How scrolling TikTok saved my app launch

March 26, 2026

Hey there,

If the only people using your app are friends and family, you don't run a business.

You just have a time-consuming and likely expensive hobby.

Many founders discover this six months in. 

After the dev costs, after the launch post, after the friends-and-family spike dies. 

By the time the enthusiasm is cracked you blame the usual things:

  • the algorithm

  • the niche

  • the timing

The real problem is building before figuring out who you are building for.

Before writing a single line of code for PuffCount, I locked myself in my apartment and scrolled TikTok for 7 days straight. 

Typed "quit vaping" into the search bar, filtered by most popular of all time, and started taking notes on everything that was already printing views.

Found a girl with 3.7 million views talking about quitting. She was dropping vapes into glasses of water while talking about her 7-year addiction.

Saved that video to a spreadsheet. Then another. Then another. 

By day 7, every viral video in the niche was broken down by hook, storyline, and CTA. 

One of my TikToks hit 2.6M views using one of those formats.
4,000 downloads in 24 hours, more than the previous three months combined.

Seven days of research feels like wasted time when you're itching to build. 

That's exactly the reason most founders skip it, and why their launch flops.

Build your first video on a format that already proved itself and you put yourself in a position to print from day 1.

Peace,
Steven