Glow Up

Before writing any code, Louis and his co-founder studied TikTok makeup content — specifically the comment sections of popular makeup videos — to identify what problems real users were expressing. They identified demand for helping women find the right makeup look without having to physically buy and test products. Rather than building first, they created TikTok content around the concept of "finding your best makeup look," validated that it could go viral, and only then built the MVP. The content went viral almost immediately, and within 3 days of launching the app, they had 100,000 users. The key early viral moment was a single TikTok video that reached ~48 million views and 2 million likes. The video incorporated a referral mechanic baked into the app: users who invited 3 friends would get a free makeup look. Viewers saw the video, downloaded the app, then came back to the TikTok video to share their referral codes in the comments — creating a self-reinforcing engagement loop that boosted the video algorithmically. An anchor (download) link was added at ~500K views, making the path from view to install frictionless. That single video generated 60K downloads and $12,500 in sales in one day.

Software engineering background enabled rapid MVP development using Flutterflow (no-code Flutter builder), allowing Louis to ship an app extremely quickly once the idea was validated. Co-founder collaboration also helped. No existing audience — the edge was the content-first research methodology and TikTok distribution playbook.

tiktok_organic_multi_account

All previous apps Louis built failed because he built first and marketed later — finishing the app before trying to get users or validate demand. He explicitly said this was the core mistake: "My apps before were more for me. I just had an idea and was building them and then once it was finished building I would start marketing but then I would get no views or no users."