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Macron was just a test. Even viral- Today we're speaking to KJ Chen, who is the founder and CEO of Macron, a personal AI agent that helps users build mini apps with just one sentence.
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The company is already at a valuation of $70 million after having to pivot from being an AI novel platform. We had three million users. It was one of the biggest in the world.
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Do you feel like that was a very large risk you were taking in terms of, like, potentially losing all your users? It was a very big decision, a tough one.
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He's now scaled to more than 300,000 users using viral marketing with short form videos and 200,000 apps created using his product.
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The structure is pose a problem in your real life, and then a solution, which is a mini app, and then the code, which you can download and enter and get that mini app.
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In this episode, KJ reveals his exact viral marketing playbook, the briefs and the frameworks they used, and the step-by-step strategies he implemented to go from zero, 1,000 to 20,000, and then to 100,000 and beyond.
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Doing the viral techniques but also integrating your product a little bit better, which one converts better? It's usually the one that raise a- Let's break down his startup strategies. Welcome to the show, KJ.
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Who is KJ Chen and what do you do? I'm the founder and CEO of Macron, which is a personal agent. It helps with your personal life by building mini apps for you.
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So you can create a calorie tracker, you can create an exercise tracker, anything you want. I graduated from Duke and had many startup experience. Amazing. Amazing.
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I know Macron is currently at a $70 million valuation, but you pivoted in order to get here, from what I know. Can you quickly tell the audience a little bit about your first version of your product? Uh, yeah.
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Um, first, I cannot comment on the valuation, but, uh, before Macron, we did another product called Midreal. Uh, it was an AI novel writing platform. We had three million users. It was one of the biggest- Mm...
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AI novel writing platforms, uh, in the world. From the very beginning, when we started this venture, it was in, at the end of 2023.
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We began with a very strong thesis that we need to do research and product at the same time to provide some, uh, amazing experience. And at that time it was by training model, we can write novels just like, uh...
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feels like human writing the novel. So it's of great quality, and people come here to write. Um, then we had a pivot in 2025. At that time, we saw an interesting new opportunity, that is building apps for everyone.
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I- I know this sounds very disconnected [laughs] But, uh, from, from AI novel to building apps for everyone is crazy.
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The connection was that I was talking to a lot of, uh, Midreal users, and they said that it was great using the product, writing novels, immersed in those stories, but they have to go back to real life again.
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When they do that, they feel empty. Uh, they, they have to go back to study or go back to their work or have relationship with their family.
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I thought at that time, why not help people a little bit better in their personal life, uh, not just creating stories for them. So that's the connection that we made.
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And our technology also supports us, uh, in this transition to creating apps for, for everyone. And I think we were the... maybe the first one for consumer to create apps. We released our Macron in, in August 2025.
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So it was pretty early. Very nice.
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I must say, if you already had three million users, don't you feel like that was a very large risk you were taking in terms of, like, potentially losing all your users and, like, building out a fresh new product? Uh,
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y- yeah, definitely. Um, it was a very big decision, a tough one. Um, what I thought was, uh, we were really small, uh, so we could only afford to do maybe one very specific thing.
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We were not able to support two products at the same time. At that time, Macron was just a test because we trained a model to write mini apps. It was just a testing out there.
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Even viral, and we quickly gained, uh, tens of thousands of users through this test. And we saw the momentum was, uh, much stronger than Midreal, uh, because novel writing, um, is very hard to train.
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For, for each novel, you, you only get fragmented signal for, for improvements, uh, in the reinforcement learning process. So we think, okay, maybe mini app...
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Because people will click on a lot of buttons, and when they create one they will give feedback. That's a stronger feedback than, uh, reading or not reading a novel.
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So I think that's a stronger momentum, and we, uh, shift the whole company into this new road. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So it seems like some of your early users kind of gave you feedback to [laughs] dilute- Right...
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some of those concerns and risks, which is great, 'cause otherwise... I was gonna say, that's, like, a massive risk you're taking in terms of, like, the three million users being gone. Um, but back to the current day.
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Yeah. With the time period that you guys have been around, I would love to know how many users you have right now. Uh, we have more than 300,000 users right now.
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And then in terms of apps created on the product, how many is that currently? People have created more than 200,000 apps on Macron. Very nice. Very nice.
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'Cause that equates to almost, like, each user going out there and, like, uh, creating and testing the product, which is awesome to see. So those users are very active, then.
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The, the statistics feels like a third of the people that ha- i- that is active is creating mini apps. On average, e- every one of them create two. Nice. So that adds up to 200,000. Amazing. Amazing.
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Um, those are awesome numbers already. Let's kind of break down how we ended up growing to the current numbers we're at, about 300,000 or more, um, users that we have.
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I would love to know maybe from your zero to thousand stage of users, what were the methods that you kind of had to use back then? We were able to find some communities that were interested in creating-...
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creating small apps. Uh, those were like, uh, AI maker community, uh, people that were so interested in writing different prompts and prompt community. Which a prompt is basically a easier or simpler version of a app.
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And the best thing of Macaron is that you can create an app with just one sentence, with just chatting. It was perfect for, for them to onboard and create their own apps, and it was super easy.
