I Make $1.3M/Year With One Skill @starterstory

Starter Story 📚 Make Your First $1 (10x Faster) with Case Studies - starterstory.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=brett&yts=true

📩 Business Ideas Newsletter (free) - starterstory.com/newsletter/?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=brett

In this episode, I meet up with Brett from DesignJoy so I could ask him how he built a $1.3M per year one-person business WHILE working a 9-5.

He reveals the secrets behind his pricing strategy, how he found his idea, and some actionable advice on how anyone can use this special business model to turn a single skill into a $1M/year business. Hope you all enjoy!

0:00 - Intro
0:52 - The $1.3M/year business model
1:24 - How he runs the business
2:06 - Finding the idea & building it
2:59 - Working a 9-5 while building the business
3:23 - Pricing strategy
4:10 - How to build a productized service with one skill
4:52 - Costs & tools
5:19 - Solopreneur marketing strategies
5:58 - How to find ideas & build them fast
6:40 - Starter Story Trial
7:14 - How to get better at design
7:56 - Day in the life / routine
9:10 - Advice for entrepreneurs

Follow Brett
🐦 Twitter - twitter.com/BrettFromDJ

🔔Subscribe - youtube.com/@starterstory
📸 Instagram - instagram.com/starter_story
🐦 X - https://x.com/starter_story
🏁 We're hiring: starterstory.com/jobs

updated 3 years ago

I Make $1.3M/Year With One Skill

Starter Story 2023-05-17 | 📚 Make Your First $1 (10x Faster) with Case Studies - starterstory.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=brett&yts=true

📩 Business Ideas Newsletter (free) - starterstory.com/newsletter/?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=brett

In this episode, I meet up with Brett from DesignJoy so I could ask him how he built a $1.3M per year one-person business WHILE working a 9-5.

He reveals the secrets behind his pricing strategy, how he found his idea, and some actionable advice on how anyone can use this special business model to turn a single skill into a $1M/year business. Hope you all enjoy!

0:00 - Intro
0:52 - The $1.3M/year business model
1:24 - How he runs the business
2:06 - Finding the idea & building it
2:59 - Working a 9-5 while building the business
3:23 - Pricing strategy
4:10 - How to build a productized service with one skill
4:52 - Costs & tools
5:19 - Solopreneur marketing strategies
5:58 - How to find ideas & build them fast
6:40 - Starter Story Trial
7:14 - How to get better at design
7:56 - Day in the life / routine
9:10 - Advice for entrepreneurs

Follow Brett
🐦 Twitter - twitter.com/BrettFromDJ

🔔Subscribe - youtube.com/@starterstory
📸 Instagram - instagram.com/starter_story
🐦 X - https://x.com/starter_story
🏁 We're hiring: starterstory.com/jobs

This $25K MRR founder is paying creators just $20/video:

Starter Story 2026-09-22 | Paying creators just $20/video. Here’s how Roman scales UGC on a shoestring budget.

He runs Career Hound, a job board doing $25K/month, and he keeps creator costs tiny by removing every ounce of guesswork.

This Simple Widget Makes $50K/Month

Starter Story 2026-09-20 | Tom built a tiny widget that solves one painful problem. He launched it about 1 year ago, and today it makes $55K per month – 100% bootstrapped. This video is the story of how spotting one real problem and building the simplest possible solution turned into a real business.

*90+ Million-dollar problems (business ideas):* clickhubspot.com/tu8n

Say hi to Tom: linkedin.com/in/tom-holliday-505469161
Check out Avenue: https://www.avenue2.au/
Follow Avenue on IG: instagram.com/avenue2.au

🔔 Follow the Second Channel: @StarterStoryBuild
🏁 We're hiring: starterstory.com/jobs

Chapters:
0:00 - The simple app I found on X
1:03 - What's your story?
1:28 - What's the app?
1:59 - Solving an age old problem
2:29 - Revenue breakdown
2:50 - Problems worth solving
3:29 - Founder background
4:13 - Finding the idea
4:51 - Build timeline
5:45 - Hiring without revenue?
6:18 - Growth and marketing
7:29 - Building for the trades
8:29 - Tom's advice for building apps
9:10 - Tools and tech stack
9:51 - App demo
10:29 - Final advice
11:19 - Gus reflections

This video is an educational case study of this founder’s experience. It is not financial advice and does not guarantee any income or results. Every business is different and your results may vary.

Most founders lose touch with their users as the product scales. But not this $140k MRR founder...

Starter Story 2026-09-20 | Most founders lose touch with their users as the product scales.

Jay doesn’t. He runs Nomad Table, a meetup app for solo travelers doing $140K/month with 1.8M users, and he stays grounded by literally living inside his own product.

He just spent 4 months in Bangkok, one of his app’s biggest hotspots. Went to meetups on his own app.

