The Startup Ideas Podcast - He built a $20K/month SaaS solo from his bedroom

Episode Date: June 11, 2025

Join me as I chat with Jack Friks to discuss driving free traffic to mobile apps through organic social media marketing on Instagram and TikTok. He details a specific approach that involves creating a fresh account, studying successful content in your niche, and consistently posting while iterating on formats until finding one that generates significant views. Jack emphasizes that success requires patience, often taking 30-100 posts before finding a winning formula. Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction and overview 01:52 - What viewers will learn from the episode 03:21 - Explanation of organic social media marketing approach 05:30 - How to find content ideas and formats 10:53 - Account warming and posting strategy 18:29 - Converting attention into actual app users 20:15 - Using AI to generate content ideas Key Points: • Jack Friks shares his journey from making zero to $20k/month using organic social media marketing for his mobile apps • The strategy involves creating a new account, finding viral content formats in your niche, and consistently iterating • Properly "warming up" a new account is crucial before posting content to avoid algorithm penalties • Converting views to app downloads requires strategic calls-to-action without making content feel like advertisements Link to Jack’s Guide: https://x.com/jackfriks/status/1856013303169847470 LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/ BoringMarketing — Vibe Marketing for Sale: http://boringmarketing.com/ Startup Empire - a membership for builders who want to build cash-flowing businesses https://www.skool.com/startupempire/about FIND ME ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/ FIND JACK ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://x.com/jackfriks Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jackfriks Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@jackfriks0

So you want to start a startup. Maybe you want to build it with AI. Maybe it's a SaaS. Maybe it's a consumer social app. But one of the hardest parts is getting thousands of customers to come to your product on autopilot, right? Well, I brought on Jack Fricks who built a startup. It's now doing, I think, $15,000 or $20,000 a month in revenue. And he did it by just posting on Instagram, building in public.

He shows us how he does it. and then we use AI to come up with ideas or how you can do it too. Stick around for this entire episode, some real takeaways for anyone who wants to build an audience from scratch and get customers on autopilot. All right, we got Jack Fricks on the pod. He, I mean, I'm not going to say you're an overnight success, but you're now making 20 grand a month, building in public. Yeah, I wanted to have you on to teach us how you're doing. it so that other people could copy you. Yeah, I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me. Overnight success, yeah, something like that. Well, it's the thing. We were talking about that before

we hit record is like even this podcast, like, you know, I've been doing it for four years. No one listened to it. And then it started to pop off. And now people see the podcast and they're like, oh, wow, that's really, you know, you've always crushed it. But the reality is, I'm sure the same with you, right? Like, you haven't been doing 10, 15, 20k a month forever. No, not even close. Four or five years before that of basically nothing. So it all happens really fast, though, when it does happen. So can't complain. If people stay to the end of this episode, what will they tactically learn? I'm going to share today basically exactly what I use to start making less than $0 a month to market my mobile apps and use organic marketing like social

media posting on Instagram, TikTok, just like how to make money with these platforms by driving traffic to your app for $0.00. That's like my main thing. That's what I'm most knowledgeable about. So if they stick around, they're definitely going to know how to do that. And when you say app, do you mean specifically mobile apps? So people who are not building mobile apps, mobile apps like click out of this episode? Honestly, no. I think the skill of social media and organic marketing, you can drive traffic to anything.

Just like I think consumer facing things are much easier. So like even if you're not building something consumer facing, I think this is extremely valuable because like whatever you learn for how to get attention is going to transfer to any business still. Cool. All right. So today we're going to learn how to get. get attention if you have no attention to begin with and how you can take that attention,

monetize it, send it to your SaaS app, mobile app, and that's what we're going to do. All right. You want to share your screen and we can begin? Yeah, I'll do that. Basically, the way that I've learned how to do marketing because I never had money for ads and I didn't like ads was organic social media posts. And what specifically that means is videos. You can post on Twitter.

I've done this a lot. It's helped me grow one of my other businesses. But organic social media posts on Instagram and TikTok, you don't need a following to start this. I had zero followers when I started these pages. I've done it multiple times. I have multiple pages for the same app. Video content is just so easy to make.

It's low effort. and you can make a low effort, you can make it easily, and you can like spam it out there and get a bunch of eyeballs on your product for $0.00. You don't have to start from anywhere. So that's what I'm going to be talking about right now. Yeah, basically, I have a guide on Twitter on all of this. It's my PIN tweet on Twitter. It's been used by lots and lots of people.