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Uh, the community had about, uh, 500, 600 people. I found different friends just getting to those community and share the idea. Uh, they loved it.
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Of course, they gave us a lot of feedback because in, in June and July, our algorithm was pretty terrible. It, it can create apps with a lot of fake buttons that can't click.
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It was a lot of trial and error, uh, that we, we, um, tested at that phase. Yeah. Okay. [laughs] There definitely was some hiccups then.
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Um, it seems like, though, the initial users were mostly just organic from whether it was, like, the network you already had as well as it seems like from the previous version of your product as well, people started trickling in from there?
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Okay. And then- Yeah, so-... the community testing begins... yeah, previous product as well, but mainly it was through, um, prompt communities that I found. Okay. Awesome. Awesome.
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Um, I'm curious then, what did the launch numbers look like? [laughs] It was cool. Um, first we launched on Product Hunt. We were very lucky to be the, the number one product of the week, the product of the week.
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Very nice. And that, um, brought us some, some traffic, and I think it was because our product looked very different from other ones. Our, our- Mm. Okay...
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we are called Macaron, and it, it really feels like macaron when you see the, uh, icon of the app. Um, it was, it was orange and pink [laughs] and, and very tasty.
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And we also released the videos, which I think were, uh, quite popular among some, uh, tech communities 'cause it was the first agent for people to build their, uh, small apps, uh, for consumers to build them.
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Of course, at that time, we already have Lovable and, uh, Bolt and other products, but they were for developers and product managers mainly. Uh, we're for end consumers.
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So we have around 10, 20,000 onboarding users in, in the two weeks that follows the launch. Okay. So that was a very good boost. Yeah.
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I must say that that probably would be, um, some decent numbers actually, just because I've heard of some terror stories in regards to [laughs] Product Hunt.
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Like, people think it would do super well, and then some people, like, just get really, really flat results and, like, no movement at all. But that is great to hear.
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Um, I'm kind of curious then, from there, your first 20,000 users, now that you have them, what is the method that you're using and the strategy that you're using to get to the 100,000 users and 500,000 users and beyond?
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We started a lot of, um, video campaigns, and that video campaigns feels like, uh... Of course, ClueLee is, is the best in doing this or the- [laughs]... the OG in doing this, but, uh, we copied.
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What KJ is referring to here is the marketing strategy that was spearheaded by Roy Lee, the founder of ClueLee, the AI-powered desktop application that acts as an invisible real-time assistant during meetings, calls, and interviews.
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What was unique about Roy's approach was that he aimed for mass reach over targeted reach. ClueLee's strategy can be broken down into mass content production, producing hundreds of videos per day at their peak.
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The viral formula. If you posted 100 videos on one account, you may get virality. If you then repost this on other accounts, you'll likely achieve a multiplication effect. Number three, controversy as distribution.
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They aim to polarize their audience to stir reaction and engagement. Hiring a creator army. They used 50 plus creators to produce multiple different videos a day. And last but not least, a distribution first approach.
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They just hired engineers and creators, no in-betweens. And this resulted in more than one billion views in three months and a $7 million ARR with $120 million valuation.
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We reward people for recording their mini apps and recording their activity in their mini apps and share, share them on TikTok and other platforms.
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And many people did this, and they are not sharing the ideas that we originally thought they would. For example, creating a calorie tracker.
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Uh, they, they usually create something that's a little bit more, uh, absurd and gain traffic online.
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For example, they create a exercise, uh, planner, but it makes crazy exercises and the, the influencer just follows the exercise plan, and in the end he, he lay, l- lay down on the, on the, on the floor and feeling too tired.
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And he, he just made a video of that whole thing, and it went viral and gained more than a million views on TikTok. Things like this. Um,
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so they, they are not predicted, but, but we made a lot of videos in that way, and the traffic start to grow from there again. That is super interesting.
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So it's kind of highlighting almost the product in a very authentic way, where it doesn't necessarily say the product is great, try this product.
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It's actually kind of talking about a very funny circumstance that came through trying to create an app. I'm kind of curious, is this something that actually converted to users or not really?
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So what the, what the video does is that, uh, people can leave a code For, for the app that they created.
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For example, if you create an app, you can share your code in the video, and people with that code can instantly get your app in Macron. Uh, this is our sharing feature, uh, which I think is very useful.
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Uh, people, people love it.
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When they adopt the app in this way, they u- they will usually, uh, check the code first and check to see what that influencer did in the TikTok video and whether that's fun or not, and, and other things.
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So, uh, when you have that code, uh, y- you naturally start chatting with Macron.
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And then from there, Macron will discover more of your needs in your personal life, uh, whether it's your frustration of dealing with different difficulties or your curiosity of exploring different things, like maybe, um, studying tennis or new sports, new instruments, other things, and can create, um, mini apps for you to learn those things.
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So it will naturally grow once you have a contact point. Very nice.
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So it seems like you have your viral marketing framework, and then supporting that is almost like a product-led growth, um, framework that is also bringing in more, um, users into the platform. I
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had a look at some of your videos [laughs] and saw a lot of different, like, viral videos, right? I've seen random ASMR videos. I've also seen people get- Yeah...
