My app made $80K in 6 months
Starter Story
Oct 8, 2025
Praneeth Pike quit his $250K/year job to go all in on building apps. After 3 months of building, he finally launched his project... just to see no success. Then, he changed one thing, and his app made $80K in the next 6 months.
🛠️ Want to build your own app with AI? Check out Starter Story Build → https://build.starterstory.com/build/ai-build-accelerator?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=praneeth
Praneeth's app: https://www.rabbitholes.ai/
Follow Praneeth: https://x.com/praneethpike
🔔 Follow the Second Channel: @StarterStoryBuild
🏁 We're hiring: starterstory.com/jobs
Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
0:46 - Who is Praneeth
1:08 - Praneeth's app
1:46 - Idea for Rabbitholes.ai
2:28 - The pricing model that failed
3:35 - The $80K pivot
4:48 - The best pricing model for bootstrappers
6:56 - Pricing framework
7:48 - Growth strategy for Rabbitholes.ai
8:48 - Numbers behind Rabbitholes.ai
9:24 - Tech stack
10:17 - Costs and margins
10:59 - Find product-market fit
12:01 - The final word
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
Stack
Transcript
Chapters
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No tools listed for this business.
After
launching
my
app
and
seeing
no
success
I
rebuilt
it
and
it
made
80
000
in
six
months
Meet
Praneeth
a
builder
from
India
who
quit
his
software
engineering
job
to
go
all
in
on
building
apps
But
after
launching
the
first
version
of
his
app
he
saw
pretty
much
no
success
So
he
decided
to
make
a
simple
pivot
that
changed
everything
I
was
making
250k
a
year
but
always
knew
I
wanted
to
build
my
own
thing
In
this
video
Praneeth
will
share
what
most
builders
get
wrong
about
their
first
idea
the
pricing
change
that
made
him
80
000
in
six
months
and
specifically
how
you
can
price
your
first
product
so
you
can
make
money
on
day
one
I
would
not
recommend
starting
with
a
subscription
model
if
you're
bootstrapping
This
one
is
going
to
be
fun
I'm
Pat
Walls
and
this
is
Starter
Story
Praneeth
welcome
to
the
channel
Tell
me
about
who
you
are
what
you
built
and
what's
your
story
My
name
is
Praneeth
and
I
quit
my
250
000
job
last
year
and
went
all
in
on
building
my
own
apps
I
built
an
app
called
Canvas
Mode
which
was
formerly
known
as
Rabbit
Holes
AI
but
when
I
built
the
first
version
of
it
it
didn't
get
any
traction
But
then
I
changed
the
pricing
model
and
my
app
paid
80
000
in
the
last
six
months
Okay
Well
before
we
get
into
that
pricing
change
which
I'm
really
excited
to
talk
about
I
do
want
to
understand
what
is
your
business
What
is
Rabbit
Holes
Rabbit
Holes
Holes
AI
is
an
app
which
is
basically
a
canvas
first
way
to
interact
with
AI
models
If
you've
ever
chatted
with
chat
GPT
for
a
really
long
time
it
tends
to
kind
of
forget
or
lose
its
place
in
the
conversation
So
it's
really
hard
to
have
any
meaningful
long
conversations
with
a
linear
app
like
chat
GPT
So
what
happens
in
a
canvas
app
like
this
is
as
soon
as
you
see
something
is
kind
of
getting
interesting
and
you
want
to
branch
off
or
create
a
different
kind
of
fork
in
that
conversation
you
could
do
that
by
creating
a
new
node
So
Rabbit
Holes
AI
it's
built
for
power
AI
users
to
get
more
out
of
the
AI
unlike
linear
conversation
apps
Okay
Let's
talk
about
how
you
came
up
with
the
idea
for
this
Obviously
this
app
is
huge
has
lots
of
users
How
did
you
find
the
idea
to
build
this
I
was
initially
trying
to
work
on
build
on
one
of
my
old
ideas
and
I
was
using
chat
GPT
and
I
was
using
perplexity
and
I
was
using
cloud
to
do
that
to
teach
myself
But
soon
I
found
myself
like
distributed
across
a
bunch
of
different
tabs
Each
one
of
those
had
different
kinds
of
expertise
Cloud
was
much
better
for
coding
and
GPT
was
much
better
for
high
level
architectural
kind
of
things
And
perplexity
was
much
better
for
real
time
information
So
the
UX
designer
in
me
thought
