Founder Interview Series: Volv—The Innovative App Dubbed 'TikTok for Smart People' Backed by Snap
Volv curates the most interesting, viral, and important content, delivering it in 9-second articles with AI—designed for today’s attention economy.
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TL;DR
Volv was born out of frustration with content overload. Founders Shannon and Priyanka created an app that delivers 9-second news bites for Gen Z and Millennials who want to stay informed without endless scrolling. Their biggest lesson? Adapt fast, listen to your users, and don’t rely on influencers to fix everything.
Founder Interview Series 👓
Founder Interview Series: Volv—The Innovative App Dubbed 'TikTok for Smart People' Backed by Snap
We’re drowning in a flood of useless content.
The endless scrolling through mind-numbing information has become the norm.
You’ve felt it. I’ve felt it.
The noise keeps growing—until now.
What if, instead of doomscrolling through nonsense, you could get the news you actually need—in 9 seconds flat?
Introducing Volv:
The TikTok for smart people that cuts through the noise.
I’ve used it for the last week… and, yes, it’s as good as it sounds.
Download Volv and get Volv Premium free for a month by using “VOLVOL”
I had the chance to interview Volv’s co-founders, Shannon Almeida and Priyanka Vazirani, who turned this idea into a massive success—even catching the attention of investor Mark Cuban.
Volv doesn’t just serve quick bites.
It curates the most important updates, to deliver what matters.
Volv isn’t about clickbait. It’s about high-quality updates.
A rare find in today’s attention economy.
Plus, their journey is packed with lessons for anyone working in a startup or in marketing.
Here’s what you’ll learn from our deep-dive conversation:
How Volv started out of pure frustration with information overload
How feedback from Mark Cuban shaped their strategy
How they solve the “too much content, not enough time” problem (9-second snippets)
The marketing strategies driving their growth
Why Volv is called the “TikTok for smart people”
Q&A with Volv’s Founders 🖊️
Q1: How did you get started in the startup world?
The journey of Volv began with the launching of our social enterprise called Benefactory, aimed at making a positive impact.
Benefactory was designed to engage brands and their customers in donating during urgent crises, integrating a donation checkout widget on websites that highlighted causes based on the most pressing issues at the time.
Our pivotal moment came during the migrant crisis.
The polarized media narrative had politicized the issue to the point where many charities and brands were reluctant to raise funds, claiming it wasn’t a humanitarian crisis. Faced with this challenge, we decided to cold-email celebrities whose voices could reach millions.
Fortunately, Kerry Washington, Prabal Gurung, and Ilana Glazer partnered with us, and we successfully raised donations.
This experience taught us two key lessons:
Reliance on influential personalities shouldn't be the norm.
Mainstream media was failing to meet our generation's needs.
Recognizing the necessity for a more effective way to inform an attention-deficit generation about relevant issues.
This realization led to the inception of Volv.
Q2: What problem is Volv solving?
It’s incredibly overwhelming to keep up with breaking news, industry updates, newsletters, podcasts, and social media trends across platforms like X, Instagram, and TikTok.
The majority of us often lack the time or patience to sift through long articles, check every newsletter in our inbox or visit multiple sources like CNN or BBC to stay informed daily.
This issue is significant because our generation's content consumption habits have shifted drastically. We are constantly on the go and have shorter attention spans.
Most of us are wasting time doom scrolling across social media and decreasing our productivity. So we reimagined the future of media by adapting to how our generation wants to consume content.
We knew we had to break free from the norms of traditional news apps who no longer serve the needs of young consumers who crave quick, digestible, and diverse content in one place. Our core ethos and value proposition were different, as we focused on quick 9-second articles instead of long-form articles.
We created Volv to be the social news app or one can say a personalized digital magazine that gives you all this content in 1 place in 9 second stories.
We provide all the essential news, trends, and updates in 9-second stories—short, impactful information that fit seamlessly into busy lives. It gives a user the power to stay informed quickly and efficiently.
This not only saves time but also makes staying updated easier and more productive.
Q3: How did you validate the idea for Volv?
Before launching Volv, we started by publishing opinionated, critical, unbiased long-form articles on Medium, covering topics like politics, tech, and business.
After a few months, we realized that this content wasn’t resonating with our target audience—Gen Z and Millennials as we were not getting enough traffic and engagement. The audience weren’t drawn to lengthy, critical articles.
We saw that people wanted to know beyond the mainstream news.
That insight led us to rethink our approach.
We then decided that in the chaos of the digital world we had to bring in news and other content in a way which is not overwhelming for them to consume.
So, we shifted our focus to short-form content, considering our attention span has dropped to just 9-seconds, and first focused on unbiased news.
Everyone talked about wanting unbiased news but the truth is users didn’t stay back for “unbiased news.” Our retention sucked. So based on data, we decided to change tracks and remove that as the sole focus of the app.
Our journey was also shaped by valuable feedback.
