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My 2 apps made $1.5M

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Oct 28, 2025

Kelechi was a 22-year-old from Nigeria who came to the US with $100 and a dream. He built Social Wizard: an AI-powered dating assistant that helps people respond to Instagram stories and craft better conversations. He has made nearly $1M, and his app has been used millions of times. This video breaks down how he found the idea and his TikTok marketing strategy that got 2M views.

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Chapters:

0:00 - Intro

1:05 - Who is Kelechi

1:25 - Numbers behind the apps

1:56 - The $1M idea

3:03 - Growth from 0 to $1M

3:45 - The $1M distribution strategy

7:45 - Kelechi's Distribution Playbook

10:26 - Apps to build right now

11:08 - What are Kelechi's apps

12:12 - Tech stack

12:45 - Costs & margins

13:14 - Be proud of being obsessed

13:55 - Episode summary

This video is an educational case study of one 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

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Transcript

Chapters

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Within the last 12 months I've built two apps that have generated 1 5 million in revenue

revenue This is Kalechi a 22 year old from Nigeria who moved to the U S with nothing but a dream to build a business

You know I moved to the U S with literally only 100 last of my name

With his back against the wall in just a few months to prove himself Kalechi built two apps that changed his life

Today my apps have been downloaded over 700 000 times across the app store and play store

His secret sauce Distribution

But it's not SEO and it's not TikTok It's something a little different

Here's what I think most people don't understand about mobile apps

By using this strategy he was able to get millions of eyeballs on his idea virtually for free

I brought Kalechi onto the channel to break down exactly how he did it

And in this video we'll dive into his two apps that made over a million dollars

his secret distribution strategy you've probably never heard of before

and his playbook on how he'd start over from scratch today

All right let's dive in I'm Pat Walls and this is Starter Story

Welcome Kalechi to the channel Tell me about who you are what you built and what's your story

Hi I'm Kalechi Within the last 12 months I built two apps that generated 1 5 million in revenue

So the first one is Social Wizard and the second one is called CleanEats

I saw a guy on X talking about how he made a million dollars a month from an app

And right then was when I decided I was going to start building apps

Okay before we get into the apps that you built I just want to understand some of the numbers behind this

You've done 1 5 million in revenue What are these apps and what are some of the numbers behind them

So we first launched in early 2024 I launched my first app and we went extremely viral

Quickly scaled to about 60 000 a month Today we've done over 600 000 downloads

Eventually after some time I put that business on autopilots and I launched my second app

And we hit about 10K in revenue within two weeks

weeks And about four months later ended up exiting that to a UK based company

Okay cool I want to dig in a little bit into your first app

The first app that you built the one that made nearly a million dollars

How did you actually find the idea for this app

The concept really came from my first app

And it was basically a social application where people shared pictures in groups

It was called Caspi It grew to a few thousand users and over 20 000 pictures were posted on the app

Well I mean eventually failed And there was one particular girl on the app

You know she would post all these really personal pictures about herself

I'll see her cooking I'll see her you know working I'll see her in class

And eventually I became interested in this girl and we started texting for a bit

But after a while it didn't really go the way I planned

And so I went to the app store and I searched up advice life advice

I didn't really see any apps that could help me

And so around this time this was when OpenAI was really going heavy with the LLMs

And I just whipped up like a script and I would get like lines to like text this girl

So it wasn't even a product It wasn't an app It was just some backend I was playing around with

It was a script on NestJS that I had built

Eventually my friends invited me to homecoming

I gave a few people the app to play around with

And this was probably the first time that my high school friends cared about anything I was working on

That was when I realized that there might actually be something here

And eventually I whipped it together polished it more and released it to the app store

Okay so the idea is clearly working Your friends finally care about it

You launch into the app store It becomes a live app

But then what I want to know is once you had the live app in the app store

how'd you grow it to make nearly a million dollars

So the first sale came in you know very very late January

We made about 10 I spent the next four weeks trying to crack the distribution

And eventually something stuck

You know I figured out the viral formats

Literally two weeks after that happened 3 5K in MRR after two weeks

After one month we had crossed 25 000 in MRR

I think by month six we had cash collected about 250 000

That year probably ended with about half a million cash collected

I haven't spent a dollar on marketing within the last year and we're literally still printing

