In a TikTok video with over three million views, a girl in a fluffy, maximalist coat sits within the again seat of a luxurious SUV, parked in the midst of a New York City avenue. Atop the 6-second video, a line of textual content reads, “our bodyguards got us matcha.” The digicam zooms in on two intimidating males in full fits with crimson ties, every carrying an iced matcha latte as they stroll again to the automotive.
In an analogous video, a younger girl movies a glossy Chevrolet Suburban because it pulls up in entrance of her home. A person in a go well with opens the door for her earlier than she’s whisked away, surrounded within the automotive by different stoic, professionally dressed males. They wheel her carry-on-sized baggage as she enters the airport, safely escorting her to her flight as she brags within the on-video textual content: “pov you ordered security to take you to the airport.”
These posts have been timed strategically with the launch of a brand new app known as Protector, which debuted final week in Los Angeles and New York City, permitting bizarre individuals to order a Secret Service-like safety element. But the movies weren’t natural.
“We posted 14 pieces of content for [Protector] which resulted in 15 million views and over 30,000 downloads,” the ladies from the matcha video, Fuzz and Fuzz, wrote in a TikTok, disclosing that they have been employed to make these movies.
The different creator, Camille Hovsepian, was not organically selling the app, both, a Protector spokesperson advised TechCrunch. The creator’s boyfriend, serial entrepreneur and progress hacker Nikita Bier, is an advisor to Protector.
In Bier’s playbook, which earned his personal apps acquisitions by Discord and Facebook, rage bait is a part of the enjoyable.
“Once you make 8 figures, you shouldn’t waste the rest of your life trying to get incrementally higher—like doing a b2b saas startup,” Bier wrote in a current publish on X. “Instead, you should be thinking of ways to piss off millions of people on the internet each day by launching controversial app concepts, for pure love of the game.”
Though Bier’s progress technique is synthetic, it has confirmed profitable in producing buzz. He lately suggested an AI-powered well being app to vary its identify from Most Days to Death Clock, then advised the app so as to add a survey that predicts precisely how and when customers will die. Sure sufficient, the app shot to No. 6 on the well being charts within the iOS app retailer and bought a shout out on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
“Me telling you to rename your app: $24,000/mo,” Bier wrote on X. “Your app in a joke on Colbert: Priceless.”
But for Protector, which Bier describes as “Uber with guns,” the thought is extra tenuous than including a gimmicky AI characteristic to a well being app.
Protector’s guards are energetic responsibility or lately retired regulation enforcement, who every has government-issued permits to hold firearms and work as guards. Hiring a safety element on Protector will price customers not less than $1,000 for no less than 5 hours, plus a $129 annual membership price.
According to estimates from Appfigures, an app intelligence agency, Protector has been downloaded by U.S.-based iOS customers about 97,000 instances within the first week after its February 17 launch. About a 3rd of these downloads got here on launch day, because it climbed to No. three on the App Store’s Travel charts. This preliminary curiosity across the app has slowed down although; as of February 27, it sits at No. 70 on the Travel chart.
Though persons are downloading the app — maybe out of sheer curiosity — these installs don’t assure that folks will really pay to make use of it.
Protector’s goal buyer is unclear, because it’s troublesome to think about what sort of particular person can be on board with paying over $1,000 for such an ostentatious, pointless service. Perhaps as one other tactic to spice up engagement, Protector has made appeals to a extremely particular viewers: enterprise executives who’re involved about their security after the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson (who would seemingly have entry to…
