When it came to Cal AI’s viral success, a small army of influencers paid off

Key points

• Cal AI, founded in 2024 by 19-year-old Zach Yadegari, generated over $30 million in revenue in two years and was acquired by MyFitnessPal in March.
• Yadegari said the app's growth came from recruiting and paying a large number of influencers to post about it.
• Yadegari has also launched Persona, a new AI agent startup that has raised $10 million.

Zach Yadegari, a 19-year-old who recently graduated from high school, founded the AI calorie tracking app Cal AI in 2024. Speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt on Thursday, he described how the company grew rapidly through a network of influencers.

Cal AI brought in more than $30 million in revenue over two years and was acquired by MyFitnessPal in March for an undisclosed amount.

How the influencer strategy worked

Yadegari said an early sign of success came when an influencer's post brought in about a thousand new users in two days. After that, he said, the company began recruiting influencers as quickly as possible and paying as many people as possible to post for it.

He described the results as clear and fast, with each post reaching a certain number of viewers who converted. Part of the strategy involved negotiating rates with influencers and promising payouts for a set scale of reach. Yadegari said many influencers are "broke college kids" who just want cash, and that the company would offer payment in exchange for a minimum amount of use and continued posting until that level was reached.

From there, we figured out, okay, this can actually work for us, and so we started recruiting influencers as fast as we could — paying as many people as possible to start posting for us

— Zach Yadegari

Finding the right influencers

Yadegari said the most important factor was finding influencers with very tight communities. He also credited his family, including his father, who was in the audience, with giving him the freedom to pursue his ambitions.

Asked about higher education, he said the only real reason to go to college is to have a fun social time as a kid and be with other people, drawing laughter from the audience. Earlier this month, he launched Persona, a new AI agent startup that has already raised $10 million. He said its overarching mission is to make computing seamless with human life, with a personal AI assistant that will live anyplace with an internet connection, including iMessage, app, email and phone call, and plans for a hardware ecosystem around the app.