Nikita Bier got 5M users in 2 months with a $0 marketing budget - and then sold his business to Facebook for $30M - He did it TWICE

Nikita Bier has a very different approach to marketing than most other businesses.
As he mentioned a few times on Twitter:
We never did physical marketing. Our rule was if you can’t launch from your couch with zero dependencies on other people, then don’t do it.

In 2017 Nikita got 5M users with the TBH app within 2 months
In 2022 Nikita got 10M within 3 months with the Gas app
both times he didn't use any money in his marketing
Gas app was almost 1-1 clone of the TBH app

What are the TBH app & Gas app?

In short, the tbh/gas app allowed teenagers to anonymously complement each other through a series of polls, which works well for validation-seeking teenagers

And it brings a lot of positive vibes to teens - many teens left reviews such as:"this app helped me a lot. it's shown me that I have a lot more friends than I thought. It has made me a lot more confident"

Here's how Nikita and his team have made the tbh app go viral:

Short timeline

On Aug 3, 2017, Nikita Bier and his team were close to bankruptcy. They had funds for another 2 weeks of work. That's when the tbh app was launched
On Aug 5, 2017, they chose to launch tbh in a high school in Georgia because it had the earliest semester start date.
Aug 7, 2017 - 40% of Georgia high schoolers had downloaded the app. The app has also spread to three more schools

He did it by leveraging psychology in marketing via Instagram

They noticed teens often list their high school in their Instagram bio.
Tbh team would then create tbh Instagram accounts for each high school and follow all accounts that included the school’s name
They made their own account private and left a mysterious CTA in their bio "You're invited to tbh at ANHS. Stay tuned." Teens were naturally curious and would send a follow request
At 4:00PM when high schoolers got out from school, Nikita and his team would add the App Store URL to the profile bio and made the profile Public. This notified all students at the same time that their Follow Request had been accepted. Curious students would follow the link from the bio to the app
By collecting users' interest first, and then contacting all of them simultaneously, they ensured critical mass during the launch hour. This was essential to get high in App Store rankings

Important dates:

Sep 15, 2017 - tbh was ranked #1 in the U.S. App Store
Oct 2017 - tbh hit 5M downloads and 2.5M daily active users in 9 weeks, without buying a single ad or doing a single interview
Oct 16, 2017 - Facebook acquired tbh for an estimated $30,000,000

Why did it work?

Most companies go for an all-access immediate approach.
They overestimate the demand for their product or service, thereby ruining the "restricted access" growth hack.
Tbh app did it with geofence allowing 1 state at a time.
Kids built hype speculating when it would finally arrive to their state. This type of limited release aroused exclusivity and blew up demand - FOMO

WHY Nikita targetted teens at the very beginning?

As Nikita mentioned:For every social app I’ve ever built, the number of invitations sent per user drops 20% for every additional year of age—from 13 years old to 18.

So if you build for adults, expect to pay to acquire every user with ads

Nikita and his team repeated the tbh app success with their GAS app (tbh app clone)

GAS app stats:

August 2022 - launched in the app store, but then removed and relaunched again
Oct 21 - 1M active users
Oct 23 - $1M in sales
Got 10M users overall within 3 months
Jan 17th, 2023 - Discord acquired the GAS app

There's more

The app was designed specifically for viral growth
Before using the app, you needed to grant the app access to your address book to invite others later on
What about the psychology of the UX, like the Hooked model.

Other viral features?

gems, traction-free sharing, etc

Its k-factor was quite good (7+, as far as I remember)

That's it
You can find the full 10-pages case study HERE in the first email here