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talking about the different apps they're creating, whether it's, like, workout, calorie counters, and stuff like that. I've also seen lots of, like, tech influencers kind of talk about the product as well.
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I'm kind of curious how you ended up picking those types of creators out, or was there a particular plan around it, or it just seemed like those were the ones that were working?
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I, I think the ones that you can see are the ones that, that's, uh, selected by the market. So, uh, I, I don't usually pick too much. Um- Okay...
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so anyone who wants to create a video for Macron, I would just say, "Go for it," and if your video creates a lot of view, uh, I will pay for it. Uh, so it's very simple. And, um,
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of course, I, I may want, uh, it to be more personal life oriented instead of creating slides or Power, PowerPoints of, uh, reports. Uh, that's the productivity t- direction, which is not Macron.
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Uh, but I don't usually select. Um, and it's, it's great because, um, if people are creating videos that... Thank you for everyone who create a video.
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But anyway, if the video doesn't gain much traffic [laughs] I don't need to pay that much anyway. So, [laughs] so it's, uh, yeah, pay, pay by the result. Okay. Very nice.
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So it seems like then they're almost like affiliates, and these are the people who, who are kind of pushing the initial strategy forward in terms of, like, viral marketing for you.
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I am kind of curious then, because I've seen such an array of, like, different types of creators out there. Which ones are the ones that are converting best? 'Cause, like, I just went through a couple, right?
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There's, like, random ASMR ones doing storytelling- Exactly... tech influencers, like young adults doing workouts and stuff like that. Is there a particular category that's working the best for you?
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Usually, if I found a video of high quality and I think this is good, this is a representative of our product, uh, the video usually doesn't do well. Uh- [laughs]... maybe my taste is too old.
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[laughs] Maybe, maybe I'm thinking too much from the product side and not from the, uh, people browsing videos, that, that angle. So at this point, I, I just gave up in determining which video will go viral. Okay.
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That's super interesting 'cause I was gonna say there's different types of virality, right? And what I notice is there's virality for reach, which you're just trying to reach the largest number of people.
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It doesn't necessarily talk about your product too much or doesn't necessarily try to sell the product too much.
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And then there's, like, the mid-tier virality, which is doing the viral techniques, but also integrating your product a little bit better.
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Like, I've seen some of the tech people talking about your product in a little bit of a more how-to style manner, right?
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And then there was this funny video of, like, someone talking about, um, what GPA you got, and then they were kind of, like, singing along to it. And- Yeah... I'm kind of curious which one converts better.
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So in terms of the, the format or the flow of the video, it's usually the one that raise a real question or situation in your life and offers a mini app for that and then have a code.
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Let's go into that viral format in a little bit more detail and how exactly to optimize it for conversions. These formats can be broken down into three core steps. Number one, introducing a problem.
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We see here that Macron's most successful videos introduce a relatable situation for viewers that draws the attention in. Number two, it's only then that we introduce the solution.
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Formatting the creator campaign videos in this way allows for a more seamless integration of the product where we show the benefits without having to sell it. Then three, we end with the CTA. In this case, a custom code.
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The, the GPA video, I, I know which, which one you're talking about, but it was pretty, pretty fun. But people don't have a strong incentive to, to, to download the app. So the conversion is, is not that good.
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But, uh, it was okay, but not that good.
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But, um, for the ones, for example, exercise and you need to download and enter this code to get this exercise, and you can feel that- Um, that, that will have pretty good conversion.
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The structure is pose a problem in your real life, and the viewer does have that problem, and then a solution, which is a mini app, and then the code, which you can download and enter and get that mini app, the solution I provide you.
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So that's the general flow. Yeah. Amazing.
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Thank you for saying that [laughs] because I always try to tell people as well that, like, viral marketing and just aiming for mass reach and, like, it's not going to convert to users.
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And you need to, like, formulate your virality to actually get users on board and make the piece of content make sense whilst aiming for virality for it to lead to users. So appreciate the [laughs] confirmation.
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Ju- just to add to that, um, I, I always feel that we need to give the creative freedom to, um, everyone that, that posts content, and I do.
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And but when I say, uh, I, I like the absurd ideas or free ideas, um, I, I'm saying that i- it's still within this framework that works best for our product.
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It's more about I don't choose which mini app you want to create. People will create, uh, apps that make memes and maybe cut photos.
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Uh, th- these things are things that I would not create, but, uh, if you choose that, that's great. But you still need to follow the problem, please format. Yeah. Amazing.
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Um, more on that, I would kind of love to break down with you then, is there a particular brief that you give to these creators in terms of, like, follow this kind of framework, but you do it in your way and how you would integrate it into your life?
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Or, um, do you just, [laughs] just point out, like, a few points and then creative freedom is up to them? Yeah. I will give them, uh, a brief of course about what the product...
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'Cause it's still pretty new, um, in terms of the concept. M- m- most people haven't used anything that can create apps for them, so the concept needs to be laid down.
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But the brief is pretty, uh, concise, I would say, 1,000, 200- 2,000 words and explain everything with a lot of pictures and links. We have tiers mainly because we are aiming different directions from time to time.
