| Readwise URL | https://read.readwise.io/read/01kt2ksv5s539mam2jd39j9ay9 |
|---|---|
| Readwise ID | 01kt2ksv5s539mam2jd39j9ay9 |
| Date | 2025-12-11 |
| Author | youtube.com |
| Category | video |
\n\nSource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw2Yc4Y1PsU
In eight months, I built and shipped over28 apps.>> This is Max, a full-time developer whospent years building apps with nosuccess.>> I had my mobile pet project. Ireally wanted to grow, and I spentso much time on it, trying differenttechniques. Nothing worked out>> until one day he decided to trysomething different. Instead of tryingto build the perfect app, he shippeddozens of apps really fast. I have arecord: one app I built in 2 hours.
In just 8 months, he shipped 28 apps andwent from 10,000 amonth, all while working his full-timejob.>> Once the app is live, just let it go andmove on to the next project.
Most people think you need one big appto win, but Max proves that you can besuccessful with a portfolio of tinybets. I asked Max to come on to thechannel to break down his entire system.
And in this video, we’ll dive into hisstep-by-step process for finding ideasthat actually can make money, exactlyhow he ships apps in just a few hours,and his step-by-step playbook you canUse to ideate, build, and launch yournext app in 48 hours. This one righthere is for the builders. You cannotmiss it. I’m Pat Walls, and this isStarter Story.
All right, Max, welcome to the channel.Tell me about who you are, what youbuilt, and what’s your story.>> My name is Max. I’m a father of two, aloving husband, and an iOS engineer inmy daily job. During my off-work hours,in 8 months, I’ve built a portfolioof 28 simple mobile apps that are nowbringing me 1,500dollars. The rest generate verysmall numbers. So basically, there’s aclear example of the famous 80/20 rule.
We’re going to get into that and how youship these so fast. But first, I got tounderstand how you even get to thispoint. What’s your background? Are you adeveloper? How do you get to this pointwhere you’re shipping a new appbasically every week?
I started my career in softwareengineering as an iOS developer. Thatwas around 8 years ago. And like many ofus, I had my mobile petproject. I really wanted to grow and Ispent so much time on it tryingdifferent techniques. Nothing workedout. And then in February of this year, I cameacross Adam’s video on YouTubeand that literally changed my entireunderstanding of how to build apps. Theold understanding was that you have your oneproject, you have to grow it and justfocus all your effort and timeinto it. But then Adam showedthat you could keep building simpleapps. You create one app, one feature,ship it, forget about it, and jump ontoanother app. So that was something thatI had never thought about, and I was sosurprised this approach existed, and I’mhappy that I went that way.
Okay. So you find this new kind of wayof thinking about how to approachbuilding apps. Don’t have any ego aroundyour idea. Ship lots of differentthings. We’re going to get all intothat. Before we do, I want to understandhow do you actually find good ideas forapps?
The very first step is to find the rightkeyword. Basically, how I look at it is that ifa user has a problem, they open the appstore and start searching by entering asearch term or a keyword into the searchbar. Here’s my process. First ofall, my main source of ideas is awell-known ASO tool called Astro. Then Ipick a random category or something thatI really want to build myself and searchfor various relevant keywords. I alsotry looking at areas that might have closelyrelated keywords that target thesame group of users but solve slightlydifferent problems. For example, if you takestudy apps, you can target physicsAI, chemistry AI, and math AI. These aredifferent keywords, but they are related
to students. This gives me anopportunity, after creating one app, toquickly jump into the closely relatedkeywords in no time. When I do myresearch, I make sure the keyword hasat least 20% popularity and 60 or 70%difficulty. When I find interestingkeywords, I usually check the topcompetitors and look at their monthlyrevenue, which can be done with asensor tower or similar tools. Mybenchmark is at least €100 or €200 perIf the competitor does less,meaning there’s not that much money inthat market, so it’s not worth goingthere. What Max is doing here is genius.
