Creators
Hookify
AI software that plugged into UGC creators' TikTok accounts, analyzed their hooks, and told them how to make better videos. Five other mentorship programs paid for it. One of them bought it when I was 16.
- Role
- Founder. Built it with ChatGPT and freelance developers
- Status
- Sold
- When
- 2023–2024 · age 15–16
The buyer and the terms are kept private.
Try it
Hookify reconstruction · Sample data: a working recreation on a fictional account.
5
Other mentorship programs paid for it
100+
Creators used it
16
Sold at age
How to read this
- 5 programs
- The customers: mentorship programs that paid to use Hookify, not counting my own.
- 100+ creators
- The users: creators who used Hookify.
- Sold
- A small acquisition by one of those paying programs: the software, and the members on our lowest-priced paid tier. The buyer and terms are private.
Who it was for
UGC creators on TikTok. The customers were mentorship programs, which paid for their creators to use it: first my own program, then five others.
What existed
- Software that plugged into creators' TikTok accounts, analyzed their hooks and their account and video analytics, and gave feedback on better hooks and what they could do better in their videos
What I did
- Built it first for my own mentorship program, then broadened it and sold it to other mentorship programs
- Learned ChatGPT could do a lot of the coding for me, before vibe coding was a popular thing, and built with it
Who did what
- Me
- Founder: the product, the sales to other programs, and building with ChatGPT.
- A developer I hired on Fiverr
- Started the build, working closely with me.
- Paid developers from Fiverr and Upwork
- Continued the build after that, working with me.
Challenges
- I wasn't a trained engineer, so I learned to build software by building it: first next to a Fiverr developer, then with ChatGPT
What happened, when
2023 · age 15
Built it for the creators in my own mentorship program
2023–2024
Five other mentorship programs paid to use it, and over 100 creators used it
2024 · age 16
When I told them I was looking to move on from the mentorship space, a rival mentorship company that was already paying for it offered to buy it. They wanted to bring the software in-house, since it was already integrated with their creators, along with the members on our lowest-priced paid tier
Hookify reconstruction · Sample data
A present-day recreation of Hookify's workflow, on a fictional account with local analysis rules and prepared demo content. The original app is no longer available.
Open the demo →What I learned
Build for yourself first. Hookify started as a tool for my own students.
Your customers can become your buyer. The company that bought Hookify was already paying for it.
Millad Afshar