Bro quit Amazon to build a $140K/month app for lonely travelers:

Starter Story 2026-09-19 | Bro quit Amazon to build a $140K/month app for lonely travellers.

Meet Jay. He was a software engineer at Amazon when he got the idea for Nomad Table on a trip. He wasn’t the “entrepreneur type.” He just knew the “what if” would haunt him more than failing.

15 months after launch:

$140K/month
1.8M users
100K+ meetups booked through the app

Bro posted 80,000 videos across 500 accounts to grow his app to $150K MRR 🤯

Starter Story 2026-09-16 | 80,000 videos. 500 accounts. Nearly a BILLION views in one year.

That’s how Mauro grew Symmetry into a $160K/month gym app in the Spanish market.

The trick isn’t posting more. It’s the incentive.

How I Work: $140K/Month App Developer

Starter Story 2026-09-16 | Jay built nomadtable, a mobile app that makes $140K/month. Before that he was a software engineer, until one trip changed his life forever. This episode is a day in the life of a solo app builder in 2026.
*iOS App ideas:* clickhubspot.com/qy55

Follow Jay: twitter.com/jayvraavi
Check out NomadTable: https://nomadtable.app/

🔔 Follow the Second Channel: @StarterStoryBuild
🏁 We're hiring: starterstory.com/jobs

Chapters:
0:00 - Meet Jay
0:53 - Morning routine
1:33 - The story behind nomad table
2:43 - iOS app ideas
3:14 - Afternoon routine
4:17 - Building apps in 2026
5:10 - Building apps while traveling
5:46 - Evening routine
6:38 - Lessons from building
7:40 - Advice for builders

Founder of a $160K/month fitness app reveals his entire tech stack:

Starter Story 2026-09-14 | Founder of a $160K/month fitness app reveals his entire tech stack: Claude with MCPs, PostHog, Superwall, Whisperflow, Notion, and Slack.

Mauro is 23. He launched Symmetry a year ago and it’s now doing $160K/month with $3M in revenue across iOS and Android, dominating the Spanish gym app market.

This app replaced my 9-5 ($155K/year)

Starter Story 2026-09-13 | Ken spent nearly his entire career in big tech before to build a mobile app. In his first year since he launched, he hit his $10K/month goal, and grew the game to $155K in revenue with zero paid marketing. This video is the story of why he left a comfortable job to build a game, and how he grew it on his own.

*Free database: 100+ Solopreneurs making $1M/year* clickhubspot.com/1k92

Say hi to Ken: linkedin.com/in/kennethylaw
Check out Harpagia: kayelleapps.com

🔔 Follow the Second Channel: @StarterStoryBuild
🏁 We're hiring: starterstory.com/jobs

Chapters:
0:00 - the $10K game
0:54 - Gus is hosting!
1:10 - What’s your story?
1:48 - Business breakdown
2:24 - Revenue overview
3:39 - Founder background
4:34 - Successful solo devs
5:23 - Quitting tech backstory
6:33 - App timeline
7:38 - Growth and marketing
9:27 - The opportunity in games
10:45 - App demo
11:41 - Tech stack
12:28 - Final advice
13:25 - Gus reflections

This video is an educational case study of this founder’s experience. It is not financial advice and does not guarantee any income or results. Every business is different and your results may vary.

$25k MRR founders playbook: Spot timeless content hidden in trends, then build systems around it.

Starter Story 2026-09-13 | Most creators chase trends. Roman chases patterns.

He built Career Hound, a boring job board, into a $25K/month business using the same content playbook for two years straight.

His framework:

Timely content = trend now, dead in a week
Timeless content = formats people always want (ex: “companies hiring remote worldwide”)
“Content thrifting” = scroll for hours across TikTok, Reddit, IG (video AND text), collect anything that grabs you
Spot the patterns others miss, then run that format over and over

Bro built a $10K/month SaaS with just these 10 tools 🥶

Starter Story 2026-09-12 | Meet Piotr, a solo dev in Poland who built Visualizee, an AI rendering tool for architects and interior designers. He runs the whole thing on nights and weekends while working a full-time job.

Here’s the entire stack behind a $10K/month side project:

Cursor + Claude Code for building
Fal AI for GPU / image generation
Supabase for database, auth, and storage
Next.js on Vercel for hosting
Stripe for payments (subscriptions from day one)
Mailerlite for email automation
Ahrefs + MonitorMySEO for SEO
PostHog, Google Analytics, and Sentry for tracking

22-year-old built a $160K/month fitness app in just one year...

Starter Story 2026-09-11 | 22 years old. $160K/month. One year in. But the app isn’t the secret, it’s how he decides what to build.

Meet Mauro. He built Symmetry, a gym tracking app that’s now one of the biggest names in the Spanish fitness market.

He went through 3 phases:

Phase 1: build what we wanted. Terrible.
Phase 2: build what users asked for. Mediocre.
Phase 3: treat every feature like a science experiment. $160K/month.

