I flipped 4 apps and made $500,000

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I flipped 4 apps and made $500,000

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Nov 9, 2025

Lotts Ezeike is a London-based founder who's perfected the art of flipping apps. His method: build apps fast, grow them to $10-20K MRR, sell them for all-cash deals, and moves on. He's done this four times and made over $500K.

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0:00 - Intro

1:12 - Who is Lotts

1:31 - Sold apps

2:10 - Background

2:41 - The first flip story

3:49 - Why you should build and flip

5:00 - How to come up with app ideas

6:16 - Build fast with Rocket

7:07 - Build & Flip Playbook (Step-by-Step)

11:41 - Profitable app ideas

13:33 - Tech stack

14:26 - Costs & margins

15:00 - Advice

15:57 - Final word

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Transcript

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No tools listed for this business.

I build apps and flip them

I've done this four times and made over 500 000

This is Lots a London based founder who treats apps like real estate

He builds them fast grows them to about 20k a month

month and then flips them for all cash deals

My philosophy is to stack cash and achieve financial freedom

Since 2022 he's done this four times and made over a half a million dollars

But here's what makes his approach different

Most founders get obsessed with their idea but Lots doesn't

He builds to sell

I'd rather take two to three years of profit up front than grind for a decade

His philosophy cash out fast and move on to the next one

I asked Lots to come on the channel to break down his entire build to flip playbook

And in this video we'll dive into how he builds and grows his apps in just a few weeks

his exact framework for finding ideas that can sell fast

and why building to sell beats building to scale

for most business ideas that are started today

This one you can not miss

Let's get into it

I'm Pat Walls and this is Starter Story

All right Lots welcome to the channel

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

Yeah my name is Lots

I'm from London moved to SF recently and I build apps to about 10 to 20k MRR

and I'm flipping them

I've done this four times now and racked up a total sales of over half a million dollars

since 2022

Okay before we get into this whole strategy around flipping apps

what were the apps that you've built and sold

So Bible Buddy was my first one

So that was an AI therapist for Christians

Then Magic Music which was a rapper around Suno AI which is an AI music generator

Then Toxic Traits which is basically just screenshot chats that you have with people

and then you get the personality traits from them

And then Pray Screen was the last one which was essentially it blocks your apps

apps and you have to pray for you to be able to unlock them

You can probably see there's this kind of Christianity thread going through all of them

as well

And we've scaled over a million users across all the apps that we have

Revenue wise have done over 500k of course as well

Okay cool

Well thanks for sharing that

Before we get into the kind of build flip and sell strategy

I want to understand how you even get here

How do you get to this point where you've flipped four apps

Yeah it actually came from a place of pain actually

So I was actually in banking originally and then I started my own VC backed startup

Everyone thinks they're going to be Mark Zuckerberg

So I also thought I was going to be from London

I ran it for about three and a half years ended up failing

And I was kind of like to lick my wounds I was like

let me just kind of create apps and see how that goes

Luckily for myself this was 2022 when GPT was first commercialized

So I was able to ride loads of waves and learn a lot super quickly

So I want to dive into that first app that you built

Did you always have this idea that you were going to be building and flipping apps

How did that first flip go

What's the story behind it

How I got the idea originally was this

Obviously GPT came out

A lot of people were doing like Bible GPT

But a lot of people were doing like Q A

It's kind of you ask questions you get something back about the Bible

And that wasn't really helpful

So I kind of flipped it to be more of an AI therapist

to be a little bit more emotional ask questions after each response

Then launched on WhatsApp

Because again I didn't have the technical skills right

So I used like a third party at the time

And then I didn't realize WhatsApp charges an arm and a leg per conversation window

