This is Alejandro and Mario, two founders who built an app that makes $30,000 a month. But here's what's crazy. They did not actually build the app first. I basically made a fake product demo and it got 80k views. They made a video using fake footage, posted it on TikTok, it blew up and only then did they actually build it. The biggest mistake most founders make is they build first and then they try to market later. The two guys flipped that completely on its head. Content first, product later. This one video got 500 comments begging me to build this app. I asked them both to comment on the channel and break down this genius strategy with real examples so you could put something similar into practice today. And in this video, we'll dive into the exact viral video that validated their idea before writing a single line of code, the step by step content first playbook they used to hit $30,000 a month and why validating through content first might just be the smartest way to build apps today. All the revenue at the beginning came from organic content. This one you cannot miss guys. I'm Pat Walls and this is Starter Story. Alejandro and Mario, welcome to the channel. Tell me about who you guys are, what you built and what's your story. Hi, my name is Alejandro. And I'm Mario. And together we will push Skull which is an app that literally makes you do pushups before you can do Skull on social media. We launched this app four months ago and it's already generating over $30,000 a month in revenue all through organic viral videos. But what I think is interesting is we didn't start by building the app right away. We first validated the idea through content and I'm excited to share the process with you today. Okay, well before we get into this viral validation strategy, which I think is super cool, I got to understand what is this app and what does it do. So a huge problem a generation face today is wasting your dive doom scrolling. Push troll actually fixes the root cause by replacing doom scrolling with fitness. Before you can open social media, you literally need to do a short workout like push ups, squats or plank. Essentially, we're hijacking the dopamine that you get from social media and retraining your brain to create movement instead. And in total we have around 300,000 downloads across App Store and Play Store, of which around 4,000 people are paying customers. And our basis model is really simple, we just make everyone pay. It's a hard paywall and takes around $30 a year. Okay, those are some pretty impressive numbers. Before we get into how you guys did this, which is super cool, I got to understand a little bit more about your background. What were you guys doing before this and how did you meet? So I was a software engineer at Lyft until last year when I just quit without a plan to do something against doom scrolling. I built side projects in the past like a silly app that reached $5 million. But after four months building another silly app, I hit a wall with distribution. I spent months making TikToks without really knowing what audience to build it for or how to do it. I did computer science and I always chased the startup dream. And in the past I built other startups, but they all failed because I ignored distribution. So I decided to master virality first and after a week of daily uploads, one of the videos blew up, which then ended up being the post school idea. And then I met Mario and YC Co founder match and it was the perfect match basically. Okay, so I heard both of you guys talking about this idea of cracking distribution. And this is the reason why I wanted to bring you guys on the channel is that you essentially cracked distribution before you even wrote a single line of code. Can you tell me what happened and how this whole thing worked for consumer apps? It's extremely important to validate your idea first with virality, right? So basically you want to get one viral TikTok video. And so I thought of the most visual and novel idea for an app that has virality potential and post school is what I came up with. And for me, it was clear as day. I had spent months creating videos and struggling with marketing only to try to sell the app later. And here it was the opposite. The video went viral and then we built the app. There were people literally begging us in the comments to build this app. And so we had to build it as soon as possible. We built the app in around two weeks, but it was a very simple MVP. It only had three screens, but this was enough to sort of validate the idea further. We launched the app with another TikTok video. And in that video, we said that the app would be for free for all the users to download within the first week. We got around 20 K to 30 K downloads from that. And then we basically scaled organic formats to 30 K in revenue per month. And now we're scanning with ads and are seeing extremely good results there as well. Okay, this is absolutely insane to me. This is why I want to bring you guys on the channel to really dive into what you guys did, which is you didn't build an app. You just created a great engaging, potentially somewhat viral video that posed the idea that if your app existed, people would download it. I really want to dive in more into this specific piece of content because I think people watching this can learn a lot from something like this. Instead of building an app, they can build a video. So can you show me this video that made your app sort of go viral and why this video worked? First of all, if you ever do a video like this, you have to make a good video. Otherwise, you don't know if your app idea sucks or your video sucks. And the most important thing in a video is the hook. So the hook here was what if you could stop your doom scrolling addiction by doing 20 pushups? And with a hook, you want to make it as clear as possible such that even a five year old can understand it. You should make sure that there is a curiosity gap. For my example, it was the pushups, right? What do the pushups have to do with stopping your doom scrolling addiction? And it has to be novel and original. And then once you have a good hook, how do you actually showcase the app if you haven't already built it? What you have to understand is that people don't really care how you solve the problem. It's just that you solve the problem. And so if you can visualize the value your app will provide, then that is good enough. So for my example, I literally use an AI pushups detection video I found on YouTube and then I show how you place the phone against the wall and finally the scrolling part. With these three visuals, people can really visualize the app body in their head and then they can see the value it could provide. And then you should add a strong call to action asking whether you should build this. I really, really like this launch video you guys did. When you showed this to me, I was like, wow, I think that anybody watching this interview right now should go. I'll put a link in the description to your guys's launch video. What I think is so good about your launch video is it's not like someone showing off a demo of an app on their screen. It's actually showing off the benefits that you would get if this app existed. It's not about that. Here's how this future works. So that future works. So this is showing someone doing pushups, getting fit and not doom scrolling. What do you think about this video really struck a chord with people? So doom scrolling is a growing problem and many people are actually looking for a solution to it because it's very, very addictive. And I think that really resonated with people because it not only removes your addiction, it also makes you fit at the same time. So I think this content first playbook is genius. If you can crack the code and distribution, then you automatically win. I was so impressed by this that I actually asked Alejandro and Mario to join me again so we could dive even deeper