Zero to $30K/Month App in 35 Days

Most people spend years searching for a business idea. This college student found his in an afternoon and then made $50,000 in 7 weeks. I'm a college student who built an app called Pepai. We launched just 7 weeks ago and we've already hit $50,000 in total revenue. The difference isn't luck, it's knowing where to look. And that's exactly what this episode today is about. This is like one of those things that it just blew up overnight. But that's kind of what I would do again is I would I asked Cedric, the founder, to come on to the channel to break down exactly how he did it. And in this episode, we'll cover the simple app he built in a couple weeks, the trending idea that helped him make over $50,000 in 7 weeks, and how anyone can spot ideas like this that are blowing up right now and build fast. This is one that you cannot miss. I'm Pat Walls, and this is Starter Story. All right, Cedric, welcome to the channel. want to tell me about who you are, what app you built, and what's your story? Yeah, my name is Cedric. I'm a college We launched just 7 weeks ago, and we've Today, I'll break down exactly how I found this growing niche and turned it into an app that's helping thousands of people. Okay, so this app is super cool. It's super trending. We're going to get all into that and why this app popped off and made over $50,000 in basically about 7 weeks. But before we do, explain the app. Show me some of your revenue. show me that this thing is real. This is the app. Um, the main point of the app is tracking peptides for safety. A lot of people take peptides and don't really know what they're doing. So, there's weight loss ones. There's some for tanning, skin care, and some of them also are for like uh recovery. If you got injured, you can inject it in those spots and it's supposed to help your recovery process. So, the whole point of the app is to help people track their peptides safely. So, this is our revenue cat dashboard. This is in the last 28 days. We have 33 uh,000 revenue, almost 2,000 active subscriptions. Our MR is 11K, total revenue 51K. We have a yearly subscription that's $45 and a monthly subscription for $10, um, with a 3-day free trial. All right, cool. Well, thanks for sharing your revenue dashboard, being open and transparent about that, especially cuz your app is trending and taking off right now, which we're going to talk all about that and maybe some of the reasons why this app grew so quickly. But before we do, I'm curious. Is this the first app that you built? What's your background? How do you get to this point where you've made over $50,000 with an app in about seven weeks? Yeah. So, um it's not the first app I've built. I built my first one in October was a student marketplace app for the University of Oregon and we just went around campus and kind of told people people about it and got like 800 users. But I always wanted to take it like to another level where I could actually make revenue cuz we didn't make any money with that app. The whole experience from the first app taught me that I needed to find a niche that was really specific to like a group of people that would be interested in it. So once I realized that, you know, I decided to find something that was really popular. And how I went about that was just scrolling social media until I found something that everyone was talking about and realized that there was no successful app for this. All right. Yeah. I mean, I think one of the most common first business ideas when I talk to a lot of founders is building a marketplace. Obviously, that's really hard to do. It's hard to monetize. It's hard to get it to work. But an app like this, obviously, it worked out pretty quickly. So, let's talk about that. We're gonna talk about how you grew it. But first, I want to know how did you build it and how long did it take to go from idea to working app? Yeah, it didn't really take that long, honestly, because vibe coding makes it so easy. I uh started on Replet, which was really easy because I would just explain what I wanted and it would build it for me. I also had Claude as like my guide. So, when it came to setting up revenue cat for inapp subscriptions, um, resend for sending out emails, anything that I have no idea how to set up, I could just ask Claude and it was like my senior developer. So, using Claude and Replet, it took about 2 weeks to build out. Um, and then I used Firebase for the back end, which we just store all of our user data. The hard part though was just Apple rejected it like a million times because they don't really want you to give it medical advice, and a lot of the features came off as that. So once we worked around it and found out how other kind of similar apps were doing it, we found, you know, the good spot where Apple was happy and they approved it and now it's hasn't been an issue. So it's funny, it doesn't really take that long, even if you're not technical, to build an app these days. The longest process, at least for iOS, I talked to a lot of founders, is just getting it approved. How long did that process take to get it approved? Probably like a week, just back and forth. To make it faster, I found out that you can expedite Apple reviews if there's something major. So, we actually got one approved kind of quickly and then there was a bunch of issues. So, then I found out about this expedite review which then they would review it in like two hours instead of two days which kind of sped up our process. I love what Cedric is breaking down right now. But the real secret behind his success I think is the power of AI. See, when you have an