Milan Halamka

Two ex-Quora engineers quit after burning out. Built a self-care app where you raise a virtual bird, and bootstrapped it to ~$30M ARR with zero VC money. No founder podcast tour. No Series A. Just a bird named Buddy. Here's how Finch is quietly outearning most YC mental health startups 🧵

The receipts (Sensor Tower est.): iOS: ~$2M/mo + ~400k downloads/mo Android: ~$900k/mo + ~300k downloads/mo #2 Top Free iPhone app in Health & Fitness (US) Apple App Store Editors' Choice ~$30M annualized run rate Headcount: tiny relative to scale All without raising institutional capital.

@pcshipp Hey men, we building tool for this thing! We are starting - so it is definetly free!

It’s been 25 days, and this app still has no ASO growth - $0 MRR - 0 active user - 21 new users I’m feeling sad because I spent 2 months building this app

A 3-person team built a $500K/month flight tracker with zero Facebook ads. Most travel apps spend millions on UA. Flighty spent that money on product instead. Here's how @rjonesy built one of the App Store's most profitable indie apps 🧵

8 out of 10 subscription apps never cross $10K total. 57.7% make less than $1,000. Ever. That's not a bad launch. That's a Dead App. The ones that break $100K? They didn't just build. They shipped, iterated, and kept the engine running. Most vibe coders stop at launch. That's the mistake.

Weekly subs are eating monthly plans alive. 56% of subscription revenue. Monthly collapsed from 21% to 12%. But ask yourself: are users choosing weekly - or just not noticing the charge? Top 10% of apps take 94.5% of all sub revenue. The rest are running dark patterns and calling it strategy.

A guy bootstrapped an AI dating coach to a reported $500,000/month with a 3-person team. No VC. No ads agency. Just ChatGPT + TikTok + a single piece of cultural luck. Here's the full @rizz_app teardown 🧵

A 17-year-old built a calorie app that did $5.7M in a single month. $0 spent on Facebook ads. Just sold to MyFitnessPal for 9 figures. Here's the entire Cal AI playbook - and what's worth stealing 🧵

@perkmaybe Hello bro! 👨‍💻 Tech founder and dev here. Building in public and looking for mutuals in the same space.

Bro to Bro: build your x account Just say “hello” and gain 700 mutuals here.

Reviews are not customer service. They're your #1 acquisition channel. You're ignoring them.

Everyone wants to be CalAI. Nobody wants to do what CalAI does after launch. ASO. Reviews. Pricing across 175 territories. That's why there's one CalAI and 10,000 dead copies. - See how CalAI actually runs its store.

@upbeat_dev Yes, no problem. I have one question... how do you go about optimizing your applications? Do you have any tools?

@Milan_Halamka Thanks, really useful insight. Good info 👍

Do you think Apple gives any advantage to native apps over cross platform ones (Flutter / React Native etc.) when deciding App Store rankings? I used to think native apps might get some hidden advantage over cross-platform ones. Sometimes you see patterns and it feels like that. But honestly, I don’t think it’s about native vs Flutter or React Native directly. What I’m starting to suspect is more simple: app size + conversion behavior might be the real thing. Native apps are often significantly smaller compared to cross platform ones, which can make a real difference in install conversion. Smaller apps = easier installs = better conversion rate. And that can indirectly boost ASO performance. I can’t prove it, but there is definitely something there. With Flutter, staying under ~40MB is impossible, but still worth pushing app size down as much as possible.

@KaiXCreator I'm building startup for indie devs!

Builders on X What are you building right now? App. Startup. Side project. Content. I want more builders on my timeline. Drop what you're working on 👇🏻

@seraleev @abdulahafzaldev And do you use any tool for that?

@abdulahafzaldev Yes. I do ASO for every language. If I don’t have time or enough keywords, I leave it in English.

Localize your app. Here are the languages I support: 🇸🇦 Arabic 🇨🇿 Czech 🇩🇰 Danish 🇬🇧 English 🇩🇪 German 🇬🇷 Greek 🇪🇸 Spanish 🇫🇮 Finnish 🇵🇭 Filipino 🇫🇷 French 🇮🇱 Hebrew 🇭🇷 Croatian 🇭🇺 Hungarian 🇮🇩 Indonesian 🇮🇹 Italian 🇯🇵 Japanese 🇰🇷 Korean 🇲🇾 Malay 🇳🇱 Dutch 🇳🇴 Norwegian 🇵🇱 Polish 🇵🇹 Portuguese 🇷🇴 Romanian 🇷🇺 Russian 🇸🇰 Slovak 🇸🇪 Swedish 🇹🇭 Thai 🇹🇷 Turkish 🇺🇦 Ukrainian 🇻🇳 Vietnamese 🇨🇳 Simplified Chinese 🇹🇼 Traditional Chinese

@vladsiu Hi, we build all in one tool for indie devs! upratehq.com

Good morning! 🌄 What are you building today?

@kyanbuilds Did you use some for TikTok videos?

Guys it’s so easy 1. make an app 2. post tiktoks + reels 3. go viral 4. hire people to make tiktoks + reels 5. run paid ads on winners It works every time

@imsanyidiriba Wow, amazing! And what is your product?

Built my app in public → 5M+ views before launch → tons of feedback → 3.5K+ installs after launch It Started as a pain point Turned into the a real product people actually use Now shipping new features

@simonecanciello I definitely don't understand this world anymore.

this is insane. (2.3M views + 421k likes). a format that could easily promote a $29.99/year creative screen time app. she’s not promoting anything… wasted potential.

Dead app checklist: ☐ Great idea ☐ Built with AI in a weekend ☐ Submitted to App Store ☐ Rejected ☐ "I'll fix it this weekend" ☐ Still not fixed ☐ Building a new app instead Sound familiar?