His system:

Set ambitious quarterly OKRs (easier to move metrics when you’re new)

Track downloads, activation, retention, ARPU

Start from a problem, not a solution

Write hypotheses, then A/B test everything for 2+ weeks

Kill what doesn’t move the needle, double down on what does

One example: adding a single screen at the end of a workout increased retention by 3%. Meanwhile two full redesigns of the home screen moved nothing.

This $25k MRR founder says: creators with gray hairs and wrinkles hit different

Starter Story 2026-09-11 | Older creators = content superpowers.

Roman runs Career Hound, a $25K/month job board. His edge isn’t the product. It’s who reads the script on camera.

His logic: would you take job advice from a 19-year-old? Gray hairs and wrinkles hit different.

On a subconscious level, they signal wisdom and credibility, and that’s what converts in a niche full of anxious job seekers.

How he runs it:

DMs creators already posting for fun (mostly people in their 50s)

Pays ~$20 a video

Sends them a sheet of pre-written formats so there’s zero research and zero confusion

Repeats the same timeless format (like “companies hiring remotely worldwide”) over and over

Result: 11.7M views in 30 days, 779 active subs, $28K last month.

How I Built This $160K/Month Gym App

Starter Story 2026-09-09 | Mauro built a gym app that last month made $160,000. What sets him apart is not the product or marketing... but his app development approach. He treats the product like a science experiment: A/B testing, validating features, and only building stuff that moves the needled.This video breaks down how to think like a product management expert, stop guessing, and start building what actually moves the needle.
*FREE iOS App Ideas:* clickhubspot.com/l6tq

Say hi to Mauro: https://x.com/Mauro_Botanes
Check out Symmetry: https://symmetry.club/

🔔 Follow the Second Channel: @StarterStoryBuild
🏁 We're hiring: starterstory.com/jobs

This video is an educational case study of this founder’s experience. It is not financial advice and does not guarantee any income or results. Every business is different and your results may vary.

What the founders of Cal AI are doing now after they have sold their app for millions?

Starter Story 2026-09-08 | Meet Blake and Zach founders of Cal AI (on track to do ~$50M this year), just cashed out and are already back at it.

Blakes new project is called 10X App Builder. The pitch: Shopify, but for apps.

Helps with the ideation process
Hosts user backends
Even helps you design an aesthetic Instagram page for your launch

Basically an all-in-one platform so anyone can ship an app without stitching together 10 tools.

$340k MRR founder reveals why pain and disbelief is your greatest fuel:

Starter Story 2026-09-07 | Sarah built Stella, a manifesting app that hit $340K/month in just 2 months after launch.

12,000 paying customers. 200K+ downloads.

Built the MVP in 2 days.

But when asked what advice she’d give herself this is what she said:

“Spite is the greatest motivation you could ever have.”

“Peace and love doesn’t build empires. Pain does.”

The most successful people started because someone didn’t believe in them.

If you’re in a difficult chapter, you’re in the luckiest season of your life, you have the most fuel you’ll ever have.

Most people run from pain. The founders who build empires use it as rocket fuel.

I make $25K/month from one simple website

Starter Story 2026-09-06 | Meet Roman. He built Career Hound, a simple job board website that makes around $25K/month. It's a saturated idea, but the reason he's successful is NOT about the product. It's all about the marketing. This video is the story of how a "boring" product wins entirely on distribution.
*One-page websites making $10K/month:* clickhubspot.com/m8ed

Say hi to Roman: https://x.com/rlakhnyuk
Check out Career Hound: careerhound.io

🔔 Follow the Second Channel: @StarterStoryBuild
🏁 We're hiring: starterstory.com/jobs

Chapters:
0:00 - Dead simple websites win
1:11 - What’s your story?
1:37 - What’s the website?
2:50 - Founder background
3:30 - Coming up with the idea
4:09 - Simple, one-page websites
4:59 - What makes your website different?
5:53 - Marketing: timely vs timeless content
7:24 - Marketing examples
8:58 - Working with ‘older’ creators
10:23 - The marketing system secret
10:47 - Advice to builders
12:13 - Tech stack
12:43 - Final advice
13:35 - Gus reflections: it’s all about the marketing

This video is an educational case study of this founder’s experience. It is not financial advice and does not guarantee any income or results. Every business is different and your results may vary.

$1M ARR SaaS founder shares his entire tech stack:

Starter Story 2026-09-06 | Gaurav launched Fastlane just two months ago. It’s already doing $69K/month, over 1,000 paid users, and $1M ARR across the business.

