Founder Playbook · Starter Story
8 tactics from Alejandro
How We Grew Our App to $30K/Month
Watch the full episode“i basically made a fake product demo and it got 80k views. there were people literally begging us in the comments to build this app and so we had to build it as soon as possible”
Post fake TikTok demo with 80K views to validate idea before writing code
Using AI footage and stock clips to simulate an app that didn't exist, Alejandro validated demand before a single line of code was written. The 80K views and 500+ comments begging them to build gave a pre-sold audience and eliminated all guesswork about whether to invest development time.
“our business model is really simple we just make everyone pay it's a hard wall and takes around $30 a year”
Hard paywall at $30/year converts 1.3% of downloads to $30K monthly revenue
Rather than a freemium funnel, Push School enforced a non-negotiable paywall from day one, converting roughly 4,000 of 300,000 downloads into paying customers. The $30/year price point was low enough to reduce purchase friction while the hard wall filtered for committed users and kept revenue predictable.
“we launched the app with another tik tok video and in that video we said that the app would be for free for all the users who download within the first week we got around 20k to 30k downloads from that”
Free for first-week downloaders only drove 20K–30K launch installs
Combining a launch video with a time-limited free offer created urgency and rewarded early adopters, producing 20K-30K downloads in week one. The hard paywall for everyone else simultaneously validated willingness to pay, giving them two signals — demand volume and price acceptance — in a single launch.
“the hook here was what if you could stop your doom scrolling addiction by doing 20 push-ups and with a hook you want to make it as clear as possible such that even a 5-year-old can understand it you should make sure that there is a curiosity gap”
Hook needs a curiosity gap even a 5-year-old immediately understands
The push-ups curiosity gap — what do push-ups have to do with stopping doom scrolling — made viewers stop and watch. A clear, novel hook is the most important element of a viral validation video, because a bad hook makes it impossible to know whether the idea or the execution failed.
“you've got to watch all the videos in your niche interact with them by commenting saving sharing or reposting and following as many creators as you can this also signals tiktok that you're not a bot and it prevents you from getting shadowbanned later on”
Warm a new TikTok account by consuming niche content before your first upload
Actively engaging with niche content trains the TikTok algorithm to correctly categorize the account and avoids shadowban penalties before the first real video goes live. This pre-upload step costs nothing but meaningfully increases distribution reach on the videos that matter.
“our mvp was literally three screens a half broken push-up detector a screen to choose what apps you want to block and a screen that blocks those apps unless you've exercised all of this ended up being rewritten later if it's ugly it's okay it doesn't have to scale”
Ship an ugly three-screen broken MVP in two weeks and plan to rewrite it
Shipping a visibly unfinished MVP in two weeks let them capture the viral momentum from their TikTok before it faded. The willingness to let it be broken and plan to rewrite everything later kept them from over-engineering before product-market fit was confirmed.
“i built other startups but they all failed because i ignored distribution so i decided to master virality first and after a week of daily uploads one of the videos blew up which then ended up being the push school idea”
Master distribution before building — every past startup failed without it
Alejandro explicitly reframed his approach after repeated distribution failures: spend weeks mastering the channel before committing to a product. This mindset shift — treating TikTok virality as a skill to drill rather than luck to stumble into — is what produced the validation video that became Push School.
“we have a full-blown journey tab to lingo style to keep you engaged and workouts where you literally have to do a series of exercises in order to earn your screen time”
Duolingo-style streak mechanics drive daily re-engagement in a habit app
Borrowing Duolingo's progression and streak mechanics gave Push School users an intrinsic reason to return daily beyond the core app-blocking feature. Tying screen-time access directly to completed workout series created a habit loop that made the app stickier than a simple content blocker.