I'm very interested in crypto and crypto going mainstream and getting real regulation, being accepted now by the government. That's really exciting. And a lot of people now kind of building consumer apps in crypto. I feel like that's like very exciting for me. As far as like future tech like this or on the horizon, I'm really excited for augmented reality glasses whenever those happen. I think that's going to be a pretty incredible experience when we can prompt an app using our own, you know, Jarvis AI type and we can create a fully immersive experience that anyone can look through and see. And I think that's really

• 37:34Speaker 01

  going to be the next step of how we kind of take AI off of just the phone and really it becomes more immersive and it becomes more shareable. And I think it'll kind of mirror the trend of, you know, where everything's going with AI coding tools like Cursor and AI video tools. I think it's all going to kind of like have this interesting singularity where we're going to be able to just create anything and anyone can see it in full immersive detail and then we can share it. And I feel like that's going to require the next step in hardware. So I'm bullish on that. I don't know when Apple's gonna finally unveil what they have there, but I'm sure it's sitting somewhere in the basement and they have the

• 38:18Speaker 01

  glasses ready to go. But I can't wait for that. That's what I'm super excited for, like, you know, the next hardware platform. I feel like we're, we're not quite there yet, but we'll start to see it soon, I think.

• 38:29Greg Isenberg?

  What about local, running local models on, on phones? Do you think that, you know, AI models will be run in the cloud like they are today? You know, you use ChatGPT and it's all hosted by them? Or do you think people are gonna have it local on their phones and, and on the web, on desktop?

• 38:50Speaker 01

  I think that the phones eventually, yes, absolutely. I think that, do you think that the phone will be the driving compute for whatever the glasses are? I don't think that the compute is going to be happening on the glasses. So I think that in the way that we're using the cloud to do all the AI training and generation, I think it'll be like, the phones will have to get more advanced. They'll have to be able to handle more of these LLMs. I could see it happening for sure. I could definitely see it happening. But I also, we don't know, you know, maybe it requires even more compute to do the even crazier things. So it might stay in the cloud. But I could totally see a future where like all the compute and all the LLM stuff is happening on the phone. And then you have like super lightweight glasses that are just connected over Bluetooth.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  And the processing is being sent to the iPhone.

• 39:37Greg Isenberg?

  If you're, so these are three trends that, trends in tech that, you know, you think are interested in, that you're interested in. If you're just starting out, you know, you want to make your first million dollars, 10 million dollars, maybe even more, and you're trying to create a startup to go and do that.

• 39:58Greg Isenberg?

  What sort of trends in tech should people be, you know, focused on, I guess?

• 40:07Speaker 01

  I do think that for young people, that I can talk to more specifically about this, like people that are in their teenage years, twenties, you know, in college or post-college. I do think that, you know, when you're young, you want to take a lot of swings and a lot of risks and a lot of like, you want to have a lot of at-bats, a lot of tries. So I do think that building consumer mobile apps is like the best thing to be doing if you're a young person. Obviously, I'm biased, that's like all I've ever done my whole life. But I do think that like when it comes to understanding human psychology, figuring out how to build a product that people love, figuring out how to go viral and kind of create these, you know, global experiences. Like you could really like touch the whole world using, you know, consumer social and consumer,

• 40:52Speaker 01

  just consumer apps in general, right? It's like the way that people, and the way that humans interact with the world is through apps. And through our phones. So I feel like if you're a young person and you're looking at tech and like, where do I go? I would really go on the consumer side versus going on like the B to B side, the S side, just because I feel like, you know, those things aren't as, call it traditionally fun than compared to a consumer app, right? Consumer app is a little more fun. You know, you're, you're dealing with building things for lots of people. You're not dealing so much of like, you know, the B to B world of dealing with businesses and contracts. It's more of like, build a great product, figure out how to market it, build something people love. So I would say like,

• 41:33Speaker 01

  yeah, young people, just anyone that's looking to get into tech, I would just get into the consumer side also because the tools are getting much better. So within a short amount of time here, you will not need any technical person with you. I think still we need, we need someone. We're not fully there yet, but I do think, yeah, consumer is the way to go for sure.

• 41:54Greg Isenberg?

  Cool. I love it. Hunter Isaacson, giving away playbooks, giving away sauce. I knew you, I knew you'd bring it. We did zero preparation for this podcast.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  None.

• 42:05Greg Isenberg?

  And I said, I said to him right before this, I said, this is what I would ask you in person, like if we were just catching up for coffee. So I wanted that to be this experience. And so I appreciate you, man. And Hunter, if people want to get to know you better, how can they, how can they do it?

• 42:24Speaker 01

  Follow me on X and Instagram, Hunter J. Isaacson. And yeah, I post there regularly. I, I give insights. I help young people in the industry and mentorship. And I'm always, you know, a resource for people that are getting into consumer social. So yeah, follow me, hit me up, send me your app. I'd love to see it.

• 42:45Greg Isenberg?

  I'll include those links in the show notes to make it easy on people. And then, like always, I read every single, every single darn YouTube comment. So please say hello, say what's up. Let us know if you enjoyed this episode and what we should be covering next. Startup Ideas Podcast, Hunter Isaacson. It's been real. I'll see you around Miami, my friend.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 43:10Greg Isenberg?

  And hopefully people enjoy this episode. So you can come back.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  I would love that. And yes, I'll see you in Miami soon, brother.

• 43:18Greg Isenberg?

  All right. I'll catch you later.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  All right, man. Peace.