Here’s the exact stack running it:

Convex for backend + database
Vercel for hosting the frontend
Railway to host the microservice that builds the content
Clerk for authentication
Resend for transactional + mailing list emails
Axiom for logs and observability
OpenAI + Claude for copy and captions
Fal AI for image generation
Claude Code on the 20x Max plan (the “absolute must”)

3 guys went from a basement to $1.5M a year with two app ideas 😱

Starter Story 2026-09-05 | Bro went from three guys in a basement to $1.5M a year with two app ideas.

Meet Kyle. He built Cardstock (a sports card value scanner) and Scanémon (same thing but for Pokémon). Together they do $120K/month.

Cardstock: ~15K active subs, $75K MRR, 13K downloads/month

Scanémon: launched in 2025, already 3,400 subs and $17K MRR

MVP for Scanémon? Built in a single day with Cursor’s agent

The wild part: he didn’t chase trends. He just looked at his own hobby (collecting cards), noticed there was no app for it, and built one for himself.

Bro was stuck at $100/month for 2 years. Then one pivot scalled him to $10K MRR.

Starter Story 2026-09-04 | Bro was stuck at $100/month for 2 years. But then one pivot changed everything.

Meet Piotr. Solo dev, full-time job, building Visualizee (an AI rendering tool for architects) on nights and weekends.

For 2 years he was convinced the problem was marketing. It wasn’t. His product was a complicated node-based system nobody wanted to figure out.

The pivot? He ripped it all out and rebuilt it as a chat interface. Upload a sketch, tell the AI what you want, get a photoreal render in seconds.

$150/mo → $10K/mo in 6 months
~300 active subscribers at $35–$80/mo
25% trial-to-paid conversion
Still solo, still working full-time

Bros TikTok ad made $15,000 on 5M views with simple app demos.

Starter Story 2026-09-03 | Bro’s TikTok ad made $15,000 on 5M views with simple app demos.

Meet Timo. 23 years old, built Chart Detector AI with his brother, now doing $50K/month and working 20 hours per MONTH on it.

The ad? Literally just a screen recording of someone using the app. That’s it.

$15K in revenue from one video
~5M views
No influencers, no UGC actors, no fancy edits

His whole system:
Hard paywall, no free trial (money back immediately)
TikTok Smart Plus campaigns, $50/day to start
Optimize for subscription events, not installs
Target broad, but skip the US (better ROAS abroad)
Always keep 6+ videos in rotation to beat creative fatigue

$69K MRR founder put a rainbow button in his app offering 7 days of free access.

Starter Story 2026-09-02 | Bro put a rainbow button in their app offering 7 days free access for a call. 2,000 customers booked in weeks, zero outbound hustle.

Meet Gaurav. He built Fastlane to $69K/month in about 2 months.

The trick wasn’t ads or cold DMs. It was one button in the UI with a rainbow border: “book a call with the team if you want 7 days of extra access.”

People clicked because they wanted the perk. Calendly did the rest.

Since August, he and his co-founder have done ~20 calls a week, every week. 2,000 total.

I was stuck at $100 for 2 years until I made one change. Now my app makes $10K/month

Starter Story 2026-09-02 | Piotr built Visualizee, an AI rendering tool that lets architects and designers generate realistic home renders in seconds. This might sound like a success story... but Piotr was stuck at $150 per month for YEARS. Then, one single product pivot changed his entire business and grew it to $10K per month.
*The AI Playbook: 50+ AI app ideas making millions:* clickhubspot.com/qs4m

Say hi to Piotr: https://x.com/pobidowski
Check out Visualizee: visualizee.ai

🔔 Follow the Second Channel: @StarterStoryBuild
🏁 We're hiring: starterstory.com/jobs

Chapters:
0:00 - 2 years to hit $10K
0:57 - What’s your story?
1:33 - Business breakdown
3:40 - App idea
4:04 - Build process and timeline
4:50 - AI app ideas
5:51 - The pivot
7:02 - Takeaways and learnings from the pivot
7:26 - Results and data
7:53 - What would you do differently next time?
9:09 - Tech stack and tools
9:51 - Advice
10:31 - Pat and Gus reflections: stay in the game!

This video is an educational case study of this founder’s experience. It is not financial advice and does not guarantee any income or results. Every business is different and your results may vary.

This guy built a $30k MRR app in one day with Claude Code. Heres the tools he uses.

Starter Story 2026-09-01 | Built a full app in one day with Claude Code.

Jack runs Profit.ai, a Shopify profit analytics app that’s done $147K since launch in December and is at $30K MRR (plus ~$40K in services).

He’s not technical. He built the original version by dumping a spreadsheet into Cursor as a CSV and iterating.

Here’s what he runs the business on now:

Claude Code on the $200/mo max plan for building
Codex in Terminal (not the app) for extra coding muscle
Framer for the marketing site (may swap to a Claude-built site)
Instantly for outbound marketing
Google Sheets for the ops layer
Slack + Claude bot to pipe data wherever clients need it

This founder turned a Tinder-style swipe into a $70K/month SaaS.

