Most of you probably know her as the founder of Going Solo, one of the top Gen Z social travel apps using UGC marketing at scale.
Now, she’s working on a brand new app with the same mission: tackling modern loneliness.
Today, we’re diving into her strategies and how she’s scaling them as a solo founder.
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Ashley Pokorski, a young U.S.-based entrepreneur who launched Going Solo in January 2023 to help solo travelers meet and connect.
Then, just 87 days ago, she rolled out Soir, a new app created to bring city people together for chill, personalized hangouts.
Going Solo
Going Solo+ 1 year: $79.99
Going Solo+ 1 week: $4.99
Travel Buddy Matching: $3.99
Going Solo+ 1 month: $9.99
Buddy Matching: $2.99
Soir
Soir Plus Weekly: $9.99
Soir Plus Monthly: $19.99
Soir Plus Yearly: $89.99
The Strategies
Going Solo
Going Solo now runs 12 accounts and has hit a total of 171.8 million views.
You can track all videos here.
They started posting on Instagram in 2023, and since then, their strategy has focused on three main formats.
Format #1 – Quick clips
These are 6–10 second videos featuring a minimalist hook and an app CTA, using screenshots or video demo.
“How did you meet all those friends in Koh tao?” pulled 3.5M views.
Format #2 – Image sequence
This format consists of 10–15 Pinterest travel-related images, each lasting 1–2 seconds, with a static hook overlay and no CTA.
Hooks are usually more generic and aspirational:
“life’s too short to be mysterious. be wildly obsessed with the things and people you love.” did 590.1k views two months ago.
Format #3 – Movie/TV clips
This format is all about short videos from popular series or movie scenes, often featuring aspirational characters.
In December 2024, the team introduced new TikTok accounts featuring different creators.
The TikTok videos with the highest views all came from the @goingsolo.app account, even though some of them were not fully organic.
“wonders if I’ll meet any new friends in Australia” pulled 3.4M views nine months ago, with the app CTA loud and clear on the post’s caption.
“I want to travel the world but no one to go with” hit 3.9M views at the same time.
Soir
Soir is already running eight accounts and has racked up 37.6 million views so far.
You can track them all here.
Unlike what she did for Going Solo, Ashley’s strategy for this new app is primarily focused on TikTok.
Most of her videos for Soir feature close-up shots with a hook focusing on city loneliness and bringing women together through a supportive community.
What’s interesting is that this time, she’s leaning heavily into headshot-style, founder-led content — and she’s boosting her own reach by showing up as different creators across several accounts.
Out of the eight accounts:
- five feature Ashley in most videos (despite different names in handle)
- two are faceless, posting Pinterest-style slideshows
- only one is run by another creator, Lexie (@lexiequinnn)
Still, it’s clear that for now, her main TikTok account, where she’s been posting since 2021 and promoting both apps, is the one performing the best.
With this app, she’s also leaning more into wall-of-text hooks, a clear shift from the strategy she used with Going Solo.
Will she be able to replicate her 171M Instagram views on TikTok?
Time to place your bets.
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