| Readwise URL | https://read.readwise.io/read/01kt2ktw799y1dn9ep3k8yyv5c |
|---|---|
| Readwise ID | 01kt2ktw799y1dn9ep3k8yyv5c |
| Date | 2025-10-26 |
| Author | youtube.com |
| Category | video |
\n\nSource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwHD6Fg-Mjs
I’m 23 years old and my apps do over amillion dollars in sales a year.>> This is Connor, a 23-year-old kid whocracked the code on building apps thatactually make money.>> I built my latest app in less than 2weeks, 100% with AI.>> To prove it, he joined a hackathon ofover 55,000 people, built an app fromscratch, grew it to $20,000 a month, andwon the entire thing.
The apps that I build are designed tomake money from day one. I asked Connorto come on to the channel to break downhis entire playbook for buildingmoney-making apps fast. And in thisepisode, we will dive into how he findsvalidated ideas that can make money fromday one. Exactly how he vibe codes theseapps quickly and his step-by-stepplaybook on how to grow them intomoney-making machines. Strap in becausethis is an episode you cannot miss. I’mPat Walls and this is Starter Story.
All right, welcome Connor to the channel.Tell me about who you are, what youbuilt, and what’s your story.>> Hi, uh, I’m Connor, and over the pastfew years, I’ve built a handful ofmobile apps. These apps have done over aI generated a million in revenue now. I really onlygot into entrepreneurship roughly threeyears ago just by watching YouTubevideos and staying optimistic about whatI’m building.
Okay, Connor, that’s amazing. Can youshare with me what types of apps you’vebuilt?>> So, I’ve built a bunch of differentapps. I’ve probably got around six appsnow. My most recent app is called Payout,and this is one that I just recentlylaunched at the beginning of August andjust scaled it up to doing $20,000 amonth in revenue. The downloads are over12,000 with over 300 new subscriptions. Onecool thing is this is part of theRevenue Cat Chipoton competition. It’s ahackathon where people can release new
apps to the App Store. This year it hadover 55,000 entrants, and it won firstplace for the Build and Grow Award, whichhas a total grand prize of $65,000 forthe app that has the most growth overthe two-month period. Before we get intothe app and how you built it, uh, I gotto understand a little bit more aboutyour background. I know you’re only 23years old, and this is pretty impressivewhat you’ve done. So, tell me how youI got to this place where I even startedbuilding apps.
So, before I started building apps, Iwas just, you know, any other kidplaying too much video games, staying uplate, with no computer science background.One night in the middle of the night, Iwoke up and I just had a random app ideaand I wrote down the whole app idea inmy notes. You know, I had never codedanything. The next morning I woke up andI just started watching YouTube videos.
At the time, I didn’t have a MacBook,and I really wanted to make an iOS app.I didn’t really have any money, so Istarted doing random tasks, just likeselling random items around my room, andeventually, I got my hands on an oldMacBook. I started building a social appcalled Hotspot Events. This app took mesix to eight months to build, kind of failed. Ireally had no idea what I was doing.After that first app, I quickly realizedthat social apps are super hardto scale. So I eventually moved on toutilities and tools, and these are mucheasier to scale as a one-person team.This was all about three years ago, andsince then, I’ve scaled these apps todoing over a million in subscription.
Revenue.>> Okay. I mean, that’s amazing. I love thatyou did this without having all thecrazy tools or anything like that. So mynext question for you is: how do youbuild these apps? What is your playbookfor building these apps? How do youthink about building an app fromscratch?
Yeah, before I get into how I do thingstoday, I think it’s important thatpeople know that you know you don’t needall these fancy tools. I was justwatching YouTube videos and going onStack Overflow, and now my process todayis pretty straightforward. I have a veryspecific set of steps that I follow tomake sure that the app I’m building hasthe ability to convert, drive a lot ofsales, and also has really good userretention. My first step is that I’ll goand download a whole bunch of apps,maybe 20 apps that are in the niche thatI’m diving into, as well as other appsthat I just think are beautiful appsthat I want to draw inspiration from fortheir design perspective. The next thingI do is screenshot every single page inevery single onboarding. And I take allOn one big line in a Figma file so I can
see all of the onboardings, everyquestion they ask, every graph theyhave. And I’ll pick out all the onesthat I like and I’ll grab some from one,some from another, and then I’llredesign them so they all have my theme andmy aesthetic that I want for my app. Ithink it’s really important to have anextensive onboarding. Realistically, 90%of users will probably only ever seeyour onboarding if you have a paywalledsection in your app. So, I think it’sreally important that you spend a lot oftime on this, maybe even as much time asdesigning the actual functionality ofthe app. When it comes to theonboarding, these are the most importantthings that you want to do to make surethat your app converts successfully. Thefirst one is you want to invoke emotion.
You want to make sure that when the useris going through the onboarding, theyfeel strongly about it. Most purchasesare made emotionally and are not logicalwhen it comes to consumers. You alsowant to make sure that you show thestrongest incentives of your app, howit’s going to improve your user’s life.
