ZED
577 posts
ZED
@ZedCodeIO
SWE - cooking consumer apps following the greats. Will try to share my journey and numbers here as much as possible.
शामिल हुए Mart 2016
234 फ़ॉलोइंग377 फ़ॉलोवर्स
Last week, I soft launched my Christian Bible app that blocks apps until you put God first in the morning. I built the whole thing with @rork .. are these good metrics for week one?
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Fun isn't in my core values.
I'm 24.
Haven't been to a club or bar since 3 years.
I wake up, do breathwork, pray, journal, then work 8 to 7.
And most exciting- read philosophy at night.
My friends think i'm crazy lol.
But i traded hangovers and small talk for a $150K exit before 25 and a peace of mind i didn't have when i was trying to fit in.
I'm not anti-fun.
I just redefined what it means to me.
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You're doing a carousel with AI generated images as onboarding? LOL!!!! NGMI!
This is my V1. ACTION BASED.
You need to do specific tasks to finish it, to learn how the main app loop works.
Now the polishing phase and final copy.
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finally broke $2K MRR 😭
BUT the biggest win tbh has been getting the costs down
been relentlessly trying to improve caching / the multi-model system and we are at about ~75% profit margin now 👀
for context month 1: we were at 25% profit margin 😱
Chris Raroque@raroque
not your average calorie tracking app 😮💨
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@benjiianc You disappeared from YouTube feed but remembered saying you definitely going to make it. Next thing you know, teaming up with Blake already GJ man
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When I was 19 I built one of the earliest self-improvement apps in the space called Pillar.
We’ve hit 50M+ organic views & 8K downloads in the first 3 weeks (CAC was quite literally zero). It was the first ever app I’ve founded.
Then I started chasing the next idea.
I stopped improving the product functionalities, fixing UI bugs, and optimizing the funnel.
Today apps in the exact same niche are printing hundreds of thousands per month, and most of them launched after I stopped working on Pillar.
I learned that compounding only works if you stay in the game. Focus is everything.
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@8riantam @alexcooldev yeah I got his guide last year. Hope will retry everything again and follow your steps man :)
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@ZedCodeIO appreciate the kind words!
yeah, still in thailand!
for this product i haven’t started posting yet, but I think it’s smart to try posting manually for a few posts first before switching to programmatic. @alexcooldev has a great guide on that!
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launched a viral post recently here, our mrr jumped 10% in a day
two days later 1-star reviews started rolling in
'not great' - 1 star, 'that's paid' - 1 star etc
one bad review needs 10 five-stars to offset so the silent majority never writes reviews, the angry ones always do
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@nestymee @RevenueCat Big thanks! Will try Amplitude out :)
I use revenuecat too but really not sure how the "last seen" triggers correctly or not and wanted to start properly logging how my onboarding goes.
Definitely will update you on how it goes too :)
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sure! for analytics i use Amplitude - you can ask Claude Code to add amplitude events to your project, and then analyze data directly or through their MCP connector, which makes it super convenient. for revenue analytics i use @RevenueCat
both have free tiers that are more than enough at early stage!
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building in public day 73!
640/1000 challenge active paying users before 15 Apr
post with aesty.ai blew up here recently, now doing the less glamorous part: reading all the feedback, watching analytics, and actually fixing things for new users.
polishing the first session experience based on what people said. also new paywall is ready - still waiting on Apple review (day 4!! 👀)
dropping 3-4 new AI creator videos today.
and 3 investors reached out after the post. already talked to one.
build in public works, now back to building. Let's go!
Nadia Zueva@nestymee
day 72, building in public! 621/1000 challenge - active paying subs by april 15 yesterday posted a random tweet and it blew up to 200k+ views and brought in a wave of new subs to aesty.ai gonna be posting more of this! also got a ton of first-session feedback from real users - exactly what we're optimizing right now. people are interested and want to pay, but subscription renewals are where we're losing them. we have the data, we know what to fix, and a release is already on the way. iterating on retention. fix the bucket before pouring more water. let's go 💪
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I'm a 16 y/o giving myself 6 months to hit $50,000 in revenue.
All I have: OpenClaw🦞, Claude Code, Six Months
I'll post daily: wins, losses, and everything in between
Tomorrow is day 1, Follow to keep up
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@nicholasnlawton Is the pricing 99$ + additional for each jobs?
Or you get credits to hire with the plans too?