Starter Story 2026-08-31 | This founder turned a Tinder-style swipe into a $70K/month SaaS.

Meet Gaurav. He built Fastlane, an AI short-form marketing tool for solopreneurs.

Launched 2 months ago. Already doing $69K MRR and over 1,000 paid users.

The UI is the whole insight:

Middle card = the video Fastlane made for your product

Left card = a trending piece of content in your niche (this one had 3M views)

Swipe right = schedule

Pick TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube

AI writes the caption

Post live in under 5 minutes

He didn’t guess this design. He earned it. Gaurav and his co-founder did 20 customer calls a week since August. 2,000 calls total.

Bro recruited his friends to build his app so they wouldnt have to work dumb jobs.

Starter Story 2026-08-30 | Bro recruited his friends to build his app by offering a three-way revenue split, even though there was basically no revenue.

Meet Kyle. He was building Cardstock alone in a basement, watching his friends line up shifts at Kohl’s and a restaurant.

So he made them an offer: quit those jobs, come help, and we’ll split everything three ways. They didn’t even know how to code. He taught them.

They spent 2-3 years building together. Today Cardstock + Scanémon do over $120K/month combined:

Cardstock: ~15K subs, ~$75K MRR
Scanémon: ~3.4K subs, ~$17K MRR

How This SaaS Hit $69K/Month In Just 2 Months

Starter Story 2026-08-30 | Gaurav built Fastlane, a marketing SaaS for indie developers. He’s grown it to $1M ARR and thousands of users, but the real story is about what he did to build it. In a few months, he had thousands of customer calls where he learned what worked, what didn’t, and exactly how to build the product for his ideal customer.

This video breaks down why talking to customers is the most important thing you can do if you want to build a successful SaaS.
*90+ Business Ideas ($1M+ problems worth solving):* clickhubspot.com/mod5

Say hi to Gaurav: twitter.com/gauravsbuilding
Check out Fastlane: usefastlane.ai

🔔 Follow the Second Channel: @StarterStoryBuild
🏁 We're hiring: starterstory.com/jobs

Chapters:
0:00 - Don't skip this!
0:57 - What's your story?
1:44 - Business breakdown
2:29 - Finding the idea
3:26 - Background and build timeline
4:40 - Tech stack and tools
5:14 - Solve painful problems
6:09 - The secret behind his success
7:45 - The system that helped him win
9:32 - Go talk to customers!
10:12 - Customer calls breakdown
12:54 - App demo
13:50 - How customer calls influenced the product
14:07 - Final advice
15:09 - Pat and Gus reflections: face the fear of rejection

This video is an educational case study of this founder’s experience. It is not financial advice and does not guarantee any income or results. Every business is different and your results may vary.

This guy manually built a database and launched on Product Hunt. First month: $4,000 🥶

Starter Story 2026-08-27 | Bro manually built a 40K investor database and launched on Product Hunt. First month: $4,000.

Rashid was raising for his own fintech startup, maxed out credit cards, and realized finding investors was brutal. So he turned his pain into a product.

That side project (AngelMatch) now does $29K MRR with 360 subscribers and a 33% trial conversion rate. He stacked two more databases on top (InvestorHunt + JournalistHunt) for a $32K/month portfolio.

The playbook:
Pick a painful B2B problem you’ve lived
Build the database manually to start
Launch on Product Hunt for the first signal
Scale with programmatic SEO (half his revenue)

Bros running 3 simple websites making $32,000 per month.

Starter Story 2026-08-26 | Bro’s running 3 simple websites making $32,000 per month.

Meet Rashid. He’s not technical. He didn’t chase an AI trend. He just built three boring database sites that basically do the same thing for different audiences.

AngelMatch: 125,000 angels + VCs for founders raising capital ($29K MRR)

InvestorHunt: investor database, pure SEO, zero marketing ($2.8K MRR)

JournalistHunt: 200,000 journalists for press coverage ($260 MRR)

Solo founder built a $50K/month app with this exact tech stack:

Starter Story 2026-08-25 | Solo founder built a $50K/month app with this exact tech stack:

Jake is 24. He launched Erly (an alarm app where you do pushups to turn off the alarm) at the end of 2025 and hit $50K/month in 4 months. 200K+ downloads. One-man show.

Here’s the full stack he runs it on:

Firebase for database, auth, cloud functions
Superwall for paywall + subscriptions
OpenAI for the AI API
Mixpanel for in-app analytics
Claude Code for actually building the app
Heroi for influencer tracking + payments
Sideshift for UGC creator sourcing
Instantly for mass influencer outreach
Cal for booking, Agree for contracts
QuickBooks + 1Password + Google Sheets to run the business

Bros first apps all flopped, until he pivoted to AI apps 🥶

Starter Story 2026-08-24 | Bro’s first apps all flopped, until he pivoted to AI.

