How Pushcroll Hit $30K/Month Profit With Zero Ad Spend
Building a consumer app to $30,000 in monthly profit isn't exactly a walk in the park. Most founders burn through cash on paid ads, struggle to crack five figures, or worse—never make it past the validation phase. But Alejandro and Mario, the founders behind Pushcroll (a fitness app that blocks social media until you do push-ups), pulled it off using completely organic marketing.
In today's podcast interview recap, we'll break down their playbook. These guys have run more growth experiments than most founders attempt in a lifetime, and they're refreshingly transparent about what actually works versus what ends up being noise.
Our host, Joseph, covered a ton of ground with Alejandro and Mario. As always, if you haven't seen the interview yet, definitely check that out right here. For now, on to the recap:
The video that started everything
Here's the thing about Pushcroll: it didn't start with a product. It started with a TikTok video about a product that didn't even exist yet.
Alejandro posted a simple concept video: "You could stop your doom scrolling addiction by doing 20 push-ups. There's this AI thing that can actually track how many push-ups you do. Now, if you pair that with a social media blocker, your doom scroll doesn't start until you did like 20 push-ups."
The video randomly blew up. "Should I build this? Let me know in the comments," he asked. Turns out, people desperately wanted him to build it.
But here's where most people get it wrong: they expect immediate results. After that viral video, Alejandro spent six months with basically nobody using the app. "We thought everyone was going to do this," he explained. "We thought this was going to be the number one thing people were going to build. We built the app in about a month, but then it was like 6 months of nobody using it."
Then everything changed with one TikTok video. A girl showed off an NGL message she received—something edgy and controversial that made people think "I need to download that." That single video activated their first thousand users in one day.
The lesson? Patience. It's easy to see viral success stories and think, "Yeah, okay. They went viral." But they went viral only after months of building, waiting, and getting that one lucky break which turned everything around.
Building an MVP in two weeks
After that initial validation, Alejandro found Mario through YC's co-founder matching. Mario had already built a screen time app, which was perfect timing. They cranked out an MVP in just two weeks.
The first version was brutally simple. Two screens: pick the apps you want to block, hit a button to do push-ups. That's it. "We just literally imported most of it into this new format and then slapped AI detection into it," Mario explained.
The AI detection itself wasn't some groundbreaking innovation. They used MediaPipe (Google's visual recognition framework) and customized it for their use case. "Push-ups detection in particular is one of the most common examples of how to do visual recognition," Mario noted. "So, it was pretty easy to get like a first version."
The genius move? They switched from side detection to front detection. Why? Because it's more visually appealing and influencer-friendly. When someone does push-ups facing the camera, you see their face—which makes for better content.
The Discord community that changed everything
While most consumer apps struggle in isolation, Pushcroll built something different: a 4,000-person Discord community that actively shapes their product.
"We can get feedback on features. We can direct the product to what the people actually like," Alejandro explained. They run polls on design decisions, test new features, and even crowdsource bug reports. It's basically free user research.
One of their channels literally just asks users which design they prefer. "This is like a super fast AB test you can do," Mario said. When they see the same suggestion 20 times, they know it's worth building.
The community also serves as their content engine. Users share testimonials, post progress updates (like hitting 8,000 push-ups), and create user-generated content they can repurpose. One user even filmed themselves doing push-ups in the mountains. That's the kind of organic evangelism money can't buy.
Here's what clicked for me: most B2B companies understand they need to talk to customers. But in consumer, people often think "ship it and see what happens." Pushcroll proves the opposite works. They listen obsessively to their users while still maintaining a clear product vision.
The viral TikTok format that prints money
After losing around $2K on influencer partnerships that didn't convert, Alejandro and Mario had no choice but to master organic content. They found a winning format by studying competitors and adapting it to their niche.
The formula? An over-the-shoulder shot of someone doing push-ups in an unexpected location (2am, in the rain, etc.), followed by a quick product demo. "My bro is doing push-ups at 2:00 a.m. to scroll reals," the caption reads. It creates instant curiosity.
"The hook has to be a banger," Alejandro emphasized. "If the hook is not like a banger, the video is not going to work." They obsess over skip rate—the percentage of people who swipe away in the first three seconds. Their best videos have skip rates around 19%, which signals to Instagram's algorithm that people want to watch.
One video got close to 16 million views. They just kept repeating the same format over and over because it worked. "We just repeated this hook over and over and over and it kept on working."
The interesting part? Even though these videos clearly promote the app, people don't care because they actually want to solve their doom scrolling problem. "People don't really care if it's an ad. They just want their problem to be solved."
The ManyChat hack that 10x'd conversions
Here's a growth hack that's almost too simple: comment "app" and get the download link sent directly to your DMs.
