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Who is Romain Torres
Romain Torres is the co-founder of Arcads, an AI-powered creative production tool that has taken the marketing industry by storm. Launched in January 2024 with co-founder Dilan, Arcads reached $5M ARR in just one year. Before Arcads, the duo built and sold a successful health and fitness app with millions of users and significant ARR.
From Fitness Apps to AI Creative Powerhouse
While scaling their fitness app, Romain and Dilan noticed a direct correlation between creative output and business growth. The more high-quality creatives they produced, the more profitable and scalable the business became.
This insight led to the creation of Arcads — a platform designed to help brands and marketers produce more, test more, and iterate faster using AI.
What Makes Arcads Different
Arcads is not just another AI tool. According to Romain, its success comes from:
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Performance-first mindset – Every feature is built to improve ROI, not just creative volume.
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Speed at scale – Marketers can go from concept to hundreds of ad variations in minutes.
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Data-driven iteration – Built-in feedback loops to identify winning creatives and scale them quickly.
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Creative diversity – Ability to produce a wide variety of formats, styles, and concepts to fight ad fatigue.
The $5M ARR Playbook
Romain credits their rapid growth to three main strategies:
1. Building for a Pain Point They Lived
They experienced firsthand how creative bottlenecks limited campaign performance. Arcads solves this problem for other marketers facing the same challenge.
2. Leveraging Their Network and Social Proof
The founders actively shared results and case studies, which created buzz and credibility in marketing communities and on LinkedIn.
3. Rapid Feature Deployment
By listening closely to customer feedback, they shipped new features and improvements at a pace that kept competitors behind.
Lessons from Scaling in Generation AI
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Solve a real, expensive problem – AI hype is not enough; it must deliver measurable results.
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Ship fast and listen – Early adopters will tell you exactly what to build if you listen closely.
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Integrate with workflows – Tools that require minimal behavior change have faster adoption.
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Focus on retention, not just acquisition – Keeping customers engaged fuels ARR growth.
Key Takeaways for Growth-Focused Founders
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Creative production speed can be a major competitive advantage.
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AI should be used to scale proven creative strategies, not replace them entirely.
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Building in public and sharing wins helps drive organic growth and inbound demand.
