Founder of $13k MRR lifting app says Meta beats TikTok for early app marketing

A founder who says his lifting app reached roughly $13,000 in monthly recurring revenue has laid out a straightforward playbook for early-stage app marketing, arguing that Meta’s advertising platform has been more effective than TikTok for driving app downloads. In a recent interview posted by Yahoo Finance, the founder describes building his app,, without coding experience, then focusing on distribution rather than product complexity. He says the most important early step is testing marketing angles quickly, before making bigger bets on content production. One of his central recommendations is to avoid hiring user-generated content (UGC) creators too early. UGC creators are people paid to produce short-form videos that look like authentic posts from everyday users. The founder’s view is that paying for creator production should come after teams identify which messaging or creative angles produce downloads, rather than guessing upfront. He also argues that, in the early phase, marketers should lean toward Meta’s ad ecosystem instead of TikTok, saying Meta has “crushed” TikTok for app marketing in his experience. While the post does not provide download numbers, campaign budgets, or performance metrics, it frames the decision as a practical lesson learned while trialing different channels and creative strategies. The comments arrive as app marketers continue to navigate a landscape where acquisition costs can vary widely by audience targeting and creative fatigue. For Meta, which operates advertising across Facebook, Instagram, and other surfaces, the pitch to app developers is that it can help reach users likely to install apps and then optimize delivery based on campaign outcomes. However, the interview itself does not link the recommendations to specific Meta product features or to any policy changes. Notably, the posting does not detail what ad formats the founder used on Meta (such as click-to-install ads, video ads, or other catalog or app event optimizations), nor does it describe how he measured attribution across platforms. It also does not clarify whether TikTok was tested at smaller or larger scale, whether audiences were constrained, or whether creative production on TikTok was limited in the same way as the early-stage UGC decisions. The takeaway, based on what the interview does say, is less about a single tactic and more about sequencing. The founder’s view is that channel choice and creative execution both matter, but that teams should avoid scaling spend on creators until they have evidence of what drives downloads. For app founders watching competitive pressures, the more immediate question may be whether Meta’s performance advantage holds after UGC scales and after early learning cycles end.

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