okay
this
is
a
frictionless
experience
and
this
is
kind
kind
of
broken
and
it's
going
to
be
much
better
if
I
can
do
it
all
in
one
tab
and
it
kind
of
evolved
as
a
design
from
there
Okay
So
you
have
this
idea
you
start
building
it
but
you
sort
of
make
almost
a
mistake
when
you
start
building
it
in
terms
of
the
pricing
model
Can
you
tell
me
about
when
you
started
building
it
what
your
plan
was
for
how
to
price
this
thing
and
kind
of
of
how
that
whole
process
started
The
default
mode
of
how
I
operated
without
building
products
was
the
typical
subscription
model
or
the
freemium
model
So
that's
where
I
went
with
initially
and
launched
a
web
app
with
free
trial
where
you
get
like
a
few
questions
for
free
and
then
you
have
to
pay
after
a
little
bit
of
usage
but
that
didn't
get
much
traction
And
I
feel
like
there's
multiple
reasons
to
that
The
top
ones
are
that
I
did
not
have
a
huge
personal
brand
trying
to
do
the
building
public
thing
where
I
was
talking
on
Twitter
or
kind
of
posting
everywhere
where
I
got
a
chance
I
got
some
interest
but
never
really
turned
into
any
real
dollars
And
on
top
of
it
I
kind
of
decided
that
my
ideal
customer
profile
ICP
is
a
power
AI
user
So
at
that
point
my
ICP
would
already
be
saturated
with
a
bunch
of
different
subscriptions
They
are
playing
for
this
multiple
AI
models
So
that's
when
I
had
to
change
the
product
a
little
bit
by
moving
away
from
web
app
into
a
desktop
app
and
making
it
a
one
time
purchase
Okay
So
you
have
this
app
it's
sort
of
working
You've
got
some
users
you've
got
free
trials
but
you
feel
like
there's
maybe
something
missing
and
you
make
a
change
Tell
me
about
what
that
change
was
and
what
happened
after
you
made
that
change
To
balance
all
of
the
things
that
were
particular
to
my
situation
I
wanted
to
start
with
a
one
time
purchase
and
I
had
to
convert
the
app
into
a
one
time
purchase
which
means
that
I
cannot
incur
any
AI
costs
because
AI
usage
costs
me
money
And
I
wanted
to
offload
that
to
the
users
So
that
was
step
one
to
make
it
bring
your
own
keys
And
the
second
step
was
to
not
even
incur
any
server
costs
If
I
were
to
like
just
build
it
once
and
sell
it
many
times
I
had
to
offload
my
server
costs
to
the
users
as
well
And
the
easiest
way
to
do
that
was
to
just
use
the
user's
computers
And
to
do
that
I
had
to
build
a
desktop
app
This
allows
me
to
like
ship
and
forget
about
my
business
cost
and
everything
ran
on
the
users
They
paid
for
the
AI
As
soon
as
they
changed
it
a
lot
of
people
actually
started
paying
They
were
more
serious
in
terms
of
giving
feedback
felt
much
more
refreshing
in
the
sense
sense
that
people
were
not
only
more
serious
but
they
were
also
more
helpful
in
kind
of
like
believing
in
this
early
stage
product
So
after
we
moved
to
a
one
time
purchase
model
that
change
led
to
about
80
000
in
the
last
six
months
Okay
so
for
anyone
watching
this
I
do
want
to
reiterate
that
a
lifetime
deal
doesn't
make
sense
for
all
businesses
So
I'd
like
to
hear
from
you
When
does
a
lifetime
deal
make
sense
What
type
of
business
and
what
type
of
founder
is
this
for
I
think
every
bootstrap
business
should
do
an
LTD
model
The
pricing
and
how
they
do
it
should
obviously
vary
according
to
their
unique
product
use
cases
and
the
costs
that
they
incur
But
I
think
a
VC
style
of
doing
freemium
would
not
work
for
a
bootstrap
model
Having
venture
capital
would
actually
mean
that
you
can
offset
your
truth
seeking
in
a
sense
like
you
can
kind
of
delay
your
product
market
fit
So
you
can
kind
of
hope
that
people
would
come
on
board
but
that's
not
a
luxury
that
bootstrap
businesses
would
have
So
almost
every
bootstrap
business
should
do
a
lifetime
deal
along
with
whatever
they
are
doing
If
you
already
have
like
a
subscription
model
have
a
lifetime
deal
Even
if
it's
a
limited
thing
have
it
because
it
kind
of
gives
you
this
boost
in
morale
with
this
chunk
chunk
of
cash
coming
in
and
you
have
a
much