Using ManyChat automation, every comment on their TikTok videos triggers an automatic DM with a direct app store link. "We've sent almost 90,000 DMs," Alejandro shared. The click-through rate sits around 33%, but the real magic isn't even in the direct conversions.
The hack artificially boosts engagement. When videos get 6,900 comments all saying "app," it creates social proof. Other viewers see everyone commenting and think "I need to comment app as well." Instagram's algorithm sees massive engagement and pushes the video to more people. It's a flywheel effect.
"The biggest part of the strategy with ManyChat is really like engagement," Mario explained. "You create so much engagement and it pushes your video like crazy."
The onboarding that converts at 70%
When you open Pushcroll, you don't just get thrown into the app. You get a conversational onboarding flow built around Alex Hermosi's value equation framework.
The goal? Increase the perceived likelihood of achievement, decrease time delay, lower effort required, and reduce perceived sacrifice. Every screen moves you through this framework:
"What goals do you want to achieve?" (Dream outcome)
"How much time do you waste on your phone every day?" (Pain point)
"What have you already tried?" (Positioning against alternatives)
Between screens, they show social proof and research citations. They even call out competing solutions and explain why they don't work. "We dissect all of these other methods, then position our app as the five-star best way to quit."
The paywall conversion rate hovers around 70% after they optimized this flow. They tested everything: free trial length (7 days beat 3 days), pricing (weekly beat monthly), and even video-based paywalls that show the product in action.
One critical insight: they created separate cohorts for US and non-US users because conversion rates were wildly different. US users convert at nearly double the rate of European users, so they optimized each experience separately.
What didn't work: the influencer experiments
Before finding their organic groove, Pushcroll tried the standard influencer playbook. They mass-DMed about 2,000 influencers with a simple pitch, negotiated flat retainers for four videos, and hoped for the best.
It didn't work. "We lost around like 2K on influencers," Alejandro admitted. One video with a calisthenics influencer got 38,000 views but only 200-500 downloads. The format just didn't convert.
The problem? Influencer content felt too much like an ad without the authenticity of organic posts. Their audience expected crazy calisthenics skills, not product demos. The disconnect killed conversions.
"The main problem why it failed is just download rate wasn't that good," Mario explained. "Our conversion rate from the videos was actually very good but people did not really want to download the app."
They learned a valuable lesson: test organic first, then scale what works with influencers or UGC. Don't start with paid distribution before validating your message.
Regional differences that doubled ARPU
One of the most surprising insights: not all markets are created equal. Pushcroll's European audience (primarily Android users under 18) converts at about half the rate of their US audience.
Looking at their Superwall dashboard, the ARPU difference was stark. US users: ~$0.70. Non-US users under 18: ~$0.30. That's a massive gap.
The strategy shift? Push harder into the US market using US-based creators. But here's the catch: you can't fake being American. "We actually tried to do it ourselves with VPN and SIM cards, but they're all very sketchy," Alejandro said. "The likelihood you're going to get shadowbanned is like 90%."
Their solution: pay US-based students around $1,000 per month to create content. The creators warm up their accounts properly (3-4 days of engaging with the algorithm before posting), then start promoting the app. It's more expensive than doing it themselves, but the conversion rates justify the investment.
Practical advice for aspiring founders
If you're starting with a consumer app today, here's Alejandro's playbook:
Validate before you build. "First validate your idea and find something that is inherently viral. If your app is not viral, you can have the best video ever. It's not going to go viral."
Copy winning formats. "Don't reinvent the wheel. Find videos of your competitors and just copy. Look at the hooks specifically and dissect why the hook worked."
Invest 80% of your energy in the hook. "Focus purely on the hook. If you see a 30% skip rate, find a different format and iterate until your skip rate is around 18%."
Build a community. "I would always suggest that people build a community to see how people like the app, what they want. It's so helpful for AB tests."
Start organic, then scale. "Organic is a really nice way to get some initial views. When you see a format going viral organically, that's when you decide to do UGC to scale it up."
Wrapping up
Pushcroll's success isn't about one viral video or a clever growth hack. It's about understanding platform dynamics, building a product people genuinely want to share, and staying patient through the inevitable slow periods.
"You've got to give a shit about what you're building," Alejandro said. "Give a shit about your users, and that will naturally translate into you figuring out how to tell more people about it."
That's the real secret behind $30K/month profit with zero ad spend. Not growth hacks or viral tricks, but genuine conviction in solving a problem people care about, combined with the persistence to figure out how to reach them effectively.
The tactics might change—TikTok hooks, ManyChat automation, Discord communities—but the fundamentals remain the same: find product-market fit first, validate it organically, then figure out sustainable ways to tell people about it.
As always, if you're ready to test your paywall, run price tests and more for your app, then you're already in the right spot. Sign up for a free Superwall account today!