Imagine launching your product today and 2 months later selling it to Facebook for $30,000,000!

Whooping 30. million. dollars. in 9 weeks!

That's the case of @nikitabier and his team when they launched the tbh app

This is how they did it leveraging psychology in marketing

1. What's the tbh app?

In short, tbh app allowed teenagers to anonymously complement each other through a series of polls, which workers well for validation-seeking teenagers.

The app only allowed for 12 polls per hour. The user never got sick of it and always craved for more.

2. On Aug 3, 2017, Nikita Bier and his team were close to bankruptcy. They had funds for another 2 weeks of work.

That's when the tbh app was launched

3. On Aug 5, 2017, they chose to launch tbh in high school in Georgia because it had the earliest semester start date

Aug 7, 2017 - 40% of the Georgia high school had downloaded the app. The app has also had spread to three more schools.

4. The tbh had blown up with teens on Instagram.
The company would visit high schools' location page and using their own Instagram account followed all high schoolers' accounts that included the school’s name.

5. They made their own account private and left a mysterious CTA in their bio "You're invited to tbh at ANHS. Stay tuned."

Teens were naturally curious and would send a follow request.

6. At 4:00PM when high schoolers got out @nikitabier would add the App Store URL to the profile and made the profile Public.

This notified all students at the same time that their Follow Request had been accepted.
Curious students would follow the link from bio to the app

7. By collecting users' interest first, and later on contacting them simultaneously, they ensured critical mass during launch hour.

They would make one Instagram account for each high school it wanted to target.

8. Sep 15, 2017 - tbh was ranked #1 in the U.S. App Store

Oct 2017 - tbh hit 5M downloads and 2.5M daily active users in 9 weeks, without buying a single ad or doing a single interview

9. Oct 16, 2017 - Facebook acquired tbh for an estimated $30,000,000

July 2, 2018 - Facebook announced that tbh would be discontinued, due to low usage

9. Was it all? Well, not...

The app was designed specifically for viral growth.

Before using the app, you needed to grant the app access to your address book to invite others later on.

10. In tbh app you needed gems to unlock more features. To collect gems you needed to either answer more polls or gain new followers - with a mere click of a button

Every profile had its own unique link that users could be easily copied and shared to Snapchat.

11. Most companies go for an all-access immediate approach. They overestimate the demand for their product or service, thereby ruining the "restricted access" growth hack.

Clubhouse did it with an "invite-only" approach.
Tbh app did it with geofence allowing 1 state at a time

12. Kids built hype speculating when it would finally arrive to their state.

This type of limited release aroused exclusivity and blew up demand - FOMO FTW_/

13. Of course, there's more to it, but this thread is already way too long.

You can read more about it here: https://kickstartsidehustle.com/tbh-hn/ 

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