A 19-year-old sign language creator spent half a year selling someone else's app, then built his own: can Ziggy's playbook work for other sign languages

Ziggy is a subscription app that teaches American Sign Language (ASL). It launched in Jul 21 2026 and in three and a half months collected 7,121 ratings in the US store, averaging 4.79 stars. Its features are almost the same as the established rivals. What made it take off was one person: Jared Huseby, a 19-year-old TikTok creator with 1.05M followers whose parents are both deaf. He spent six months promoting a French company's sign language app in the closing segment of his videos, figured out what people wanted, then pulled the sponsorship and built his own. Several articles have already picked this apart, and the US market isn't short of competitors. For anyone following, the part worth watching is the combination of "find a matching creator + build a good-enough app." Can you swap in a different sign language or a different country and run it again?

Jul 22, a 14-second video

The day after Ziggy launched, Jared posted a 14-second video, still pinned to his profile today:

"I made my own ASL app. The teachers are certified sign-language interpreters, and my mom is in it too. Search Ziggy ASL on the App Store and try it. Love you all."

This video had 1.33M views by 11-06. A month later, 08-22's "Use the best app — Ziggy ASL" video hit 2.61M, and 09-13 posted another at 2.43M. Going through his 1,400 videos one by one in a breakdown piece: in August he posted 123 videos with 74M views combined, and in September 110 videos with 62.9M views. Nearly every tutorial ends with the same line: "Want to learn sign language? Get Ziggy, free trial available."

His TikTok bio is one line: "19 | CODA." CODA means "Child of Deaf Adults"; he grew up speaking English and signing at the same time. The first link on his profile is the App Store.

What it is

A Duolingo-style sign language course: 30+ units, 500+ signs and phrases, real video demos, quizzes, spaced review, daily streaks, and a sign dictionary. The teachers in the videos are Jared and three other signers, including a certified interpreter, and his mom appears too. The developer is OneDegree Labs, a small app studio in San Francisco with several other apps for running, meditation, and a dinosaur game. How Jared and the studio split revenue isn't visible from outside.

The onboarding flow is 32 screens, and the smartest part is the first two: it asks "Who do you want to sign with?" (parents, siblings, partner...), then has you enter their name. Next it drops you straight into the first lesson, where hello is taught by Jared himself. The person you saw in videos every day is the first thing you see after downloading, so there's almost no break in the path.

After that first lesson comes the paywall: $49.99 a year or $7.99 a week, with a free trial and no free tier. The annual price is much lower than Anna's ($89.99), the app it replaced in his videos.

Why it blew up now: he tested it for others first

Jared didn't get famous because of Ziggy. In March 2025 he started posting "singing pop songs in sign language." One video reached 7.5M views, and his numbers climbed for a month. In autumn they fell to tens of millions of views a month, then in January 2026 he went back to daily posting, 3 to 4 videos a day.

In Feb 2026 12, a French company's sign-language app, Anna, launched, and three days later it showed up at the end of Jared's videos: "Whether you're just starting or want to become fluent, I recommend an app called Anna." Almost every video after that ended the same way. Around the same time he started a new series: teaching his girlfriend Rylie sign language and quizzing her on what she remembered. In May one video got 5.5M views and another 8M. According to the analysis, Anna got 50k downloads in under 30 days, and by May it had 250k downloads total.

After late May, Anna disappeared from his videos. In Jul 21, Ziggy launched. In effect, over half a year and using someone else's product, he validated both "people pay for sign-language apps" and "my audience will download" before building his own.

There's a counterintuitive point too: daily promotion inside his videos didn't hurt his views, which actually went up. August's 74M was his second-highest month ever. The reason is that promotion was built into the content. His videos fall into four types, each doing a different job:

Saves on teaching videos run about 2.2%, roughly 7x those on singing videos (according to the analysis). The people who save are the ones who go download the app.

Where users come from

Jared himself does most of the work. The other channels amplify him:

• Other sign-language creators: deaf creator @misintended (795k followers) posted "Going to the App Store to download Ziggy today!" in 08-21, with 116k views; two or three other sign-language accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers have also posted about it. Whether any of them were paid, there's no way to tell.
• Paid organic content: On a creator-task platform that pays per view, Ziggy posted a "viral photo carousel" task that went live in late October. It only accepts TikTok photo posts, pays $1.50 per thousand views, has $5,000 budget with $2,542,22 already spent, and requires posting from dedicated accounts. On TikTok a batch of new accounts with a few followers have been posting "this app is so good" with #ziggypartner.
• App Store search: 11-06 In the US App Store, searching asl, sign language, or learn asl all put Ziggy at #2, just behind the long-standing Lingvano. The videos kept telling people to "search Ziggy ASL," and as more people did, its ranking rose (inferred).
• Website SEO: ziggyasl.com has 700+ sign dictionary pages and a tool for "how to sign your name," all very new. Their contribution is unknown.
• Paid acquisition: No evidence found of Meta ads. One comment says they saw an ad on TikTok, possibly a boosted creator video, unverified.

