| Readwise URL | https://read.readwise.io/read/01kt2hy8a9d3c158q4wqgmn013 |
|---|---|
| Readwise ID | 01kt2hy8a9d3c158q4wqgmn013 |
| Date | 2026-05-31 |
| Author | Starter Story |
| Category | video |
\n\nSource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4QodeA_lQ0
I decided to really lock in and focus onbuilding one specific product, and we’vegone from 0 to 30k MR ever since. Thisis Benji, and in the last year, he’s builtover 45 apps, and his latest one just hit$30,000 a month in less than 4 months.
In the past year or so, I’ve built over45 apps.>> But this isn’t a story about one app.It’s about the system behind all ofthem—the exact process he follows everysingle time to go from idea to revenuefast.>> The entire process usually takes aroundfour to five hours to actually get agood app built out.
So, I asked Benji to come on to thechannel to break it all down step bystep. And in this episode, we’ll diveinto how he goes from an idea to aworking app in just a few hours, thesimple distribution strategy that makeshis app thousands of dollars everymonth, and the complete playbook he’dfollow if you were starting a mobile app.
Again from scratch today. If you’rebuilding apps right now, this is theepisode. Let’s dive in. I’m Pat Wallsand this is Starter Story.Okay, Benji, welcome to the channel. I’mpumped to have you on here. Tell meabout who you are, what app you built,and what’s your story.
Hey guys, my name is Benji. Today I’mtalking about Snag, which is an app thatmy team and I at 10X Studio had launchedaround four months ago, and we’ve gone from0 to 30K MRR ever since. And I’m reallyexcited to share the entire playbookthat we used to scale Snag. Okay,Awesome. Before we get into the wholeprocess of you building it and growingit, let’s talk about what you built andhow it’s doing. Could you pull up someof your dashboards, show me the revenueit’s making, and just show me what youbuilt. As you can see here in SuperWall, we have around $30,000 US inmonthly recurring revenue. We have over100,000 authenticated users on Snag.
9,000 conversions, and over $80,000 intotal proceeds. Snag is an app thathelps people find free items near them.This is the main page of Snag whereusers literally will gain access to freeitems near them. They can select whatthey want here, either by searching itor filtering it. You can store the gooditems that you like in the favoritesection. We do weekly, monthly, yearly,one-time uh subscriptions. We havearound 3.3K ratings on App Store, whichis very important social proof whenyou’re promoting uh consumer apps.
Amazing. $30,000 a month in just fourmonths shows you how fast apps can grow.We talked to a lot of founders that aregrowing apps very fast. I think it’sawesome. Tell me how you get here. Howdo you get to the point where just in acouple months you have an app that’sabsolutely crushing it? What’s yourbackground? I grew up in Asia andgrowing up I always played by the books,worked really hard in school, had a 4.0GPA, but really didn’t explore myselfenough to the point where I knew what Iwanted to do with my life, and then soldmy first media company for six figures.
Then proceeded to work in Congressinvestment firms. I was doing quantresearch, also worked in media companies.Before, I was just trying to exploremyself before ultimately pursuingsoftware products. And then, in the pastyear or so, I’ve built over 45 apps. Myfirst ever app is an app called Pillar.It’s a self-improvement app. We scaledto 11,000 users with basically zero CAC,and basically stopped because I hadshiny object syndrome. I proceeded tobuild my second app, which is calledHighGBT. Again, shiny object syndrome.Just proceeded to build the next 43products, and then decided to really lockin and focus on building one specificproduct that could scale over time withamazing people.
So, you mentioned shiny object syndrome.I think it’s super common. I’veExperienced it. Pretty much everyonewho’s building anything experiences. Isee it all the time with people we bringon the channel and people who want tobuild stuff. Let’s talk about that for asecond. You said you built 40 apps. Youprobably got pretty good at buildingapps. What was your process to buildover 40 apps? That seems crazy. What wasyour process? The highest leverage thingyou could do is to find a great idea. Soyou start from the marketing. So reverseengineer the value proposition that youwant to show in your app first. Then youcould think what would the app look likeif you want to attract a user in 3seconds. Then you go to Figma, wireframeit, design it, feed the designs to clotcode in your IDE and code it. The entireprocess usually takes around 4 to 5hours to actually get a good app builtout without the back end. Personally, Ilove Benji’s process for building apps.
