- Steven Cravotta
- Posts
- This spreadsheet got me to $44k MRR
This spreadsheet got me to $44k MRR
Hey there,
Most founders guess at what content will work.
They post random videos, hope the algorithm picks one, and cross their fingers.
Six months later, they're still stuck at 200 views per video.
I did the opposite.
Before I posted a single TikTok for my app Puff Count (now acquired), I scrolled for 24 hours straight.
I typed "quit vaping" into TikTok and filtered by most liked videos of all time.
Found a girl with 3.7 million views talking about her vaping addiction, another creator with millions showing transformation stories, and dozens more with similar results.
Most founders would've stopped there. "Cool, I found some viral videos. Let me try to copy them."
That's the mistake.
Finding viral videos takes 5 minutes. Anyone can do that.
The hard part is dissecting them.
I didn't just watch these videos. I studied them and broke them down into every single detail.
What was the hook?
What was the storyline?
How did they present the product?
I even went deeper: How many seconds did it show the app? 2.3 seconds? Cool, noted.
To gather all the info and not forget it, I built a spreadsheet.
Every viral video I found went into it with notes on every detail.
After 24 hours, I had a library of proven formats that I knew worked.
That spreadsheet drove 50 million views, 120k followers, and became the foundation for an app I exited 4 years later.
You can't replicate what works if you don't understand why it works.
Peace,
Steven