idea or you spot a trending topic like this, the most important thing is your ability to build and launch fast. And with today's AI tools, this is more possible than ever before. So, if you're wondering how you can get started, find an idea, and build it quickly. Well, I have something for you. Inside Starter Story Build, we have our free iOS boot camp. In just a few days, we will guide you on how to spot a good idea, how to build it, and how to get it ready for the app store. You will build it 100% with AI. You don't need to be technical, and you don't need to write a single line of code yourself. If you're ready to build, just head to the first link in the description, and you can get started for free. All right, let's get back to the episode. Okay, cool. So, as everyone knows who watches this channel, the easy part is building it. You built it few days. It took a week to get it approved. That's not that hard. Didn't take that long. I think one of the most important things for a lot of people watching this channel is how to find the right idea. And I think that your app is the perfect example of finding a great niche, a great idea, a growing trend. So, let's talk about that. How did you actually find this idea? How did you validate and how did you know and have confidence that this is something that can make $50,000 in 7 weeks? How it started is one of my roommates um came up to me and was like, "We should take peptides." And I had no idea what he was talking about. Like a week later, I get a Tik Tok on my for you page about peptides. And so, you know, started looking them up and found that they're huge on social media. There wasn't an actual peptide app out there to like really explain what all these peptides do and how to use them safely. And there there were a couple that had been out for a couple years, but none of them were successful yet. That's when I realized that there was like an opening there. So then I went through every single existing app, looked through all the reviews of the things like what do people like, what do they not like, what do they wish they had, and then from there I just built the best version and had Claude do a bunch of searches so that we could build something that would be actually useful for people when they want to take peptides or just learn about them. I think there's a couple interesting points you have there, which is like there was like a couple of signals, which is your friend told you about it, then you saw it in Tik Tok, and then you had genuine interest in it as well. Those are like three things that I think are really important. If anyone's watching this, what would be your advice to them on like how to identify like an idea like this? Tell me a little bit more about that. Yeah, it's hard to say because, you know, this is like one of those things that it just blew up overnight kind of and then I just moved quick. But that's kind of what I would do again is I would scroll social media, find all these big content creators online and what are they all talking about? Is there something you've never heard of that they're all talking about? Cuz if there is, there's a chance that it's something new and no one has done anything with it. Um, an example I have is like people were really into looks maxing for a while and like just be trying to look as best as they can. And so this guy made an app where you like take a picture of yourself and it tells you what you need to do to make yourself look better. And that was just a trend on TikTok. So I think that if you can find any trend online, you can turn it into an app. What's super cool about your app, Peptides, is that you probably don't have to work that hard to market it right now relatively because PE it's just so popular right now that people are actually just searching it in the app store and finding your app. 100% organic and uh you know that's one of the huge benefits of finding a trend before it takes off. Um there's actually there's been a couple competitor apps that have come out since we started like everyone's copying ours kind of and like creating apps called like peptide AI now. One of them like there was a post on X that blew up about that. People started looking up Peptide AI but ours was the top search and we got like a bunch of like just traction from that. So it puts us in a good spot. Building on a growing trend. Let's dive a little bit deeper into that. If you were to start over right now, peptides are already reached the top of their trend curve and you have to find a new idea. What would be your step by step? If you're starting over in middle of 2026, finding a new trend in building an app, what would be your process? I would probably just live on social media. Every second I have, I would just go on there, scroll Tik Tok, scroll Instagram, and just find what everyone's talking about. This is what a lot of successful people have done is finding things that are just blowing up. But I would literally just step one is watch Tik Tok every single day and find out what people are just genuinely obsessed over. If multiple people are posting about it, it's probably going to be something that you can turn into a tool that people would use. Um, step two is to investigate whether these apps already exist in the space. And if they do, I think it's actually a good thing because it kind of validates that this is something that people want. If there's zero apps, it still 100% can be popular and done well. But I think if there are a couple apps, that's a good sign because they people have built it, people want it, just no one's really marketed it like successfully yet. Uh, next step