How I Hit 10M Users in Just 1 Year l Creati, Ella Zhang

Intro

00:00To be honest, like our first product looks really rough. We actually only used two weeks. One day we have over like 100 people just flowing this product. Our users actually just you know like doubled. There is huge increase in the user and there's huge increase in the revenue.

00:16That is a time we know okay we hit something right. We have over 10 million downloads in a year and we now have over 10 million annualized revenue within a year. It's not just about fantastic UI, UX or how you're marketing it, right? It's more like what result users are get.

00:32You don't need to wait for the product to be perfect to launch it. Most of the time in the AI era, things will change every day. If you wait too long, you may never be able to launch your product. So, you just need to launch it, develop it, learn from it at the same time.

00:54Hi, I'm Ella. I'm the founder and the CEO of CRY AI. Criti is the agentic AI to augment your marketing video at scale. Just drop one product image and Criti write your script, shoot your video and even do the processing for your marketing video without the need of full media crew.

01:14Cringy is growing pretty fast. We have over 10 million downloads in a year and we now have over 10 million annualized revenue within a year thanks to our network effect between the influencer and the [Music]

Tip1: Apple's Rule: Talk to Your Users in Person

01:33brands. I started my career as actually a hardware engineer at Apple. We are building the first generation of AirPods. We don't even know what product people actually need. So we invite a lot of users to our small interview room and we ask them a lot of questions like what do you need actually for the earpods?

01:53What do you actually have the pinpoints for? Uh things like that. At Apple when we conduct the interviews instead of just doing online surveys we actually more prefer to invite the users to the interview room and conduct like face-toface interviews.

02:07Right? When you ask people to fill out the survey online, people most of time they just, you know, click the first one, whatever they see there, right? Because they want to just jump to the end. No one really want to get their feedback. So you may get the wrong answers.

02:22And another more important thing actually is when you are talk to your users face to face, you actually get more than what you want to ask, right? Like people they always have some assumption that okay maybe user need A b and C but actually user don't care about them like at all right like they only care about what they care about like D but you don't have that on your survey so you'll get the wrong answer that's the reason actually Apple prefer to have face-to-face user interview when they are building a new product and one important thing we learn at Apple is you know you really need to

02:59understand people's pain points you need to really know why people need it when you are building it. We have our like a lot of fantastic ideas or imagination but those are not solving the pain points of real customers and that's not we want right so meeting people or knowing people's pain points actually is the first step when you need to create a great product.

03:21The AirPods project is like it's amazing uh experience for me. Many people said I should stay there for longer. But the thing is that I always pursue for building something new or building something I think I feel most excited for. When I was a child, I found I get information much easier when I get it in the form of video instead of like long text or like blog post or things like that.

03:46So it is always my dream that in the childhood that if one day we could turn a lot of communication the learning the information gathering just in the video format that will be really helpful for a lot of people sometimes you know it's it's pretty pretty hard for people from the giant company to actually quit and really doing the startup when I looking back I really miss the time there at big company enjoying with my friends and my family Still I think I don't regret uh because I am doing what I really passionate about and I believe that will help a lot of people that is more important to

Tip2: Done Is Better Than Perfect

04:31me when I saw the generative AI even it's back in 2020 I believe that one is will change the world and it will be the future because at that time I saw a lot of people they spend over 80% of their time just online instead of offline, right?

04:48So there is a huge trend that people actually are shifting from offline to online and then people will definitely need much much higher demand for the great content online. But on the offset that I saw it's pretty pretty hard for people to create great content right the requirement for great content actually growing higher and higher.

05:07The supply of the great content actually uh have a huge gap between the supply and the demand. I'm pretty certain that you know it's only the technology which could like merge the gap and help people with that. That's a time that I think okay even though I am not experts I don't know a lot about software or I don't know a lot about AI but you know I can always learn once I find the motivation I would know what I want to do and I can shift to that and I can learn that pretty quickly to be honest like our first product looks really rough.

05:43We don't have really fantastic UX or UI. We even don't have the batch mode in the beginning. But that's totally okay. You know, like sometimes when the product is really rough, but users still, you know, like willing to use it, that means something.

05:59If you have a really like bad design product, but people are still using it. They're like, okay, there's some real value thing in that one. It's not just about fantastic UI, UX, or how you're marketing it, right? It's more like what result users are get whether they can use it to get the benefit they want.