Why? Because it’s a simple, provensystem where he can ship things fast. IfYou’ve gotten to this point in thevideo, you might be thinking about yourapp that you’re going to build. Well,that’s why we launched the free iOS bootcamp. In just a few days, this boot campwill walk you from idea to a realworking app in the app store. You’lllearn how to think about the rightideas, how to build with AI, and how toactually ship. So, if you’re ready toactually build your next app, just headto the first link in the description andyou can get started for free. All right,let’s get back to the episode. Youmentioned something crazy which isyou’re building apps in four to fivehours. I expect you to say like four tofive weeks or something like that. Youbuilt so many apps you probably havelike a nice little tool set. What arethose tools?
Yeah, it’s a pretty much a streamlinedapproach for me right now to build apps.So I use cursor as my IDE. I use ClaudeCode Max to code pretty much the entirething. I use GoDaddy to host my appsdomain. I use loops to send out emailsto churn the users so that I can convertthem back to the app. I use Superwall toAB test my paywalls. I use Mix Panelto track whether my onboarding processis good enough or not. I have an Appledeveloper account, Figma subscription,and finally I host everything onSuperbase as my back end.
On a separate topic, before we get intothe whole build and how you build stuffand how you grow it, how do you thinkabout ideas now? How to come up with agood idea that could make $30,000 amonth like yours.
YouTube and Twitter are great sources ofinspiration because you just see peoplemaking money from all sorts of differentideas, and I think you can discoverpinpoints that are underserved, andactually impact you as a person, or youcan go on Sensor Tower to search forideas that are making a lot of money, andyou can literally copy the same app butMake it 10% better. A great example of this would be height GPT that I built.
After we launched height GPT, there were around 20 different copycat apps, butthey’re also making hundreds of thousands of dollars because they have a better user interface,they have better marketing,they have better funnels.
So, ideas don’t really worth much if you cannot provide the product to the end user in a better way.Thanks for sharing that.Ideas are worthless, but they’re also kind of everything.You still got to have a good idea.But if you can launch the high GPT app and there are 20 other competitors,you need something else.And just what everyone in the comments are going to say right now,starter story, you don’t talk enough about marketing.Building is easy now.So, let’s talk about it. Specifically, what we did is we ran UGC campaigns at scale,and then turn those creatives into paid ads.
So, essentially how this works is you reach out to a bunch of creators.
First, and then filter them one by one byinterviewing them to see whether theyhave that virality built in them. Andtypically, we get a 10% conversion rate.So, for every 100 creators we interview,we get actually about nine to 10 goodones. Then you put them on a monthlyretainer plus a CPM structure, and thenyou test them. If they’re doing over50,000 views per video, then those aregreat videos that you can run on Metaads. So, you can set up test campaigns onMeta ads and then figure out the roeson it. So, if your roes is greaterthan one, that means you’re making moneyfrom your app. And Meta ads is not alinear growth structure. This means that ifyou’re making a 10% profit margin whenyou’re spending $100 a day on Meta ads,it does not imply that if you spend 200,
then you get 20%. Because there’sdiminishing marginal return. So, you haveto see whether your ads are fatiguing ornot on Meta ads and then basically pumpout more creatives so that you couldTest more options and to figure out themost optimal creatives to run on metaads. I like that because, yeah, workingwith UGC creators is a pain over thevery long term, and switching over topaid ads when it starts working is smart,because you don’t have to deal with asmuch of that headache of rehiring andthe churn and all that. We’re going toget into the paid ad side of things, butI’d love if you could just show me anexample of the UGC that you did, maybe asuccessful post that led to actualrevenue for your business.
As you can see, this video is soft-sellingthe app.I seriously can’t believe she just putthem on Snag for free.> So, this video got 240,000 views. Whatwe typically see is that with every 100,000views, we can make around 2,000 thatwe can directly make from subscriptionprofits. Thanks for showing that. It shows how simple these videos can be.This video got 240,000 views, and I’mSure, you created a bunch of other videoslike that that also crushed it. Youmentioned that, then once the video likethat works, then you run paid ads onthat specific TikTok video. How doesthat work? There’s a two-step approach,
that we usually take versus we set atest campaign. So, we spend around 3,000 in total for this adbefore the Rorowas became negative.
That’s why the number of creativesmatters a lot when you’re running paidads, so you get more tickets to thelottery. Thank you for showing that, andthanks for sharing some of your numbers.