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Sometimes we, we need to show our technology more for the community and mainly for hiring people. Uh, and that's a very different brief from maybe showing our product side.
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I know that's a lot of information probably mainly for, like, TikTok and Instagram, like the different short form pieces of content.
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I would love to dive into X however, 'cause I know you've gone viral on there multiple times as well.
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Do you have, like, a different process that you do or is it, like, similar in terms of, like, creating virality on there? So I, I, I think I'm not that viral on X. Um- [laughs]... we, we still need a lot of work.
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Um, I think our most recent video have 3 million views, but, uh, it's still quite small compared to other, many other people.
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Anyways, so, uh, what we basically do on X is that we, we still found those communities and influencers that may like us or that we can c- cooperate.
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For example, our, I think our second launch on, on X was, uh, more successful, which was at the beginning of December. Uh, it was a tech release about our new technology in Mind Lab, which is the lab that supports Macom.
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Uh, and in that lab we released a few works, which is the reinforcement learning infrastructure that allows us to train the really large models, the trillion size models, and we release our memory algorithm, um, which is really cool 'cause it was, uh, uh, state-of-the-art performance and really impacts the product 'cause, uh, every, every chat is, uh, cooked with memory.
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We released this work and we found, uh, people who have already shown interest in this work on X, and we direct message them, uh, saying that we have this new release coming up and this is our work.
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Uh, it feels like, um, talking to other researchers and, and showing our research results. If you want to, uh, do a rebuttal or, uh, show, show your insights on this work, please do.
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Um, so we DM'd a lot of people, uh, in this direction, and naturally they show, uh, great interest because our work is, it, it, it's, it's still pretty good work and, uh, the work has also contributed to Nvidia and a lot of open source projects.
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So we are very interested and they accept and they just share the work. Definitely.
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I mean, what's good to see about what you've done there, I think is that you've kind of leaned into platform and creator fit, and you're kind of looking into, oh, what is most suitable for the second product launch because obviously it's a little bit more, um, I guess it's more suitable for people who are a little bit tech savvy.
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So you kind of shifted towards X, which is kind of good to see so that you do have that fit. Um, but I'm curious, what do you think has been most successful for you?
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'Cause I, 'cause your product is kind of at, not only is it, like, technologically savvy, but it's also something that a lot of consumers can utilize.
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I'm kind of curious which platform has been most successful for you in terms of actually driving the users that you want to see. TikTok and, and Instagram.
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Uh, these are the, the big ones, and TikTok might be a bit, um... 'Cause, 'cause, uh, it's easier to create a video loop on TikTok, uh, for us. Um, I'm kind of curious then, what are your next...
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Maybe you shouldn't give these away [laughs]. But what are your next plans in terms of, like, your marketing strategies that you're looking to implement further to kind of get to your 1 million, 2 million user mark?
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, there, there, there are a lo- lot of things that we need to do, we want to do, and a big one of them is our website, [laughs] um, building SEO from there.
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And this is because, um- Of course, we have an app, uh, that's for sure. But many small tools we found people created can actually be shared online and, um, actually for one-time use or for search engine use.
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This is important because, uh, it's basically free traffic, 'cause we already have, um, 200,000 apps and many of them can be converted into a single website app. And those app can...
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If each one of them gain 10 traffic, uh, each day, we, we already have two million traffic, which is great. So that's one of our strategy, uh, moving forward.
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So marketing is always connected with act- what, what product feature you are launching, and we are launching something very new, uh, in terms of experience, may not have been seen on the market before.
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Like when we launched Macron, it was a good, good launch. Uh, we, we want to recreate that launch, and maybe people will come from there.
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Uh, it was a research product called Design Experience that, that we have high hope for. Okay. I'm excited. I'm excited to see, um, what comes next.
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I think I'm also curious, are you guys planning to, like, continue on with, I guess, scaling up your viral strategies that you're implementing currently? Um, definitely yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Uh,
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I, I think it will grow with our number of users as well. Um, so we aim to have maybe, maybe 200,000 or 300,000 daily active users, uh, next year, which is a 10X growth from, uh, what we currently have now. Um, so
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we definitely need to scale this. Right now our marketing team is also very small. Um, of course, I, I want it to be more organic, of course. Um, but I, I think it will scale up, uh, as well.
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Um, yeah, definitely scale up. Before we let you go, I would love to know if you have any final words for anyone else building, like, B2C products out there, and some tips you might give to them. Ooh. Okay.
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Um, I, I'm not in a position that I can give advice.
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Uh, I think I'm still fighting this war and, um, the only thing that I found, um, worth sharing is that, uh, we are very different in terms of we train our own model, and we always want to give some experience to a user that's special and never seen on the market before.
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Uh, when you go into this app, that's, that's very different from what you experience.
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And I think you can achieve that with prompt engineering, of course, or context engineering, um, or training a model which is becoming easier and easier today.
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So, um, yeah, if you are creating something that's for consumer, I think people do want to experience something that they've never seen before. I appreciate the tips and the strategies you've shared.
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Um, and thank you for coming on the show. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me today.