Understand the benefits and that it’svery simple for them to be able to makethat purchase. It’s also important tomake sure that the app feelspersonalized. In today’s day and age,when there’s so much competition, peoplewant to make sure that what they’rebuying feels like it’s meant for themspecifically rather than just like agenerally applicable app. Finally, youwant to make sure that you have somesort of charts, graphs, or something tomake the app feel more scientific.
People like to know that something thatthey’re using has been proven to work,that other people have successfully usedit. And by adding these charts andgraphs, it’ll make it so your app seemsvery legitimate. The next step is you’regoing to want to design your datastructures. This is very importantspecifically for vibe coding. It’simportant to know what your data isgoing to look like, how it’s shaped.Because when you feed the AI, such asCursor or Claw, it’ll make it much moresimple for the AI to know what exactlyyou’re trying to build, so it doesn’thave to make any guesses on what you’retrying to make.
I start with a text document that includes an explanationas well as some JSON data that explainswhat your data actually looks like andprovides information about each of theattributes that you’re going to have foryour data. By giving it this textdocument in advance, it allows me tocode this thing very quickly. With thisprep done, you can actually start tobuild the app. Usually, I start withbuilding the core functionality of theapp, skipping the onboarding and justgoing straight for the main features ofthe app. You can really just drop thescreenshots into Claude or Cursor,whatever AI you’re using. And becauseit’s now able to read the images and
understand what it’s looking at, it’llactually be able to write the code forthe full screen for you. When workingwith AI, it doesn’t always geteverything right the first time. So,sometimes you need to just continue towork with it, and eventually it’ll getthe details correct. I don’t recommendbeing too picky, because it’s importantto get a version out quickly rather thangetting a perfect app out. As for thetools I use now, I honestly justuse Claude. That’s the only thing I’mUsing AI for coding, and it doeseverything for me.
It is absolutely insane that Connor wasable to build and launch this app injust a few weeks. I hope that his storyinspires a lot of people watching to getstarted and vibe code stuff as well.
However, I need you to be careful. I seea lot of people get into vibe coding,try to one-shot something real quick, getlost, not be able to deploy, and thengive up. Because here’s the truth aboutbuilding with AI. You need to know howto use these AI tools effectively. Whatto build, how to ship fast, and how tobuild something that actually works.
Well, this is exactly why we launchedStarter Story Build, which is ourprogram where you will learn how tolaunch your project using only AI codingtools and do it in just a couple weeks.
Once you understand how to actuallyleverage these AI tools, you can build alot faster and save a whole lot of time.
So, if you’re ready to learn how tobuild apps the right way with AI, well,head to the first link in thedescription to check out Starter StoryBuild. Our next cohort is starting thisweek, so definitely check out that link.
And save your spot. All right, let’s getback to the video. The next question Ihave for you is around validation.You’ve built multiple apps that arereally successful, and I know you’vealso built some stuff that wasn’tsuccessful as well. Looking back, how doyou know if your app idea is validatedand it’s worth taking it the distance?
So, the way I see it is there’s twodifferent types of apps. There’sinnovating new ideas and there’smodifying versions of existing ideas. Ifyou’re creating a modified version of anexisting app, then congrats, your app isalready validated by other people. Now,all you have to do is make somemodifications and make it so the appfeels like it’s your own. The otheroption is when you’re making somethingbrand new. What I’d usually do when I’mmaking something brand new is go look onTikTok, Instagram, see if anyone’stalking about the problem that you’retrying to solve. You want to make surethat there’s an easy path for you tomarket this app by looking at thecomments and seeing if peopleare asking questions, asking how do Isolve this problem?
The current state of how fast you can buildapps. I actually will skip theweightless steps and just go ahead andbuild the app. I really believe that anyapp can make thousands of dollars thesedays. Your idea doesn’t have to be somecrazy app that changes society to make acouple thousand dollars. There arehundreds of millions of people in the USalone. If you can even capture atiny grain of sand out of that, then youcan make more than enough to sustainyourself.
I agree with that, too. There are somany apps out there that are crushing itthat we don’t even know about. It’spretty insane what’s possible today. Butas we know, building it is not enough.
We have to focus on one very importantthing, which is distribution. My nextquestion for you is around marketing.What was your playbook to grow this appfrom 0 to $20,000 a month in 50 days?And what is your general playbook formarketing apps? For this app, there werea couple of different tactics that I usedto get the app off the ground. The firstone was influencer campaigns. This iswhen you work with an influencer andhave them promote the app or theirIf you can work with an influencer and get them to promote your product, people alreadyhave some degree of trust for thatinfluencer, then they’re more likely tolisten to their recommendation. For thisapp, I partnered with a content creatorwho was already in the niche for theapp I was building, and his videos wereable to drive a bunch of traffic to theapp, like thousands of downloads. Theonly issue with influencers, though, isthat they can be very expensive. My nextstep will be to run organic UGCcampaigns on TikTok. This is basicallywhen you work with smaller creators whocome off as everyday people or you can
even make the content yourself. The goalis to create relatable viral contentabout your app that comes off as naturaland unprocessed. Once one of thesevideos starts to perform well, you canget more videos like that made withother creators so you can have peoplejust repeat formats that are working foryou. One of the major benefits ofrunning these UGC campaigns is that asthese creators produce content, you’rebuilding out a library of ads that youcan run in the future, and you alreadyYou will know relatively how good the performancewill be on ads based on how well it didorganically. Once some of those formatsstart to consistently go viral and youstart to see some installs, you’re readyto start putting this video behind paidads. Which brings me to my final andmain channel: I use paid ads for everysingle app, and my goal is to always getmy app to the point where I can run paidads. It’s the most consistent way todrive revenue growth to your app.
