150 million Americans use TikTok—nearly half the country. But when we talk about TikTok as a success story, we forget that most of its growth was paid.

Bytedance spent $3M a day in 2018 on paid acquisition—about $1B for the full year. At one point, TikTok was Snap’s biggest advertiser (before Snap realized it had been selling nuclear weapons to the enemy).

We’re seeing the same playbook again right now: Bytedance is pushing Lemon8 (a Gen Z mash-up of Instagram and Pinterest), and Pinduoduo is pushing its discount shopping app Temu.

But most companies don’t have the backing of an internet giant to fuel growth. They have to crack distribution on their own—and the holy grail is virality 🚀

This week’s Digital Native is about how startups can achieve viral growth, both by engineering virality into the product and by injecting viral boosts.