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Macron was just a test. Even viral- Today we're speaking to KJ Chen, who is the founder and CEO of Macron, a personal AI agent that helps users build mini apps with just one sentence.
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The company is already at a valuation of $70 million after having to pivot from being an AI novel platform. We had three million users. It was one of the biggest in the world.
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Do you feel like that was a very large risk you were taking in terms of, like, potentially losing all your users? It was a very big decision, a tough one.
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He's now scaled to more than 300,000 users using viral marketing with short form videos and 200,000 apps created using his product.
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The structure is pose a problem in your real life, and then a solution, which is a mini app, and then the code, which you can download and enter and get that mini app.
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In this episode, KJ reveals his exact viral marketing playbook, the briefs and the frameworks they used, and the step-by-step strategies he implemented to go from zero, 1,000 to 20,000, and then to 100,000 and beyond.
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Doing the viral techniques but also integrating your product a little bit better, which one converts better? It's usually the one that raise a- Let's break down his startup strategies. Welcome to the show, KJ.
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Who is KJ Chen and what do you do? I'm the founder and CEO of Macron, which is a personal agent. It helps with your personal life by building mini apps for you.
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So you can create a calorie tracker, you can create an exercise tracker, anything you want. I graduated from Duke and had many startup experience. Amazing. Amazing.
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I know Macron is currently at a $70 million valuation, but you pivoted in order to get here, from what I know. Can you quickly tell the audience a little bit about your first version of your product? Uh, yeah.
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Um, first, I cannot comment on the valuation, but, uh, before Macron, we did another product called Midreal. Uh, it was an AI novel writing platform. We had three million users. It was one of the biggest- Mm...
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AI novel writing platforms, uh, in the world. From the very beginning, when we started this venture, it was in, at the end of 2023.
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We began with a very strong thesis that we need to do research and product at the same time to provide some, uh, amazing experience. And at that time it was by training model, we can write novels just like, uh...
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feels like human writing the novel. So it's of great quality, and people come here to write. Um, then we had a pivot in 2025. At that time, we saw an interesting new opportunity, that is building apps for everyone.
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I- I know this sounds very disconnected [laughs] But, uh, from, from AI novel to building apps for everyone is crazy.
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The connection was that I was talking to a lot of, uh, Midreal users, and they said that it was great using the product, writing novels, immersed in those stories, but they have to go back to real life again.
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When they do that, they feel empty. Uh, they, they have to go back to study or go back to their work or have relationship with their family.
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I thought at that time, why not help people a little bit better in their personal life, uh, not just creating stories for them. So that's the connection that we made.
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And our technology also supports us, uh, in this transition to creating apps for, for everyone. And I think we were the... maybe the first one for consumer to create apps. We released our Macron in, in August 2025.
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So it was pretty early. Very nice.
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I must say, if you already had three million users, don't you feel like that was a very large risk you were taking in terms of, like, potentially losing all your users and, like, building out a fresh new product? Uh,
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y- yeah, definitely. Um, it was a very big decision, a tough one. Um, what I thought was, uh, we were really small, uh, so we could only afford to do maybe one very specific thing.
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We were not able to support two products at the same time. At that time, Macron was just a test because we trained a model to write mini apps. It was just a testing out there.
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Even viral, and we quickly gained, uh, tens of thousands of users through this test. And we saw the momentum was, uh, much stronger than Midreal, uh, because novel writing, um, is very hard to train.
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For, for each novel, you, you only get fragmented signal for, for improvements, uh, in the reinforcement learning process. So we think, okay, maybe mini app...
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Because people will click on a lot of buttons, and when they create one they will give feedback. That's a stronger feedback than, uh, reading or not reading a novel.
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So I think that's a stronger momentum, and we, uh, shift the whole company into this new road. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So it seems like some of your early users kind of gave you feedback to [laughs] dilute- Right...
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some of those concerns and risks, which is great, 'cause otherwise... I was gonna say, that's, like, a massive risk you're taking in terms of, like, the three million users being gone. Um, but back to the current day.
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Yeah. With the time period that you guys have been around, I would love to know how many users you have right now. Uh, we have more than 300,000 users right now.
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And then in terms of apps created on the product, how many is that currently? People have created more than 200,000 apps on Macron. Very nice. Very nice.
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'Cause that equates to almost, like, each user going out there and, like, uh, creating and testing the product, which is awesome to see. So those users are very active, then.
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The, the statistics feels like a third of the people that ha- i- that is active is creating mini apps. On average, e- every one of them create two. Nice. So that adds up to 200,000. Amazing. Amazing.
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Um, those are awesome numbers already. Let's kind of break down how we ended up growing to the current numbers we're at, about 300,000 or more, um, users that we have.
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I would love to know maybe from your zero to thousand stage of users, what were the methods that you kind of had to use back then? We were able to find some communities that were interested in creating-...
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creating small apps. Uh, those were like, uh, AI maker community, uh, people that were so interested in writing different prompts and prompt community. Which a prompt is basically a easier or simpler version of a app.
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And the best thing of Macaron is that you can create an app with just one sentence, with just chatting. It was perfect for, for them to onboard and create their own apps, and it was super easy.
