2023
Croft
100k users in 10 weeks. App Store rating 4.8. Series A closed 6 weeks post-launch.
The Challenge
Croft came to us with a validated concept, a small founding team, and a very specific goal: launch a consumer iOS and Android app in 10 weeks to hit a funding milestone. The window was non-negotiable — their seed funding was running out and they needed traction to close a Series A. The risk was real. Consumer apps are hard. Timelines this tight usually produce something too rough to gain traction. We had to build fast without building badly.
The Solution
The first conversation was about scope. Ten weeks is enough time to build something great if you're building the right thing — and not enough time to recover from building the wrong thing. We spent the first week only on scope: ruthlessly cutting everything that wasn't essential to the core user value, and then cutting more. We built with React Native so we could share logic across iOS and Android without sacrificing native feel. We made aggressive performance budgets non-negotiable from day one — if a screen took more than 300ms to become interactive, we didn't ship it. We ran usability testing with real users every Friday, even when it hurt to hear the feedback. The app launched on week 10 with a core feature set that was small but polished. No beta, no soft launch — full public release on both stores simultaneously. The first week brought 12,000 downloads. By week 10, Croft had 100,000 users. The App Store rating held at 4.8. Six weeks after launch, the founding team closed their Series A.
