| Readwise URL | https://read.readwise.io/read/01kt2kwxfm0akgn8y66jdewn9d |
|---|---|
| Readwise ID | 01kt2kwxfm0akgn8y66jdewn9d |
| Date | 2025-10-28 |
| Author | Starter Story |
| Category | video |
\n\nSource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WWvLj-NqEE
Within the last 12 months, I’ve builttwo apps that have generated 1.5 millionin revenue.
This is Kletchi, a 22-year-old fromNigeria who moved to the US with nothingbut a dream to build a business.
You know, I moved to the US withliterally only $100 my name>> with his back against the wall in just afew months to prove himself. Kletchibuilt two apps that changed his life.
Today, my apps have been downloaded over700,000 [music] times across the AppStore and Play Store.
His secret sauce, distribution. But it’snot SEO and it’s not Tik Tok. It’ssomething a little different.
Here’s what I think most people don’tunderstand about mobile apps.
By using the strategy, he was able toget millions of eyeballs on his ideavirtually for free. I brought Kletchionto the channel to break down exactlyhow he did it. And in this video, we’lldive into his two apps that made over aMillion dollars, his secret distribution strategy you’ve probably never heard of before, and his playbook on how he’dstart over from scratch today. Allright, let’s dive in. I’m Pat Walls andthis is Starter Story.
Welcome, Kleti, to the channel. Tell meabout who you are, what you built, andwhat’s your story.>> Hi, I’m Kishi. Within the last 12months, I built two apps that havegenerated 1.5 million in revenue. So,the first one is Social Wizard, and thesecond one is called Clin. I saw a guyon X talking about how he made a milliondollars a month from an app. And rightthen was when I decided I was going tostart building apps.>> Okay. Before we get into the apps thatyou built, I just want to understandsome of the numbers behind this. You’vedone 1.5 million in revenue. What arethese apps and what are some of thenumbers behind them?>> Um, so we first launched in, you know,Early 2024, I launched my first app,and,we went extremely viral. Quicklyscaled to about $60,000 a month. Today,we’ve done over 600,000 downloads.
Eventually, after some time, I put thatbusiness on autopilot and I launched mysecond app. And,we hit about 10K inrevenue within two weeks, and about fourmonths later, I ended up exiting that to aUK-based company.
Okay, cool. I want to dig in a littlebit into your first app, the first appthat you built, the one that made nearlya million dollars. How did you actuallyfind the idea for this app?
The concept really came from my firstapp, and it was basically a socialapplication where people shared, youknow, pictures in groups. It was calledCasp. It grew to a few thousand usersand over 20,000 pictures were posted onthe app, but I mean, eventually, it failed.
And there was one particular girl on theapp, you know, she would post all thesereally personal pictures about herself.
I’ll see her cooking. I’ll see her, youknow, working. I’ll see her in class.And eventually, I became interested inthis girl. And we started texting for abit, but after a while, it didn’t reallygo the way I planned. And so, I went tothe app store and I searched up advice,life advice. I didn’t really see anyapps that could help me. And so, aroundthis time, this was when OpenAI wasreally going heavy with the LLMs and Ijust whipped up like a script and Iwould get like lines to like text thisgirl. So, it wasn’t even a product, itwasn’t an app, it was just some back endI was playing around with. It was ascript on NestJS that I had built.
Eventually, my friends invited me tohomecoming. I gave a few [music] peoplethe app to play around with. And thiswas probably the first time that my highschool friends cared about anything Iwas working on. That was when I realizedthat there might actually be somethinghere. And eventually I whipped itTogether, polished it more, and releasedthe app store.
Okay, so the idea is clearly working.Your friends finally care about it. Youlaunch into the app store, it becomes alive app. But then what I want to knowis once you had the live app in the appstore, how’d you grow it to make nearlya million dollars? So the first salecame in, you know, very very lateJanuary. We made about 25,000 inMR. I think by month six, we had cashcollected about $250,000. That yearprobably ended with about half a millioncash collected. I haven’t spent a dollaron marketing within the last year andwe’re literally still printing, which isreally good.