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Uh, the community had about, uh, 500, 600 people. I found different friends just getting to those community and share the idea. Uh, they loved it.
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Of course, they gave us a lot of feedback because in, in June and July, our algorithm was pretty terrible. It, it can create apps with a lot of fake buttons that can't click.
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It was a lot of trial and error, uh, that we, we, um, tested at that phase. Yeah. Okay. [laughs] There definitely was some hiccups then.
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Um, it seems like, though, the initial users were mostly just organic from whether it was, like, the network you already had as well as it seems like from the previous version of your product as well, people started trickling in from there?
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Okay. And then- Yeah, so-... the community testing begins... yeah, previous product as well, but mainly it was through, um, prompt communities that I found. Okay. Awesome. Awesome.
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Um, I'm curious then, what did the launch numbers look like? [laughs] It was cool. Um, first we launched on Product Hunt. We were very lucky to be the, the number one product of the week, the product of the week.
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Very nice. And that, um, brought us some, some traffic, and I think it was because our product looked very different from other ones. Our, our- Mm. Okay...
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we are called Macaron, and it, it really feels like macaron when you see the, uh, icon of the app. Um, it was, it was orange and pink [laughs] and, and very tasty.
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And we also released the videos, which I think were, uh, quite popular among some, uh, tech communities 'cause it was the first agent for people to build their, uh, small apps, uh, for consumers to build them.
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Of course, at that time, we already have Lovable and, uh, Bolt and other products, but they were for developers and product managers mainly. Uh, we're for end consumers.
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So we have around 10, 20,000 onboarding users in, in the two weeks that follows the launch. Okay. So that was a very good boost. Yeah.
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I must say that that probably would be, um, some decent numbers actually, just because I've heard of some terror stories in regards to [laughs] Product Hunt.
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Like, people think it would do super well, and then some people, like, just get really, really flat results and, like, no movement at all. But that is great to hear.
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Um, I'm kind of curious then, from there, your first 20,000 users, now that you have them, what is the method that you're using and the strategy that you're using to get to the 100,000 users and 500,000 users and beyond?
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We started a lot of, um, video campaigns, and that video campaigns feels like, uh... Of course, ClueLee is, is the best in doing this or the- [laughs]... the OG in doing this, but, uh, we copied.
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What KJ is referring to here is the marketing strategy that was spearheaded by Roy Lee, the founder of ClueLee, the AI-powered desktop application that acts as an invisible real-time assistant during meetings, calls, and interviews.
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What was unique about Roy's approach was that he aimed for mass reach over targeted reach. ClueLee's strategy can be broken down into mass content production, producing hundreds of videos per day at their peak.
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The viral formula. If you posted 100 videos on one account, you may get virality. If you then repost this on other accounts, you'll likely achieve a multiplication effect. Number three, controversy as distribution.
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They aim to polarize their audience to stir reaction and engagement. Hiring a creator army. They used 50 plus creators to produce multiple different videos a day. And last but not least, a distribution first approach.
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They just hired engineers and creators, no in-betweens. And this resulted in more than one billion views in three months and a $7 million ARR with $120 million valuation.
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We reward people for recording their mini apps and recording their activity in their mini apps and share, share them on TikTok and other platforms.
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And many people did this, and they are not sharing the ideas that we originally thought they would. For example, creating a calorie tracker.
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Uh, they, they usually create something that's a little bit more, uh, absurd and gain traffic online.
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For example, they create a exercise, uh, planner, but it makes crazy exercises and the, the influencer just follows the exercise plan, and in the end he, he lay, l- lay down on the, on the, on the floor and feeling too tired.
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And he, he just made a video of that whole thing, and it went viral and gained more than a million views on TikTok. Things like this. Um,
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so they, they are not predicted, but, but we made a lot of videos in that way, and the traffic start to grow from there again. That is super interesting.
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So it's kind of highlighting almost the product in a very authentic way, where it doesn't necessarily say the product is great, try this product.
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It's actually kind of talking about a very funny circumstance that came through trying to create an app. I'm kind of curious, is this something that actually converted to users or not really?
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So what the, what the video does is that, uh, people can leave a code For, for the app that they created.
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For example, if you create an app, you can share your code in the video, and people with that code can instantly get your app in Macron. Uh, this is our sharing feature, uh, which I think is very useful.
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Uh, people, people love it.
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When they adopt the app in this way, they u- they will usually, uh, check the code first and check to see what that influencer did in the TikTok video and whether that's fun or not, and, and other things.
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So, uh, when you have that code, uh, y- you naturally start chatting with Macron.
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And then from there, Macron will discover more of your needs in your personal life, uh, whether it's your frustration of dealing with different difficulties or your curiosity of exploring different things, like maybe, um, studying tennis or new sports, new instruments, other things, and can create, um, mini apps for you to learn those things.
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So it will naturally grow once you have a contact point. Very nice.
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So it seems like you have your viral marketing framework, and then supporting that is almost like a product-led growth, um, framework that is also bringing in more, um, users into the platform. I
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had a look at some of your videos [laughs] and saw a lot of different, like, viral videos, right? I've seen random ASMR videos. I've also seen people get- Yeah...