which is really good

Okay Kolechi so you mentioned something really important

which is you cracked distribution

I want you to go deeper though

I want you to tell me how you actually cracked distribution

What was the secret sauce behind Social Wizard

where there are lots of other apps that I'm sure did the same thing

but didn't make nearly a million dollars like yours

I think distribution is really a show don't tell kind of game

With Social Wizard people just use it for texting

Like that's the main use case that guys use it for

Everyone knows that Instagram is a dating site

I think Instagram is a dating site masquerading as a social network

And we had this kind of like streamer strategy that we used to scale the app

There was a feature on Social Wizard where you can take the screenshots of a girl's story

put it on the app and it would generate like hints to say

that was the format that ended up going viral

But it took me a while to find that format myself

Initially I was making content myself to kind of find what was going to stick

When I found what kind of you know worked

then I went to very very micro streamers very degenerate streamers

They hadn't really had any viral moments

Maybe they had some videos that had done like 100K 200K

But I saw the edge with them because you know

you know they were hitting the audience that we wanted

And I believe that if we worked with them and took shots with the formats that worked

we would go viral

And that's exactly what happened

So this is an example of a collab that we did with a streamer

You know I went to him and said hey this is the format that's working

A lot of people like to see videos like this

Just recreate this

Just going to play for you so you see why this went viral

And I'll tell you what we actually ended up getting from this video

What's this

Oh my God look at her

If you want to go viral you need to find a strategy to make the viewer pause

If your video doesn't make people pause they're going to scroll past

And obviously you can see why people will pause on this

It starts with a very pretty girl

And you know this is literally where we integrate Social Wizard

He doesn't talk about trying to sell the app

The viewer is watching this like a regular video and he says OK it's a pretty girl

What do I say to the picture

How do I reply to the story

Everyone is probably thinking the same thing

Everyone watching this video is probably thinking

how does he reply to the story

And let's see what he does

I don't know what to do

You know what

We're about to use the Wizard app

Wizard app always do the trick

Start a conversation

I'm going to add the picture of her

Flirty

All right cook up please

That pink dress looks like it was made just for you

Planning on stealing any horse tonight

I'm going to use that one

Boom

By this point we've sold everyone on what this product is

They don't even need to finish the clip

Distribution is always a show don't tell a game

A lot of people think you need to try and sell your products

Boy demo what it does

Show people how it works

If they find value in it they're going to download it

They're going to give you money and your app is going to scale

So with this particular video I paid this creator about 120

And the video hit 2 million views and brought in tens of thousands

of dollars which is insane ROI

You can't get this on PayDad

You can't get this on UGC

And that's pretty much it

We took this format and we scaled it over and over and over and over

and over again across multiple creators multiple videos

And yeah we just kept printing

One thing I love about Kelechi's story is how fast he builds his apps

He had the idea built it over just a couple weeks

and started getting users right away

This is the power of what happens when you're using the right tools to build

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Thank you to Emergent for sponsoring this video

