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Cal AI Founder Credits Paid Influencers for Viral Growth

Cal AI founder Zach Yadegari says paid influencers drove viral growth and over $30 million in two-year revenue before MyFitness acquired the app in March.

AI News Feed · 2026-10-16 09:40

Cal AI was founded in 2024 and rose to viral fame over the past two years. Yadegari has enjoyed an immense amount of success for someone who only recently graduated from high school. A Forbes 30 Under 30 alumnus, he described an early signal: an influencer’s post about the app brought in about 1,000 new users over two days. “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,” he said.

He said the approach followed a clear formula. “What we saw was that it was a clear formula. It was pretty linear, but it was extremely fast. I guess linear in the sense that every post they did would get a certain number of viewers that would convert,” Yadegari said. The strategy, he added, was to recruit influencers quickly and pay as many as possible to post about the app.

Part of the company’s strategy involved negotiating rates with influencers and promising certain payouts for a certain scale of reach. Yadegari said many influencers are “broke college kids” who “just want cash.” He described the pitch: “You just ask them, okay, we’ll pay you this, but we need to get us at least this amount of use and keep posting until you get there.”

Yadegari also said finding the right influencers mattered. “The biggest thing for us was finding influencers that had very tight communities,” he said. He noted that the reach of those influencers could be quantified.

His father was in the audience, and Yadegari credited his family with giving him the freedom to pursue his ambitions. Asked about higher education, he was less enthusiastic. “I think the only real reason to go to college is if you want to have a fun social time as a kid and be with other people,” he said, drawing laughter from the audience.

Earlier this month, Yadegari launched Persona, a new AI agent startup that has already raised $10 million. He said Persona’s “overarching mission” is to “make computing seamless with human life.” The company’s personal AI assistant will “live anyplace with internet connection,” he said, including “iMessage, app, email, phone call.” He added that part of what distinguishes Persona’s plans is building a “hardware ecosystem around” the app.