He has this very fine-tuned system forfinding ideas, shipping fast, and thenmoving on to the next one. If you stickaround to the end of this video, he’sgoing to talk about exactly how he doesthis, which I think you will enjoy. Butthis whole thing got me thinking. If youlove watching people build fast andthink big like Max, then I definitelythink you should check out The Hustle,who is the sponsor of today’s video. TheHustle is a free daily email that makesbusiness news actually fun to read. Theycover offbeat stories like Max’s everysingle day. And it’s the kind of stuffthat will actually inspire you to buildand launch that business idea, no matterhow crazy it sounds. I’ve been readingThe Hustle for years, and it’s one ofthe few emails I actually look forward
to opening. It’s fast, it’s punchy, andit always gives me at least one story totalk about with my friends. Plus, itmakes me sound way smarter than Iactually am. So, if you’re buildingapps, looking for your next side hustle,If you love discovering business ideasbefore everyone else, The Hustle is foryou. Hit the link in the description,subscribe to The Hustle, and you’ll getdaily stories to keep innovators likeyou in the loop with stories onbusiness, tech, and the internet. Thankyou to The Hustle for sponsoring thisvideo. Let’s get back to the story. Max,that Astro tool seems really cool. Couldyou show me an example of howyou’d find an idea? Let’s say it’s thetree identifier idea.
Basically, what I do is create atemporary app, and then you can addkeywords. You go with the treeidentifier, bring up the apps, and thenpick some closely related ones. Thisis obviously not the one that wewant. This is probably a nice one. Andthen you look through the keywords andyou just go with popularity that Imentioned, starting from 20 anddifficulty 70. So you see that woodidentification is kind of popular andthe difficulty is very low. I wouldbuild that because I mighttarget this keyword and get somegood results.
Keywords that I will be targeting, I add themto selection. Then, I openthe app store to see the revenue of thisapp, and if it’s nice enough, like if it’sbig, then I just go for that.
Okay, cool. So let’s talk about that.What is your build process like? How doyou build all these apps, and how do youbuild them so quickly?
First, I pick two or three competitors andstudy the app, paying closeattention to the main feature thatis closely related to the keyword. So, Idon’t bother with anything else. Then, Itell ChatGPT or Gemini that I want tobuild an app for a given keyword. Iprovide some specific UI/UX constraintsand I ask for a detailed implementationplan. Next, I create a project. I dragand drop some UI elements, custombuttons, and views like screens. Insteadof building a new settings screen overand over again, I just drag and drop.And the same with onboarding and the paywall. For some apps, I basicallycopy around 90% of the code, which gives methe instant time for the building,and the app is shipped in a coupleof hours. Then, once the app is ready, Iopen Figma and create a new project there.
And I copy the screenshots and app icontemplates from all projects. And thenonce I have everything ready, theapp is built. Then I finally ask RGBD togenerate the app description. I fill inall the metadata, making sure it isrelevant to the keywords that I’veselected originally. Then the app isready for distribution. My processusually takes time depending on the app.Some apps might take a week because Ineed to do one thing, then another,but I have had a record where I builtone app in two hours, from the idea thatcame into my head until I submitted it toreview in the app store. Okay, before wefinish the video, I wanted to pop inreal quick and share how cool I thinkthis whole thing is that Max is doing.Find the idea, build it, ship it, and thenmove to the next project. This strategy is genius becausebuilding software is changing. Whenanyone, including your grandma, canbuild an app, how fast you can ship appsreally matters. This is exactly thekind of stuff that we teach insideStarter Story Build. In Starter Story
Build, we will not only show you how tobuild an app with AI, but moreimportantly, we will teach you aFramework that you can use to ship appsover and over again. If you join StarterStory Build, in just a few weeks, youwill have a real working app. And injust a few months, you might be quittingyour job and going all-in on buildingapps. If you’ve gotten to this point inthe video right here, I have a deal foryou. Just put code 28 apps at checkoutfor 20% off your next Starter StoryBuild Boot Camp. Our next boot campstarts this week and this offer won’tlast forever. So if you’re ready tobuild, head to the link in thedescription to check out Starter StoryBuild. And remember to use the code 28apps. That’s 28APSfor 20% off. All right, let’s get backto the video. Okay, that’s crazy howfast you can ship these apps. I reallythink there’s something there. Buildingand shipping new apps every single week.
So for anybody who’s watching this rightnow, I’d love if you just broke down thesteps from actually taking an app fromidea to shipping it to the app store.Break down the exact steps on how to dothis if you were starting over today.Always begin with finding strongkeywords.
