Founder Dora Akulshina shares how she secured 25,000 users for a consumer app using Instagram Trial Reels and later reached 600,000 views for a niche developer tool on Reddit in just three days.
Dora (Daria) Akulshina is the founder of Dora AI, an AI relationship and conflict coach, and a developer tool known as yolocode.ai. A physicist and a negotiation expert by training, she is a product leader who combines PM execution, AI-building experience, community strategy, viral content, and startup operations — allowing her to move across product, growth, hiring, launches, partnerships, and user support in a high-speed early-stage environment.
Facing the universal startup challenge of distribution without an advertising budget, Dora engineered a disciplined approach to user acquisition. In this interview, she explains how she grew a consumer app to 25,000 users in four months on Instagram and how she adapted her strategy to reach a highly sceptical developer audience on Reddit.
You studied physics for nine years. How did you end up building a consumer app and posting Reels?
I build what I sincerely care about. With both Dora AI and Yolocode AI, I started from a problem I understood deeply and an audience I knew well, and the product followed from there. Consumer apps are a different discipline from physics — the product matters, but distribution is the real game. You can build something excellent, and nobody will ever find it. In my experience, treating distribution as a system to be engineered, rather than a marketing afterthought, is the only way to succeed.
Why Instagram Reels specifically, and what is the insight most founders miss?
I noticed an underused mechanic that almost nobody was talking about: Trial Reels. Trial Reels is an Instagram feature that shows your content only to non-followers. That distinction changes everything. On a personal account, your existing followers expect a certain kind of content, and you cannot suddenly publish thirty emotional reels about relationships without it feeling out of place. Trial Reels solves this elegantly: that content never touches your main feed and reaches only new audiences. Recognising that this feature could be used as a pure acquisition channel was the core of my strategy. I scaled to posting up to 30 reels a day, all to fresh audiences.
Posting 30 reels a day from one account sounds overwhelming. How is that operationally possible?
I built a content library. Specifically, I kept three folders on my phone, each with 200–300 ready-to-publish reels. I used the same core structure every time: a strong hook in the first few seconds, followed by a short product demo. From there, I systematically varied the hooks and sounds.
The real principle is disciplined reuse. When one reel performs well, you redeploy it repeatedly. You change the sound, the hook, or the length to test new variations. The whole system takes about 30 minutes a day because it is engineered, not improvised.
What does the funnel look like, from the Reel to a paying user?
The funnel is simple: Reel → bio link → product → paywall. Every description ends with a clear call to action, and I track each traffic source with UTM links. This tracking ensures I always know precisely which reels drive conversions. New users get a few free interactions, and then they reach the paywall.
How do you write hooks that stop people from scrolling?
It comes down to a deep, almost clinical understanding of your audience’s pain. A generic hook gets scrolled past instantly, but what stops someone is a hook that names a feeling they recognise but have not articulated out loud yet. Because my background is not just in physics but also in conflict resolution and relationships, I understand this emotional landscape well. I do use AI tools to draft and sharpen variations, but the underlying insight has to come from profoundly understanding the person on the other side of the screen.
After your consumer app’s success, you built a developer tool. Why did you turn to Reddit for a niche audience of US developers?
My co-founder and I were working on a developer tool, essentially a code editor experience for product managers. The audience was developers and PMs in the US — niche, discerning, and unreachable through emotional short-form video. Reddit fit for three specific reasons:
- High trust: It is one of the highest-trust platforms on the internet.
- Targeted reach: It allowed me to reach US customers I did not already know.
- Search visibility: It is one of the most-cited domains by large language models, doubling as an SEO and AI-visibility channel.
Reddit is famously resistant to self-promotion. How do you build credibility there and generate 600,000 views in three days?
You have to earn the right to contribute before you ever promote anything. Start by participating and contributing in a meaningful way. For instance, I read the top all-time posts in my target communities to understand the distinct voice and norms of each one, and I added real value through comments.
Once you establish credibility, honest market overviews and useful roundups work best. My strongest posts were not pitches; instead, I wrote considered overviews of the market and positioned our product honestly alongside competitors. When you lead with useful expert content and add practical tips, it reads as a contribution to the community rather than an advertisement.
How did those 600,000 views translate into actual users for your developer tool?
The funnel was simple: Reddit traffic → waitlist → email. We gained around 100 signups in those first three days, growing the waitlist to roughly 150 for the developer tool.
I then converted them personally. I sent a newsletter, a TestFlight invitation to try the app, and an offer of a 15-minute feedback call in exchange for free credits. These conversations directly shaped the product roadmap.
Your results drew attention from some major figures in tech. Tell us about that.
That period was surprising. I was at Network School, an intensive international community of technology founders. I shared my Reddit results with someone who runs the largest subreddits in India, and he encouraged me to keep going. I also pitched the developer tool one-on-one to Balaji Srinivasan, the former CTO of Coinbase. A month earlier, the idea that I would be doing that would have seemed impossible. In our experience, when you build a disciplined distribution system, the results speak for themselves and open doors you did not expect.
Now based in London, Dora continues to support the startup ecosystem beyond her own products. She regularly hosts hackathons, mentors early-stage founders, and gives talks and workshops on AI, product building, community, and zero-budget growth. Readers interested in her work can follow her upcoming events and public sessions to learn more.