And there's some common pitfalls people fall into, and that's what I'm going to go over right now and some like just basically tips you could use to actually like get say a thousand downloads this month or a thousand visitors to your website for free. That's what we're going to focus on.

Cool. Yeah. I mean I'm looking at this and it almost feels so easy but it's like well how did you come up with the idea for this type of content right? Maybe we're going to get into that. Yeah. So honestly as you can see here, kind of sneak peek. This page, I only post one type of content.

It's two by two images with the caption. I found this format while I was iterating. I made hundreds of videos before I found that format. And now I'm just low effort putting these out there and they still get results. So like most people might stop milking something or stop using something because they've used it so many times. But I don't because if it still gets results, I'm going to keep. using it. I mean, that just makes sense to me. And like, how does someone who doesn't have an idea for this format or a format, like how do you come up with ideas for formats? Yeah, so that's like the

first step, honestly, in getting into like organic social media is you need to find ideas. And it's actually not hard. All you have to do is what I do is I make a new account for whatever business I'm in. That's the first step to doing this. You make a new new account because it's just easier this way. And you can then use this new account and follow content in your niche. You're going to find a ton of content that's already viral for your target audience if you're scrolling and only engaging with your niche. And then you just save it for later. I found a video when I was scrolling on this page, my curiosity quench page, which is one of my apps. I made this, had zero followers. And I was scrolling in my niche, which was like hobbies,

anti-dome scrolling, like these niches. And I saw like this two-by-two video. I had like a million likes. So I tried it with, I tried it with first, like things to do instead of scrolling. That didn't work. I iterated. I went to hobbies. One of them blew up to like 10K views, which was abnormal because I was stuck below

a thousand. And then I made it again. One of them had like 100K views. That is a very quick example. It usually takes a few. you try, like 30 to 40 to 100. But like, if you don't have ideas, you just scroll in your niche and save videos. Like, click that save button when you're scrolling. And then I just looked at them later when I go to create a video. I do one a day when I'm trying on new formats and just like

mix it up every single day, basically, and try something new and then iterate on it, if that makes sense. Are formats universal, meaning could you look at, you know, do you have to scroll your niche because sometimes you'll find a format in another niche that, you know, in your niche people actually haven't tapped into. And there's an opportunity to use that that's proven in that niche and bring it to yours. Yeah, that's actually a really good angle. I think most people, you could definitely, yeah, you definitely could bring formats to, like, that aren't in your niche to your niche. I think that works. Because like this two by two, format. Just one example. You could do anything, but this could be applied in like a million

different ways. You can write a different caption. You can have different pictures of anything. And that could be applied when I first found it in hobbies to food. And that's what I actually did do that. Just because I was slow effort. I did do that. I made this page and I made 30 posts on it for my food app. And one of them hit like, I think, two million because this is like a format that's validated in another niche and it brought it to this one. So yeah, to answer your question, yes, you absolutely can bring other formats over. The reason I just said for starting a new account is like for algorithms to know who to push your content to, if you have a new account, it's best if you only scroll in your niche

just because then when you make your first video post, it knows who you're going for. So that's important, I think, to know. But if you're like scrolling on a different page and you see a format, you could definitely definitely still reuse it. Good tip. Good tip. I never thought about that. Sam Altman, the co-founder of OpenAI, just said that it is the era of the idea guy, and he is not wrong. I think that right now is an incredible time to be building a startup. And if you listen to this podcast, chances are you think so, too. Now, I think that you can look at trends to basically figure out what are the startup ideas you should be building. So that's exactly why I built ideabrowser.com.

Every single day, you're going to get a free startup idea in your inbox, and it's all backed by high quality data trends. How we do it, people always ask. We use AI agents to go and search what are people looking for and what are they screaming for in terms of products that you should be building? And then we hand it on a silver platter for you to go check out. We do have a few paid plans that take it to the next level, give you more ideas. ideas, give you more AI agents and more almost like a chatGVT for ideas with it. But you can start for free, ideabrowser.com. And if you're listening to this, I highly recommend it.