Meet Blake Anderson. 25 years old, from Philadelphia. Started building apps at Tulane and watched most of them fail.

Then he shifted to AI apps, DM’d a kid named Zach, and together they built Cal AI.

Month 1: $30K
Month 2: $100K+
Month 8: $1M/month
On track for ~$50M this year

The lesson: the flops weren’t wasted. They were the reps that set up the pivot.

I make $32K/month from 3 simple, boring websites

Starter Story 2026-08-23 | Rashid built three simple websites that make over $32,000 per month. But what's actually interesting is that he built essentially three identical websites. They all solve a very similar problem for a slightly different user. This is the story of how a guy built a few simple, boring websites and scaled them to where they are today.
*90+ Business Ideas ($1M+ problems worth solving):* http://go.starterstory.com/lp-test-4-million-dollar-problems-description

Follow Rashid: twitter.com/Rashidkhasanov
Check out his websites:
- angelmatch.io
- investorhunt.co
- journalisthunt.com

🔔 Follow the Second Channel: @StarterStoryBuild
🏁 We're hiring: starterstory.com/jobs

Chapters:
0:00 - Making money with simple websites
1:00 - What’s your story?
1:33 - Business overview
2:14 - Revenue and numbers
3:23 - Painful problems win!
4:34 - Founder background
5:48 - Finding the business idea
6:33 - Growth and marketing
7:33 - Secret behind the websites
8:15 - Ideas to start in 2026
8:57 - Database product playbook
10:12 - Tech stack and tools
10:57 - Final advice
11:57 - Pat and Gus reflections: solve a painful problem!

This video is an educational case study of this founder’s experience. It is not financial advice and does not guarantee any income or results. Every business is different and your results may vary.

He built 100 apps and made $0. Can he fix it in 30 days?

Starter Story 2026-08-22 | Meet Gaurabh. He built almost 100 apps in 60 days. But... he had a problem. Despite shipping all these projects, he has made exactly ZERO dollars. What happened? What was going on? Why hadn't he made any money?

In this first episode of the Starter Story challenge, we challenge him to finally monetize his app. Can he actually do it?
*Side project ideas you can build with your 9-5:* clickhubspot.com/jzxl

Apply for the challenge → https://forms.gle/eFqR1QdT4N5tBWyo9

Follow Gaurabh: linkedin.com/in/gaurabhmathure
Check out his projects:
- https://attn.design/
- vuemagnet.com
- mastersofattention.com

🔔 Follow the Second Channel: @StarterStoryBuild
🏁 We're hiring: starterstory.com/jobs

Chapters:
0:00 - $1K in 30 days
0:42 - Welcome to the challenge
1:05 - 100 apps... zero revenue
1:34 - What's the problem?
2:21 - The Challenge
3:05 - Do you accept the challenge?
3:23 - It begins!
3:50 - 100 side project ideas
4:48 - Update
5:02 - The first 30 days
6:11 - Making $100
6:53 - The next 30 days
8:08 - Numbers behind the content
8:58 - Talking to customers
9:42 - Revenue and results
10:35 - Congrats on the challenge!!
11:09 - Lessons learned and advice
12:57 - What's next?
13:29 - Join the challenge
13:36 - Wrap up

This video is an educational case study of this founder’s experience. It is not financial advice and does not guarantee any income or results. Every business is different and your results may vary.

$22K MRR indie hacker rejected the 5AM guru life and wakes up at noon instead.

Starter Story 2026-08-22 | Meet Rob. He makes $22K/month running his SaaS solo while traveling the world.

His actual day:

Wake up 11am-12pm (he’s a night owl, always has been)

Gym around 2-3pm, coffee, chores

8-hour deep work block starting at night when nobody’s texting

9 hours of sleep, non-negotiable

4 friends built one of the most successful iOS apps EVER then sold it for millions 😱

Starter Story 2026-08-21 | Four friends built one of the most successful iOS apps ever, sold it for millions, but the real story changes everything you think about building apps in 2026.

Meet Blake (25), Zach (19), Henry (18), and Jake (31). The team behind Cal AI.

Month 1: $30K
Month 2: $100K+
Month 8: $1M/month
On track for ~$50M this year
Sold for multiple millions

Bro took his app from $20K to $80K/month by cutting influencers in on the profits 🤯

Starter Story 2026-08-20 | Bro took his app from $20K to $80K/month, just by cutting influencers in on the profits.

Meet Tomer. He built an AI calorie tracker for the Israeli market (basically CalAI in Hebrew) and grew it to $20K/month in 4 months with paid ads.

Then he made one move that changed everything.

