Starter Story — I Built a $20K/Month App in 83 Days
Source: YouTube Channel: Starter Story (830000 subs) Duration: 16:14 Views: 186047 · Likes: 4147 Video: Watch on YouTube
In this video, we break down how a simple mobile app turned into a $20K/month business. But the real story is about how he validated the idea BEFORE writing a single line of code. By the end of this video, you will have playbook you can use to go validate your app.
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Follow Brian: https://twitter.com/brianshinsh Check out Once: https://once.film/
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Chapters: 0:00 - The commitment metric 0:56 - Meet Brian Shin 1:27 - Business breakdown 2:35 - Mobile app growth tactics 3:22 - Founder background 4:25 - App idea 5:48 - Build process 6:35 - Tech Stack 7:07 - Validating the app 8:30 - Validation Playbook 11:23 - How the app works 12:18 - Stop overthinking! 13:15 - Pat and Gus reflections
Key Insights
This started as a fun side project, but
we turned it into a real business. Meet
Brian. He and his girlfriend built a
really simple mobile app, and in less
than 3 months, they grew it to over
20,000 [music]
a month. We set a number and didn't
start building until we hit it. You
might think he validated the idea like
everyone else, but no. He did something
I've never seen before, and it's called
[music] the commitment metric. We made
sure that people committed to this
product before writing a single line of
code. So, I brought Brian onto the
channel to break it all down for me. In
this episode, we'll dive into the
amazingly simple app that makes over
20,000 a month, why you should resist
the temptation to build anything until
you hit this one number, and the new
framework to validate business ideas in
an AI world. This one is a great story,
so let’s dive [music] in. I’m Pat Walls,
and this is Starter Story.
All right. Welcome Brian to the channel.
Tell me about who you are, what app you
built, and what’s your story. Hey Pat,
nice to meet you. My name is Brian Shin,
and we built a disposable camera app
called Once. We launched back in
December 2025, [music] and fortunately,
we were able to hit 20K in monthly
revenue within 83 days of launch. So,
today, I really want to share exactly
how we pre-validated Once before
>> [music]
>> writing a single line of code, and also
some of the growth playbooks that we had
to grow Once from zero all the way to
20,000 in monthly revenue. Okay, cool.
I mean, awesome to have you here. Would
you be able to just explain what your
app does, who uses it, and pull up some
of your revenue dashboards to show that
this is legit to the audience? Yeah, for
sure. So, Once is basically a disposable
camera for events, especially for
weddings, birthday parties, and these
days even for some corporate events. So,
anything where a group of people can
come together, have fun, and capture all
the candid moments, Once can play a role
there. And our pricing is based on the
number of guests that you want to invite
into your event. So, if it's like a
small birthday party with just 10
people, it's going to be just 2. But,
if it’s like a bigger wedding for
instance, if it’s like 150 people, it’ll
be 50. So, that's the more usage, the
more guests, the more higher tier that
you would need to purchase in order to
use [music] Once. So, it's been around 3
months since launching, and our weekly
active users is around 10,000 to 12,000
users at the moment. And in terms of
revenue, this month we're totaling
around 22,000.
And this is our internal dashboard
calendar where you can see all of our
active users who have scheduled an event
through Once. And as you can see, in
February, there are around more than 300
events. And for March, we got around 700
events coming up real soon. Here’s what
I love about Brian’s story. It’s a great
example of someone who focused on growth
and then hit $20,000 a month in less
than 90 days. And this got me thinking.
We talked to dozens of mobile app
founders every week right here in this
channel, and I always ask them the same
question. How did you actually grow your
app? Well, since we talked to so many
people, we decided to turn all of their
answers into a free guide that you can
download right now. It’s called the
mobile app growth cheat sheet, and
inside you will find the seven different
marketing tactics that are working for
real founders right now making money
with mobile apps. If you’re ready to
focus on growth and actually grow your
app, just head to the first link in the
description to download the entire guide
for free. I promise it won’t disappoint.
All right, let’s get back to the
episode. Okay, cool. I mean, this looks
like a really cool app. I can see why
it’s popular and why it’s growing. I
want to understand a little bit about
your background. How did you get to this
point where you’re building this cool
consumer app that over 300 people are
about to use this month at
Transcript continues…
Chapters
- 11:23 — How the app works
- 12:18 — Stop overthinking!
- 13:15 — Pat and Gus reflections