Then my costs like ballooned to like 15k a month

month I was like hell no

I need to move on to my own infra

Then hired an engineer from Upwork

They moved it to like iOS and Android

And how I found the person that I sold it to

was actually first originally listed on Microacquire

Then I was also active in my first million podcasts as well

in a community they have on Facebook

And someone just happened to be in London at the same time that I also was

And he reached out

He was like hey this seems interesting

And then he ended up acquiring it

Okay cool

So you sort of sell this business as an accident

Then you go and flip three more

What did you learn through that process

And why are you so into flipping apps and doing this over and over

Yeah I say that there's like two key trends I'm riding here

There's the whole consumer coming back

The market is like trending and is highly liquid

So I mean by highly liquid

it means that right now tech isn't a hard thing to build at all

Which means there's a lot more buyers out there who can feel like

hey I can just take this product on and just market it better than you

And then get more money and more profit margin

So I think that's the first thing

Number two came from a personal perspective

So I raised VC originally for my first startup

But I was still broke right

At the end of the day

And with this it was kind of a much clearer route to be able to get some cash in

And I think there's a lot of like dreams sold to people

which is kind of like hey raise VC you know

raise raise raise for the next 10 years

And then you know hopefully there's that 0 0001 chance

you're going to become a billionaire through there

I would rather you know build something

And then in the 6 to 12 months exit it for like a cool 250k

Okay cool

A lot of people that watch this channel they have this one big idea

They get really really attached to this idea

And they can't even imagine what would it be like

to just build something just to sell it

How do you approach ideas

Do you get really attached to your ideas

Or how do you approach ideas

Yeah

So for me before I kind of start working on anything

I always tell myself is this gonna be my legacy or is this cashflow

And that then dictates all further decisions going down the line

A lot of the things so far have been things that have just been cashflow

So that actually dictates on how I build things itself

What people normally get wrong is I'll say two main things

First one is that they make their apps way too complicated

And when I say complicated I don't mean the actual app itself

but more so the operations behind the scenes

And they don't make it clean enough

when you want to then get something acquired itself

which then normally like kills a lot of deals going forward

Especially if a buyer is asking you certain questions

and you can't answer it or just too long with an answer

They just think oh you know what

This is not for me

So I think that's the first thing

The second of all when they're also looking for buyers

I would say the issue is that everyone wants to go for the highest price

And the highest price tends to take the longest

and also fall through the most itself

And the longer it takes the more likelihood of it falling through

So even when I'm actually selling my app

I don't like to sell to the highest bidder

I normally like to sell to the third highest bidder

and tell them that they have two other bids on top of them

But if they're able to close in like three to four days

I'll choose them

And they normally kind of like feel lucky

and they're kind of like you know what

Let's just wire everything now

and then let's get everything else for it afterwards

I want to tell you about a new tool

that makes it even easier and faster to build

Rocket

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Rocket because it's the simplest way to turn ideas

