This App Makes $35K/Month With One Influencer

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This App Makes $35K/Month With One Influencer

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Apr 6, 2026

Flo's app was stuck at a few hundred bucks for over a year. Then one partnership changed everything and grew his app to $35K/month.

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Follow Flo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/florian-vates-195429244/

Check out MonAI: https://www.get-monai.app/

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This video is an educational case study of this founder’s experience. It is not financial advice and does not guarantee any income or results. Every business is different and your results may vary.

Chapters:

0:00 - Distribution is harder than ever before

1:02 - What's your story?

1:28 - App overview and stats

2:17 - Founder background

2:57 - How he found the app idea

3:45 - Distribution overview

4:41 - How Flo works with the influencer

6:58 - Influencer example and impact

8:31 - Learn distribution from successful founders

9:26 - Influencer marketing playbook

14:09 - MonAI demo

15:30 - Tech stack and tools

16:30 - Flo's final advice

18:06 - Pat and Gus reflections

Chapters

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Transcript

Chapters

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No tools listed for this business.

Right now it's easier than ever to build apps but distribution is harder than it's ever been

TikTok paid ads Reddit what do you do Well today I think I found a solution

I partnered with one guy and we grew by 10

This is Flo a solo developer who built a really simple mobile app

but for over a year he tried everything and barely made a few hundred dollars

I tried doing it all by myself and only made 300 per month

Then something happened that changed everything

In just one year my entire business completely changed

So I brought him onto the channel to break it all down

and in this episode we'll dive into his really simple app that makes over 30 000 a month

why you do not need a TikTok army in order to win

and how one smart partnership can change everything for a business

If you're thinking of building an app in 2026 this video is for you

All right let's dive in

I'm Pat Walls and this is Starter Story

All right Flo welcome to the channel

Tell me about who you are what you built and what's your story

I'm Flo I'm from Germany

I built an expense tracking app called Mon ai

I launched it around three years ago and spent around one and a half years

scaling it to 300 of MRR by myself and then I partnered with a content creator

and together we scaled it to over 35 000 in MRR in just over a year

Okay wow So 300 MRR in the first year and a half

then you found an influencer and then it blew up

That's what we're going to be talking about today

I'm super excited

But before we get into that could you walk me through the app you built

who uses it and then some of your revenue dashboards to show that this is legit

Yeah sure

So it's basically a money tracking app that makes the entry a lot more frictionless

by using AI to use voice or use automations

So that is the main concept

And also that it's minimalistic and not bloated like most of the other expense tracking apps

Here you can see we are currently at a bit over 35 000 of MRR

We are a subscription based app

We only offer a seven day trial right now

We used to be freemium

With A B testing we figured out that actually a hard paywall with free trial works best for us

Okay well let's change topics a little bit before we get into

you found this influencer distribution all this

Let's talk about your background

How do you get to this point where you start building apps

start getting excited about the finance category

How do you get here

So initially I actually wanted to study something in the creative space

but eventually ended up studying computer science

And in there I taught myself to code iOS apps

Afterwards I was a mobile UX lead

Yeah I always wanted to build something myself to fully work on my own apps

So I kept building side projects next to my job

But none of them had success until this one

Earlier this year I was finally able to quit my job and do this full time

Okay cool

So let's talk about the idea

How do you come up with the idea for an app that eventually is doing over 30 000 MRR

I initially built the app for myself because I wanted to get back into tracking my expenses

I tried many different expense tracking apps over the years

and I always quit them again because they were just too cumbersome to use

And eventually at this point AI was becoming fairly usable

So I thought of combining these two things and using AI to make it more of a frictionless

