Etan

🇨🇦 🇵🇭 | Head of Growth @thestatusai | prev founder @fitdropapp (acquired) | make your app go viral @

[brendan @bpjzy]

Summertime in the Loo is about to be a movie

[fai nur @faionur]

No AI models or data centers were used in the making of this launch video. We wanted to make something with creatives that remind you the feeling of falling in rabbit holes with your favorite stories and worlds. Just like you can on Status. 

Hand drawn, real actors, built with 2D + 3D models frame-by-frame in Blender. No AI. Real art.

dir. by ZAL and Simon Boyd
music by Trevor Will

[Etan @etanddd]

@Jonovono haha true OG - appreciate it 🙏

[Etan @etanddd]

for the last few months I’ve been quietly leading Growth for Status - and we’re scaling faster than ever

If you have a background in marketing / growth, UGC, influencers, mobile app UA, or content creation, and love pop culture / anime / fandom, send me a dm - im always hiring!

[fai nur @faionur]

Status has raised $17M in seed and Series A funding led by @AbstractVC, @generalcatalyst and @usv to let anyone step inside their favorite stories, become famous, and live a million different lives.

We quietly launched Status last year and grew to over 1 million users in 19 days - making us the fastest growing AI app since ChatGPT.

But we hit a (predictable) snag - the app was incredibly expensive to run. How do you serve millions of users without degrading the product with a cheap LLM?

So the team locked in: we rebuilt the whole experience, and our technical bets paid off. Our users now spend 35 minutes on average to (90 minutes each day for power users!), and millions of characters and worlds have been created. All by our users.

The next frontier of entertainment is mobile-first and deeply personal. Traditional mobile games take years to build and rarely stick. TV shows are fleeting in the age of streaming. Status is different. It is not a game you finish, it is a world you can live in.

Status is a new category entirely: Immersive Social Entertainment, and we believe strongly that it is the next great entertainment paradigm. We’ve 10x’d to millions in annual revenue in Q1 2026, we're just getting started.

On Status, you can be anyone.

[Etan @etanddd]

@nickconfrey appreciate it 🙏🙏

[Etan @etanddd]

@faionur @AbstractVC @generalcatalyst @usv and we’re just getting started 😎

[Etan @etanddd]

@KevinBelfort_30 Where did you see Japan? Do you have data on this

[Etan @etanddd]

@jackfriks Is that the RC Harris water treatment plant? So pretty

[Etan @etanddd]

and they’ve got an amazing UGC program @olbuilds

[Simone Canc @simonecanciello]

YOU SHOULD BUILD BORING APPS!

this app makes $60k/month.

it teaches people how to play piano.

i bet most of you would never think about building apps for niches like this.

now you know you can do it.

[Etan @etanddd]

@bchesky have you heard of ugc marketing 👀

[TBPN @tbpn]

"I think the highest turnover job of any Silicon Valley executive position might be the CMO."

Airbnb's @bchesky says he has a huge amount of respect for people in marketing because it's one of the hardest functions in a business.

"Because once something works, it almost becomes stale. Because everyone does it."

"Part of my theory is that what works in marketing changes every few years and you have to be adaptable. Your old playbook gets outdated."

"It's this thing called 'banner blindness.' After you see something over and over, you tend to be blind to it, so you need a new tactic."

[Etan @etanddd]

@1vnzh Yes

[FanDuel @FanDuel]

RJ Barrett during his game-winner

[fai nur @faionur]

calling all NYC builders! Status is hosting an AI Demo Night with @usv on May 12

featuring demos from some of NYC’s best creative minds:

@ndrewpignanelli
@theesabina
@tylerangert
@liamjmcgregor
@jaredhecht
@y_earu
@parthematics & @alex_ruber
@kitakinluyi
@arin_pantja

[Etan @etanddd]

@zainzitawi Sent u a dm!

[fai nur @faionur]

consumer founder rite of passage: post the cringiest tiktoks ever to promote your app

[Etan @etanddd]

@EvoBradley I guess we agree to disagree haha 🤝

[Etan @etanddd]

3 to 500k+ users, when done right it’s such an easy reproducible format, convert much better at scale than talking videos that bring the cta 20 seconds into the vid when 80% of the viewers are gone, and they often do way better than talking videos when brands want to start running them as paid creatives.

[Etan @etanddd]

@GabrielKerkinni @jhueri amazing!! Yeah super low effort & does really well when done correctly