into apps in minutes and not months

So if you're ready to finally build your idea faster than ever

check out Rocket at the first link in the description

Thank you to Rocket for sponsoring this video

I love what you guys are building

All right let's get back to the video

Okay cool

I want to get a little bit more tactical here

I want to understand your playbook

You've done this for over four apps

What is your actual playbook for finding an idea

building it marketing it and selling it

Can you walk me through this step by step

Yeah for sure

So I'd say like step one is spotting trends in the app store

And how you do that is actually pretty simple

You just essentially go to the app store

and be able to see okay

okay who is currently number one in the different categories

And then once you do that

you're able to then see are there other apps also

let's say in the top 20

who are doing exactly the same thing

but maybe for slightly different niches

Then I go to sensor tower to be able to see

okay what's actually the revenue numbers of each

And if I see all of them are doing

you know over 100K MRR or over 500K MRR

then I know okay cool

There's something here for sure

And once I've actually spotted the trend that I'm seeing

I then think to myself

okay how can I make my app unique

So for me specifically

I love the Christian market itself normally

because obviously I'm Christian myself

but also the edge is most technology gets to faith

or religion last

And I want to be the one to kind of like pioneer

that on the end

And then step number three

I would say is make the app a single player

So whenever I speak to people

a lot of people try to do this whole kind of socialness

for the app

whereas can oh you need somebody else

to be able to come in for you to be able to get value

But I always say like

make your app single player

something that someone could do on their own

without having to invite anyone else in

to get that initial value

Yes you can do it afterwards

afterwards as an added extra later on

but it just makes things too complicated

And then you kind of have to start marketing

to two people at the same time

And then I would say number four

a key thing for me is like

is either you make it highly shareable

or super high retention

So no one on this earth shares apps right

No one's going to randomly be like

hey yeah download this app right

But what they tend to do is actually share an asset

within the app

So they don't even know that they're sharing the app

A good case of this was magic music

And I allowed people to share songs with other people

and it opened up a web view

where they could actually listen to the song

without downloading the app

But then there was a big green button

that said create your own song

So what we kept seeing is that people would

you know make a song about their friend

cussing their friend

their friend listens to it

And it's like oh I'm going to create my own one

And then they then downloaded it themselves

And that actually made like the shareability of it

like super high

And then high retention

I mean praise screen is the best one of saying this

So praise screen had a 60 day 30 retention

which is kind of like unheard of

And what helped with that was two things

Number one of course we literally blocked your apps

So you kind of had to use us for you to unlock your apps

But also number two is something religious

So there's also another pull factor to bring people in

And then number five

I would say making the tech stack simple

and plug and play

When you're trying to sell something to someone else

you need to make it look as simple as possible

just so that they don't need to come in

with like technical know how per se

to be able to operate this thing

Step six I would say now you have

kind of like your idea already

Now of course the major part is obviously growing it

for it to be attractive to a buyer

I have a very specific route that I go down

and it's normally UGC first

So I have multiple UGC accounts

and I like to create content that is kind of rage baiting

where it's kind of like you show something

and people have to maybe scroll back or watch it again

to just make sure did I just see that

Or they just end up arguing with everyone

in the comments as well

because all TikTok sees is that

oh that's engagement

Let's boost that to other people

Once I have the right hook

then I then launch it on Meta ads for example

And that way I should get really low CPIs

CPI being cost per install

So for Prey screen we were getting

between 30 to 50 cents cost per install in the US market

which is like unheard of

That's actually how I normally grow things

Then number seven is around I guess the finale

which is how to sell it

For me I love to get them to about 10K to 20K MRR

before then looking for a buyer

One thing you wanna do is that your last three months

you want it to be like an uptick right

You don't want it to be like

oh it's currently failing

and now you're trying to sell it

because it just looks like you're just trying

to empty your bag to somebody else

Where I'd list it

MicroQuire is a great place for you to list this

Also just post it on Twitter as well

I've seen it does really well

In terms of valuations

they vary depending on the buyer

but I've seen between like two to 4X EBITDA I would say

EBITDA would be just essentially profit

But again the kind of apps I build

aren't something that's like so deeply technological

that another company would be like

well we need this for sure

It tends to be more of a cashflow thing

for the other companies purchasing

But normally between two to 4X EBITDA

for the ARR that you have

Okay cool

Well thanks for sharing that entire playbook

That was amazing

You've already built and sold four apps

So I imagine you see a lot of ideas that didn't work

And obviously you've had some ideas

that worked really well

If you were starting over today and building stuff

what would be some of the ideas

you'd be working on right now

Apps that you think you could build

and sell just like you've done

First one sounds funny whenever I say it

