Post by @starterstory

He built an alarm clock app that makes you do pushups to turn it off… and it’s doing $50K/month. Jake is 24, went to school for accounting, and worked at a Big 4 firm. No fancy dev background. He shipped the MVP in 19 days. First version didn’t even have an alarm - just an accountability log. Then iOS 26 dropped the AlarmKit API, and he added the real alarm feature 19 days later. 7 days after launch, his first influencer video went live. 3 weeks later: first $1K. Month 3: $30K. Month 4: $50K. Over 200,000 downloads in 2026. His playbook: > Solve a painful problem in a simple way > Add a novel, inherently viral hook (pushups to turn off your alarm) > Find influencers already making “day in the life” content so the app fits in naturally > Pay ~$2–3 CPM with a view guarantee - low risk, power-law payoff on the 1M+ view videos > Track spikes, not attribution. Treat it like a black box: put in $5K, get out $10K > Focus on top of funnel ONLY Views are the whole game. His stack: Firebase, Superwall, OpenAI, Mixpanel, Claude Code, Heroi for influencer payments. The takeaway: building is easy now. Marketing is clearly the moat. If nobody knows about your app, it doesn’t exist.