Let's get back into it

My next question for you would be if you were to start all over again

knowing what you know what would be your playbook

to build a successful app right now

I think in 2025 product development is not enough anymore

If you don't find a way to tell people about your product

then you might as well not even build a product

Step one is I look at the niche

Is there a large volume of content already being produced in this niche

That's the first question I ask myself

And if the answer is yes then I'll go to mid size to large creators

to make content

If it's no then I would focus on making content myself

And it's very important that you don't outsource this process

process because you want to learn as much as possible

A lot of people they have capital and they just outsource the whole thing

and they end up burning so much money and it never makes any sense

Step two produce the content

And this is where most people get it wrong

Working with creators is also a volume game right

A lot of people reach out to five creators or 10 creators

and they're like oh it's not working it's not working

But in reality you might have to reach out to 100 creators

to get one that will work for you

But once you find a creator that is willing to work for you

and you put out content with them

it's much easier to get more creators on board

because then you can have that creator's video

and leverage it to other creators

And all you're trying to do is make clips with the creator

to find what kind of works

A lot of people think you need to find the viral format from day one

Not really

You just need to find something that kind of works

And it's always important that you make content on TikTok

when you're trying to find a viral format and not Instagram

It's easier to go viral on TikTok on new accounts compared to Instagram

Create a page start making content

I'll start with three videos a day you know on let's say two accounts

So you have two accounts you're making three videos a day

maybe two on one account one on another account

The goal here is consistency and volume

After a week or two you scale that up to 10 you scale that up to 20

A lot of people believe in this idea of virality being a luck game

But if you're putting out 100 videos per day that's 700 videos in a week

If one went viral I don't think you would call that luck

You pretty much think that you earned that

And so when it comes to distribution it's never luck

It's deterministic

Go full throttle create as much volume as possible

One would stick

If you try hard enough you're going to find that viral format

Step three scale

If you're working with creators you want to work with as much as possible

You want to reproduce the content reach out to more more more

The more you reach out to the easier it is to get in contact with more creators

and get them pumping out the same videos

You don't have to go to creators that are directly in your space

They could be adjacents

I'll give you an example

For Social Vision for example these micro streamers that we work with

none of them were really making content for our space about social skills

It was kind of a lot of different things

They were making content about Fortnite people breaking into McDonald's

just crazy stuff

They were reacting to videos but again they were hitting our audience

And there was a lot of potential I saw with them being able to create content

If you're building an app that is in health and fitness

you could go to cooking creators

You don't have to go to creators who are directly in your niche

And if you try hard enough you'll find something that will stick

Okay cool

I mean that playbook is awesome

It's all about distribution

I want to go back a little bit and talk to you about ideas

You launched two very successful apps

You're a very busy guy

You probably have a bunch more ideas for things that could work

Could you share with the audience right now

some of your mobile app ideas you have in 2025

I think the education niche is massively overlooked

I mean right now everyone is building apps in health and fitness and lifestyle

and that's kind of like where the craze is going

Today there's so much information out there

You can build an app about how to get better at boxing

how to get better at swimming how to even get better at persuasion

If you package it properly I think there's a huge opportunity there

So I think education is a really good space I think people should start looking into

Well we haven't really talked about it yet

but I'd love to actually see what you build

You have two apps that made 1 5 million

What are these apps What do they do

So the first one is Social Wizard

It's an AI powered application that helps guys improve their social skills

Most of the users who use the app are within the ages of 16 to 24

I guess what we're selling here is confidence

making it easier for people to reply to the DMs they get

For this app we monetize through subscriptions

It's a weekly subscription about 10 a week

We have a monthly about 20 and there is a yearly for about 80

And the second one is called CleanEats

Very simple It's an app in health and fitness

You scan the barcode of a food product

and it will tell you how it affects your skin or your weight

Most of the users who use this are women within the ages of 18

to I'll say about 28 is the core market

One thing I would say app founders need to do is

when you look at your products

try to extrapolate what you're actually selling

Because when you're looking at CleanEats

you can say we're trying to sell these healthy alternatives to products

But what is the purpose of being healthy

What is that going to get me

But if you tell me hey don't eat this food product

because it's going to mess up my skin

I am not going to touch it

I think for both apps really what we're selling is confidence

Okay let's switch topics here

You built these apps yourself

What's the tech stack How do you build apps

Right so for me I'm a React Native guy

With all these tools they like ChargeBT

It's very very easy to build a very performative app with React Native

For backend I love NestJS

You can deploy that anywhere render hero code

doesn't really matter as long as the server works

Database Firebase is my go to

Very simple highly scalable very affordable

And analytics we just use Mixpanel

Always optimize for a stack that would get your product out there

as soon as possible and is highly scalable

And on that same note I want to understand a little bit about

the cost to run a business like this

What are the margins like for a solopreneur running multiple apps

For Social Wizard most of the expenses was really marketing

You know after Apple takes their cuts

profit margins are really over 90

because there wasn't really much we're spending money on

So every month we only spend like 1 to maybe 2K

on infrastructure costs

These apps barely cost anything to run

You're going to end up spending like 90 of your budgets on marketing

If you do it properly the cash flow is the same

Okay well thank you for sharing that

being transparent about those numbers

The last question that I have for you that we ask

everyone who comes on Starter Story

if you could stand on young Kolechi's shoulders

before Social Wizard what would be your advice

Or to anyone who's watching this that wants to build apps

what would you tell them

You're not crazy for being extremely obsessed with your goals

You're not weird if you choose not to go out on the weekends

because building is all you love to do

And this is something I heard from Alex Mosey

To be exceptional by definition you have to be the exception

And I think that's okay

That's great advice

Thank you Kolechi for coming on sharing this

Congrats on your success

Two very successful apps

I know people watching this will be inspired

Thank you for coming on

Thank you for having me Pat

Okay thank you to Kolechi for coming onto the channel

I especially liked what he said at the end there

about what tech stack to use

Keep it simple build stuff that solves problems

and focus on distribution

But in order to do that you need to actually build something

And what better than to build it with all these AI coding tools

that are taking off and allowing you to build apps days

This is why we launched Starter Story Build

which is our program where in just a couple weeks

we will show you how to use AI to build anything you want

So whether you want to launch a mobile app or a micro SaaS

Starter Story Build can help you get there

Just head to the link in the description

to check out Starter Story Build

I think you're going to love it

All right that's it for this episode guys

Thank you for watching

We'll see you in the next one

Peace

Starter Story

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