into the strategy because I wanted to know what exactly was their content research process? What was the recipe they used to find this viral app idea? And how did they go about creating a piece of content that got over 80,000 views? Well we got together and recorded this whole thing separately and now I want to give it to you for free. This is the content first playbook and it might just change your entire view on how to build successful apps right now. So if you're someone curious about this process and looking to launch something soon, then you're going to want to check out our tactical playbook inside Starter Story Build on this very strategy. The content first playbook is free right now. If you just click the first link in the description, you can check it out, but it won't be free forever. I definitely think you guys should check this out on how they built a real app that made $30,000 a month and how you can do the same. Again, I'll put a link in the description for you to check that out for free. Otherwise, let's get back to the video. You guys are solving a really painful problem in a clever way. It's a super cool novel app idea and I think that really did have a big part of it. That brings me to my next question is do you think that this is a repeatable process for anyone watching this video right now? Could they go do the same thing, which is create content before creating an app or validate an app idea before actually creating it? Do you think it's repeatable and what would be your playbook if you had to start over from scratch right now? I do think it's repeatable and this would be my first step, creating a warming up and you tick to account. You've got to watch all the videos in your niche, interact with them by commenting, saving, sharing or reposting and following as many creators as you can. It's really funny for us because we actually wanted to quit tombstrolling but we ended up making ourselves addicts in self-improvement content, which is what you want. Once you've watched everything, you've got to understand why they go viral. You might even find potential apps that you could copy and improve safety. This also signals TikTok that you're not a bot and it prevents you from getting shadow banned later on. Step two would be to come up with viral ideas. Your app needs to have one visually heavy element. So try to make your app as visually interesting as you can. Also, your app needs to be super easy to explain. If you cannot explain your app in three words, it's too complex for the short attention span of TikTok users. And then your app also needs to solve a fundamental human desire or problem. And step three would be just to post daily videos, validating any idea you have until one of the ideas takes off. And that should be a strong signal for you that your idea can go viral again in the future for a UGC or influencer collapse. So step four is once you have a video, create a waitlist or a secret that's not so known is creating a community like Discord. Since you don't have an app yet, you'll need to keep everyone up to date and convert them into users. This traction will be super important for the launch. The MVP should be extremely simple to the point where it's embarrassing, especially because the bureaucracy of launching an app will take a few weeks and you'll be able to throw it while running a private beta or just waiting. Our MVP was literally three screens. A half broken pushup detector, a screen to choose what apps you want to block, and a screen that blocks those apps unless you've exercised. All of this ended up being rewritten later. If it's ugly, it's okay. It does not do scale. We gave it away for free to the first users, but everyone else saw a hard paywall. That's the ultimate validation that you want that people will pay for your app. So step five would be to just post organic content yourself until you fit around five to 10 K MRR. The reason why you should do this is it will give you a lot more information to work with influencers later to know actually what videos sell. Like just experiment with different formats every day until you find something that goes viral over and over again. You just rinse and repeat it until it doesn't work anymore. With one video, you can literally reach five to 10 K MRR. It happened to us actually. One video got six million views and that converted to around 10 K MRR. Step six and beyond probably needs another video. It's scaling. You can scale your organic through UTC influencers or paydots. And in the meanwhile, work on your funnel from the moment someone watches your video until they pay focus on fixing broken things instead of optimizing what already works. So that would be our six step playbook if we had to start from scratch and do all of this again. Okay, cool. So sharing all that, I'm curious and I think a lot of people watching might be as well. How does this app even work? Would you be able to give me like a quick demo of how your app works and how it makes money? So the main functionality is actually quite simple. You can block apps like TikTok or Instagram. For example, like here I have TikTok and then you can go and exercise and every pushup you do will give you one minute of screen time. And then you can use that time to unlock TikTok temporarily. And then on top of that, we have difficulties and more exercises such as squats or plank. And there's a full blown journey to Lingostyle to keep you engaged and workouts where you literally have to do a serious exercises in order to turn your screen time. Okay, cool. Thanks for showing me that. I want to change topics a little bit and understand how you guys actually built this. What's the tech stack and what tools run this app? So in our case, we're using ComposMod platform to build a cross-platform app. We also have SuperBase for backend database authentication. We have SuperWall to show and test tables, Amplitude for analytics, Century for Back reports and finally, ThoughtfulMax for coding. Well thanks for sharing that and being transparent around how you built this in the numbers. The last question that I have for everyone who comes on the channel, you guys were just very recently successful with this app. If you could go back in time to before you built this app, before you have this $30,000 per month app, what advice would you give yourselves or what advice would you give for anyone watching this channel that wants to build apps like you guys? Building an app, you're going to invest a lot of your time. So don't be afraid to also invest money. I'm a bit cheap, but time is money. Building an expert $200 for advice could have a huge return on investment. And most importantly, build your consumer product with distribution in mind first and foremost. It will literally make your life 10 times easier in the long run. Well that's great advice. Thank you Alejandro and Mario for coming on. I think what you guys did is amazing. Congratulations and I'll be looking forward to what you guys do next. See you. Thank you to Alejandro and Mario for coming on the channel and sharing this whole process when they didn't have to. They did what most people are not willing to do. Instead of the exciting part of going in and building something and spending all that time, they did the hard part by focusing on distribution first. They had a Viower video. They had hundreds of people begging them to build this app. They built it and all of a sudden it was making money and they had a successful app. This is exactly the type of framework that we teach inside Starter Story Build. How to come up with an idea, how to build it quickly and how to get it out into the real world in the hands of real users. If you want to check that out, I'll put a link in the description to Starter Story Build, including the free content first playbook that we did with Alejandro and Mario. I hope you enjoy it. Otherwise, I'll see you guys in the next episode. Thank you guys for watching.