experience

So my goal was to also ship it as fast as possible because before that

I built an app that took me two years

And in the end I launched it and obviously no one cared about it

So I wanted to improve that and launch it very quickly

I think it took me a month or two to get the first version

and then I continuously iterated over it

Let's switch topics a little bit and talk about this distribution topic right

It's easy to build stuff nowadays

You can build pretty amazing stuff with AI

And when you built it you got to like 300 MRR after a year and a half

which still is amazing to be making money with an app

but it's probably not what you truly wanted

Then something changed

And in one year you went from 300 000 to 30 000 in MRR

What was that

What was the big strategy

And why are you here today to share it

Basically on a very high level

I started to collaborate with a fairly big influencer from Colombia

After we negotiated some terms he actually reached out to me

because he found my socials in the app

And after negotiating we came up with an agreement

And he's now posting three videos per month on his main channel

The first video he posted end of 2024

like within a week we 10x the MRR

And within a month it was at almost 8K

Okay yeah

This is why I wanted to bring you on the channel

because a lot of developers or technical people watch this

And like you said you thought

maybe I don't have product market fit or something like that

Maybe there's something wrong with my app

The only thing wrong with your app is that nobody was seeing it

And that's what we love to talk about on Starter Story is like

building is cool but distribution what's the actual strategy here

I'd love to hear just a little bit more of a deeper dive into how this works

How is the influencer partnership set up

I think it's cool that you only have one influencer

You don't have to work with like 20 of them which sounds complicated

Let's dive in a little bit deeper into it

What's worked for you

And what's the kind of strategy here

So the partnership is largely built on trust right now

We do of course have a contract

So now we have a percentage of the profits and a fixed monthly retainer

Before we had percentage of revenue and we noticed that doesn't really scale well

What's good about this is since it's profit based

his payout is mostly profit based

He's incentivized to actually do what's best for the app

It's not like he's my employee and he just delivers the video and calls it a day

But he's like constantly thinking about what to do and how to make the greatest videos

So he's also incentivized there

What's different also to many other people that work with content creators

is that we only post three videos per month

They are very high quality

So we really want to have quality over quantity

So they are always very story driven

We don't get millions of views mostly

but those that we get they do convert at a fairly high rate

So yeah and he's responsible for coming up with the video ideas

So I don't have to constantly think about new viral video ideas or something like

he's the creative mind behind it basically

Okay cool

I mean this makes a lot of sense to me

I see a couple themes here

The first one is like quality over quantity both in terms of influencers right

You have one quality influencer not 20 of them

and you do three videos a month not 100 and then hope that something hits

The second thing that I think is actually really smart here as you mentioned

is this guy has skin in the game right

It's not like you're just pitching them 300 videos to create

and they create something quick and it doesn't convert

This person is incentivized to make great videos which I think makes a lot of sense

I'd love if you could dive a little bit deeper and just show me like

what kind of videos are you creating

What's the impact of these videos

I didn't expect you to say that you only do three videos a month

Could you show me what the impact of what

a successful influencer can do to a software business

Yeah sure

I actually built a little tool for that to visualize it a bit better

You can see those small circles where a video was posted

So you can see this was the first one

It was actually a very simple video

This one it was just a walkthrough of the app

but since his main audience didn't know the idea behind it yet it worked quite well

So this and another video actually got us to 7 8k MRR from the 300 from before

And then another video which was also fairly short

but it also got us another boost of more than 5k to 13k MRR

Then we did a lot of testing

Actually we had a low season there

We didn't get another viral video until June 21

which was when we were invited from Apple to join the WWDC together

So that made for a really great story

And like I said the videos that we post are mostly story based

That's why also we only post three of them

because it takes a long time to create them

But this one in total got us 1 7 million views and grew in plus almost 5k in MRR

And then the latest one was a feature that was really wanted by people

And he also made a very nice story behind it

And that grew us now to finally over 35k

So you can see from the beginning to now we grew by over 10 000

I absolutely love everything Flo is sharing right now about how he grew this thing

It just goes to show you the power that content can have on your business

or your app that you're building in 2026

We've actually talked to dozens of founders right here on this channel

who've used similar strategies to grow their apps

So I decided to put it all together into one free resource to help you get started

The organic short form playbook will walk you through how real founders

are growing real apps making real money right now

From how to find viral content ideas to building a content system

This playbook will show you how to think about growth differently

So if you're ready to grow head to the first link in the description and download it for free

All right let's get back to the episode

So this awesome influencer reached out to you

because you had built something cool and you guys partnered together

For a lot of people watching this they might be thinking

I'm a developer I'm technical minded

How can I find someone who's a genius at marketing and video and content

If you were starting over from scratch with a new app in 2026

what would be your playbook for nailing influencer marketing

based on everything you've learned

Yeah totally

I talked to my partner about this and we came up with this playbook

So step one finding your aligned partners

So before reaching out you should make sure that the influencer's lifestyle

the tone the audience actually match your product

So what I was looking for in a partnership was great personality of course charisma

but also that he connects with his viewers

So he replies to comments which is very important if you have an app to sell

because they will have questions about it

So that was important

And also that he's not purely a tech influencer

but he's also like he's kind of tech and lifestyle

That's why his audience is not just interested in specs of apps or something like that

but they really care about his story about what he's doing in his life

So that makes it really valuable

Then step two warm up the relationship

That means you should follow them beforehand

Those influencers usually notice that people are constantly commenting on their videos

