Lifestyle tips app Trusper launches with 5M users, $6.17M funding

Trusper, an app that collects lifestyle tips from users, has gained five million users in eight months. The initial numbers look promising: Users view over 10 million tips per day, outpacing similar lifestyle apps.

And this all happened in beta, through word-of-mouth marketing.

Trusper’s tips primarily focus on health and beauty, but the service plans to expand into other categories, such as home and garden and relationships. Frequent submitters earn points that can be redeemed for gift cards and discounts at many popular stores.

Now, backed by $6.17 million in funding led by DCM, Charles Schwab, and other investors, Trusper’s gone gold. The app officially launched today and is available on the App Store and Google Play.

The app’s users are mainly women aged 18 – 45. While Trusper said in its press release that “monetization is not currently [its] primary focus,” it also said it is currently in talks with unspecified companies to allow sponsored tips and offers. By comparison, it took Twitter four years to add sponsored tweets and Facebook seven years to add advertising to users’ news feeds.

It’ll be interesting to see how Trusper implements these sponsored tips without risking the app’s main draw: tips submitted by users for users. But for now, it looks like the company could create a tip on how to drive product adoption with little marketing.