Where the money comes from and how it's doing now

The money is subscriptions. According to a app-data firm's estimate, cited by the analysis, September revenue exceeded $200k for the month (unverified). The Android version launched in September and has about 98k installs on Google Play, with 8,474 new in the last 7 days (11-06).

Lately it's been sliding. US daily new ratings went from 106 per 10-30 to 11-04 and then 53,11-05 to 11-06, with only 17 and 21. The number of countries where it charts fell from 51 to 33. Over the same period, reviews kept complaining that videos wouldn't load:

"Lots of videos won't play. In theory it's great for beginners, but if the videos don't load you can't practice." (US App Store, 3 star, 11-02)

The 11-01 5.8 version says it fixed video loading, and one user then changed their review to positive. Whether the decline is from bugs, content that stopped going viral, or paid promotion ending, it's unclear now.

The other type of bad review is about the paywall:

"Looks like a good app, but $50 a month is outrageous, I won't pay." (US App Store, 2 star, 11-03)

"Education shouldn't have a paywall. At least leave something for people who can't afford it." (US App Store, 2 star, 11-03)

The first one actually misread the annual price as monthly, which suggests the paywall copy isn't clear enough. Still, the overall rating has held around 4.8. People who learn sign language mostly do it for a Deaf family member, a child, or a partner, and people who really want to learn are willing to pay.

Who it's competing with

Since Ziggy, five or six more ASL apps have appeared in the US store. One developer released an ASL version in early October, then a British Sign Language (BSL) version five days later, and both still have single-digit ratings. Anyone can build the features. What's missing is the person.

If it were you

In one line: don't fight for US ASL; you can't pull Jared away. What you can follow is the combination itself: in another sign language and another country, find a creator like Jared and build an app that's "good enough."

Who it's for: small teams of 1–3 people who can quickly build a course-style app (video lessons + quizzes + daily streaks + subscription), and who can sign the top ASL creator in the sign language niche, ideally someone who is CODA or Deaf themselves; or you are that creator, with a niche skill audience of your own.

Who it's not for: anyone trying to start ASL from zero with no creator, relying on store search or paid ads (Lingvano and ASL Bloom already own the search terms, and you won't win on features); anyone who wants a free, ad-funded app (this audience pays through subscriptions).

How to do it: Follow Anna's path first, and don't hand out equity right away: build the app, pay the matching creator a promo fee or revenue share, and have them add a line at the end of each teaching video. Only talk partnership or bring the creator on as the on-screen teacher once conversion works. Copy Ziggy's onboarding: ask "who do you want to sign with + their name," have the creator teach the first lesson personally, put the paywall right after it, and price the annual plan one tier below competitors. Candidate niches: British Sign Language (BSL), French Sign Language (LSF), Australian Auslan, Japanese Sign Language, or baby sign language for new parents. First check TikTok to see whether each language has creators with hundreds of thousands of followers. No creator, no shot. Video service has to be solid: Ziggy's dip in October most likely came from here.

How to get users: The creator posts daily across four content types (singing to pull in new viewers, couple/family stories to keep them, everyday life to build trust, mini lessons to convert). Only add a spoken CTA on the mini-lesson and story formats. Then spend a few thousand dollars on a pay-per-view creator platform for amateur photo carousels, pointing viewers to search your name in the store.

When to launch, before: Launch before March 2027. Ziggy's teardown article just came out in October, and someone is already running a BSL version. Few sign languages have a creator yet, so whoever signs one first holds the spot.

Signs you're wrong: ① For six months, Ziggy's daily new ratings in the US store stay around 20 or lower, meaning creator-driven volume can't last and subscriptions don't renew; ② Similar BSL, LSF and other sign-language apps with creators stay outside the top 200 in their country's education chart for three months, meaning sign language audiences outside the US are too small; ③ You approach two or three sign-language creators and they've all already signed with someone else, meaning the spot is taken.

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Data and sources: App Store charts, ratings and reviews for the US store and other countries (2026-10-28 to 11-06); Google Play installs and charts (11-06); App Store listing and ziggyasl.com; videos and view counts from TikTok accounts @jaredhuseby1706, @misintended and others (11-06); the Onbo Hub teardown article (2026-10-20; monthly video stats, onboarding screenshots, Anna download numbers and revenue estimates all come from here); the Ziggy task page on the creator task platform Content Rewards. Monthly revenue figures are third-party estimates, unverified.