How I Work: $22K/Month Solopreneur

Starter Story 2026-08-20 | Rob builds apps, travels the world, and is an inspiration to all indie builders in the game. Over the past few years, he has been documenting his journey of building a $20K/month SaaS on X, sharing what it really looks like to be an indie developer in this day and age.
*Free $1M Solopreneur MVP Guide:* clickhubspot.com/66mr

Follow Rob: twitter.com/robj3d3
Check out his projects: http://robhallam.com

🔔 Follow the Second Channel: @StarterStoryBuild
🏁 We're hiring: starterstory.com/jobs

Chapters:
0:00 - Meet Rob
0:58 - Morning routine
1:38 - Building while traveling
3:00 - Start your solopreneur journey
3:28 - Afternoon routine
4:19 - Prioritizing work
5:53 - Biggest lessons learned
7:40 - Advice to builders

He left Google to build a $30K/month golf app. Heres his entire tech stack:

Starter Story 2026-08-19 | He left Meta to build a $30K/month golf app. Here’s his entire tech stack:

Next.js on the frontend
Google Firebase as the backend

That’s it. No exotic infra, no 10-person team. Just a senior engineer scratching his own itch at a local golf course, shipping nights and weekends until 150 courses were paying him.

Now at $350K ARR and pacing to $800K, he finally quit Meta to go all in.

The lesson: the stack isn’t the moat. Building something you’d do for free is.

19-Year-Old CEO: Coded at 7, Built His First App at 12, and Reached 5M Users by 16.

Starter Story 2026-08-18 | 19-year-old Cal AI CEO was coding at 7, shipped his first App Store app at 12, scaled a company to 5 million users by 16, and sold it for $60K/year in revenue.

Then he met Blake, they went all in on Cal AI, and hit $1M/month within 8 months.

This year? On track for $50M.

First app on the App Store at 12
5M users by high school
Sold his first company at 16
Cal AI: $30K month one, $100K+ month two
$1M/month by month 8

I Spent 24 Hours With iOS Millionaires

Starter Story 2026-08-16 | I traveled to New York to spend 24 hours with the guys who built and sold Cal AI for millions. The video answers one main question: now that AI lets anyone build an app, is it still possible to build a successful one in 2026? Along the way, we talked about what it was like to build a company with your friends, and what they're doing now that they've sold.

*Free iOS Bootcamp:* clickhubspot.com/bqt8

Follow Blake: https://x.com/blakeandersonw
Follow Zach: https://x.com/zach_yadegari
Cal AI: https://calai.app/

🔔 Follow the Second Channel: @StarterStoryBuild
🏁 We're hiring: starterstory.com/jobs

Chapters:
0:00 - iOS Millionaires
1:20 - What’s your story?
2:24 - Numbers behind Cal AI
2:48 - Meet the other co-founders
3:36 - What was it like to work together?
3:59 - Did you know it’d be successful?
4:48 - Becoming co-founders
5:38 - Managing conflict and trust
6:58 - Build your own iOS app
7:39 - Opportunity in apps in 2026
8:32 - Does copying apps still work?
9:15 - Advice for building apps
10:00 - NYC office tour
10:25 - What did it feel like to sell Cal AI?
10:58 - The game of entrepreneurship
11:42 - What are you working on now?
12:46 - Final thoughts from Pat

This video is an educational case study of this founder’s experience. It is not financial advice and does not guarantee any income or results. Every business is different and your results may vary.

$80K MRR founder reveals every tool he uses to build and manage his app.

Starter Story 2026-08-16 | He reveals every tool and monthly cost behind his App tech stack 👇

Tomer built an AI calorie tracker for the Israeli market and scaled it to $80K/month in 12 months. No dev background. Just Claude and a lean stack.

Here’s exactly what he pays every month:

Claude for coding + AI agents across the business - $200/mo

PostHog for product analytics - $20/mo

Supabase for database + storage - $35/mo

Expo for in-app updates - $100/mo

RevenueCat for subscription management

That’s it. No 25-person team.
No over engineered infra.

Bro scaled his app from $1K a month to $81K in under a year 😱

Starter Story 2026-08-14 | Bro scaled his app from $1K a month to $81K in under a year.

Month one: $1K.

Just 11 months later? $81K/month.

Tomer didn’t reinvent the wheel whatsoever; he found a proven AI calorie tracker, localized it for Israel, and went all in on marketing over code.

In his words: “We started with only 1K on the first month. And since then, we grew consistently until the previous month, we made over 81K.”

This dude turned X articles into a repost machine and blew up his SAAS to $143K 🥶

Starter Story 2026-08-13 | This guy turned X articles into an influencer repost machine and blew up his reach.

How? He found top-performing content, DM’d influencers for paid reposts, and set off a viral chain reaction.

Each article he dropped had 20+ reposters lined up turning a single post into a full-on distribution engine.

The crazy part: it’s a growth hack anyone can run if you hustle the network effect.

He built two apps to $150K MRR heres the tech stack he uses:

Starter Story 2026-08-12 | Kyle Fowler went from a six-month grind on Cardstock to a one-day MVP for Scanémon - all thanks to AI agents and a smarter stack.

