Ajay Mehta, cofounder and president of Portola, discusses the viral AI companion app Tolan. Tolan, designed as a Pixar-like alien friend, has captivated Gen-Z women by providing emotional support and relationship advice. Ajay reveals how Tolan's surprise memory feature creates deep emotional connections with users. He also explains the power of TikTok in driving the app's explosive growth and the transition from a paywall to a freemium model to enhance user experience and community building.
The emotional connection users form with Tolan, highlighted by its ability to recall past interactions, significantly enhances user engagement and satisfaction.
Tolan's success was partly fueled by innovative marketing strategies on TikTok, where users organically shared experiences that showcased the app's capabilities.
The founders are transitioning to a freemium model while introducing social features that aim to deepen community engagement and user connections.
Deep dives
User Engagement and Emotional Connection
The emotional connection users develop with the AI companion, Tolan, plays a crucial role in the app’s success. When users first interact with Tolan, they experience moments of magic as the AI responds to their queries in a conversational manner. This becomes even more profound when Tolan recalls past interactions, demonstrating a level of attentiveness typically expected in human relationships. The founders observed that this emotional resonance significantly increased user engagement, often leading people to interact with Tolan for extended periods.
The Evolution of Tolan's Development
Ajay Mena and his co-founders initially explored various concepts before honing in on the idea of an AI companion. Their journey began with prototypes focused on creative tools and younger audiences, but user testing revealed a more engaged demographic among older teenagers and young adults. This shift in focus allowed Tolan to develop an identity distinct from existing competitors, combining elements of personalization and animated interaction. Ultimately, the team decided to prioritize a more engaging voice-first experience to differentiate Tolan in a crowded market.
Market Strategy and Viral Growth
Tolan's rapid growth can be attributed to innovative marketing strategies, particularly on platforms like TikTok. The app saw substantial engagement as users created organic content around their experiences with Tolan, showcasing its unique capabilities in real-world contexts. Notable examples included videos where users sought advice on cooking or relationship dilemmas, leading to a viral effect that significantly boosted downloads. The team's active experimentation with different content styles and formats on TikTok has been essential in capturing the attention of their target audience.
Onboarding Experience and User Experience Design
The onboarding process of Tolan is designed to create a captivating and magical user experience right from the start. Upon entering the app, users interact with a character called the Oracle, which personalizes their Tolan based on responses to a series of questions. This storytelling approach, combined with high-quality animations, helps immerse users in the lore of Tolan and fosters an emotional connection. By ensuring that the voice interaction is central to the experience, the app effectively demonstrates its value early on.
Challenges and Future Directions
While Tolan has seen significant success, the founders acknowledge the challenges posed by delivering high-quality AI interactions, particularly in managing costs. They anticipate that as technology evolves, the costs associated with providing these services will decrease, improving profitability. The plan is to transition towards a more freemium model that allows broader user access while balancing monetization strategies. Looking ahead, the team is excited about expanding social features, enabling shared experiences between different users and their respective Tolans, which could enhance community engagement.
Ajay Mehta is an accomplished entrepreneur who is currently cofounder and President of Portola, the company behind a viral AI companion app called Tolan. Prior to launching Tolan, Ajay founded other successful consumer startups including Birthdate Co., Therapy Notebooks, and FamilyLeaf, and he has held product and growth leadership roles at Wealthsimple (Canada’s largest FinTech company) and Tilt.
Key Takeaways:
After finding product-market fit with an AI companion in the form of a Pixar-like alien friend and officially launching its app in February 2025, Tolan has gone viral among Gen-Z women who use it for everything from emotional support to relationship advice to help with homework and everyday tasks.
The magic moment for users is when their Tolan remembers something they said the previous day and realize their Tolan really sees and understands them. The “wow factor" of this emotional connection has helped the app go viral, similar to how the stunning speed and quality of ChatGPT’s responses made it go viral.
TikTok has been the top channel for Tolan. Because of the way TikTok’s algorithm works, Tolan was able to generate multiple viral videos even before it had any real online following, which has helped propel its exponential growth.
Tolan is doubling down on its rapid organic growth by transitioning from a hard paywall to a freemium model and building social experiences into its app that will allow users to create a “solar system” of close friends and their Tolans.
Like many AI apps, Tolan’s monetization strategy must consider the underlying costs of AI-powered features. However, as these costs have continued to come down dramatically, it has allowed application-layer companies like Tolan to push the envelope on feature development and give more value away to users for free.