more
validated
idea
and
you
have
a
good
sizable
user
base
who
are
willing
to
actively
give
feedback
and
be
involved
And
it's
hugely
hugely
beneficial
if
you're
a
solo
founder
or
like
a
founder
with
like
a
small
team
trying
to
figure
out
what
to
build
Because
usually
what
happens
which
happened
with
me
in
the
past
as
well
was
that
you
kind
of
get
into
your
own
head
and
trying
to
think
what
to
build
and
what
not
to
build
Alright
before
we
get
into
how
Praneeth
successfully
pivoted
and
relaunched
his
business
I
do
need
to
point
point
something
out
Making
money
online
isn't
as
complicated
as
most
people
think
At
its
core
it's
as
simple
as
creating
something
valuable
and
putting
a
strike
payment
link
on
it
No
it
won't
always
work
but
you'll
never
know
unless
you
ship
it
And
that's
the
beauty
of
the
internet
today
There
are
almost
no
barriers
to
trying
And
this
is
why
we
created
Starter
Story
Build
It's
our
action
oriented
bootcamp
where
in
just
a
couple
of
weeks
you'll
come
up
with
an
idea
you'll
build
it
with
AI
tools
and
you'll
actually
launch
it
to
the
real
world
Even
if
you
have
no
coding
experience
or
you're
still
working
a
full
time
job
there
has
never
been
a
better
time
to
just
try
So
if
you're
ready
to
take
action
click
the
first
link
in
the
description
to
learn
more
about
Starter
Story
Build
Alright
now
back
to
Praneeth's
story
The
next
question
I
have
is
more
specific
and
tactical
is
the
pricing
of
lifetime
deal
How
did
you
price
your
lifetime
deal
and
how
would
you
recommend
anybody
who's
got
similar
products
to
price
a
lifetime
deal
If
you
are
building
an
AI
product
I
think
it's
absolutely
worth
it
to
have
a
bring
your
own
keys
model
that
offsets
a
lot
of
costs
and
it
kind
of
offloads
it
from
you
to
the
users
So
everybody
should
do
that
The
way
I've
done
that
for
Rabbit
Holes
is
that
the
pricing
pricing
of
the
actual
product
actually
started
with
something
really
small
It
started
off
with
29
when
I
was
under
100
users
Once
it
crossed
100
I
bumped
it
to
like
49
and
we
are
going
going
to
be
bumping
the
lifetime
deal
much
higher
and
kind
of
moving
on
to
a
recurring
model
now
that
we
are
about
1
200
users
right
now
So
the
initial
offering
was
much
lower
and
the
early
users
who
bought
in
got
it
a
much
better
deal
And
it
also
gave
me
feedback
of
like
that
the
market
is
wanting
to
buy
something
like
this
On
that
tactical
note
I
do
also
want
to
talk
about
growth
Yes
you
can
create
a
lifetime
deal
and
you
can
set
your
pricing
but
you
still
need
to
drive
users
to
the
page
You
still
need
to
get
it
in
front
of
people
How
did
you
grow
Rabbit
Holes
and
what
was
the
growth
strategies
One
of
the
first
things
I
would
still
want
people
to
do
is
to
get
their
landing
page
right
To
get
that
right
I
think
this
is
something
that
I've
done
in
my
past
experiments
but
this
time
I've
done
it
right
which
is
to
get
my
ICP
correct
In
my
case
it
was
PowerAI
users
So
my
landing
page
copy
was
like
completely
tailored
to
PowerAI
users
I
call
them
out
in
my
H1
and
I
call
them
out
in
multiple
places
on
my
website
And
this
is
very
important
And
there's
like
tons
of
places
where
you
can
find
how
to
structure
your
website
And
after
I've
done
that
I
started
like
talking
more
about
it
on
Twitter
And
I
kind
of
like
replied
to
conversations
that
were
in
relation
to
AI
interactions
and
the
new
age
of
AI
And
it
was
not
just
directly
talking
about
my
product
in
a
sense
like
you
know
buy
my
product
or
I'm
building
this
in
that
sense
But
I
was
just
hinting
towards
something
related
to
my
product
On
that
note
I'd
love
to
hear
just
some
of
the
numbers
of
the
business
today
What
does
the
business
look
like
Revenue
profit
users
What
can
you
share
It's
like
around
80K
ish
in
gross
revenue
as
we
speak
and
about
75
around
profits
and
minus
the
refunds
and
everything
We
have
about
like
200
paying
users
and
60
of
them
are
lifetime
users
And
about
40
are
like
people
who
