Going Viral on TikTok As A Small Startup

TLDR: Went viral on TikTok which led to 3000+ waitlist signups

My small team and I are building an app for homeowners. As the growth guy, I was tasked with figuring out the right approach to attract users, both DTC and B2B2C. We figured that going DTC would be insanely hard as CAC in real estate is infamously high (competing with mortgage brokers, etc.), so we threw out the idea of going direct to homeowners and pivoted to getting more realtors and loan officers on board.

For fun and experimentation (and without the team knowing), I started posting TikToks of our early prototype. The first few videos got to 1k views each, but my goal of getting feedback on the app seemed futile. That was until I posted this video: https://www.tiktok.com/@_humble_abode/video/7247220238289227054

Within 3 hours, we reached 100k views. I came back from having a beer with a friend and was amazed at the feedback - "I want to use your app right now", "I would pay anything for this", "please please send me the link", etc. It's crazy what a 30-second video can do.

I quickly threw up a landing page and started capturing emails. In 24 hours, we had 2000+ signups. Insane!

I've never had a viral moment in my career so it was a great time to step back and assess why this happened. I had been studying the TikTok algo for a couple of weeks, but I chalk this up to mostly luck. It must have struck an emotional chord in people - being a homeowner is hard! My current analysis is that the video feels authentic and is genuinely aimed at gathering honest feedback.

Now we're planning the next few months of building and growing our community. Obviously, we'll need to monetize this, but building an engaged community isn't out of the question either.

I don't expect to go viral ever again, yet the team wants to continue chasing the high of virality and keep using TikTok as a channel. Maybe it will work, maybe it won't. If anything, we have a burgeoning community willing to provide feedback and test our product. It's enough validation to keep going for now!

Cheers