Sebastian Turner and Miles Nowel stumbled onto their idea when the Feynman Technique exploded on TikTok. The method asks students to teach a topic back to lock it in, and dozens of clones crowded the App Store overnight. To rise above the noise they rebranded as Einstein AI and set one goal: give every learner an AI tutor that never sleeps.
Two problems, one spreadsheet
In late 2023 the entire operation lived in a single Google Sheet tracking outreach, payouts, and view counts for ten creators. Growth stalled on two fronts: most early videos fizzled, and creators wanted proof the app could actually pay.
"Growth is two lines: find content that hits, and bring in people who can repeat it."
Miles Nowel, Co-founder
The first spark: proof we pay
In January an experimental format went viral and one creator's payout crossed four figures. Sebastian screenshotted the payment inside Growi and posted it to Discord under the title "Proof We Pay." Applications jumped the next morning. The founders formalized a simple funnel:
- 1Lead with receipts. Real payouts and view stats, not promises.
- 2Sell the upside. Start at a few hundred a month, scale to thousands.
- 3Layer referrals. Veterans earn a cut for every friend who joins and posts.
The loop pushed Einstein from 10 to 150 creators in three months.
Surviving the surge
The leap would have drowned a two-person team still living in Google Sheets. Switching to Growi killed the administrative drag: automated payouts ended the late-night Venmo marathons, real-time dashboards pulled views and sales directly from TikTok, and a creator CRM replaced color-coded cells.
"Without Growi, the jump to hundreds would have been impossible."
Miles Nowel, Co-founder
Outreach stayed aggressive, thousands of prospects a day across platforms, but with payouts and tracking on autopilot the effort translated into clean numbers. Today roughly 150 creators post for Einstein, generating tens of millions of views each quarter.