How Pushscroll got its first 100 users
Before writing any code, Mario created a fake product demo video for TikTok. The hook was: "What if you could stop your doom scrolling addiction by doing 20 push-ups?" He used an AI push-up detection clip found on YouTube, spliced it with footage of placing a phone against a wall, and ended with scrolling footage — visualizing the app's value without the app existing. The video accumulated 80K views and 500+ comments from people begging him to build it. This served as full demand validation. Once the app was built as a bare-bones MVP (just 3 screens: a half-broken push-up detector, an app-blocker selector, and the blocked screen), they launched with a second TikTok video offering the app free to anyone who downloaded within the first week. This generated 20,000–30,000 downloads immediately. Everyone after that first cohort hit a hard paywall at ~$30/year, providing the ultimate proof that users would pay.