How Gas app went viral and made $1M in 3 months
How Gas app went viral and made $1M in 3 months
“I want to make $1 million dollars in 3 months.”
That’s what Nikita Bier told his friends in a group chat about their current work plans. So with a team of four engineers all living in his house in LA, they created the Gas app and launched it in August 2022.
And on October 23, 2022, Nikita tweeted that they reached $1 million in sales.
Instant #1 on App Store charts
Launched only in a few states (which makes being #1 even more impressive), the app lets you send compliments to your friends and classmates through polls.
Here's how it works: after you sync up your location and contacts, people anonymously vote for their friends in a round of polls that refresh every hour. The topics range from friendly superlatives to flirtatious confessions. If you win a poll, a "flame" gets sent to your inbox.
This is where people’s burning curiosity turns into major profit.
In-app purchases that popped up saying “subscribe for $6.99/week to see who voted for you”
$28/month. Double the price of netflix for people to see who likes them.
And teens happily paid for that information.
Going viral is a skill
This isn’t Nikita’s first viral app. He launched and sold tbh app back in 2017 to facebook for a reported $100 million.
It quickly shut down after, but that’s where Nikita took his learnings to improve on Gas app.
For example, he’s not trying to become snapchat and be valued at multi-billions or focused on retention. He’s really just looking to build something exciting, go viral, and cash out.
No shame in that.
Gas was focused on positivity and smaller social circles and was still able to go viral and generate millions in revenue.
He wrote about his experience in social apps to help any inspiring entrepreneurs in this twitter thread
Going viral in two moves
To get people to notice and become curious about the app, they would first create instagram accounts with the high school and brand name together. For example, @gas.georgiahigh
They would make the account private, then follow everyone associated with that high school. As the students would request to follow back so they can see the profile, they would not accept anyone.
Second, at 3:00pm on the day before launch, when all the teens got out of school at the same time, they accept everyone at the same time.
So every student is getting the same notification at the same time, showing each other and talking about it, to then go to the profile directing them to download gas to “see who likes you.”
The main thing about going viral is to have people talking and sharing your product for you. A great way to do that is leave out certain information to build up curiosity and speculation.
That and feed into people’s deep desires of being liked and wanted.
So don’t be boring, make people feel important.