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Suno spams 1000s of TikTok's a month via SideShift
Currently, they are #7 on the appstore
An example of a consumer app who understands the game
Don't get left behind bc ur not posting enough volume
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day 72, building in public! 621/1000 challenge - active paying subs by april 15
yesterday posted a random tweet and it blew up to 200k+ views and brought in a wave of new subs to aesty.ai gonna be posting more of this!
also got a ton of first-session feedback from real users - exactly what we're optimizing right now. people are interested and want to pay, but subscription renewals are where we're losing them.
we have the data, we know what to fix, and a release is already on the way. iterating on retention.
fix the bucket before pouring more water. let's go 💪
Nadia Zueva@nestymee
day 71, building in public! 606/1000 challenge - active paying subs by april 15 -8 subs since yesterday. spent the day deep diving into churn data across paying users key insight: users find all our features, try-on works, they like it - but there's no reason to come back after day 2. it's a leaky bucket good news: users who stick past day 5 retain at 45%. the product works, we just need to hook people in that critical first week tomorrow: hackathon to fix retention - adding like/dislike on try-on results, improving try-on generation, and better outfit assembly fix the bucket before pouring more water. let's go
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@LouisDavidPH Thanks man! Finishing up my second app and would love to connect. Will DM with you soon 🤜🤛
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Built my first successful app knowing nothing about the niche
+ 2M users
Marketed it before writing a single line of code
+ 100k users in 3 days
Bought out my cofounder for $50
+ $800k revenue
Built the app in 2 weeks from my childhood bedroom
+ $150k exit
Hard paywall from day 1. No freemium.
+ 70k paying customers
Broke every rule they teach in startup courses.
Build fast. Ship faster. Trust in God.
Blake Anderson@blakeandersonw
Built my first app with ChatGPT and launched with no version control + code ONLY local on my laptop. + $250k mrr Reinvested every dollar and did it on my own. + $600k mrr Partnered with two 17 year olds. + $1.3m mrr Broke every rule in the book. Listen less, do more.
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@fearless_209 @desmondhth That’s the google play? What’s the Apple Store like? But miss the GOAT tweets sharing for sure. Im sure he’s doing fine though.
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@desmondhth
what happened bro? not hating or anything but weren't you doing like 500k/month?
did you sell the app or something?
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Same
Tech bros in 🇻🇳:
Entry Level: $400 – $700
Mid Level: $1,000 – $1,500
Senior Level: $2,000 – $3,000
Team Lead: $3,500 – $5,000
Tech bros in 🇺🇸:
Junior Level: $6,000 – $10,000
Honestly, this isn’t the life we should be living in this part of the world. 😮💨
Akintola Steve@Akintola_steve
Tech bros in 🇳🇬: Entry Level: ₦150 Mid Level: ₦350K – ₦500K Senior Level: ₦600K – ₦800K Team Lead: ₦1M – ₦1.5M Techie in 🇬🇧 : Junior Level: £1,500 Honestly, this isn’t the life we should be living in this part of the world.
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@ZedCodeIO I haven't tried Stripe yet (AFAIK it's not fully supported in my country), but I think Apple disallows developers from using Non-Apple payments for Apps in App Store, correct?
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💯 This margin problem is real
Important:
If you're making mobile apps, you need to consider the 30% (or 15% for Small Business Program) cut too, so that you don't accidentally run your app with negative profit margin.
Ghost Gap Intelligence@ZeroCompWhop
@jonathanzliu Stripe in app means they're routing around Apple's 30% cut entirely. If it holds, every app with meaningful revenue is watching this closely. The App Store tax has always been the margin problem nobody talks about in consumer software
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@bardonadam Would love to connect with you same day here man!
Following to see your launches :)
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I'm moving to Bangkok! 🇹🇭
- DTV visa secured ✅
- 1 year lease signed ✅
- $0 MRR 😅
I'm super excited! I spent there ~140 days last year, met some amazing people and indie hackers, made a lot of friends and it just feels like home.
But it also feels quite bittersweet. I love the city where I live right now(Brno 🇨🇿). I have this very cool office/music production studio, bunch of guitars and solid home theatre/audio setup. This Means I have to sell a lot of things. The money will definitely come handy, but still... I almost shed a tear when I sold my bass guitar today.
Brno is great, but I moved here because of my ex, with not many friends here... I met a lot of great people, but nobody is a builder. Nobody can relate to my situation and I can't relate to theirs.
That's why going to place with big indie hackers community feels like the best step for me right now.
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