Difficulties, a great ratio, and make surethe top apps are making real revenue. Soyou want to build apps in the marketthat pay because I don’t want to waste mytime on building apps that don’t bringany revenue. Step two, study competitorsand define the core feature. Review thetop apps in the category, analyze themand choose the single core feature thatwill solve the main user problem betterand more efficiently. Step three, planfast with AI. Use an AI tool to generate aclear development roadmap, featurebreakdown, and UX structure that removesthe guesswork and lets you startbuilding with clarity and speed. I use
Coursera or Cloud and I just ask them towrite down all the screens and all thefeatures and the flows so I can see theclear picture and understand whichscreens I need to build and which screens Ineed to copy over from the previousprojects. Step four, build lean and shipquickly. Focus on shipping a clean MVPwith only the features necessary todeliver value. Step five, release andmove to the next build. Once the app isfunctional, polished enough, and live,just let it go. Move on to the nextproject. Let data decide which app sinks.
On which float, when you just ship theapp, you get this famous app store boost,but then over time it fades away, andthen I see if it keeps going down orit’s kind of stabilized or even growing.If the app is not sinking, it meansit has potential. The last step, six,is to return to winners and scale with ads. Soafter some time, I do revisit apps thatshow organic traction or retention, andfor once, the ones that float, I startimproving them: do some polishing, do somebug fixes, and add ads just to doubledown on the results and to make surethat they grow. And that’s pretty muchmy playbook for all the apps that Ilaunch.
I want to switch topics slightly andtalk about tech stack. How do you buildyour apps? What tools do you use andwhat languages are they built on?
I don’t have a lot of tools, but herethey are. Flutter, this is the frameworkthat I use for the app development. Fastlane, this is the thing that I use forshipping everything fast. Then I useCORS for AI coding. Firebase, this iseverything. This is my app’s back end.This is the authentication database andeven website hosting.
Air and Gemini for image recognition andthe AI work mix panel used for analytics.I use Astro for iOS and Fox Data foriOS and Android.>> Okay. And on a similar note, I’m curiousabout costs and margin. You’re makingover $10,000 a month from over 28 apps.What are the costs to run this whole appempire?
Corser goes for like 0 a month.Open AI is a bit costly; it’s like 50 a month.Firebase, even though there’s so muchgoing on, it doesn’t cost much because Idon’t really go over the free tier, soit’s around 10 a month. Mixpanel, I’m using a free plan, so I don’tpay anything. Astro goes for like 0 a month.
Okay. Well, thanks for sharingthat, being super transparent about thenumbers. Cool to see how lean youactually run this operation. Lastquestion that I have for everyone whocomes on to Starter Story. If you couldgive one piece of advice to Max just ayear ago on what to do, what to work on,or for anyone watching right now whoIf someone wants to do the same as what you’redoing, what would be your advice?
The most important advice would be notto be afraid of shipping. Don’t wasteyour time on polishing it up, thinkingabout adding one more killer featurethat would definitely get you a ton ofusers. No, don’t do it. Get it readybug-free, just one single feature, shipit, and let users tell you what theythink about it while you’re buildinganother app.
That’s amazing. Best advice I heard allmonth, Max, thank you for coming on,sharing all this. It’s amazing whatyou’re doing. I think it might be thefuture of building apps and software.So, super cool to see and I’m sure it’sgoing to keep growing. Thanks for comingon.
Thank you. Thank you to Max for comingon to the channel. I think that hisapproach is really cool. The fact thathe did it all while he had a full-timejob and he’s making $10,000 a month with 28apps shows what ishappening in the software and applandscape right now. You need to be able tobuild stuff fast, reuse differentcomponents, and just try a lot ofDifferent things. Building that shippingmuscle is super, super important. And Iimagine that one day he’s going tostumble onto a very, very big idea andbe able to execute on it flawlessly. Andagain, this is exactly what we teachinside Starter Story Build. We help youbuild that shipping muscle. We help youcome up with an idea, build it, launchit, and get it into the hands of realusers. And it takes a lot of courage tobuild something and put it out into theworld shamelessly.
All right, guys. Ihope you enjoyed this episode. Thank youfor watching. We’ll see you in the nextone. Peace.