Recently, the paid ads algorithm haschanged. Facebook is trying to balancetwo things: they want to make sure thatthe advertisers are happy with theirresults while also keeping people on theplatform by making sure the videos areentertaining. The more entertaining yourvideo is, the cheaper it’ll be to getyour video put in front of people. Butyou also want to make sure that you’redriving conversions. So, your ad has toalso ensure that it pushes yourproduct. It’s important to find thatbalance between having a video that’svery entertaining and also has thepotential to convert.
Thank you for sharing all those growthtactics. I think that might be the mostAn important part: we haven’t really talkedtoo much about what your app actuallydoes. Would you be able to show us aquick demo of your onboarding and howyour app works?
So, my app is called Payout. It’s aclass action lawsuit discovery app thatlets people find class action lawsuitsthat they are already applicable for.And this is basically just a way forpeople to get some money from companiesthat have done something wrong. So, forthe onboarding, I’ll quickly run throughit here, asking for activitynotifications. You can see the socialproof. Here’s the paywall. This paywallhas been converting really well.You can see that I have a weekly and ayearly option here. And the goal is toprioritize users to get the yearlyoption since it has the highest lifetimevalue per customer. Here’s the mainfeature of the app: it’s a list of classaction lawsuits that you can check andsee if you’re applicable for. Forexample, this one is the NBA Top Shotapp. They had a privacy settlement overthe Metapixel being on their website.You can see the description requirementsof who’s applicable for this lawsuit.
You can press the “Get Started” button andfill out a form. This will take you to aform that you can fill out, putting all ofyour information in, and have everythingready to mail in and claimyour class action settlement. Youcan see that the app will prepare the PDFready for you to mail in. There’s alsothe wallet tab where you can keep trackof all the class action lawsuits thatyou’re applying for, and your forms tabwhere you can see all the forms thatyou’ve already filled out.
Okay, I mean, that’s a really cool ideafor an app. I think anybody watchingthis right now probably wants to go onthere and check to see if they’re owedany money from these class actionlawsuits. What is it about this app thatreally makes it work? Why do you thinkit went from zero to twenty thousand a month so fast?
I think the value proposition for thisapp is just very obvious. There are somecore things that all people want. Theywant to be healthier. They want to makemore money. They want to lookattractive. All sorts of things likethis. I like to make apps that tap intothese core human desires. I thinkthat anybody that wants to build appsYou should be doing the same. And this oneplays into people wanting to make moremoney. So, it’s very easy for people toinvest money into an app that they knowwill make them more money.
Okay. I want to change topics a littlebit and understand how you built thisapp. What tech stack do you use and whattools do you use to run this business?>> I use Figma for UI design, app storescreenshots, and making the app icon. Iuse Mixpanel for analytics. I use ClaudeCode for vibe coding. For the moretechnical stuff, I’ll use Nex.js andTypeScript for my website and back end.
I use Vercel for hosting. I use GitHubfor version control as well as making iteasier to host. I use Expo forcross-platform build management. And Iuse RevenueCat for subscriptionanalytics and pricing testing.>> Okay, cool. Thanks for sharing. That’s apretty simple stack you got there. Ilike that. The last question that I havefor you, which I ask everyone who comes onto Starter Story, is: What advice would youhave for anyone watching this who wantsto build apps like you? You’ve built abunch of successful things. You’ve builtNumber one piece of advice on gettingstarted today?
My number one piece of advice would beto build something simple with a greatonboarding. A simple app can make lotsof money. You only really need one tothree good features, and your onboardingwill pull most of the weight for you.
All right. Well, that’s great advice.Thank you, Connor, for coming on. I lovewhat you built. Amazing stuff you sharedhere. Thanks for coming on and sharingeverything.Yeah, thanks for having me.
All right, I want to thank Connor forcoming on to the channel. I hope thisvideo finally gives you the proof thatyou can build apps in a matter of weeksthat grow really, really fast. Thisvideo was the playbook here on how to doit, and we’re showing you the real actualapp that he did it with. If you’re readyto launch your app, then definitelycheck out Starter Story Build. We willhelp take your idea, turn it into a realapp, get it in front of real peopleusing only AI tools. If you’re ready toget off the sidelines and launch, headto the link in the description and checkout Starter Story Build. I promise youYou won’t regret it.
All right, that’s it for this episode.Thank you, guys, for watching.We’ll see you in the next one. Peace.