Fueling Growth with AI and Viral Product Features — Ajay Mehta, Portola

On the podcast, I talk with Ajay about the fresh opportunities AI is creating for app developers, how they built a cost-effective TikTok growth engine, and why being forced to monetize helped improve their product decisions.

Top Takeaways:
🤖 New tech, new apps – AI isn’t just making apps smarter. It’s enabling new categories entirely.
Apps built around real-time interaction, emotional context, and personalized content wouldn’t have been possible just a year ago. That means product-market fit can emerge in spaces that didn’t even exist before.

🎨 Design spreads – Great visuals are for distribution, not just decoration.
Memorable characters, animations, or interfaces can make your app instantly recognizable in screenshots, social videos, or App Store listings. Strong creative amplifies word-of-mouth.

💸 Monetization pushes clarity – Charging early forces your product to stand up on its own.
When you’re paying for AI infrastructure, you can’t wait to figure out value. Monetizing quickly reveals which users are getting enough utility to stick around and where the gaps are in your experience.

📈 TikTok still works – For the right product, UGC beats polish.
Test fast, post often, and watch what takes off. Lo-fi creator content can outperform paid campaigns, especially if your app is visual and easy to explain. One viral post can change your growth curve overnight.

🧠 Voice AI is tough to fake – Real conversation needs more than an API call.
Delivering a fast, natural back-and-forth requires layered systems: memory lookup, tone control, real-time rendering, and low-latency streaming. It’s a technical challenge and a competitive moat.

About Ajay Mehta:

👽 Co-Founder of Portola, the creators of Tolan—an AI companion app that offers personalized, engaging, and fun experiences.

📈 Ajay is passionate about AI’s potential to revolutionize consumer apps, focusing on building emotionally resonant, interactive experiences. 

💡 “Something that AI really allows you to do is make a consumer experience that just feels like there is totally something on the other side that knows you, understands you.”

👋  LinkedIn and Twitter

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Episode Highlights:

[1:10] Origin story: How Ajay and the Portola team developed the AI alien buddy app, Tolan.

[7:38] Cash flow: Why the Tolan team secured venture funding instead of bootstrapping.
[11:36] I, Robot: How AI is changing the app landscape and why AI companion apps are especially promising.
[16:36] Cost/Benefit: The costs associated with running an AI app forced Tolan to monetize early (but that wasn’t a bad thing).
[21:17] Onboarding excellence: How Tolan’s onboarding experience fosters deep personalization and long-term retention.
[28:08] Going viral: Why an effective TikTok marketing strategy can dramatically lower your cost per acquisition.
[39:34] A league of their own: Why competition is relatively low (for now) for AI companion apps.
[47:39] Race to the top: Raising venture capital and using the upfront cash infusion to iterate and beat out the competition (à la Duolingo).
[51:18] Tolan 2 (The Sequel): AI engines have the potential to be spun off into multiple app businesses.