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Growpad | Instagram Automation tool | 2020 - 2021

Chrome extension started as an Indie Hacking project while working at GoJek | Grew to $3k MRR | Shut Down
Growpad, a chrome extension was an Instagram Automation tool to increase IG followers & engagement using Like-for-like / follow-for-follow techniques.
 

Facts & Stats 🧮

  • ICP: Sole Proprietors, 1-2 member business teams, Music Producers.


  • PLG growth: Grew to 2000+ Chrome users in a year

  • Major bump in revenue: Using youtube influencer (affiliate)

  • Overall earnings: $38000 | ~30% paid to affiliate marketers


 

Idea Germination 💡

Idea germinated when I was working at GoJek and wanted FIRE ~ July 2019. I wanted to create niche accounts on instagram & grow them on autopilot. This growing on autopilot was validated with follow-for-follow & like-for-like strategy. Abhishek (my co-founder) created a page & did it manually. He could grow a page to 1000 followers in under 5 days.

Idea was to build a chrome extension & automated this process - find perfect target accounts and call the follow/like/unfollow APIs like how I was doing in my scraping extension - Profilebud.

 

Build Phase 👷🏻

  • I wanted a better product than all existing players in the niche and honestly I was loving the build part of my journey. All I was doing was having fun building features. Working 40 hours / week for GoJek & another 40 hours working on this.

  • For 6 months, I built the product with so many features & DIDN'T LAUNCH IT.

  • After launch, I had to make 2 products - Growpad (this one) & Profilebud as the market for both of them are very different. Also I made 10+ small tools which weren't really used by anyone.

  • Lesson learnt: Ship the product fast & get it in the hands of users


 

Initial Validation Phase & Growth ✅

  • Abhishek tested this method already manually so we knew this works!

  • Rob's magic - We met an influencer via Profilebud's Support Chat - Rob Level. Complete accident & pure luck. He's a rapper who sells courses on how to rap. A lot of music producers buy his courses.

  • Music Producers need to grow their IG. Perfect fit!

  • He made a video & a course for us. Our deal = 50% affiliate commission for anyone who comes via his site & code.

  • 2 more IG affiliates started making videos & getting organic high intent traffic that just converted

  • We got to ~$220 MRR in 1st month (Nov 2020), $600 in Dec 2020, $3000 by Mar 2021 & ~$4000 by July 2021.


 

So so many features! 🌟

  • Growpad is perhaps the only tool I've built with so so many features which I thought would be perfect fit. IG Story watcher, 10+ editor tools, calculate brats & fans, etc. I really loved solving this problem myself. This is what I guess passion looks like!

  • Result is majority of features were not used and the ones that were being used were not fully working after a few actions due to IG bans.


 

Blocks from IG & Automouse 🚫

  • After just 7 months into launch, tool started getting blocks from Instagram. People would get message saying "Bot automation detected. Your account is at risk".

  • Calling simple API of Like & Follow is starting to get detected. People would put this tool on at night and sleep but without mouse being moved and likes happening is just botic behaviour.

  • Cat & mouse game detected. Okay, one more try.

  • To fix that, we made another mac & windows software called automouse. This would be controlled by the browser extension & would behave like how a human likes a post, follows someone.

  • Extension would tell the mouse to go to a certain co-ordinate and perform an action - Click the left button, double click, etc

  • This seemed to work much better but after a month of testing, the botic behaviour message started to come.


 

Subscribers leaving, churn & Cease-Desist 📉

  • Majority of the people would not use the software fully as you have to remember to put it on every night & it's a little hassle process

  • The ones who do would get block message and would not dare to do it again

  • We got a cease & desist from Meta in July 2021 for Growpad & Profilebud to shut it down as they say it violates their Terms

  • We were ~$4200 MRR. We decided to call it off and stopped accepting new users. The old users churned to 50% in next 3 months & by Dec 2021 MRR was $1500. By May 2022 it went down to ~$550 MRR and went dead later.



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