We constantly cold email people for advice. Mark Cuban’ talked a lot about news at the time so we cold emailed him too. He actually responded saying the content looked like “AP news” and it had to be a lot more entertaining to appeal to the younger audiences.
We got our pre-seed funding through Snap's accelerator program which was incredible. Our accelerator advisors, Mike Su and Alexandra Levitt, were amazing, they were hands-on and guided us through the initial stages of finding product-market fit.
Considering Snap and Volv target the same audience and are both based on quick interactions, we learnt a lot from the program too.
We officially launched Volv with the concept of 9-second articles, offering calm, concise content in a user-friendly way. We also designed a serene, minimalist UI to create a sense of calm, steering away from the chaotic visuals seen in traditional news apps.
Our goal was to give our readers a space where they could stay informed on various topics without the noise and aimed at giving them a personalized digital magazine experience.
Q4: Who is Volv for?
Our target audience primarily consists of Gen Z and Millennials, accounting for 87% of our user base.
For our app, we’re focused on reaching an audience that legacy media is trying but has not completely captured with their traditional mainstream long-form content. A large portion of our users are not on social media and the other majority chunk is Gen Z.
Users often call us as “TikTok for smart people,” which is fitting given that our core audience includes founders, C-suite executives, engineers, product managers, and other professionals who don’t have time to doom scroll on social media.
Our user base is majority male, with higher education and disposable income, which is ironic since it’s a female founded company. But this is most likely because of the tech communities we partnered with plus the fact that Youtube tech bloggers have been talking about Volv, who have a predominantly male-dominated audience.
Our goal however, is to have a balanced ratio.
After 100s of user interviews, market analysis, feedback - we understood Gen Z and Millennials prefer short-form, high-impact content, especially in a world where attention spans are shrinking.
With this research we realized that many are expressing their need to be up to date with the latest discourse in a more efficient way and without the clutter of social media. We give them Volv as their very own, personalized digital magazine.
This audience is our primary focus because they represent a growing demographic that values speed, convenience, and quality in their content consumption. They seek an alternative to traditional news outlets and social media.
By catering to their needs, we have built an app that these users now actively rely on to discover the latest news or trends that they would’ve never discovered otherwise and as their go-to source for smart, quick updates.
Q5: What’s driving your growth?
Email marketing has been huge for us.
We send targeted cold emails to professionals in industries like tech, banking, and finance, positioning Volv as the go-to platform for cutting through information overload.
We also collaborate with newsletters.
These partnerships have been effective, especially since we launched our Creator Platform, which allows writers and journalists to publish directly on Volv using our AI tools.
It’s a win-win—creators get exposure, and we get fresh content.
One of our past newsletters is also featured on Volv. Check it out
Q6: Can you share a marketing campaign that worked?
Our referral program was a big success.
Initially, users earned custom merch for referring friends, which drove a significant bump in new users. While the merch rewards were successful, managing global shipping logistics became too costly.
Switching to Volv Premium features not only made the program scalable but also encouraged deeper engagement. Users now enjoy features like text-to-speech and ad-free experiences, which increase retention and long-term app loyalty.
This approach has been far more scalable and sustainable, with strong results in user retention and long-term engagement.
Q7: How do you measure your marketing success?
To measure the success of our marketing efforts, we focus on several key metrics that provide insights into user engagement, acquisition, and retention.
One of the primary metrics we track when we are doing paid marketing like newsletter collaborations or ads, we focus on customer acquisition cost or cost per click, as it helps us understand how much we’re spending to bring in new users. This is crucial for maintaining a healthy marketing budget and ensuring sustainable growth.
We also pay close attention to user retention rates, which indicate how well we’re keeping our users engaged over time. High retention suggests that our app is providing value and that our marketing efforts resonate with our audience.
Additionally, we look at monthly active users and daily active users to gauge overall app usage and engagement.
So far, users have read 60 million stories on Volv and we get 5 million monthly impressions on our app.
Q8: What marketing challenges have you faced?
One of our biggest challenges in marketing is the rising cost of paid influencer collaborations and expensive ads on social media.
For startups with limited budgets, it can be challenging to compete with bigger brands that can outspend in paid ads or influencer marketing. The price for a single 30-second feature can start from $2,000 to $5,000 and go way up. While these might generate visibility, they don’t guarantee that users will engage or sign up for our app.
The ROI on such collaborations has become unpredictable, especially with algorithms and audiences becoming more saturated and selective. It’s no longer enough to just "get the word out"; we need active, engaged users, and influencer collaborations don’t always deliver that kind of result.
With users bombarded by ads on every platform, it’s becoming harder to capture attention through traditional digital advertising. People have developed ad blindness and often scroll past sponsored content or banners without noticing.
The sheer volume of content available online makes it harder to cut through the noise. We're also up against fierce competition from both traditional media and newer platforms, making it crucial to differentiate our value proposition.
To overcome these challenges, we’ve shifted our focus to more direct and measurable marketing channels, like email marketing and newsletter collaborations. By targeting professionals and dedicated readers through cold emails and strategic partnerships with popular newsletters, we can reach an audience that is actively looking for smarter, time-efficient ways to stay informed.