Yeah, I mean, that's the, I think a lot of people do reuse old accounts and it can work. But I always just say, like, I just start a fresh account. Zero followers is actually usually an advantage because if I have an account, let's say I have a personal account. And I start posting content that is not relevant to my audience. Instagram pushes that video out to your audience first or like whoever your audience was or thinks it it is before. And if it doesn't resonate with them, it's not going to push it out to a huge group of people to find a new audience. Whereas a new account, it's going to test, it's going to

test like different audiences, which is really the great part of having a new account is you get that like huge widespread possibility of reach. So you don't want to skip out on that, I think. Cool. All right. So step one is your scrolling in your niche, you got a fresh account, you're figuring out a format, what's next? First, definitely don't rush that phase. You don't want to post content on a brand new account in the first, I'd say a week. I used to say two days, three days, but like a week because you don't want the algorithm thinking you're a bot. You want them thinking this guy is a human and we want to push his content out there when the time comes. So for the first week, I would not post it.

post any videos. And when you do post your first video, only post like one a day. If you're going to post multiple, spread them out a few hours, at least like three, four hours, especially for new accounts. So I just do one a day. Then you have time to iterate on content. And you want to keep that account in good standing. You don't want any algorithms thinking you're doing like some bought behavior. So you also want to post manually. I've run a social media scheduling tool and I tell people do not use my tool for the new accounts. You want a good standing account, which means you want to do everything.

I guess buy the book like a human would do it, at least for the first like bit until your accounts warmed up. And then after that, after you've warmed up the account, you've waited a week and you post your first content, really it's all just about testing new pieces of content. I think something important, which I mentioned in the guide,

is obviously you're doing this to get views to your business. So you don't want to just make content for max views. You want to make content that's highly relevant to what you're promoting. And that's where some people will be like, I have 100K views, but I only got two signups, which is very common for like low effort videos because usually they don't have either a call to action in the video or they're not like pinned comment is directly,

go download this app for this result. And it's related to the real. and also the main caption. It has to be telling people to go download it and what it's called or use it or the website link. Otherwise, like, no one's going to care. They're going to scroll to the next reel. So you have to kind of spam it in their face.

But you don't have to put it in the video. Like some people, they make ads. That's like the biggest mistake for making organic content. It should not look like an ad. If it looks like an ad, they're going to scroll. The algorithm is going to give it 20 views and that's that. you might as well have not made the content. And yeah, I mean like after you found your content or a piece of content, you post it.

If it works and you get 10,000 views first try, 100,000 views, well, I guess just keep doing that. But usually that's not the case. Usually people end up having to post 30 videos before they see something like do well. And that's if they're making changes and iterations to. improve and test new angles on each video, which most people don't, which is where they get stuck. And I think that's another pitfall is making the same video over and over again, expecting something to change. Well, and usually, like, it doesn't, I guess. Do you have any questions on that?

I just have a question? Have you ever, you know, have ever used ManyChat? because I'm just thinking about, you know, yes, I can create a video and at the end I could be like download my app if you want more of this. Yeah. I'm seeing this trend around like comment X and I'll send you a link. Yeah, many chats actually is pretty good. I used it before. Before I actually saw any success, like on social media, I was trying it.

But I never, I disabled it. And then I realized now like, actually. I should probably use that now. Many Chai is very good. Yeah, like comment X and then it DMs them a link to the app or something. That's actually a really good addition to this that I have overlooked for a long time now that I realize it. Yeah, I think that's a huge thing, especially for business to business things or like tools and guides. You could definitely use tools like Many Chai.

Like automations are probably a huge addition. If you can get the initial virality, like if you're just doing, um, It's probably not as important if you haven't got anything that catches yet. But yeah, once you get a working system or a working piece of content, it could be huge. So let's take a quick detour for a second. Go to my Instagram. Instagram.com slash my name, Greg Eisenberg. I'm literally going mini, like a little bit viral right now.

And I don't have that many followers. If you scroll down. So you go to Reels. Yeah, go the Reels. So this, that last reel, I have many chats. And it's like comment LCA, which is our design agency to get the playbook. And the comments aren't loading. The comments are broken, but 123 comments.

That's a good thing. There's so many comments that the comments are broken. Yeah, that's also very good for the algorithm. The algorithm loves to people comment too. Exactly. So this has been a light bulb moment for me because I've never thought about Instagram, using Instagram as a funnel. In tech, we think a lot about X.

