Kaboose had no funding, then one TikTok video brought almost a thousand users

Michelle told the technology panel at the 2024 Autistic Pride Day Symposium in Melbourne that Kaboose had grown for a year without money. Kaboose is a community app for neurodivergent people to find friends, and eventually mentors and jobs, and she said she designed it with the community. She had appeared at the symposium the year before, and Kyriakos Gold, who hosted the session, asked her to reintroduce the app and tell the audience what had happened since. She said that “it’s been a slow sort of journey because we haven’t had funding”. Even so, almost 5,000 people were using Kaboose around the world, she said, and the app was starting to see real traction.

She put the change down to her TikTok videos, which she described as getting quite a few views. Gold gave the audience the number. “Quite a few is 2.9 million views for her last Tik Tok video.” He asked whether that had turned into users or only attention, because a viral video on TikTok can be followed by nothing. She said almost a thousand people had joined in three days.