Okay, Kletchi, so you mentionedSomething really important which is youcracked distribution. I want you to godeeper, though. I want you to tell me howyou actually cracked distribution. Whatwas the secret sauce behind SocialWizard, where there were lots of otherapps that I’m sure did the same thingbut didn’t make nearly a million dollarslike yours?
I think distribution is really a showdon’t tell kind of game. With SocialWizard, people just use it for texting.Like that’s the main use case that guysuse it for. Everyone knows thatInstagram is a [music] dating site. Ithink Instagram is a dating sitemasquerading as a social network. And wehad this kind of like streamer strategythat we used to scale the app. There wasa feature on social wizard where you cantake the screenshots of a girl’s story,put it on the app and it would generatelike hints to say. That was the formatthat ended up going viral. But it tookme a while to find that format myself.
Initially, I was making content myself tokind of find what was going to stick.When I found what kind of, you know,worked, then I went [music] to very,very micro streamers, very degeneratestreamers. They hadn’t really had anyviral moments. Maybe they had somevideos that had done like 100k, 200k,but I saw the edge with them because,you know, they were hitting the audiencethat we wanted. And, uh, I believe that ifwe worked with them and took shots withthe formats that worked, we would goviral. And that’s exactly what happened.
So, this is an example of a collab thatwe did with a streamer. You know, I wentto him and said, "Hey, this is theformat that is working. A lot of peoplelike to see videos like this. Justrecreate this. Just going to play foryou so you see why this went viral, andI’ll tell you what we actually ended upgetting from this video.
What’s this? Oh my god, look at her.>> If you want to go viral, you need toFind a strategy to make the viewerpause. If your video doesn’t make peoplepause, they’re going to scroll past. Andobviously, you can see why people pauseon this. It starts with a very prettygirl. [music] And you know, this isliterally where we integrate SocialWizard. He doesn’t talk about trying tosell the app. The viewer is watchingthis like a regular video and he says,"Okay, it’s a pretty girl. What do I sayto the picture? How do I reply to thestory? Everyone is probably thinking thesame thing. Everyone watching this videois probably thinking, “How does he replyto this [music] story?” And let’s seewhat he does.
I don’t know what to do. You know what?We’re about to use the wizard app.Wizard app always does the trick.>> Start a conversation. I’m going to add thepicture of her. Flirty. All right. Cookup, please. That pink dress looks likeit was made just for you. Planning onstealing any hearts tonight? I’m goingTo use that one.
Boom. By this point, we’ve sold everyonewhat this product is. They don’t evenneed to finish the clip. Distribution isalways a show, don’t tell game. A lot ofpeople think you need to try and sellyour products, but demo what it does.Show people how it works. If they findvalue in it, they’re going to downloadit. They’re going to give you money, andyour app is going to scale. So, withthis particular video, I paid thiscreator about $120, and the video hit 2million views and brought in tens ofthousands of dollars, which is insane[music]. ROI. You can’t get this on paidad. You can’t get this on UGC. Andthat’s pretty much it. We took thisformat and we scaled it over and overand over and over again acrossmultiple creators, multiple videos, andyeah, we just kept printing.
One thing I love about Kletchi’s storyis how fast he built his apps. He hadthe idea, built it over just a couple ofWeeks, and started getting users right[music] away. This is the power of whathappens when you’re using the righttools to build. And this is why I lovetoday’s sponsor, Emergent. Emergent is avibe coding platform that turns youridea into a production-ready app just by[music] chatting with AI. You can buildfull stack mobile apps with ReactNative, download [music] APKs to test onyour phone, and deploy directly to theapp store. And if you’re building AIapps just like Keni, Emergent’suniversal LLM key gives you instant
access [music] to OpenAI, Claude, andGemini with no complex API setuprequired. And the best part aboutEmergent is [music] everything isproduction ready from day one. Built tohandle real users and real traffic[music] without expensive rewrites. Over1.5 million people are already buildingwith Emergent. And their apps have hit15 million ARR in just 3 months. Ifyou’re ready to turn your idea into aReal app without the overhead, check outEmergent at the first link in thedescription right below. Thank you toEmergent for sponsoring this video.