bought
it
out
of
one
time
purchase
where
they
would
have
renew
it
after
a
year
to
get
more
updates
And
overall
we
have
about
like
38
000
unique
visitors
to
the
site
so
far
Well
thanks
for
sharing
that
On
that
same
note
tell
me
about
TechStack
How
did
you
actually
build
this
I
was
saying
in
the
beginning
I
used
AI
as
my
co
founder
in
a
sense
and
I
use
cursor
for
coding
The
landing
page
is
built
on
Next
js
The
actual
app
is
an
electron
app
and
it
uses
React
underneath
and
TypeScript
to
do
it
And
you
host
the
apps
on
Cloudflare
but
that's
not
a
huge
deal
But
another
big
thing
I
have
to
talk
about
or
touch
on
is
the
AI
SDK
that
is
built
by
people
at
Vercel
And
it's
a
huge
accelerant
in
me
being
able
to
build
this
product
because
it
allowed
me
to
build
a
product
with
great
abstraction
where
I
could
just
focus
on
the
front
end
and
have
almost
nothing
to
worry
about
integrating
with
this
multiple
different
kind
of
AI
providers
AI
SDK
gives
you
the
best
abstraction
in
that
sense
You
use
it
and
capable
of
logging
into
all
the
top
providers
and
then
some
On
a
similar
note
what
I
think
is
cool
is
you
have
this
BYOK
bring
your
own
keys
which
basically
means
you
don't
have
to
pay
for
API
LLM
costs
So
I'm
curious
what
are
the
costs
and
margins
for
a
business
like
this
You
really
don't
have
big
server
costs
and
you
don't
have
API
costs
So
what
does
it
cost
to
run
day
to
day
It's
almost
nothing
I
only
have
to
pay
for
my
landing
page
hosting
and
almost
I
can
bring
it
zero
But
because
I'm
like
an
XJS
spoiled
person
I
hosted
on
Vercel
and
I
have
some
fancy
things
going
on
there
So
it
costs
me
about
50
a
month
and
I
have
a
cursor
subscription
about
200
a
month
month
But
that
is
something
that
I
have
to
only
spend
because
I
have
to
keep
working
on
new
features
not
to
maintain
the
existing
product
Cool
Well
last
question
that
I
have
for
you
a
question
that
we
ask
all
founders
to
come
on
to
the
channel
If
you
could
stand
on
Praneeth's
shoulder
when
you
were
just
starting
out
before
you
had
product
market
fit
in
this
awesome
product
that's
made
a
bunch
of
revenue
what
would
be
your
advice
I've
been
trying
building
different
products
since
the
last
six
seven
years
And
for
the
good
chunk
of
last
five
years
I
was
operating
as
a
skills
man
As
an
entrepreneur
your
goal
is
to
find
product
market
fit
as
soon
as
possible
And
your
goal
is
to
build
something
that
makes
people's
lives
better
But
what
I
was
doing
was
appealing
to
my
peers
which
is
totally
not
the
mindset
that
I
need
to
as
an
entrepreneur
because
your
whole
purpose
should
be
about
finding
a
product
market
fit
finding
something
that
you're
going
to
put
out
in
the
market
and
they're
going
to
give
you
money
and
reward
you
in
return
as
a
thank
you
for
making
their
lives
better
And
that
should
be
your
only
goal
That's
really
good
advice
Thanks
for
sharing
that
Praneeth
That
was
awesome
Thanks
for
coming
onto
the
channel
What
you
built
is
awesome
I'm
excited
to
see
what
you
continue
to
do
and
continue
to
build
Thanks
for
coming
on
And
thanks
for
having
me
It's
a
great
pleasure
All
right
Thank
you
Praneeth
for
coming
onto
the
channel
Hopefully
Hopefully
you
guys
got
a
bunch
of
value
from
this
video
I
find
it
super
inspiring
about
how
Praneeth
left
his
full
time
job
decided
to
go
build
stuff
and
especially
how
he
didn't
give
up
after
the
initial
version
of
his
app
failed
If
you're
looking
to
do
something
similar
and
ship
your
own
app
then
definitely
check
out
Starter
Story
Build
It's
our
program
where
in
just
a
few
weeks
we'll
help
you
find
an
idea
build
it
with
AI
and
launch
it
to
the
real
world
with
real
users
If
this
sounds
interesting
to
you
just
head
to
the
first
link
in
the
description
to
learn
more
about
what
Starter
Story
Build
is
about
All
right
That's
it
for
this
episode
Thank
you
guys
for
watching
We'll
see
you
in
the
next
one
Peace
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