Mobile App Bro

Update. Now ~$180 MRR to $19K MRR in 6 days. I think I'll definitely break $20K MRR today. So thats +$10K MRR in 2 days since the last post which is kinda crazy, basically doubled. What wild is how because of global reach, my app isn't particularly charting significantly anywhere, but getting purchases in lots of different countries. Really goes to show that there could be a lot of apps making money out there that aren't visible. Anyways as cool as this is, don't get too fooled. These are all mostly weekly plans and we are one day away from the renewals starting to hit. Also the little niche trend i'm riding probably will run out of steam at some point and I think i'm slowly starting to see it fade today. A great dose of reality approaches and hopefully should give you some perspective on these high growth MRR posts like this one that you see on X all the time. This MRR is not real, its weekly x 4. Still impressive in a way but it's likely any time you see a revenue chart in consumer that moves at this velocity, this is the likely case. And in consumer apps, a huge percentage of user's will cancel, regardless of what you do sometimes up to a point, its just kind of the baked in behaviour. You can see it sometimes in something like RevenueCat were a user will start a trial and immediately cancel it or purchase and immediately cancel the plan within a minute or two. On top of that for half the time so far, my app basically didn't work without realising 😅 so that might make it even more dramatic. So we are one day away, lets see how high it gets before the roller coaster ride begins 📉

Hate to pick on one of his posts again, but one of the problems in my opinion with consumer apps' revenue velocity is that it makes people think they are geniuses. Kinda like picking the right coin in a bull market in crypto. It's intoxicating going from $0 - $500k / mo in a matter of months. I've been there. But the problem is people get some success in consumer apps and think they've cracked the da vinci code to business. Particularly when it comes to an ad arbitrage situation like this one. As much as I think YC are dinosaurs in this new age. They give very sage product advice, advice that as much as I hate to admit it, is standing the test of time. So my take on your take is that you have at present carved a very narrow path through the maze. Treat is as that, you've found a way to turn meta traffic into money, that's pretty much the bottom line. And it's a good thing because you are not VC funded which is why this path was the right choice. But believe it or not, the arbitrage you are experiencing right now will atrophy, the margins with start to crunch, you might even find yourself pulling back on ad spend. Increasingly your decreasing margins will mean your reliance on renewals and therefore retention will become more important and then what Garry is talking about here will become very relevant. And because of the volatile forces of consumer, this will be an absolute grind, you only need to read best in class Duolingo's S-1 filing to see. A LOT of big apps and app studios, that spend on ads, eventually run deficits like you wouldn't believe. But some of the biggest are willing to wait 2+ years to see payback on their ad spend. That seems to be what happens at scale, at least what I've observed in the industry. If I were you I would be crafting a plan to sell in the next 1 - 2 years before that happens and you still have a strong growth story. Otherwise, to hit your $100M goal (with ads specifically, influencer is a different ball game) you will likely need to raise, and I say this as someone who hates the whole funding ecosystem. You are not the first to do what you are currently doing, and you won't be the last. For example, I remember seeing this app Reflectly for the first time a few years ago, beautiful app, doing hundred of thousands a month in revenue back when it wasn't as common as it is now, running facebook ads profitably from what I gathered. Featured everywhere and critically acclaimed. They were pioneers of UGC/micro influencer marketing for apps imo, you can even find talks about it on youtube. But at some point, they decided to stop running ads I assume. Why could be anyones guess, I noticed they acquired other apps since so maybe shifted focus. But my main point is to just stay humble and avoid boxing yourself into wisdom primarily driven by a narrow path and discarding foundational startup wisdom as "useless" and "overrated". It's a mistake.

It works until it doesn't? I'm not saying this to gloat. It's just worth remembering. This is why you should invest in new ad channels, ops, and new products.

stop charging subscriptions for your apps. apps won't exist next year anyway. do lifetime payments. which means "until january 2027" ✌️

apps are dead

There are way more apps WITHOUT a hard paywall used by millions of people than anything with a hard paywall Don’t sacrifice growth for a few bucks

Finally reached 500k MRR with my app Most companies never end up reaching this scale We did it in less than a year Time to take this blueprint and scale multiple apps 2026 will be insane

just because you can make something that brings in cash doesn't mean you should we do have a responsibility to actually provide GOOD into the world - not just pray on people's insecurities you can literally build & distribute anything you want. make it count