06:18You don't need to wait for the product to be perfect to launch it because you know like most of the time in the AI era like things will change every day. If you wait too long you may never be able to launch your product. So you just need to launch it, develop it, learn from it.

06:34At the same

Tip3: Don't Chase Trends, Chase User Needs

06:41time, there's one lesson I learned as a founder or I will say the most painful lesson I learned. Our first product actually is called ZMO.ai. At the time I was building Zmo. I'm not sure like why I'm building this like why people need this.

06:56The thing is at the time me journey is super hot. Everyone is chasing that right. So just like so many other founders, I'm like, "Okay, text to image is so popular. We definitely need to enter this domain. So let's do it." But I don't really know why people are generating those images.

07:12So I don't really understand the users need. When I was building the product, we actually don't know what the business model will be and we even don't know what the next step will be, right? So the revenue actually doesn't go that high as the users grow, right?

07:28and we suddenly just get lost right we don't know like why people are using it like why some people pay why some people don't pay for it when we have this difficulty the only thing I can think about is talking to your customers right that is a thing I learned from Apple we do email our users or most active users email them like over 500 and finally we get 300 actually we have the face toface conversation with them because I believe talk to the users is the only way we can find whether there is a true need or what do they really need after talking to more than like 300 users we find that a lot

08:10of people they create the images it's just out of curiosity the AI is so new to them they just want to try it out but they do a small group of people they they actually do have the need for it not designers they don't know how to create all those cool images they do need actually those content for themselves for their company uh for marketing.

08:33So we're like okay we finally find people who have real needs for that. Most of them who are on Amazon or eBay or Etsy they actually use their phone directly to take the photos of their product. So they hope that okay the social media is also on the phone photos and the videos are also on the phone.

08:53it will make him much more sense if you just build the product on the model. After talking to them, we finally made the decision. Okay, we will reposition this product and we will build it for people who really have the needs which is marketing and we will also shift it actually from the PC side to mobile.

09:10That's the time when the pivot is happening.

Tip4: The Growth Flywheel Behind $10M ARR

09:18We are building the mobile version of creati in a way that it's not actually just a tool but it's more like a community for both influencers and the brands. The reason actually we have features or templates for both influencers and brands is actually we find if some brands they want to do marketing it's impossible actually to avoid uh the influencers contribution because influencers they are the people who actually know best about the social media who actually know much better about what content is more engaging and more attractive to users.

09:54So when we are building creat from day one we know okay we need to create the actually the network effect between the influencers and the brands they they know the internet so well after they create the template they will also will post those videos uh on their own channel on the social media and if that video templates actually is a great one that video will actually go viral it will actually get millions or tens of millions of views right and Those viral videos actually is the best marketing strategy for us to acquire more and more brands because when the video go viral that will bring

10:34a lot of lot of users to the createl the end of funnel there will be the brands that will really use this video templates to create their engaging ads video. So the brands actually when they are using those brands as video they will pay more uh to create this platform so that we can hire more influencers in the community and the influencer can create more viral video templates for the brands.

10:56So it's actually a very nice flywheel actually we're building between the influencers and the brands and we believe that is the key differentiation CR is have compared to all other like AI marketing tools is because we believe the ecosystem actually need both sides.

11:13We need both influencers and brands to help them to grow marketing at scale.

Tip5: Adapt Fast. Users Are the Signal

11:26The AI world just changed daily. Every day you wake up, there will be new technology and new product, right? And I think building in the AI era is quite different from like 20 to 30 years ago when people are just enter the mobile boom. The thing is actually I believe maybe 99% or maybe all the products that you saw today maybe not the final version of what they will be at the end of AI evolution.

11:54The requirement for the founder in the AI era for AI startup actually is kind of different from previously because those founders really need to adapt really quickly and flexibility to those changes. And one thing we think actually is helping us to adapt to all those changes is we talk to our users every day and to learn what is the key thing that won't change even if the technology change.

12:23So the thing that we find out you know is what kind of content will go pretty like viral on the social media is all the things that our users or our customers care about. Even though technologies change, the important thing is once you get those industry insider data and knowledge uh for that vertical that will build your mode and that will actually be your key value along with those all technology changes daily or those technology change will just help you instead of you know like disrupted to your product.