Let’s get back into it. My next questionfor you would be if you were to startall over again, knowing what you know,what would be your playbook to build asuccessful app right now?
I think in 2025, product development isnot enough anymore. If you don’t find away to tell people about your product,then you might as well not even build aproduct. Step one is I look at theniche. Is there a large volume ofcontent already being produced in thisniche? That’s the first question I askmyself. And if the answer is yes, thenI’ll go to midsize to large creators tomake [music] content. If it’s no, then Iwould focus on making content myself.
And it’s very important that you don’toutsource this process [music], becauseyou want to learn as much as possible. Alot of people, they have capital andThey just outsource the whole thing,and they end up burning so much money,and it never makes [music] any sense. Step two,produce the content. And this is wheremost people get it wrong. Working withcreators is also a vol game, right? Alot of people reach out to five creatorsor ten creators and they’re like, “Ah,it’s not working. It’s not working.” Butin reality, you might have to reach outto 100 creators to get one that willwork for you. But once you find acreator that is willing to work with you,and you put out content with them, it’smuch easier to get more creators on
board because then you can have thatcreator’s video and leverage it to othercreators. And all you’re trying to do ismake [music] clips with the creator tofind what kind of works, right? A lot ofpeople think you need to find the viralformat from day one. Not really. Youjust need to find something that kind ofworks. And it’s always important thatyou make content on TikTok when you’reTrying to find a viral format and notInstagram. It’s easier to go viral onTikTok on new accounts compared toInstagram. Create a page, start makingcontent. I’ll start with three videos a
day. You know, on let’s say twoaccounts, so you have two accounts,you’re making three videos a day, maybetwo on one account, one on anotheraccount. The goal here is consistencyand volume. After a week or two, youscale that up to 10. You scale that[music] up to 20. A lot of peoplebelieve in this idea of virality being aluck game. But if you’re putting out a100 videos per day, that’s 700 videos ina week. If one went viral, I don’t thinkyou would call that luck. You wouldpretty much think that you earned that.
And so, when it comes to distribution,it’s never luck. It’s deterministic. Gofull auto. Create as much volume aspossible. One would stick. If you tryhard enough, you’re going to find outviral formats. Step three, scale. IfYou’re working with creators, you wantto work with as much as possible. Youwant to reproduce your content to reachout to more, more, more. The more youreach out, the easier it is to get incontact with more creators and get thempumping out the same videos. You don’thave to go to creators that are directlyin your space. They could be adjacent.
I’ll give you an example. For SocialWidget, for example, these microstreamers that we work with, none ofthem were really making content for[music] our space about social skills.It was kind of a lot of differentthings. They were making content aboutFortnite, you know, people breaking intoMcDonald’s, [music] just crazy stuff.They were reacting to videos, but again,they were hitting our audience and therewas a lot of potential I saw with thembeing able to create content. If you’rebuilding an app that is in health andfitness, you could go to cookingcreators. You don’t have to go toCreators who are directly in your niche,and if you try hard enough, you’ll findsomething that will stick.
Okay, cool. I mean, that playbook isawesome. It’s all about distribution. Iwant to go back a little bit and talk toyou about ideas. You launched two verysuccessful apps. You’re a very busy guy.You probably have a bunch more ideas forthings that could work. Could you sharewith the audience right now some of yourmobile app ideas you have in 2025?
I think the education niche is massivelyoverlooked. I mean, right now, everyoneis building apps in health and fitnessand lifestyle, and that’s kind of likewhere the craze is going today. There’sso much information out there. You couldbuild an app about how to get better atboxing, how to get better at swimming,how to even get better at persuasion. Ifyou package it properly, I think there’sa huge opportunity there. So, I thinkeducation is a really good space I thinkpeople should start looking into.