We think a lot about YouTube. But there's just so much thirst for software content on IG. And using many vids to, like, create an actual funnel so that it's not leaky is a, has been a light bulb moment for me. So you just started using like automation? Like you didn't use it any time before. Literally. No, never. never I just signed up for an account. I saw that well I knew I was going to chat with you and I was like I want to yeah I want to basically this is why I love doing the podcast because it helps me get smarter on subjects and now I feel like I've got like a really good sense for what IG is and how to create a funnel but you just have to like go and post yeah yeah and now and you already got the content down at this point so this is just going to be like a lot of fuel to your fire because

Because as you mentioned, too, it's not just the final part. Like having people comment is a big part of what I'm trying to do when I make videos. That's a piece of what you should make your content for is people to engage with it. Like if the algorithm sees people commenting, they're going to push it way further. If they see them watching it twice over, they're going to push it way further. So that's also a pretty important part, I guess, of making organic content. Recap, I guess. or maybe before we recap, for anyone who's making content and wants to make organic content,

I would start for one post a day and then iterate and make it better or try something new, try different formats every single day until something hits and be patient with that because it might take a month or two, especially if you're doing this for the first time to see any real results. And even then, your results, your views may not convert directly to signups because that's another skill in itself. But if you can get eyeballs, you can ultimately get towards driving people to your business and making money from those eyeballs down the line at some point. Totally. Yeah, I think your first step is basically to get attention in the niche. And then once you have that, then it's like, okay, I've got this attention.

how do I actually get them to the SaaS or mobile app or whatever it is that, you know, I've built. Exactly. Like the first skills, attention grabbing, getting attention, the second skill is converting that into like actual people going to your thing. And yeah, I mean, that's the most simple recap of it, I guess. The nitty-gritty details on how you do that really do come from just doing it. like doing what I said like going to your account warming it up waiting a week saving content creating content and that the creating content part like if you're someone who's new just use cap cut it's like the simplest tool ever um I think like there's automations for everything but

if you can't do it manually there's no point of automating it because you're not going to know what works and what doesn't and then once you've created like a hundred pieces of content then maybe like I don't know, then maybe worry because it's going to take a lot of iterations to get the skill to develop a taste of what actually drives attention. So if I'm hearing you right, the most important thing to do is, like, if you're going to try to 80-20, this is figuring out what is the format and figuring out the niche and consistently posting. Like, that's really what it comes down to. If you can figure out a format that works in a niche and you can consistently do it.

So my question is, you know, people might be listening to this and they might be like, okay, Greg and Jack really understand social. They're really good at scrolling and able to identify these formats and come up with ideas. I'm not as good as them at that. And I don't want to spend five or 10 years in my life trying to get good at that. Is there a way that AI could help you, you know, know, shortcut your way to figuring out the format that works? I think to me, I think the only ways to shortcut formats are to like scroll on social media.

And you don't have to do it that much. But you should like, if you want to really know like what goes viral, just take 10 minutes a day and it doesn't have to be for long. You'll get the hang of it in like a week or two. 10 minutes a day, set a timer, scroll on social media and look like, okay, what did well? what is simple what can I create like what is not that high of effort because a lot of the videos out there like full productions you don't have to have a full production and then just like as I said like save those videos and try to recreate them I know that that's probably not the answer most people want but I don't think like at this point I have been able to successfully use AI tooling to help me find those ideas it's just like it's not something I feel like it's outsourceable yet but like there is is obviously once you find one format you can use that and you can use AI to to pump out content for that format or help you idea it on it. Can we try that just for fun? Can we, for example, take a image of let's say you're cooking at the cooking meme page. Let's take a like let's take a

screenshot of it. Let's pump it into chat GPT and let's see hey, you know, I want 10 ideas based on this. Let's see if it's actually good at it. It's good that you have the, the screenshot of the homepage, but I think actually showing like, oh, the actual app. No, the, um, go to, what's it called? My Instagram page? Yeah, the Instagram page. DoFat. Yeah, like giving one of these, like people who Oh, okay, got you. Yeah. I got you. Like using this format to ID it on this format. I saw this format. I'm the CEO of DuFAP. It's a food diary app. Um, By the way, I love how we're just doing this live, like, on-planned. Like, we have no idea if this is going to work or not, but let's, you know, this is dope.

Help me. What do we want as a result? Like versions of this or like new ideas? Yeah, what do you think? I think, like, if I'm, it's like, okay, you know, I found a cool format, but I need more ideas. And I want ideas that have a high likelihood of success. So it's like, I'm just, okay. you. I'm the CEO of Dube Food Diary app. I found, yeah, exactly. I found this, I'm just

narrating for the people that listening on audio. I found this video format that gets views, but I want some more ideas. Video format ideas that can bring in more views for my, that are related. But I want some more video format ideas that can bring in more views that are related to my food diary app. Let's see what happens. And then should like make it low, make the ideas possible to create with low effort, like in a simple video editor or is that too much? Let's try it. I mean, let's just see.