I want to switch topics a little bit,since you’ve launched so many apps foranyone watching this right now. Like,let’s say you had to start over fromscratch. What would be your playbook forbuilding a consumer mobile app in 2026?Keep in mind that this literally workedfor me for even my first app, and Ididn’t really have any money as acollege student. So this would actuallyapply to everybody. So step one isfigure out an idea that is actuallyscalable and that you can implementproperly. This is probably the highestleverage thing you could do. Think of itlike this: a good product doesn’t really
need much, quote-unquote, marketing. Peopleconvert at a higher rate, and peopledon’t want to cancel subscription onyour product because your product isproviding so much value to them. ForSnag, it was very simple. You pay us afew dollars a month, and then you getaccess to products that are worthhundreds of dollars, and hence why II think we have a very high conversionrate. Yeah, I agree with that. Myfavorite apps are apps that help youmake more money or help you save moremoney. This is a very simple valueproposition. I’m happy to pay for that.
What’s the next step?
Step two is to start building. So, openyour IDE and start using cloud code toactually code out your app. Most likely,when you’re starting off, you’reprobably going to be building single usecase apps where it’s pretty much like aAPI wrapper, which is perfectly fine.All you have to do is use the APIproperly. Make sure the app is actuallyfunctioning and make sure that there’s away for you to authenticate the user forthem to create an account so that youcould actually get approved on AppStore. That’s pretty much it. Inbuilding nowadays according to you andbasically everyone else that we talkedto on Starter Story takes four to fivehours. So, this part shouldn’t be hard.
What’s the next step? Step three wouldbe distribution. So if you don’t havemoney to hire UGC creators orinfluencers, start filming themyourself. I filmed probably thousands ofvideos for my previous apps by myself.And then you can find an editor to edityour videos at scale, have a packagedeal to run them as paid ads. So yeah,the greatest skill I think right now isthe ability to create content and knowhow to get views and engagement in thissort of algorithmic Tik Tok world thatwe live in. That is probably my favoriteone. What is the final step?
The final step is just iterating on theproduct so that you have a betterproduct so that you get higher LTV,lower CAC. So focus on generating realvalue to your end users becauseultimately, business is the transactionof value. They give you the money, yougive them the value.
Okay, thank you for sharing that. Lastquestion that we ask all founders whoCome on, Starter Story, if you could goback in time while you were, you know,in college or thinking about going, thattraditional career path, what would beyour advice to your younger self or youradvice to anyone who’s watching thiswho’s in a similar spot?
Definitely create your own luck and meetthe right people. I’m able to learn somuch in the past few months because Imet a guy called Blake Anderson. If youwork with great people like that, youtend to want to improve yourself so youcan match their pace and then to providevalue. I’m not saying to do meaninglessnetworking, but create your own luck.Meaning that just keep doing what you’redoing right now. Iterate, learn frommistakes, and then you’re going to be ata point where you’re able to work withgreat people. And great people lead togreat opportunities, which would justenable you to learn even more.
One of my favorite phrases is that youare the average of the five people youSurround yourself with. Just bysurrounding yourself with people thatare crushing it, like Blake, who hasbuilt a ton of cool stuff, it just makeseverything easier when you’resurrounding yourself with ambitiouspeople. Thanks for coming on to theshow. Love what you built. Hope to seeit keep growing and you can come back onStarter Story and share more. Thanks forcoming on.
Thank you for having me.>> All right, Gus, producer of StarterStory. What did you think of this one?>> Yeah, Benji was awesome. When I firsttalked to him, I really liked his. He’ssuper chill, first of all, likepersonality, but loved hearing just likethis proven system he has. He knew whathe was talking about. He had thenumbers, he had the creatives,everything in his head there. So, thatwas really cool.>> He’s not worried about the things thatcan go wrong or doing things wrong. HeBuilt 40 apps very kind of straight intothe point. Do this, do this, do this.
Let’s not really like over-complicateit. And this is how smart builders act— is like, instead of worrying about is myidea not going to work. What are peoplegoing to think about me? Build apps, getyour rowaz up to this point, and you’regood to go. So hopefully people watchingthis realize that, hey, it can really bethis simple. It’s math. On that note,you still got to find your idea. Youstill got to build something. So, I’llput a link in the description down there,if you want to build an app. We’ll helpyou come up with an idea. We’ll help youbuild it. We’ll help you ship it to theapp store. Put that all down there inthe description. You can download it andget started building right now. Hope youguys enjoyed this one. We’ll see you inthe next one. Peace.