Key Takeaways

• Your only moat is distribution: Copycats will come, but anyone can clone an app. No one can clone your exact marketing strategy or creator program.
• Growth capital works when reinvested quickly. Advancing your earnings instead of waiting on the app store’s payout calendar lets you reinvest continuously in growth, without giving up equity or taking on debt.
• Start exit conversations early. Begin exploring a sale months before you plan to close, and explore opportunities in unexpected places. Be proactive, exits take time.

Background

When Austin Hale and his co-founders, Sai Karuturi and Justin Harron, launched their viral app studio Cracked Labs, their first bet was on an AI voice cloning app that let users recreate the voices of loved ones who had passed away. Much to their surprise, the app went viral, but it didn’t convert very well. “There wasn’t a lot of product market fit,” Austin explained. “But it was a good first try.”

By early 2025, the team decided to pivot and started hunting for a new niche, one with real purchase intent and emerging growth. They landed on a fast-growing men’s health category with only one clear leader at the time: quitting pornography. “We didn’t really see a lot of other players that were really scaling there yet,” Austin said. “We saw it as kind of a Cal AI moment… there was just so much TAM.” 

By the next month, Overcomer shipped on the App Store.

From Launch to Influencer-Led Take Off

Overcomer launched as a habit-recovery app that helps users quit compulsive porn use and rebuild healthier habits. The app combines streak tracking, daily check-ins, and milestone-based progress with a built-in accountability system, a 24/7 AI companion, and a library of educational resources designed to help users understand and manage triggers. 

Early growth for Overcomer was almost entirely influencer-led, but the team started small: a few hundred dollars here and there, testing content in the faith and self-improvement niches. Their first month brought in about $1,000, then $5,000; not long after, the team started taking bigger swings on influencers, and revenue suddenly jumped 4x. By the end of month 4, the app had earned $30,000 in proceeds in a single month.

“That’s when it really started taking off,” Austin said. 

The team doubled down on influencer marketing: managing more creators, and handling momentum. Less than 6 months after launching, a single post about Overcomer crossed 10 million views and the company was now pulling six figures in ARR. 

How Braavo Capital Helped Fund Growth

As UA spend scaled from a few thousand dollars to the tens of thousands per month, the gap between what the team was spending and when Apple paid out their earnings was becoming a real constraint.

“When you’re bootstrapping and you start having to put in a lot more capital, that’s when it starts to get serious.”

Braavo stepped in and closed that gap. “This is a no brainer,” Austin remembers thinking. “It allows us to scale so much faster.” 

Rather than waiting on Apple’s payout schedule, delaying creator payouts, or floating spend on a credit card, the team could reinvest their earnings in a continuous cycle. “The growth is really exponential in the beginning,” he said. “Looking back, it was super helpful to be able to forward those earnings as early as possible.”

“The growth is really exponential in the beginning. Looking back, it was super helpful to be able to forward those earnings as early as possible.”

Yet even with faster access to capital, the team stayed disciplined about how aggressively they deployed it, especially given how binary influencer marketing can be. “We would never spend more than we were making,” Austin explained. Their influencer deals were structured with minimum view count (MVC) guarantees to protect against underperformance. They also tracked total contractual exposure, not just day-one spend, to avoid overextending on any single creator deal.

On Competition, and Why It Never Scared Cracked Labs

After launching Overcomer, the category started getting saturated with competition and copycat apps, but that never worried Austin and his team. 

“It’s just part of this market,” he said. “Whenever there’s an app or category that’s doing well, people want to come in and compete, and I think that’s totally fine and healthy.” What he pushes back on is the assumption that cloning an app means cloning its growth. “It’s not as easy as everyone thinks it is. It might be easy to clone an app, but it’s hard to clone distribution,” he said. “You can’t just copy someone’s Meta ads strategy or their influencer marketing program. You really have to do your own thinking there.” 

“You can’t just copy someone’s Meta ads strategy or their influencer marketing program. You really have to do your own thinking there.”

That distinction shaped how the team thought about timing and expectations for Overcomer from the start. Austin emphasizes that this particular category is especially punishing. “Most new apps here don’t survive more than a few months, partly because the core audience skews younger and has a higher rate of failed payments,” he explained. For Overcomer, standing out meant more than fast execution. It required original branding, strong creator relationships, and capital that could move as quickly as market demand.

The Exit

By late 2025, the team began exploring a sale, initially hoping to close before year-end. The process took a bit longer than planned, a reminder Austin now shares with other founders. “If you want to sell, be proactive and start exploring a few months in advance,” he said. “Exits take time.”

“If you want to sell, be proactive and start exploring a few months in advance. Exits take time.”

The sale itself came from an unexpected place: Cracked Labs had listed another one of their apps on a marketplace for smaller acquisitions. When the buyer learned about Overcomer instead, the conversation pivoted entirely. Within a couple of weeks, the team had a deal moving forward.

In the end, they sold Overcomer roughly twelve months to the day after it launched.

The Bottom Line

Cracked Labs took Overcomer from a pivoted app idea to a profitable, acquired asset in one year, without giving up equity and without taking on conventional debt.

For Austin and his co-founders, faster access to their earnings wasn’t just a short-term cash flow fix. It was the difference between waiting on Apple’s payout calendar and making bigger bets on growth that paid off exponentially.