Founder Playbook · Starter Story
8 tactics from David Park
The $10M AI SaaS Playbook
Watch the full episode“A video with 10,000 views that somehow hits the pocket of viewers that love your product and they're immediately evangelized I would say that is like very viral and you did a good job of creating content that was able to go viral in this pocket with this community that's worth infinitely more than a viral video that got a million views but it's a lukewarm meme.”
Real Virality Is Infecting The Right Pocket, Not Chasing View Counts
David redefines virality as resonance with the right pocket of viewers, not raw view counts. A 10,000-view video that evangelizes the right community beats a million-view lukewarm meme every time.
“You want to post pretty frequently just every single day you should be posting at least one video in my opinion just farming hooks finding what works learning each time having a spreadsheet just having a bunch of different ideas for content and then cutting off branches okay these ones I've tested this thoroughly this is not working cut off these.”
Post Daily, Kill Losing Branches, And Pull Harder On What Shows Signal
David treats content as a tree of hypotheses, posting at least one video a day and tracking each hook in a spreadsheet. Branches that fail get pruned, while branches that show signal get pulled on harder until something breaks through.
“We had a series called point of view you have a paper do or point of view an essay do and it was just a ridiculous plot of someone realizing that they have an essay do and then running to the computer and then we showcase Jenny we probably posted that exact same video two times a week for maybe half a year and that's done hundreds of millions of views.”
Turn One Viral Hook Into A Series And Run It Twice A Week For Half A Year
Once David found a viral hook at Jenny AI, he turned it into a repeatable series and posted near-identical versions twice a week for six months. The single format pulled hundreds of millions of views, tens of thousands of paid users, and over $500K in revenue.
“to create a truly viral video you have to understand what your viewers want to see which you have to ask yourself like who are your viewers what are their interests what are they currently watching why are they watching it and how can you create content even more engaging than what they're currently watching”
Ask Users For Their Instagram Handles And Reverse-Engineer Who They Already Follow
David argues the highest-leverage research is understanding what your users already watch. He asks users for their Instagram handles, then mines who they follow to find influencers worth sponsoring and content formats worth copying.
“When you have Instagram or Tik Tok deliver you influencers with kind of their own algorithm you can be sure that these influencers organically will appear on people's algorithms like they're still being served up to people”
Let Instagram And TikTok Algorithms Surface Live Influencers For You
David creates a fresh Instagram account that follows influencers his ideal users already watch, then lets the algorithm surface similar creators. This filters out influencers whose reach has quietly faded so he only sponsors people whose videos still get distributed.
“when you post them you don't want to just post it with the Tik Tok Watermark obviously that's like the most obvious thing but also you want to actually rewrite the text in the hook within each of these native platforms it helps with like the SEO of the video”
Rewrite The On-Screen Hook Natively When You Cross-Post To Each Platform
When reposting one video across Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts, David rewrites the on-screen hook text natively on each platform. This helps SEO inside each platform and avoids signaling that you're just farming clips from elsewhere.
“When it comes to sponsoring influencers it what matters more to me is not really the floor of are they consistently getting 5,000 10,000 100,000 views what matters way more to me is the ceiling do they have at least one or two videos that gets 1 million 2 million 10 million views.”
Bet On The Ceiling Not The Floor When Picking Influencers To Sponsor
David evaluates influencers by their ceiling, not their floor. A creator with one or two breakout hits in the millions is worth more than someone with a steady but capped average, because influencer marketing is a hit-driven game where one viral video makes up for every flop.
“You should try to avoid paying Upfront for the video and most May pay half upfront this because most influencers are fantastic people but some influencers will just try and drop a half-ass video once they get the money into their account and also generally just lose all of your leverage once the payment is completed you want to try to split some of the payment so that some percent of it comes from the number of conversions that they bring you.”
Never Pay Influencers 100% Upfront — Tie Some Of It To Tracked Conversions
David structures deals to keep leverage after the wire transfer. Half upfront at most, with the rest tied to conversions tracked via coupon code or UTM, so the creator stays invested in actually making the video work rather than dropping a half-effort clip and disappearing.