Wrestle AI

Build the vertical users keep asking for. George's general martial arts app, Fight AI, made about $1,000 at pure margin from posts by him and his friends. When people kept asking whether it did wrestling, he built Wrestle AI for that niche.

Fight AI began as a personal tool: users upload a training video and get told what they did right and wrong. George, who is not technical and wrestled in high school, later repeated the format for boxing with Brawler, and an MMA app is in the works.

Superwall▶ 3:33

Pair a validated product with the niche's top creator as a partner. George had the validation and wrestling creator Kaden Henshaw had the audience, so they went 50/50 on Wrestle AI. Other influencers were sponsored only after the partnership began.

They had no agreement beyond the 50/50 split, which George calls luck. He recommends setting minimum posts and vesting up front in any similar deal.

Superwall▶ 8:23

Reach big creators through a warm intro run by a DM assistant. George's first hire was a VA who ran Instagram DMs. Instead of messaging Kaden directly, the VA messaged someone who knew him, which led to a reply, then email, then a phone number.

George spotted the mutual connection in the "followed by" line on Kaden's profile minutes before a sponsor call, and scrapped that call. "The first hire you have is getting someone to run your DMs through your Instagram."

Superwall▶ 5:27

A creator-hyped pre-order made launch day a surge. Kaden pushed a pre-order and asked everyone to order ahead. The first week brought $8K and launch day hit number 19 in Sports, briefly ahead of the NFL app.

The pre-order started almost a year before recording. Kaden's later announcement that the whole product was rebuilt also did well.

Superwall▶ 8:23

In a niche with no app competitors, a few creators go very far. Wrestle AI passed 100,000 downloads with about 10 creators and no paid ads until the week before recording. As the only wrestling app, its audience had never seen an app sponsorship.

George's sequence: prove the offer with influencers, then move to paid ads, which scale further, expecting to burn about $2K in the first 2 weeks while the pixel learns. "If you have a smaller budget, you could 10x your money with influencers."

Superwall▶ 29:45

Match uploads spread the app through teams by word of mouth. During the season, revenue rose while views stayed flat, because teammates in one room see a match being uploaded. In January, a quarter to a half of revenue came from word of mouth, with about 1.2 to 1.3 word-of-mouth customers per paying customer.

The season runs September to March, so revenue is seasonal; Wrestle AI has the most total revenue of George's apps but not in the off-season month of recording. The off-season plan is to sign as many of the few wrestling influencers as possible.

Superwall▶ 3:33

Stitch videos that call out another clip convert well as ads. Kaden stitched a clip of a coach calling out moves, pitching that the app calls them so no coach is needed. Creator videos became ads only once paid spend started.

The move-calling feature uses Kaden's own recorded voice for every combo, matched randomly, not voice AI.

Superwall

Ranking videos flop organically but work as paid ads. Kaden ranked wrestling apps, naming the notes app and MyFitnessPal before Wrestle AI. Joseph Choi suggests rankings build trust because they aren't shilling one app.

A viewer forced to watch an ad doesn't mind it if it is all value and educational.

Superwall

Clear ads beat polished ones because the product sells itself. The selling angle is a wrestler uploading a match and seeing their mistakes. Across George's apps, raw screen recordings and talking-head ads beat high-production creatives, which returned zero revenue.

The call to action should land in the first 15 seconds. George admits attribution is "kind of cooked," so CPA and ROAS figures are shaky. "It's everything is clarity."

Superwall

Onboarding teaches the core feature, then asks pain-point questions before the paywall. The flow shows the main analysis, adds social proof and an attribution question, asks about attack style and weight struggles, builds a program, then shows a paywall with an example breakdown. The paywall is $59 a year or $9.99 a month, chosen about 50/50.

All three of George's apps use this format. Wrestle AI was the only one with a free trial, and George is testing removing it.

Superwall▶ 19:49

A daily weight-class calorie tracker fixed long gaps between matches. Wrestlers only analyze a match when they compete, so usage was sparse. A calorie tracker built for weight classes gave them a reason to open the app daily, and George says it "helped our retention a ton."

Monthly subscribers have about a $40 12-month LTV. No data is given isolating the tracker's effect.

Superwall▶ 20:20

Seed a social feed with sponsored creators to beat cold start. Wrestle AI added a TikTok-style feed, and every sponsored creator must post into it. A simple point-based algorithm heavily favors new content, since a paid app has few posts.

"Come for the tool, stay for the community aspect." No retention data is given for the feed.

Superwall▶ 38:10

Copy Duolingo's notifications and tie them to each user's actions. The team reverse-engineered Duolingo's best notifications and sends at least one a day tied to past behavior, like tracking calories again or beating a run record. Non-payers after onboarding get "don't give up on yourself" messages.

They do not yet track which notifications drive clicks.

Superwall▶ 41:16

Explain complex features with short demo videos. An influencer filmed the wrong feature because a button was unclear, so the team now uses short demo videos to explain complex features.

Superwall