Glam Up
A consumer app whose founders grew it through short-form UGC videos.
Glam Up hit a million users in 6 months and over $600K total revenue, peaking near $150K MRR, using one repeated before-and-after TikTok slideshow, referral codes in comments, and a hard paywall. Tripling the weekly price from $3 to $9 raised conversion. Lesson: lock one viral format, repeat it across many accounts, gate results behind payment, and test higher prices.
- 1Test formats on own accountsEach founder warmed up about three accounts
- 2Lock one viral formatBefore-and-after slideshow; first post 10M views
- 3Repeat it exactlySame caption, hashtags, about 10 audios
- 4Scale to trained creators30 to 40 creators, taught by course
- 5Grow the creator networkOver a thousand creators, 200+ active
From Nicole on Glam Up's growth
What was said about Glam Up
1How Glam Up started and reached a million users
Glam Up adapted a proven app, Umax, for women and shipped fast. The idea and name were settled in one 10-minute call, and the first MVP took about 3 to 4 weeks and barely worked. Distribution was worked on at the same time.
Nicole's co-founder Aaron was in the same H0 cohort as Umax's founder, so he saw its growth early. Nicole started it from her bedroom while in school, with no engineering background.
A gentler angle on makeup and skincare set it apart from face scoring. Umax scores jawlines and facial structure, which the team found toxic for women, so Glam Up focused on skincare, makeup and products. It reached a million users in 6 months, passed $600K in total revenue and peaked around 150K MRR.
They stopped work at a million users, and leftover distribution brought roughly 2 million downloads. Plans were weekly and monthly only, with no annual plan.
A copycat with a similar name sent Glam Up about $100K in a week. After tweets about its revenue exposed Glam Up, someone cloned it with a near-identical name. The clone did not rank on the App Store, so when its videos went viral the traffic landed on Glam Up, which hit number three on the App Store and briefly beat Tinder and Hinge.
The copycat's viral tests may also have helped Nicole's team find the format they then scaled.
2The before-and-after TikTok slideshow and the creator network
Lock one viral format and repeat it exactly across many accounts. Glam Up reused one faceless before-and-after makeup slideshow with the same two or three line on-screen caption, caption, hashtags and about 10 audios. The very first post got 10 million views, and hundreds to thousands of near-identical posts got millions of views a day.
Latina makeup slideshows, color theories, celebrities and tutorials all flopped first. Text had to be small and off-center in a Gen Z style, and deviating stopped posts going viral. Images were Pinterest photos with makeup removed about 10 times in another app, then enhanced, to avoid using real users' photos.
Go viral yourself first, then scale with trained creators. Nicole and her co-founder each warmed up about three accounts and tested formats; once one worked they scaled to 30 to 40 creators. A course covered account setup, warm-up and details like text size.
The same system on Sprout grew to over a thousand creators, with 200+ active at once, paid $10 to $30 per post plus view bonuses. "once we found a viral strategy, that's when we just scaled immediately."
3Blurred results and referral codes in TikTok comments
- 1Scan face, results blurredPay, or invite three friends
- 2Share invite templateAbout 1.6 million share requests
- 3Codes flood TikTok commentsTemplate says download Glam Up
- 4Name ranks in TikTok searchNew searchers find Glam Up content
From Nicole on Glam Up's growth
Gate scan results behind a paywall or an invite-three-friends unlock. After a face scan, results were blurred with two options: pay to view, or invite three friends to unlock free. The app logged about 1.6 million share requests, and conversion did not drop much because getting three friends to install and onboard is slow, so many sharers paid anyway.
The target audience is 13 to 25, so young users who would not pay posted their codes in TikTok comments. The friend receiving a code gets no reward.
Put the app name in the referral share template to rank in search. The share action pasted a template saying to download Glam Up and use the code, not a bare code. Thousands of comments containing "Glam Up" made the name rank on TikTok search, so a fresh account searching it saw mostly their content.
The comments also lifted engagement on the videos. Nicole admits part of the ranking may be hindsight bias, since "Glam Up" is also a popular phrase.
4Pricing and the paywall stack
Tripling the weekly price from $3 to $9 raised conversion. Glam Up's price increase lifted conversion, and on her newest app a 20% rise on monthly and annual plans raised both conversion and revenue per download; she is testing another 20%.
Her theory is that demand for an app people really want is inelastic and a low price signals low value, but she admits she cannot say why it worked. "your demand for it is relatively inelastic."
A hard paywall right after onboarding beat letting users explore first. On her newest app, showing the hard paywall immediately after onboarding gave a 50% conversion increase over letting users explore.
Dismissing the hard paywall triggers a 50% off paywall. Weekly prices of $8.99, $10.99 and $12.99 dropped to $4.49, $5.49 and $6.49 the moment a user closed the paywall. A third paywall offers a higher tier when users run out of scans.
Plans allow two or four scans a week across many scan types, including color analysis and a glow up guide with six makeup guides, which pushes paying users to upgrade.
Run the expensive API only after the user pays. The face scan before payment was fake and the result blurred; the real API call ran only after purchase, so no API cost was spent on non-paying users.
5Onboarding that primes users, and the rating prompt
Use onboarding questions to make users feel they need the app. Questions about beauty goals and skin concerns prime users, and a tailored plan then makes them want to use it more. Nicole ranks priming above collecting analytics as onboarding's main purpose.