is what I would do is look for these other apps and come up with ideas off of it. I would literally go through every single review on all these apps. Um, like I said before, find what people like, what they don't like, what they wish the app had, and then take all that and give it to Claude or Chat GBT and have them come up with your app idea so that you have at least a foundation of what you want to build. This is genius. I actually just talked to a founder who completely rebranded their entire app based on past uh they took all their reviews, they took all their cancellation reasons in Stripe, they took all their support requests, they pumped it into Claude and they completely rebranded their app and then after the rebrand they grew like 350% or something like that. So go on and look at the existing even if you have competitors go take their reviews, put it into Claude, build your own thing. You might be able to do it better. I like that. What's the next step? Step four, I would say is to find influencers in that niche and get them posting about it before you even launch. We reached out to a couple people, had them made a couple posts just to see like, are people interested in this? And all of them said yes. We made some Reddit posts and we had a wait list with like 300 people on it before we launched. So, we knew that this was something people were really going to be interested in. And and one thing I also did was when I first got interested in peptides, I was watching a lot of people on social media and everything that these guys would say, I believed and trusted, which is kind of what gave me the idea that if I trusted them and if they were promoting an app, I would totally download it. So if I just got to them before anyone else and got them to post about my app and be like, "This is the tool I use." Everyone's going to listen to that. So the results were what really blew me away. We had one guy that had made one story post and from that we did $1,000 in revenue, which is insane for one story post on Instagram. And then when he made his actual first post, it got 50,000 views and we did like $4,000 in revenue just from that day. We think that we did in total over 10,000 revenue from that post. So that's really what re made me realize how important the influencer marketing is. I mean, I feel like that's one of the little secrets also of finding something trending is there's also like influencers that are maybe don't realize how powerful or realize how big their following is because the trend is still so early. And that's a great example of that. I'm guessing you couldn't attribute all the revenue, but $10,000 from a single post is insane. What's the final step? Step five, though, and I think the most important part about building an app is marketing. I I think marketing and distribution matters way more than your idea, than your app, how great it is. If you don't have a vision for how you will market it and distribute it, then I just don't even think it's worth building. I got this advice from some other podcasts that I watched of other successful app founders and that's their biggest piece of advice is just if you don't know how you're going to market it and you don't have a plan for influencer marketing, ads, whatever it is, that's the biggest thing. So unless you feel very confident in how you'll market it, I wouldn't even build it. There's a famous quote which is first time founders think about product, second time founders think about distribution. Let's switch topics a little bit and actually take a look at your app. I'd love if you could show me the app that you built, the app that made $50,000 in seven weeks. Could you just like walk me through a demo of the app? Yeah. So, the core features of Pepai is the main feature is peptide tracking. You know, people want to be safe about what they're tracking and know how much to take. The first feature I would use on the app is go to the calculator where there you can put in your vial amount. Then you can add your backwater and how much you're wanting to take. And then from there, it tells you how many units to pull to. After that, you could go to adding your peptide. Then you put in how much is in that one, how much water, but then once you get to there and you have everything inserted, then you can actually log a dose. And from the calculator, you know how much you would be taking. Um, and then choose your injection site, which is a really important part because you want to remember where you did last time. You don't want to do the same spot over and over. And then after that, the other really important feature is just our research. You know, we have a kind of like a Duolingo type feature where you can take quizzes and teach yourself everything about peptides. And then we also have a research library where you can look at different type of peptides, you know, the overview, the research focus, how it works. Um, and then we have sources in there from PubMed, which is a a source everyone likes for reading about peptides where you can see the real information about it. And then uh yeah, then we have a lifestyle feature where you can like do meal scanning, tracking nutrition, weight tracking, Apple health integration, progress photos, and yeah, that kind of sums up what the app does. So, it's pretty simple. Cool. I was uh just searching peptide tracker on the app store right here on my phone. And looks like there's a couple ads, but you come up number three, which is awesome. Congrats. Last question that we ask all founders who come on here. What would be your advice if you could go back in time before you had this