So they see that recurringly and they see that you actually care about it

Of course that takes a lot of time

So if you don't have the time then at least be upfront

like don't fake that you follow them for a month or something like that

Step three is that you should be very specific with the outreach

So don't just send what a lot of people do to say

I love your content let's collaborate

That won't cut it

Instead you should reference a specific video or a specific moment

a joke they made or something like that

So they actually know okay they watch the content

They actually care about what I do

For example you could say something like

I really liked how you made such a little detail look so cinematic

in that video of whatever that specific product

Step four is connect the dots to your product

After you show that appreciation he should see the alignment

not just a transaction

So it shouldn't look like I want to pay you make something for me

but he should see that there's an alignment between the both of you

So for me that was like his audience clearly values aesthetics and nice tech

And my product I think was a perfect overlap for this

because it's minimalistic aesthetic

but still also has the tech heavy side with the AI automations and things like that

Then for step five I think this one is the most important one

You should acknowledge their value and signal willingness to pay very early on

You should really lead with making it clear that he will get incentivized one way or another

I think that's already sets you apart from the rest

And what could also work really well would be to show examples of products in that niche

that already make a lot of money

You can easily look that up on Sensor Tower or other websites

Yeah so you could say something like I understand the value of what you do

You can reach millions of people with a single video

I would love to have you as a long term partner and share the profits of the app with you

It might not be much in the beginning

but other apps in that niche make 50 to 100k per month with the right distribution

So that kind of gives them like a future mental model of what this collaboration could lead to

And there's some final tips

Try to be brief

I think this one is important

These creators get hundreds of emails per week

so they don't want to read through a huge paragraph of text

Bonus points if you can send a personalized video

where you actually mention the creator's name and their content in that video

because that shows actually that you really care about this collaboration

Most people won't do this

So that's exactly why you should do it

Then what worked for me is that you should add your social handles on your profile tag

This is the first step you should probably do when you build an app

I think this will actually become increasingly important in the future

because the popularity of apps is getting bigger and bigger I feel like

I think more and more content creators will see the value in collaborating with a developer

So if they find nice apps and they see

oh okay there's just a single person working on that app

I think that could lead to the influence actually reaching out to you

which would be a lot better for you because then you can also negotiate terms a lot better

And most importantly which also worked for me

is that you should look into other markets than just the US

I think there are a lot of great content creators also outside

And I think my partner also makes it clear that it can also work in any other market as well

Yeah there's a lot of influencers out there that are US based or popular

But the influencer that you worked with is kind of tackling the Colombian market

It goes to show that there's a lot of emerging influencers across the world

that developers could work with

You're German he's Colombian

There's so many opportunities and apps are such a huge growing space right now

So I guess for anyone watching this don't just limit it just to the US

Thank you for sharing that playbook

That's amazing

I think it's going to be super useful for people watching this

I'd love if you could just give us a quick demo of your app

What's the app that makes over 30 000 MRR

Yeah so this is the app

It's very minimalistic

It doesn't even have tabs or anything like that

It just shows you what's really important which is the distribution of your expenses

And below that you see the list

If you want to make a new expense you can either do it manually

manually or you can use the voice input feature and say something like coffee at Starbucks

50 bucks

And we'll use that and automatically create the transaction for you

add tags add the category and automatically add it to your list

What also works is you can use the Apple Pay automation

So we heavily also use shortcuts integrations to make it even easier

So if you just pay once it gets realized

you can see that it was automatically now added to the list

This is more or less it

There's a lot of other things like you can add budgets

or if you don't find some feature you can always use the AI reports feature

So you can just simply ask questions about all the finances that you already added

