Founder Playbook · Starter Story
8 tactics from Jack Ficks
I Built a $10K/Month App from My Mom’s Basement
Watch the full episode“For Curiosity Quench as an example I posted a video 60 seconds on TikTok. I just point and shoot recorded it talking to the camera and 15 people commented saying 'I need this this is it this is good.' So I kept making videos, the same thing happened, and eventually I realized hey I should probably make this thing that hundreds of people say they want.”
Shoot A 60-Second Selfie TikTok And Count The “I Need This” Comments Before Writing Code
Jack validated Curiosity Quench by filming a single 60-second selfie TikTok describing the idea — no landing page, no pre-orders. When 15 strangers commented 'I need this,' he kept posting; when hundreds said it across more videos, he built. The signal is unsolicited 'I need this' comments, not likes or views.
“My process is actually pure chaos. I basically jump into my code editor, I bring up ChatGPT or something similar and I just start asking how I should go about building the thing. And in terms of landing page I have just used like a boilerplate and I have made very small improvements. I'd go back and edit one section at a time usually and just make it a little bit better week over week.”
Start From A Boilerplate And Refine One Landing-Page Section Per Week
Jack doesn't design — he starts from a boilerplate (ShipFast) and ships immediately, then improves one landing-page section per week. Build velocity comes from accepting 'pure chaos' early and refining incrementally instead of polishing before launch. The site gets better one block at a time while real users are already arriving.
“My core strategy is to do everything through organic. To get Curiosity Quench to 100,000 users was just finding a template that I can repeat over and over and over again — a very funny simple 2x2 images caption template, it's 6 seconds long, and having the pinned comment be go download and try our app... I posted the 2x2 template over now 300 times on two different accounts and they've driven 60 to 70,000 signups.”
Find One Six-Second 2x2-Image Template And Repeat It Three Hundred Times To Hit 100K Users
Jack got 100K users from a single 6-second 2x2-image template posted 300+ times across accounts, with the CTA hidden in the pinned comment instead of the video. Once a format wins, don't get creative — recreate the exact same video and milk it until it stops converting. Engagement-bait captions (mixing up astrology/astronomy on purpose) farm comment volume the algorithm rewards.
“First I would open account on TikTok and Instagram for my product or a personal page either one works and I would just scroll on those pages for 2 days 15 minutes a day each this is to warm it up so the algorithms don't think you're a bot... when you see videos that have went viral save them do not post content during this time comment and follow people in your niche.”
Warm Every New TikTok Or IG Account For Two Days Before You Post Anything
Before posting anything, Jack spends 2 days on each platform scrolling, commenting, and following accounts in his niche for 15 minutes daily so the algorithm reads him as human. During the warm-up he saves viral videos in his niche as a swipe file of proven formats to spin up later in CapCut.
“I spend 1 hour a day marketing I post the videos same day I usually don't schedule them far out just because I can iterate way faster... I run three Instagram accounts to split up my videos because I want to try and spread all of them out by at least 3 or 4 hours I don't want the algorithm to think I'm spamming it.”
Post Same-Day Instead Of Batching So You Can Iterate On Winning Formats In Real Time
Jack refuses to batch a month of content because daily posting lets him iterate on what's working that week instead of locking in a dead template. He splits volume across 3 IG accounts with 3-4 hour gaps and never reuses the same video+metadata, since modern algorithms now detect duplicate uploads.
“What's really important is onboarding. Basically before you get to showing that pay wall, for them to pay tell them what the problem you're solving is and how you're going to solve it. Make them get excited about it cuz they're going to be way more primed to actually spend money on your thing when they know it's going to help them.”
Prime The Paywall By Selling The Problem In Onboarding Before You Ever Show The Price
Jack uses a skippable paywall on Curiosity Quench, but the conversion lever is the onboarding flow that precedes it. He spends those screens articulating the user's painful problem and how the app solves it, so prospects reach the paywall already convinced rather than cold. Problem framing is the paywall's pre-sell.
“For web for PostBridge my SAS, I did experiment a lot with yearly pricing, but what worked even better for me was a 7-day free trial. There's no free version. You just put your credit card in if you want to try it. You can cancel anytime. That was really helpful for me. Free trials and 40% discount on yearly or a big discount are two really simple things that I did that drove revenue up a lot.”
Beat Yearly-Only Pricing With A Credit-Card 7-Day Trial Plus A 40 Percent Yearly Discount
Jack tested yearly-pricing-first on PostBridge but a 7-day credit-card-required free trial outperformed it, with no free tier as an escape hatch. Pairing the trial with a roughly 40% yearly discount were the two pricing changes he credits with materially lifting revenue — the trial captures intent, the yearly anchor captures the upgrade.
“My cost for running these businesses is Twitter API, that costs $200 a month. The other bills are just hosting the websites, the database — usually I think it's around $400 a month is what I pay. Very good margins, like over 95%.”
Run Two Apps At $10K MRR On $600 Of Costs And 95-Plus Percent Margins From Pure Organic
Two apps generating $10K MRR run on ~$600/month in fixed costs: $200 Twitter API plus ~$400 hosting and database. Zero ad spend (everything is organic TikTok/Instagram), no employees, ShipFast boilerplate plus Supabase to skip infra work. Living in mom's basement keeps personal burn near zero, so the margin actually compounds into runway.