A guy made $44,000 in 60 days from an app that makes your MacBook moan when you slap it.
Two days to code. Two Instagram reels. And he built the whole thing while working his nine to five.
His name is Toni. He's the second founder on the My First Dollar series, and he shared a trick I genuinely hadn't heard before.
Full interview here → click to watch
The refund hack.
Toni, founder of SlapMac, put a page on his website with a simple offer: make a reel about SlapMac, and if it gets 2,000 views, I'll give you 50% back. Hit 20,000 views? Full refund.
That was the whole system.
People bought the app, thought it was hilarious, made reels, and some of those reels hit hundreds of thousands of views. He turned his own customers into a marketing team without hiring anyone, without paying upfront, and without taking any risk at all.
Just a simple promise that if you help me spread the word, I'll make it free for you.
About 10 people claimed refunds.
The app got an estimated 50 million views. Toni's own reels accounted for 3.7 million. Everything else came from other people sharing it because they wanted to.
Why this works.
Most founders think marketing is something they do.
Run ads. Post content. DM strangers.
Toni flipped it. He made marketing something his customers do for him, and he gave them a reason that cost almost nothing.
It even went viral in Vietnam. Toni had no idea until a user sent him a screenshot.
If your product is something people would naturally want to show off, and honestly most products can be positioned that way, this mechanic is sitting right there waiting for you. No upfront cost, no risk, just a simple incentive that aligns what's good for your customer with what's good for your business.
The other thing Toni said that stuck with me.
I asked him if he'd advise people to try and go viral.
He said no.
His first reel went viral by accident.
His screen was dirty. He had an eyelash on his face. It was completely unscripted.
A screenshot from the first reel that went viral and started it all.
He was just having fun showing something he thought was cool, and it resonated because that energy came through.
His advice was simple: don't chase virality, just have fun building things, and if that fun comes through in your content then people will feel it.
Every time I hear this from someone who's actually done it, it confirms the same thing. You can't fake genuine excitement.
Starting from $0.
I asked Toni what he'd do if he woke up tomorrow with nothing. His answer:
Train your algorithm. Spend an hour every evening scrolling Instagram and TikTok with intent, liking and saving content in your niche until the platform only shows you relevant stuff. When something makes you stop and think "that's cool", that's your signal. Build an app around it, make content about it, and make it stupidly easy for your users to share it too.
This was a really fun episode to film, you can watch the full thing here → click to watch
Question for you: what's your biggest challenge right now when it comes to getting people to actually see what you're building? Reply and let me know, it helps me decide what to cover next.
See you next Tuesday.
You've got this.
- Rob
