One 2021 TikTok now a brand growing 57% a year

Mia Lind made a TikTok about "hot girl walks" in 2021. The video went viral.

The phrase has since become a brand that works with Nutella and Spotify, according to Inc., which reported the business this week.

Inc. puts the growth rate at 57 per cent annualised. The period that figure covers has not been published, and nor has the revenue it is measured against.

Lind has not disclosed how the brand earns: the split between brand partnerships, products and anything else is not public.

What is on the record is the shape of it. A single piece of free content became a name, the name became a thing advertisers wanted to attach themselves to, and two of those advertisers are large consumer brands.

The useful part for a founder is the ordering. The audience arrived first, at no cost, and the commercial relationships came later because the phrase had already travelled.

That ordering is not a strategy anyone can schedule. It is worth noting, though, that four years separate the video from the brand deals, which is rather longer than the usual telling of these stories allows.

The detailed steps Lind took to convert attention into income have not been set out publicly in a form that can be checked.