Requiring an "I rated it" tap lifted ratings but feels manipulative. After the native rating pop-up, users could only continue by tapping a big "I rated it" button, so some claimed ratings they never left. Founders who copied it told her it raised their App Store ratings.
Her current co-founder is uncomfortable with it, so the newest app just offers "leave a rating" then continue, and she says it still works. "we're kind of forcing people to lie if they didn't rate."
The UGC Marketing Playbook Behind 300M+ Monthly Views
With no budget, Nicole and her co-founders made the first videos go viral themselves, and only scaled with paid creators once a format worked. Her own tested formats and screenplay-style scripts drive the content creators repeat.
Glam Up adapted a proven app, Umax, for women and shipped fast. The idea and name were settled in one 10-minute call, and the first MVP took about 3 to 4 weeks and barely worked. Distribution was worked on at the same time.
Nicole's co-founder Aaron was in the same H0 cohort as Umax's founder, so he saw its growth early. Nicole started it from her bedroom while in school, with no engineering background.
A gentler angle on makeup and skincare set it apart from face scoring. Umax scores jawlines and facial structure, which the team found toxic for women, so Glam Up focused on skincare, makeup and products. It reached a million users in 6 months, passed $600K in total revenue and peaked around 150K MRR.
They stopped work at a million users, and leftover distribution brought roughly 2 million downloads. Plans were weekly and monthly only, with no annual plan.
A copycat with a similar name sent Glam Up about $100K in a week. After tweets about its revenue exposed Glam Up, someone cloned it with a near-identical name. The clone did not rank on the App Store, so when its videos went viral the traffic landed on Glam Up, which hit number three on the App Store and briefly beat Tinder and Hinge.
The copycat's viral tests may also have helped Nicole's team find the format they then scaled.
Lock one viral format and repeat it exactly across many accounts. Glam Up reused one faceless before-and-after makeup slideshow with the same two or three line on-screen caption, caption, hashtags and about 10 audios. The very first post got 10 million views, and hundreds to thousands of near-identical posts got millions of views a day.
Latina makeup slideshows, color theories, celebrities and tutorials all flopped first. Text had to be small and off-center in a Gen Z style, and deviating stopped posts going viral. Images were Pinterest photos with makeup removed about 10 times in another app, then enhanced, to avoid using real users' photos.
Go viral yourself first, then scale with trained creators. Nicole and her co-founder each warmed up about three accounts and tested formats; once one worked they scaled to 30 to 40 creators. A course covered account setup, warm-up and details like text size.
The same system on Sprout grew to over a thousand creators, with 200+ active at once, paid $10 to $30 per post plus view bonuses. "once we found a viral strategy, that's when we just scaled immediately."
Gate scan results behind a paywall or an invite-three-friends unlock. After a face scan, results were blurred with two options: pay to view, or invite three friends to unlock free. The app logged about 1.6 million share requests, and conversion did not drop much because getting three friends to install and onboard is slow, so many sharers paid anyway.
The target audience is 13 to 25, so young users who would not pay posted their codes in TikTok comments. The friend receiving a code gets no reward.
Put the app name in the referral share template to rank in search. The share action pasted a template saying to download Glam Up and use the code, not a bare code. Thousands of comments containing "Glam Up" made the name rank on TikTok search, so a fresh account searching it saw mostly their content.
The comments also lifted engagement on the videos. Nicole admits part of the ranking may be hindsight bias, since "Glam Up" is also a popular phrase.
Tripling the weekly price from $3 to $9 raised conversion. Glam Up's price increase lifted conversion, and on her newest app a 20% rise on monthly and annual plans raised both conversion and revenue per download; she is testing another 20%.
Her theory is that demand for an app people really want is inelastic and a low price signals low value, but she admits she cannot say why it worked. "your demand for it is relatively inelastic."
A hard paywall right after onboarding beat letting users explore first. On her newest app, showing the hard paywall immediately after onboarding gave a 50% conversion increase over letting users explore.
Dismissing the hard paywall triggers a 50% off paywall. Weekly prices of $8.99, $10.99 and $12.99 dropped to $4.49, $5.49 and $6.49 the moment a user closed the paywall. A third paywall offers a higher tier when users run out of scans.
Plans allow two or four scans a week across many scan types, including color analysis and a glow up guide with six makeup guides, which pushes paying users to upgrade.
Run the expensive API only after the user pays. The face scan before payment was fake and the result blurred; the real API call ran only after purchase, so no API cost was spent on non-paying users.
Use onboarding questions to make users feel they need the app. Questions about beauty goals and skin concerns prime users, and a tailored plan then makes them want to use it more. Nicole ranks priming above collecting analytics as onboarding's main purpose.
Requiring an "I rated it" tap lifted ratings but feels manipulative. After the native rating pop-up, users could only continue by tapping a big "I rated it" button, so some claimed ratings they never left. Founders who copied it told her it raised their App Store ratings.
Her current co-founder is uncomfortable with it, so the newest app just offers "leave a rating" then continue, and she says it still works. "we're kind of forcing people to lie if they didn't rate."
she makes $400k/mo from ai apps (while in college)
Reached a million users in 6 months and passed $600K total revenue, with about 150K MRR at peak. Grew through a repeated before-and-after TikTok slideshow, referral codes in comments, and a hard paywall; tripling the weekly price from $3 to $9 raised conversion.
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