These methods are cost-effective and provide a clearer path to engagement and user acquisition, allowing us to build a stronger, more sustainable user base without relying solely on expensive influencer collaborations.
Q9: What tech tools are you using in your marketing stack?
To fuel our email marketing efforts, we use RocketReach, Apollo, and Snov for lead generation. Each platform has unique strengths that help us achieve precise targeting.
RocketReach helps us excel at finding accurate and up-to-date contact information for professionals, making it easy to connect with decision-makers. Apollo and Snov offer deep insights into companies, allowing us to segment and target based on industry, size, and growth potential.
These platforms are versatile, enabling efficient list-building and automated lead searches, which saves time while scaling our outreach efforts.
When it comes to sending email campaigns, we rely on Hunter.
Hunter is great for creating highly curated and personalized email sequences, ensuring that each campaign is tailored to the specific needs of the companies we target. Its analytics are robust, providing us with detailed metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and response rates.
This data helps us track engagement and optimize future campaigns for better performance. We also used Instantly for sending email campaigns and it is a great platform to warm-up your emails.
In addition to email marketing, newsletter collaborations play a significant role in our strategy. Platforms like Substack, Beehiiv, and Ghost allow us to partner with creators.
We also have our newsletter with over 25,000 subscribers on Beehiiv - The Concierge. Having a newsletter helps us to understand the ins and outs of creating content and reach some of our marketing goals.
For ads on Volv, we previously used PartnerStack although it did not yield any profitable results. So we recently transitioned to WellPut. With ads we really focus on what is more relevant and important to our user base rather than just showing some random ads.
So we aim to have enhanced ad performance tracking, better management tools, and streamlined reporting that will help us optimize ads and improve campaign outcomes.
Q10: How do you see your marketing strategy evolving?
Over the next year, our marketing strategy will undergo significant shifts, aligning with emerging trends and expanding our focus on community-driven growth. One of the key areas of evolution will be a stronger emphasis on user-generated content.
We plan to actively encourage our users to create and share content about their experiences with Volv, leveraging the authenticity and trust that users bring. This approach not only deepens engagement but also amplifies organic reach as users become advocates for the brand.
We are also aiming to build exciting partnerships with educational and tech platforms to extend our reach to Gen Z and Millennials who are interested in current trends and emerging technology.
We’re also increasing our efforts on TikTok, we recently teamed up with high school and university students as social media and marketing interns. These students are bringing fresh ideas and perspectives to our TikTok strategy, which we see as a key platform for future growth. Their input helps us create relevant content while providing them with valuable marketing experience.
Additionally, we’re doubling down on our Creator Platform, which will help writers and creators with our AI tools to boost their discoverability on Volv. This not only enriches our content library but also fosters organic growth as creators promote their work to their existing audiences, driving more users to our platform.
These shifts will help us stay agile and connected with evolving digital trends, driving both user engagement and growth.
Q11: What advice would you give to other startups?
When building an effective marketing strategy from scratch, start by deeply understanding your target audience.
Conduct thorough research to identify their pain points, interests, and habits, then tailor your messaging accordingly. Test different channels early and analyze the data to find what works best for your audience.
You don't have to be spending money to market. Partner with communities, find synergies with people who already have a large audience that is relevant to you.
Q12: What’s book do you recommend?
Growth Levers by Matt Lerner. It’s packed with actionable insights and is an essential read for anyone serious about marketing and business growth. It’s a quick read too - kind of like the Volv of books :)
My Key Takeaways
Volv is shaking up how we consume news.
Their unique approach, combined with smart marketing and an agile mindset, has set them up for success.
Know Your Audience: Volv nailed it by understanding that Gen Z and Millennials want short, digestible content. That’s why they moved from long-form articles to 9-second stories—a smart pivot that shows they get their audience.
Adapt to Feedback: Mark Cuban pushed Volv to focus on short-form content, and they listened. It’s a great reminder—always listen to your users and be ready to pivot when needed.
Email Marketing Still Works: Targeted emails were a game changer for Volv. They built their user base by getting specific about who they emailed and why. Personalization matters.
Scalability is Everything: Moving from physical merch to Volv Premium features made their referral program scalable. Smart growth decisions are all about long-term impact.
Partnerships Drive Growth: Newsletter collabs and their Creator Platform helped Volv grow organically. It shows just how powerful the right partnerships can be.
Volv isn’t just changing how we consume news - it’s reshaping the future of content consumption. By delivering short, smart updates, Volv is pioneering a new approach to the attention economy.
As startups continue to battle content overload, Volv stands out by offering quality without the clutter.
Keep an eye on them—they're just getting started.
Download Volv and get Volv Premium free for a month by using “VOLVOL”.
I love this. I will say, I desperately want to spend less time on my phone. Concerned I'll actually enjoy this so much that I'll end up scrolling mindlessly just like every other social app 😅.
Curious, do you publish marketing news on volv ?