I'm curious too, because this format, I've been now automated. I've been working on a system to automate the format, like the two by two grids. Like you can automate the images. I've done that. That one is automated. the one like that just showed you um that one is automated like i made this with an automated system and i i'm working on bulking it but like yeah i don't know about more ideas that's what i'm curious too because oh 10 more low effort ideas this versus that energy levels so split screen or

swipe comparison how i feel after eating a bagel versus oatmeal with berry that's pretty good that could work especially slideshows are kind of hot right now yeah no that's actually That's actually pretty solid. I think the hardest part is getting the copy, right? I'd say direct AI to sound like Gen Z. It's pretty good at it. Use lowercase. Like those things kind of make it feel not AI.

Foods that secretly drain you. Ooh, that's actually a pretty good idea. It's not a bad idea. Two for two. Best Food Diary entries this week. I mean, it's kind of a. It sounds like an ad. But it could be adapted.

Like you could be like, it could be adapted. It's something, there's something there. For relatable bad food mood skits. I don't know what kind of, I don't know even know what it's trying to do. Five underrated snack ideas that make me feel 10 out of 10. Okay, snack ideas like slides or two by two. Okay, that's not bad. Foods I tested for seven days ranked by mood.

Like an ad, but that could be interesting, like a story type of content style. What I log today in Doof series. Too ad. That's like an ad. That's like an ad. That's like an ad. Yeah. Like what I ate today and then you just have at the end like or like an integration of it.

Logging in Doof that might work, but still not titled like that. Foods that make you smart or dumb. Oh, that could be cool. You could like even show logs in the app. of it with the food. Food mood equals mood swap. Swat morning pastry. Folks are kind of weird.

There's some ideas there. You're right. Like, it definitely could help you find ideas, especially if you're someone who doesn't know what to post and you're seeing things on your, for you page when you're scrolling, but you don't know, like, how to adapt it.

It could help you bridge the gap there, I think. It's obviously not autonomous. You have to have some sort of like, idea of what's going to work. And I think scrolling for 10 minutes a day for like a week would do that. You'd know like you could train yourself pretty quickly. But yeah, I mean, you're kind of right. If I wanted ideas to try new things other than that one format, I mean, this would help. Yeah. This would definitely help. Yeah, I think some other tips for people is, you know, you can say like pretend you're Jack Fricks and Jack is amazing at finding format.

and here's what I, you know, I like that he, he, he comes up with very simple ideas. He talks like, you know, Gen Z. He isn't, you know, promoting his app all the time. It feels very value-ad. So saying pretend like you're, you're a brand or person is very helpful in terms of figuring this out. Yeah. I didn't know that. I've honestly not used chat GPT for ideation.

as much as I probably should. But I definitely think people watching this should use this tool because, like, this would save you a lot of time and effort. Even if you're still using social media and, like, doing what I said, scrolling, this is going to help you get to probably the same place faster. Yeah. There you go. Anything else you want to add?

I mean, I think the best thing, if someone is, like, missing context, they are, like, aren't sure, like, what to do. Just like, probably go to the guide. I'm going to keep saying that because it's like, I can't say everything perfectly, but if you can reread these things and learn like the pitfalls of not warming up your account and keeping posting consistently and trying new formats, just like, yeah, read the guide if you're unsure of what to do. Also, like, make sure you warm up your accounts properly. That is very important. If you don't warm up your accounts properly, you're going to be stuck posting videos to the void you're getting like you you should be able to get hundreds of views per video on a new account if you warmed it up properly if you're not then something is

wrong and you should probably stop posting but i mean i think anyone can do this like it's very accessible it doesn't take much to make content and i'm excited for people to try it and share like what they learned how they did amen well appreciate you coming on i'll include the link uh to the guide and maybe I'll write my own notes on it as well in the show notes and include where to find you on social so people can go and follow you. Dude, thanks for, by the way, I do agree with you. Like, I think that anyone could do this.

It does, you know, you do have to do it for longer than you expect. And you do have to develop like a system. And that takes time. we get numb to these numbers of like hundreds and thousands of views but like think of a stadium right like a stadium with 2,000, 3,000, 5,000 people that's a lot of people so when you see numbers like hundreds or a few thousand like don't be discouraged those are real people who might buy your product who might download your app and might change your life so jack thanks again for coming on and I hope you come back on soon thanks for having me

Later.