Most productivity apps spend years clawing their way to real revenue.
Playbacks did it in a few months, without a viral launch or VC funding.
The app entered the App Store in July 2025. By October, it was already doing $20K in monthly recurring revenue.
Playbacks comes from ATTN Labs, a New York startup founded in 2025 by Connie Cen.
Cen isn’t a typical tech founder.
Her background is in growth strategy and marketing, and you can see that in how the product is built and sold.
The app launched with a simple promise: “never take notes again,” plus a direct line into TikTok creators.
And the product itself is just as simple. You record a meeting, lecture, or interview, and the app transcribes, summarizes, and organizes everything for you.
In the last 30 days, they only had about 1,000 downloads. But even with low downloads, they held on to $20,000 in monthly recurring revenue thanks t their pricing model.
Playbacks is free to download, but it works just like a premium SaaS product.
Pricing is $14.99 per month, $139.99 per year (about $11.67 per month), or $8.99 per week as a paid trial. There is no generous free tier.
New users get just enough usage to feel the value before they hit a paywall.
That puts them in a different bucket from most AI voice notes apps, which usually see high downloads but low MRR.
Playbacks now manages 26 creator accounts that have pulled in more than 49.4M views. Connie is running a TikTok first strategy, with Instagram acting as a backup mirror.
17 TikTok accounts have done 39.3M views, and 9 Instagram accounts have done 10.1M.
The founder herself has gone viral on two different handles on both platforms.
She is uploading headshot, selfie-style videos under @cons.journals on TikTok and @corporatebridget on Instagram Reels.
On @cons.journals, she hit 100K bookmarks in August with a single video.
She filmed a short clip of herself typing in an office and used a long hook asking for hacks to look like the top performer at her corporate job.
Then she plugged the app in a clever way: she had other accounts reply in the comments, calling “Playbacks” the best hack, then mass liking those comments, so they rose to the top.
In October, she went viral twice again using the same CorporateTok angle, just changing the hook slightly.
On her corporatebridget accounts, she found a winning format and is repeating it on repeat.
Short, dramatic CorporateTok videos, usually with her hand on her forehead.
Hooks often start with “HR said” or “Manager said,” and she mentions checking the Playbacks app for “legal reasons” tied to her job rights.
Besides her 4 viral founder-led accounts, there are other 2 that have gone viral and are still actively uploading.
@corporatetaja is an ambassador who racked up 10.1 million views since she started, mid October. She took off with fake coworker drama on video calls.
During the call she mentions that she used Playbacks to record the meeting.
“When your coworker tries to make you turn your camera on” -> 5.3M views
@corporatedenise also built steady viewership by copying this format after her first approach did not land.
In the end, Playbacks is not really about notes. It is about how far you can push consumer SaaS when you pick one painful problem, one clear audience, and one main channel.
A growth focused founder built a straightforward product, priced it like a serious tool, and plugged it into a tightly managed creator network while also growing her own viral accounts. Instead of chasing millions of downloads, she used premium pricing and a TikTok first distribution.
The full collection is available on Shortimize: https://app.shortimize.com/c/2b10M2FFnWRrbQ
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