but if you've been dating or have a girlfriend

you don't really have this issue

where they're kind of like

oh you know I've got a headache

I don't really feel well today

And you're just trying to do it three times a day

I'll do an app where it just tracks

that they've eaten three times a day

Especially like around let's say the 18 to 30 age group

for sure

And the reason I'll do kind of this

is because there's a specific audience

So that means targeting is a lot easier

And then this is something I've already seen

adjacent apps do

which is more like you know

know calorie tracking specific for women

So I'll just do some kind of version of that

Second idea I'll do would probably be something

around Korean skincare thing that the ladies love

Again I'll just make this kind of like tracker

You can take a picture of your face

kind of like the Luxemax in

but just more specifically that the career glass skin

just because there's already a big trend around it

People are already spending real money on real procedures

So you already know the propensity to spend

already is there

And then I call this chill guy

but probably doesn't really make sense

So I was kind of thought yo

this should be like an app where I can just type in stuff

about my girlfriend for example

And then it just reminds me

And it just says Hey you haven't had a date in

I don't know three weeks

Here's a place

Just click this button to book

or like you haven't sent flowers to her

in like three months

I didn't have to think about it

Just click the button to book straight to her address

Right

And like any little things she's told me before

I can just write it down in the kind of like journal

And then it just kind of uses that bit to find gifts

And I just click a button and it does it for me

And I just kind of think that would absolutely kill it

Especially like revenue model wise

you can have the subscription based on that

So I think that's something that would be super cool

If you build that I will be one of your first customers

I promise

So let me know when you do build that

To talk about that idea that you were just talking about

I want to know about tech stack

Let's say you were to just go and build that idea right now

And that was your next big idea

What would be your tech stack in terms of building the app

And then also tracking analytics and running the business

Yeah for sure

So I tend to build in React Native

So that's what I'll do on the building side of things

In terms of like the marketing

which is what really matters on that end

I'll use something called Shortomize

And it's basically like you're able to track TikTok views

over time for the different accounts

There's also another product called AppStoreTracker com

And that's able to be able to see different apps

and how quickly they've gone up in the app store

So you can also track yours and see if there's any changes

in like the bios or the titles et cetera

which can obviously help with ASO

And then the creator check

So this is something me and my co founder

were actually working on

Just think of it as like a gusto

but specifically for UGC creators

where we do the calculations and payouts

Okay and on that same note for

if you were to build Chill Guy AI

what do you think some of the costs and margins

margins would look like for that business

if you were to get to say 10K a month

I would say all in all

you're looking at max 1 000 a month

I think the balloon costs

come from the UGC side of things

things And that depends on the amount of UGC creators

that you get on board

So you could have 10 UGC creators

maybe you're paying five to 10K a month for them

And then what you get is 10 different videos

every single day which is super cool

And then on the margin side of things

you're looking to have something

that's at least 70 profit margin

I would say it's something to be super healthy

Last question that we ask everyone

who comes on Starter Story

What would be your advice for someone

starting over from scratch in 2025

building apps to sell

What would be your advice to someone watching

Sure like my thing I say now is

only play games you can win and always have an edge

And what I mean by that is like

only play games you can win

doesn't mean you always win

but at least when you lose you know it's your fault

If I was to build another app

unfortunately it wouldn't be Chill Guy AI

I just don't think I have an edge in that

But I would build another Christian app

but for maybe a different niche

Just because over time

I now have an email list of 1 2 million Christians

And Meta has this beautiful thing

called lookalike audiences

It makes it so much easier for me

to get now a low cost per install

whenever I want to build an app there

And operationally it's just so much easier

Just kind of create a new app

and just put it into the same funnel that you have

And then you can also cross sell within your apps

and actually sell add space to another

one of your apps for free

I think that's great advice

Thanks for coming on Lots

sharing your entire playbook

Hopefully people really enjoyed this video

If you guys have any questions

put it down in the comments below

But otherwise thanks for coming on man

You're inspiring

Thank you so much bye

I want to thank Lots again for coming on the channel

and sharing everything

I think it's amazing that he's done this over four times

and he has plans to do it over and over again

That's the power of being able to come up with an idea

and build it fast

And this is exactly why we launched Starter Story Build

It's our program where we will help you take your idea

and turn it into a real app using only AI tools

If you're ready to get off the sidelines

build that app and launch into the real world

then head to the link in the description

to check out Starter Story Build

Our next bootcamp is starting this week

So get in there and save your spot

I would love to see you in there building

All right

right Thank you guys for watching

That's it for this episode

I hope you enjoyed it

I'll see you in the next one

Peace

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