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talking about the different apps they're creating, whether it's, like, workout, calorie counters, and stuff like that. I've also seen lots of, like, tech influencers kind of talk about the product as well.
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I'm kind of curious how you ended up picking those types of creators out, or was there a particular plan around it, or it just seemed like those were the ones that were working?
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I, I think the ones that you can see are the ones that, that's, uh, selected by the market. So, uh, I, I don't usually pick too much. Um- Okay...
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so anyone who wants to create a video for Macron, I would just say, "Go for it," and if your video creates a lot of view, uh, I will pay for it. Uh, so it's very simple. And, um,
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of course, I, I may want, uh, it to be more personal life oriented instead of creating slides or Power, PowerPoints of, uh, reports. Uh, that's the productivity t- direction, which is not Macron.
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Uh, but I don't usually select. Um, and it's, it's great because, um, if people are creating videos that... Thank you for everyone who create a video.
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But anyway, if the video doesn't gain much traffic [laughs] I don't need to pay that much anyway. So, [laughs] so it's, uh, yeah, pay, pay by the result. Okay. Very nice.
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So it seems like then they're almost like affiliates, and these are the people who, who are kind of pushing the initial strategy forward in terms of, like, viral marketing for you.
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I am kind of curious then, because I've seen such an array of, like, different types of creators out there. Which ones are the ones that are converting best? 'Cause, like, I just went through a couple, right?
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There's, like, random ASMR ones doing storytelling- Exactly... tech influencers, like young adults doing workouts and stuff like that. Is there a particular category that's working the best for you?
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Usually, if I found a video of high quality and I think this is good, this is a representative of our product, uh, the video usually doesn't do well. Uh- [laughs]... maybe my taste is too old.
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[laughs] Maybe, maybe I'm thinking too much from the product side and not from the, uh, people browsing videos, that, that angle. So at this point, I, I just gave up in determining which video will go viral. Okay.
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That's super interesting 'cause I was gonna say there's different types of virality, right? And what I notice is there's virality for reach, which you're just trying to reach the largest number of people.
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It doesn't necessarily talk about your product too much or doesn't necessarily try to sell the product too much.
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And then there's, like, the mid-tier virality, which is doing the viral techniques, but also integrating your product a little bit better.
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Like, I've seen some of the tech people talking about your product in a little bit of a more how-to style manner, right?
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And then there was this funny video of, like, someone talking about, um, what GPA you got, and then they were kind of, like, singing along to it. And- Yeah... I'm kind of curious which one converts better.
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So in terms of the, the format or the flow of the video, it's usually the one that raise a real question or situation in your life and offers a mini app for that and then have a code.
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Let's go into that viral format in a little bit more detail and how exactly to optimize it for conversions. These formats can be broken down into three core steps. Number one, introducing a problem.
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We see here that Macron's most successful videos introduce a relatable situation for viewers that draws the attention in. Number two, it's only then that we introduce the solution.
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Formatting the creator campaign videos in this way allows for a more seamless integration of the product where we show the benefits without having to sell it. Then three, we end with the CTA. In this case, a custom code.
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The, the GPA video, I, I know which, which one you're talking about, but it was pretty, pretty fun. But people don't have a strong incentive to, to, to download the app. So the conversion is, is not that good.
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But, uh, it was okay, but not that good.
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But, um, for the ones, for example, exercise and you need to download and enter this code to get this exercise, and you can feel that- Um, that, that will have pretty good conversion.
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The structure is pose a problem in your real life, and the viewer does have that problem, and then a solution, which is a mini app, and then the code, which you can download and enter and get that mini app, the solution I provide you.
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So that's the general flow. Yeah. Amazing.
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Thank you for saying that [laughs] because I always try to tell people as well that, like, viral marketing and just aiming for mass reach and, like, it's not going to convert to users.
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And you need to, like, formulate your virality to actually get users on board and make the piece of content make sense whilst aiming for virality for it to lead to users. So appreciate the [laughs] confirmation.
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Ju- just to add to that, um, I, I always feel that we need to give the creative freedom to, um, everyone that, that posts content, and I do.
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And but when I say, uh, I, I like the absurd ideas or free ideas, um, I, I'm saying that i- it's still within this framework that works best for our product.
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It's more about I don't choose which mini app you want to create. People will create, uh, apps that make memes and maybe cut photos.
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Uh, th- these things are things that I would not create, but, uh, if you choose that, that's great. But you still need to follow the problem, please format. Yeah. Amazing.
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Um, more on that, I would kind of love to break down with you then, is there a particular brief that you give to these creators in terms of, like, follow this kind of framework, but you do it in your way and how you would integrate it into your life?
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Or, um, do you just, [laughs] just point out, like, a few points and then creative freedom is up to them? Yeah. I will give them, uh, a brief of course about what the product...
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'Cause it's still pretty new, um, in terms of the concept. M- m- most people haven't used anything that can create apps for them, so the concept needs to be laid down.
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But the brief is pretty, uh, concise, I would say, 1,000, 200- 2,000 words and explain everything with a lot of pictures and links. We have tiers mainly because we are aiming different directions from time to time.