successful app that was making money, maybe after you had that first app that didn't really work out. What advice would you have for your younger self or for anyone watching this that wants to build a profitable app like you? Yeah, my biggest piece of advice and the advice I've given myself this entire time is just literally never giving up on myself. I've always been very like an entrepreneurship type of person and I've always wanted to have my own company building apps or video games and so it's always been my dream and so once vibe coding became a thing I knew I could actually do it and so I've just never given up and I was literally never going to stop until something became successful it just happened a lot faster than I thought it would but I still want to scale even farther. I want to make this a $1 million a month app and so I got to keep telling myself the same advice. Just never give up. Fully believe in yourself. I've had literally a lot of my friends that I'm really close to that have just make fun of my app ideas. Even what it is now, they still think it's funny and not a serious thing, but I have a vision and I know where I want to be. So, it's just never giving up on what you really believe in. Well, that's awesome advice. Thanks for coming on the show. Congrats on your success. I think it's going to grow and become a lot bigger and you'll hit that 1 million a month. Maybe we'll have you back on the channel. Put a comment there below if you'd like to see Cedric come back on when he's hit 100K per month or maybe a million per month. Otherwise, thanks for coming on and sharing this. It's amazing what you can build in seven weeks with the right idea. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, thank you for having me, guys. All right, Gus, producer of Starter Story. What' you think of this one? That was cool. I mean, I don't know anything about peptides. So, first of all, I feel like I learned a lot. And then second, I just love seeing a young kid who just kind of like saw an idea, built it fast. He talked at the end about like how his friends are like, "That's kind of stupid." Or maybe aren't like fully bought in, and he's just like, "I'm going to do it anyway." So that's kind of like not a big lesson about everything he shared, but that's something that's sticking out to me right now. He sort of mentioned this right at the end. I'm not sure if it'll get into the final edit, but he said like, "I don't know if I would have been able to do this without AI coding tools." This is a kind of classic example of someone who like has a cool idea, but maybe wouldn't have been able to build it or, you know, would have gotten lost with crappy developer or something like that even two years ago. But he was able to build this with AI tools and you know is kind of marketing focused and ideas focused, execution focused. He mentioned that he just had an idea and built it as quickly as possible. That's usually a sign of a great builder or founder entrepreneur is someone who just built it. I mean we've said this over and over again on this channel or whatever, but like really these AI coding tools are really just game changers for regular old people. I'm not saying he's a regular old guy, but like me or or like him or people who have ideas, they can just like go build it really fast. And but yeah, that that was that's that that was like a it's a good lesson. Like you can have any idea and just like everything's there for you to go build. Just go build it. The other underrated theme of this, and hopefully it really comes out in the video because I think it's probably one of the most important things you can do, especially if you're building your first app, is build on a growing trend. You get so much free juice when you do something like that, right? Peptides is one of those trending things that everyone is talking about. If you're in the, you know, the pop culture or whatever, everyone's talking about it and you're just getting so much free users revenue just by building on that space. Let's say he had a really crappy app. It still would make money. It still would be successful if you just build it on something exciting rather than something that's dying like, I don't know, newspapers or something like that. So, I think that is like hopefully the biggest lesson you can walk away from this video. I don't know your thoughts on that. Yeah, I mean he said like I just scroll and it's like kind of boring, but I think he had sort of this sort of like magnifying glass. I think that most people don't. So, yeah. I think if you're like really wanting to build something or wanting to like create something like he did, you just really have to have this like magnifying glass on social media instead of just like I don't know brain rotting. People online are always talking about something new or something interesting or something trending. And if you're paying close enough attention, you can, like you said, get that that juice. Yeah. Well, if you're looking to build something as well, I think a great idea is, as you mentioned, go on social media, browse it for an hour. You might just find something. And when you do, you got to build it. You got to build that iOS app. I think building iOS apps is a great platform to be building a business right now. And if you're looking to do that, check out the link in the description for our iOS boot camp. We'll teach you how to come up with an idea, build it, and get it live and approved on the app store in just a matter of weeks. Click that link there down in the description if you want to check it out. Otherwise, we'll see you in the next one. Peace.