Uh, well, we haven’t really talked aboutit yet, but I’d love to actually seewhat you build. You have two apps thatmade $1.5 million. What are these apps?What do they do?
So, the first one is Social Wizard. It’san AI-powered application that helpsguys improve their social skills. Mostof the users who use the app are withinthe ages of 16 to 24. I guess what we’reselling here is confidence, making iteasier for people to [music]uh reply to the DMs they get. For thisapp, we monetize through subscriptions.It’s a weekly subscription about $10 a[music] week. We have a monthly about 20bucks and there is a yearly for about80.
And the second one is called CleanEats. Very simple. It’s an app in healthand fitness. You scan the barcode of afood product and will tell you how itaffects your skin or your weights. Mostof the users who use this are [music]women within the ages of 18 to say about28 is the core market. One thing I’llSay, app founders need to do is when youlook at your products, try toextrapolate what you’re actuallyselling. Because when you’re looking atcleans, you can say we’re trying to sellthis healthy [music] alternatives toproducts, but what is the purpose ofbeing healthy? What is that going to getme? But if you tell me, hey, don’t eatthis food product cuz it’s going to messup my skin. I am not going to touch it.
I think, for both apps, really what we’reselling was confidence.>> Okay, let’s switch topics here. Youbuilt these apps yourself. What’s thetech stack? How do you build apps,>> right? So for me, I’m a React Nativeguy. With all these tools today likecharge, it’s very, very [music] easy tobuild a very performative app with ReactNative. For back end, I love NJS.[music] You can deploy that anywhere.Render Heroku, it doesn’t really matteras long as the server works. Database,Firebase [music] is my go-to. VerySimple, highly scalable, veryaffordable. And analytics, we just useMixpanel. Always optimize for a stackthat would get your product out there assoon as possible and is highly scalable.
And on that same note, I want tounderstand a little bit about the costto run a business like this. What arethe margins like for a solarreneurrunning multiple apps? For SocialWizard, most of the expenses was reallymarketing. You know, after Apple takestheir cuts, profit margins are reallyover 90%. Because there wasn’t reallymuch we were spending money on. So, everymonth, we only spend like 1 to maybe 2Kon infrastructure cost. These appsbarely cost anything to run. You’regoing to end up spending like 90% ofyour budgets on marketing. [music] Ifyou do it properly, the cash flow isinsane.
Okay. Well, thank you for sharing that,being transparent about those numbers.The last question that I have for youThat we ask everyone who comes onStarter Story, if you could stand onYoung Kletchi shoulders before SocialWizard, what would be your advice? Or toanyone who’s watching this that wants tobuild apps, what would you tell them?
You’re not crazy for being extremelyobsessed with your goals. You’re [music]not weird if you choose not to go out onthe weekends because building is all youlove to do. And this is something Iheard from Alex Mozi. To be exceptional,by definition, you have to be theexception. And I think that’s okay.
That’s great advice. Thank you Kletchifor coming on sharing this. Congrats onyour success. Two very successful apps.I know people watching this will beinspired. Thank you for coming on.
Thank you for having me Pat.
Okay. Thank you to Kletchi for coming onto the channel. I especially liked whathe said at the end there about what techstack to use. [music] Keep it simple.Build stuff that solves problems andFocus on distribution. But in order todo that, you need to actually buildsomething. And what better [music] thanto build it with all these AI codingtools that are taking off and allowingyou to build apps [music] in days. Thisis why we launched Starter Story Build,which is our program where in just acouple weeks we will show you how to useAI to build anything you [music] want.
So whether you want to launch a mobileapp or a microsass, Starter Story Buildcan help you get there. Just head to thelink in the [music] description to checkout Starter Story Build. I think you’regoing to love it. All right, that’s itfor this episode, guys. Thank you forwatching. We’ll see you in the next one.Peace.