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Sometimes we, we need to show our technology more for the community and mainly for hiring people. Uh, and that's a very different brief from maybe showing our product side.
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I know that's a lot of information probably mainly for, like, TikTok and Instagram, like the different short form pieces of content.
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I would love to dive into X however, 'cause I know you've gone viral on there multiple times as well.
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Do you have, like, a different process that you do or is it, like, similar in terms of, like, creating virality on there? So I, I, I think I'm not that viral on X. Um- [laughs]... we, we still need a lot of work.
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Um, I think our most recent video have 3 million views, but, uh, it's still quite small compared to other, many other people.
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Anyways, so, uh, what we basically do on X is that we, we still found those communities and influencers that may like us or that we can c- cooperate.
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For example, our, I think our second launch on, on X was, uh, more successful, which was at the beginning of December. Uh, it was a tech release about our new technology in Mind Lab, which is the lab that supports Macom.
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Uh, and in that lab we released a few works, which is the reinforcement learning infrastructure that allows us to train the really large models, the trillion size models, and we release our memory algorithm, um, which is really cool 'cause it was, uh, uh, state-of-the-art performance and really impacts the product 'cause, uh, every, every chat is, uh, cooked with memory.
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We released this work and we found, uh, people who have already shown interest in this work on X, and we direct message them, uh, saying that we have this new release coming up and this is our work.
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Uh, it feels like, um, talking to other researchers and, and showing our research results. If you want to, uh, do a rebuttal or, uh, show, show your insights on this work, please do.
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Um, so we DM'd a lot of people, uh, in this direction, and naturally they show, uh, great interest because our work is, it, it, it's, it's still pretty good work and, uh, the work has also contributed to Nvidia and a lot of open source projects.
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So we are very interested and they accept and they just share the work. Definitely.
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I mean, what's good to see about what you've done there, I think is that you've kind of leaned into platform and creator fit, and you're kind of looking into, oh, what is most suitable for the second product launch because obviously it's a little bit more, um, I guess it's more suitable for people who are a little bit tech savvy.
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So you kind of shifted towards X, which is kind of good to see so that you do have that fit. Um, but I'm curious, what do you think has been most successful for you?
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'Cause I, 'cause your product is kind of at, not only is it, like, technologically savvy, but it's also something that a lot of consumers can utilize.
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I'm kind of curious which platform has been most successful for you in terms of actually driving the users that you want to see. TikTok and, and Instagram.
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Uh, these are the, the big ones, and TikTok might be a bit, um... 'Cause, 'cause, uh, it's easier to create a video loop on TikTok, uh, for us. Um, I'm kind of curious then, what are your next...
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Maybe you shouldn't give these away [laughs]. But what are your next plans in terms of, like, your marketing strategies that you're looking to implement further to kind of get to your 1 million, 2 million user mark?
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, there, there, there are a lo- lot of things that we need to do, we want to do, and a big one of them is our website, [laughs] um, building SEO from there.
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And this is because, um- Of course, we have an app, uh, that's for sure. But many small tools we found people created can actually be shared online and, um, actually for one-time use or for search engine use.
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This is important because, uh, it's basically free traffic, 'cause we already have, um, 200,000 apps and many of them can be converted into a single website app. And those app can...
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If each one of them gain 10 traffic, uh, each day, we, we already have two million traffic, which is great. So that's one of our strategy, uh, moving forward.
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So marketing is always connected with act- what, what product feature you are launching, and we are launching something very new, uh, in terms of experience, may not have been seen on the market before.
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Like when we launched Macron, it was a good, good launch. Uh, we, we want to recreate that launch, and maybe people will come from there.
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Uh, it was a research product called Design Experience that, that we have high hope for. Okay. I'm excited. I'm excited to see, um, what comes next.
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I think I'm also curious, are you guys planning to, like, continue on with, I guess, scaling up your viral strategies that you're implementing currently? Um, definitely yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Uh,
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I, I think it will grow with our number of users as well. Um, so we aim to have maybe, maybe 200,000 or 300,000 daily active users, uh, next year, which is a 10X growth from, uh, what we currently have now. Um, so
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we definitely need to scale this. Right now our marketing team is also very small. Um, of course, I, I want it to be more organic, of course. Um, but I, I think it will scale up, uh, as well.
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Um, yeah, definitely scale up. Before we let you go, I would love to know if you have any final words for anyone else building, like, B2C products out there, and some tips you might give to them. Ooh. Okay.
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Um, I, I'm not in a position that I can give advice.
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Uh, I think I'm still fighting this war and, um, the only thing that I found, um, worth sharing is that, uh, we are very different in terms of we train our own model, and we always want to give some experience to a user that's special and never seen on the market before.
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Uh, when you go into this app, that's, that's very different from what you experience.
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And I think you can achieve that with prompt engineering, of course, or context engineering, um, or training a model which is becoming easier and easier today.
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So, um, yeah, if you are creating something that's for consumer, I think people do want to experience something that they've never seen before. I appreciate the tips and the strategies you've shared.
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Um, and thank you for coming on the show. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me today.