His stacks now are filled with:
ChatGPT (Codex) for code
Notion for idea capture and planning
Cursor and Claude for AI-driven coding
Framer for fast web builds
Supabase, Railway, and AWS for backend
RevenueCat for subscriptions

The secret? Let the tools do the heavy lifting, so you can move 100x faster.

The Lazy Method: How I Build $10K/Month Apps

Starter Story 2026-08-12 | Will Baker might be the laziest founder we’ve ever had on the show. He built an app and grew it to $10K/month… not by running a tiktok army, not with UGC, not building in public – none of that! He has an even SIMPLER playbook he followed to grow his apps to a combined $10K per month.
*iOS App Ideas:* clickhubspot.com/wbb6

Say hi to Will: williambaker.co.uk
Check out Glowly: glowlyaiapp.com

🔔 Follow the Second Channel: @StarterStoryBuild
🏁 We're hiring: starterstory.com/jobs

Chapters:
0:00 - The Lazy Method
1:02 - What’s your story?
1:24 - Business breakdown
2:01 - Will’s background
2:36 - “Lazy way” overview
3:30 - Why the lazy approach works
4:04 - Ad examples and results
4:44 - More app ideas
5:29 - The Lazy playbook
7:16 - How to learn paid ads
8:16 - Tech stack
8:36 - Final advice
9:26 - Pat and Gus reflections: why paid ads work

This video is an educational case study of this founder’s experience. It is not financial advice and does not guarantee any income or results. Every business is different and your results may vary.

I laughed when he showed me his app. Then he told me how much money it makes 😱

Starter Story 2026-08-11 | Timo and his brother built Chart Detector AI, a ridiculously simple app that lets you snap a photo of any stock or crypto chart and instantly get AI-powered analysis on where it might go next.

No complex setup, no trading jargon. Just take a pic and get insights in seconds.

That simplicity?

It’s made the app a $56K/month business, with over 90,000 downloads and 40M+ impressions, all while Timo works just 20 hours each month (and travels the world).

He started with a tiny side project. Today $18K/month in revenue 😮

Starter Story 2026-08-10 | He started with a tiny side project. Today? $18K/month in revenue.

Ryan quit his $200K job and, with the help of his girlfriend, built a playful Pomodoro app for cat lovers. The hook? It’s not just a timer.

“Cat on Chair” turns focus sessions into a game: when you start working, a cat jumps on the chair and keeps you company. Finish a session, and the cat leaves you a gift.

I Copied A Huge App. Now I Make $80K/Month

Starter Story 2026-08-09 | Tomer took one of the most successful apps in the world and built it for his local market. Today, just 12 months after launching, he's already doing over $80K/month.

This video breaks down his playbook for reverse-engineering a proven app idea and building your own.
*iOS App Ideas:* http://go.starterstory.com/lp-test-3-ios-app-ideas-description

Follow Tomer: twitter.com/tomercn
Check Cal Buddy: https://calbuddy.co.il/

🔔 Follow the Second Channel: @StarterStoryBuild
🏁 We're hiring: starterstory.com/jobs

Chapters:
0:00 - You don’t need an original idea
1:04 - What’s your story?
1:38 - What’s the app?
2:15 - Founder background
3:03 - Build process
4:01 - Finding the app idea
4:43 - More app ideas!
5:32 - App differentiation
6:40 - Growth and marketing
8:00 - Influencer strategy
9:05 - Partnership breakdown
9:54 - Tech stack
10:24 - Final advice
11:05 - Pat and Gus reflections: you don’t need a new idea!

This video is an educational case study of this founder’s experience. It is not financial advice and does not guarantee any income or results. Every business is different and your results may vary.

Bro cold-DMed thousands of influencers with one killer insight to grow his app 😱

Starter Story 2026-08-06 | Bro cold-DMed thousands of influencers with one killer insight.

He wasn’t just blasting messages; he went after lifestyle and day-in-the-life creators where his app could “actually fit in”.

Instead of paying for an ad, he found partners that could organically weave his product into their content and make it feel like a natural part of their story.

Bro learned to stop working at dinner time to save his relationship:

Starter Story 2026-08-05 | As a $40k MRR founder, bro learned to stop working at dinner time to save his relationship.

For two years, he blurred the line between work and real life, carrying his laptop into every moment, even dinner.

Setting a hard stop at dinner saved the quality time (and the relationship). Now the rule is simple: once the food’s out, the work is done.

She spotted a $300K/month idea men would never think to build.

Starter Story 2026-08-03 | She spotted a $300K/month idea men would never think to build...

Sarah built Stella, an app that hit $340K MRR in two months - because she saw a problem only women would notice.

“I don’t think most men would have come up with this idea, right? And so I think that’s actually the unfair advantage of being a woman in this space.”