597: How She Built a $33M App with ZERO Ads | Tezza Barton

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan

Nathan Chan

Marketing, Business, Entrepreneurship

4.8 • 662 Ratings

🗓️ 16 October 2025

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Tezza Barton bootstrapped the Tezza app from a two-person passion project into a 25M+ download, $33M/year creative-tech brand—with just 15 employees and zero paid ads for the first four years. In this interview, Tezza breaks down the scrappy path from negative bank balances and collage kits in a 250-sq-ft apartment to building a category-defining editing app and community that creatives actually love. From community-led growth and brand-first product design to pricing pivots, lean teams, and culture-shifting collabs, you’ll learn exactly how she scaled profitably while staying fan-obsessed and creatively uncompromising. What you’ll learn from this interview: • How Tezza grew a bootstrapped, creator-led app to 25M+ downloads and ~$33M revenue • The community-first playbook: DMs, feedback loops, and building demand before launch • Product-led marketing: naming filters (e.g., “Wildflower”), seasonal drops, and experiential launches • Pricing and retention: recovering from a bumpy subscription rollout and increasing LTV • Why a lean, high-leverage team can out-execute bigger competitors • Collaboration strategy: pitching value, co-creating effects, and tapping partner audiences • Creative brand building: designing an app like a beauty brand, not a utility • Where AI helps (ops, grunt work) without replacing human taste, curation, and intent By the end of this interview, you’ll walk away with a proven roadmap to build, market, and scale a profitable consumer app—so you can turn audience insight and great creative into durable, compounding growth SAVE 50% ON OMNISEND FOR 3 MONTHS Get 50% off your first 3 months of email and SMS marketing with Omnisend with the code FOUNDR50. Just head to ⁠https://your.omnisend.com/foundr⁠ to get started. HOW WE CAN HELP YOU SCALE YOUR BUSINESS FASTER Learn directly from 7, 8 & 9-figure founders inside Foundr+ Start your $1 trial → ⁠https://www.foundr.com/startdollartrial⁠ PREFER A CUSTOM ROADMAP AND 1-ON-1 COACHING? → Starting from scratch? Apply here → ⁠https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-start-application⁠ → Already have a store? Apply here → ⁠https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-growth-application⁠ CONNECT WITH NATHAN CHAN Instagram → ⁠https://www.instagram.com/nathanchan⁠ LinkedIn → ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanhchan/⁠ CONNECT WITH TEZZA BARTON Website → https://www.shoptezza.com/ Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/tezza.barton/ LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/tessa-barton-6b73091b3/ FOLLOW FOUNDR FOR MORE BUSINESS GROWTH STRATEGIES YouTube → ⁠https://bit.ly/2uyvzdt⁠ Website → ⁠https://www.foundr.com⁠ Instagram → ⁠https://www.instagram.com/foundr/⁠ Facebook → ⁠https://www.facebook.com/foundr⁠ Twitter → ⁠https://www.twitter.com/foundr⁠ LinkedIn → ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/foundr/⁠ Podcast → ⁠https://www.foundr.com/podcast

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey Founder Fam, I want to talk to you about something super exciting. We're officially partnered with Omniscend, the email marketing and SMS platform built specifically for e-commerce founders. We've been recommending OmnisCent to Founder students for a while now because it just works. Whether you're launching your first store or you're scaling the seven figures, it really helps you automate your marketing and get real results.
0:24.0	Did you know on average, Omnysend customers make $68 for every $1 they spend, which is an insanely good return on investment.
0:32.6	And because you're part of the founder community, you get 50% off your first three months with the code Founder 50.
0:39.3	Just head to Omnicend.com forward slash founder without the E to get started. All right, now
0:46.2	let's jump back into the show. Welcome back to another episode. What if you could bootstrap an app
0:52.7	to 25 million downloads and $38 million in revenue
0:56.2	without spending a single dollar on ads for the first four years or while keeping your team
1:00.4	under 16 people?
1:01.5	Well, that's today's guest, Teza Barton, co-founder of the Teza app.
1:05.0	It's a creative editing platform that's transformed how millions of creators and brands approach
1:10.2	visual content. With negative dollars in
1:12.4	their bank account, Teza and her developer husband Cole built their business by treating their
1:17.4	app like a beauty brand. So you're going to discover how to build a loyal community before you launch,
1:22.5	how to turn users into your best marketers, and why bootstrapping and staying intentionally small can be a super
1:29.1	competitive advantage. So this is a masterclass on building a profitable, sustainable, growing
1:34.2	business from a founder who chose passion and community over venture capital.
1:41.7	Hear the stories. Learn the proven methods and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship.
1:49.5	Welcome to the founder podcast with Nathan Chan.
1:55.6	Thank you so much for joining us. The first question I want to ask you is you grew up surrounded by artists
2:03.1	and entrepreneurs. Was there a particular moment where you realized I'm meant to build my own thing?
2:09.9	I think from the very beginning, if I'm being honest, I grew up in kind of a Norman Rockwell type of situation where I lived in, I shared a backyard
2:22.7	with my grandparents and my cousins lived across the stream and then my other cousins lived
	...

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