which makes it very simple

Like for example you could say

I want to save 300 euros a month on which cost should I cut back

You can see that it will analyze your finances and then come up with a plan

Okay cool

Well thanks for showing that

It looks like a really cool app

I love the AI features

On that note let's talk about tech stack

What's the stack that you built this in

Where are all the tools that run this 30 000 plus per month app

I built my apps natively

So I just use Xcode which is free

I use Cloud Code extensively

I'm paying for the max plan which is 100 bucks

I use Revenue Cats to show the revenue stats of course

but also most importantly to do A B tests

So for me it's around 400 bucks a month now

Then I use AppRite for my backend and authentication and database as well

That together is 25 bucks

For the AI requests in the app I use OpenAI for the easier tasks

and Anthropic for the deeper analysis

That is around 200 bucks a month

Then Helm

Every iOS developer will know the pain of using App Store Connect

So this makes it a bit more hassle free

I bought the lifetime plan which is around 175 bucks

And for design I use Figma but just the free plan

Well thanks for sharing that

Last question that we ask all founders who come on Starter Story

You built this awesome business

It's doing over 30 000 a month in revenue

Congratulations

If you go back in time to when you had just started your app

or when you're at 300 MRR

you couldn't figure out how to crack product market fit

what would be your advice to young flow

or anyone who's watching this who wants to build apps

and achieve success like you did

I was very reluctant to start with meta ads

because it always looked super intimidating for me

And I was always afraid it would be a waste of money or something like that

But what I noticed is my creator can make such great videos

These videos you can use to experiment with meta ads very easily

We just started a few weeks ago

and we already see really great results with this

So I think we could have made a lot more money

if we got on that train sooner

Yeah no we talked to a lot of founders

who are building apps specifically

who are crushing it with ads right now

Yeah you got to figure out the content first

The content that you run on the ads needs to be good

But there's been like two three four guys out of a dozen

dozen that are building apps where ads are really starting to work

and they can pour gasoline on the fire and it's working

So that's super cool to hear anybody who's watching this

Get started throw some money on some paid ads and see what happens

It can't hurt

Thank you Flo for coming onto the channel and sharing all this

Congratulations to what you built

It's amazing

Let us know in the comments what you thought of this video

Any other questions

If you want Flo to come back on and maybe share some more things

that worked for this 30 000 per month personal finance app

which I think is super cool

Thanks for coming on

Thanks for having

All right Gus producer of Starter Story

What did you think of Flo

Man I love that guy

Super chill and just straightforward with his system

In terms of the story initially what stands out to me

obviously is this one influencer thing

We talked to a lot of guys and this is no shade to them

I talked to a lot of guys you see on Twitter like spamming TikTok

dozens of sort of brain rotting content

He did the exact opposite

That's why I wanted to have him on the show

I thought that was like a different way

So that's one thing for me

Yeah

One thing that I like about this is that the skin in the game aspect

I'm a little bit skeptical of the influencer strategy of like

contact 100 influencers make a deal with 10 of them

and then one of them works out and helps you grow your business

But that's as far as you can really take it right

Then you're going to pay them again and then it gets sort of complicated

When we talk to a lot of these guys that do the influencer playbook

there is usually just one influencer that really crushed it for them

even though they contacted a bunch

That's kind of what he did is he had one influencer who has skin in the game

who's taking a share of the profits who's going to create great content

and going to be thinking about the business from an actual growth perspective

rather than just recording a video and posting it

So the influencer for equity thing is something that we've

there's a lot of videos on our channel that cover that

Influencer for equity model I think it's going to get bigger

And I think it's really great for people like him who clearly aren't content creators

but they're good developers they can build cool stuff

This I think is going to be big

The other thing I always think about this when guys like this come on the channel is like

his app is basically yet another budget tracking essentially

For myself if I'm building something or thinking about something

I'm like oh it's already been done

And this is just a good example of like yes it's obviously yet another budget tracking app

There's obviously some unique things to it that we saw in the demo that were really cool

but that doesn't matter

What matters is the distribution which you talk about a ton

And obviously there's the other markets element

like the Colombian influencer that's a whole other thing we could have delved into

But that's what's standing out to me

It's like it's just another budget tracking app

That's crazy

And it's like 2026 and people are still making money with this kind of stuff

I mean yeah there's no clear winner in the budget tracking space

I don't really use something

When he showed me his app I was like oh I kind of want to try this out

It integrates with Apple Pay like I use that

So that can be kind of cool

I immediately wanted to try it out so I could see the appeal

and I can see how it would you know it could be a popular app

And yeah as you mentioned what he did that was really smart

is that he didn't build it for people in Germany where he lives or in the US where we live

He partnered with the influencer who built it in Colombia of all places

You can and that's a great money in Colombia by the way

There's so much opportunity to build popular apps

build the same exact app in another country because the app store is huge in other countries

And we talked to a lot of founders who crushed it in the early days by targeting other countries

France Argentina come to mind in a couple of videos we did

So yeah let's put that to rest the idea that like

if it's already been built you can't build it again

So if you're watching this and you've built something cool just like Flo did

you'll definitely want to check out our short form content playbook

It is our Starter Story build playbook where you can go on

It's 100 free

You can see a bunch of different content playbooks that are working

Short form content playbooks of the many founders we interviewed on Starter Story

We put it all into one place so you can watch learn

learn and see what kind of content that might work for you so you can focus on distribution

I'll put a link to that down there in the description

Hope you enjoy it

Otherwise we'll see you in the next one

Peace

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