I Built A $30K/Month App: Here's My Exact Process

tarter Story

Starter Story Starter Story Build

Explore

Ideas Case Studies Episodes Academy Build New

Ideas Case Studies Episodes Academy Build Login

4,418 Founder Case Studies

I Built A $30K/Month App: Here's My Exact Process

Starter Story

Build

Jun 1, 2026

Benjamin Chen is a 20-year-old NYU student who’s built 45+ apps and scaled his latest app to $30K/month. What makes Benji different is he has a repeatable system that’s helped him build, launch, and grow his apps fast. This video breaks down the exact system he uses to scale apps profitably.

Free iOS App Bootcamp: https://clickhubspot.com/r91p

Follow Benji: https://twitter.com/benjiianc
Check out Snag: https://snagapp.com/

🔔 Follow the Second Channel: @StarterStoryBuild
🏁 We're hiring: starterstory.com/jobs

Chapters

Stack

Transcript

Chapters

Stack

Custom Built (link)

I decided to really lock in and focus on building one specific product

And we've gone from zero to 30K MRR ever since

This is Benji

And in the last year he's built over 45 apps

And his latest one just hit 30 000 a month in less than four months

In the past year or so I've built over 45 apps

But this isn't a story about one app

It's about the system behind all of them

The exact process he follows every single time to go from idea to revenue fast

The entire process usually takes around four to five hours to actually get a good app built out

So I asked Benji to come onto the channel to break it all down step by step

And in this episode we'll dive into how he goes from an idea to a working app in just a few hours

The simple distribution strategy that makes his app thousands of dollars every month

And the complete playbook he'd follow if you were starting a mobile app again from scratch today

If you're building apps right now this is the episode

Let's dive in

I'm Pat Walls and this is Starter Story

Okay Benji welcome to the channel

I'm pumped to have you on here

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

Hey guys my name is Benji

Today I'm talking about Snag which is an app that my team and I at 10x Studio had launched around four months ago

And we've gone from zero to 30K MRR ever since

And I'm really excited to share the entire playbook that we used to scale Snag

Okay awesome

Before we get into the whole process of you building it and growing it

let's talk about what you built and how it's doing

Could you pull up some of your dashboards

show me the revenue it's making and just show me what you built

As you can see here in Superwall we have around 30 000 in monthly working revenue

We have over 100 000 authenticated users on Snag

9 000 current versions and over 80 000 in total proceeds

Snag is an app that helps people find free items near them

This is the main page of Snag where users literally will gain access to free items near them

They can select what they want here either by searching it or filtering it

You can store the good items that you like in the favorite section

We do weekly monthly yearly one time subscriptions

We have around 3 3K ratings on App Store

which is very important social proof when you're promoting consumer apps

Amazing

30 000 a month in just four months shows you how fast apps can grow

We talked to a lot of founders that are growing apps very fast

I think it's awesome

Tell me how you get here

How do you get to the point where just in a couple months

you have an app that's absolutely crushing it

What's your background

I grew up in Asia and growing up I always played by the books

worked really hard in school had a 4 0 GPA

but really didn't explore myself enough to the point where I knew what I wanted to do with my life

and then sold my first media company for six figures

then proceeded to work in Congress investment firms

I was doing quant research

Also worked in media companies before

I was just trying to explore myself before ultimately pursuing software products

And then in the past year or so I've built over 45 apps

My first ever app is an app called Pillar

It's a self improvement app

We scaled to 11 000 users with basically zero CAC

and basically stopped because I had shiny object syndrome

I proceeded to build my second app which is called High GPT

Again shiny object syndrome

Just proceeded to build the next 43 products

and then decided to really lock in and focus on building

one specific product that could scale over time with amazing people

So you mentioned shiny object syndrome

I think it's super common

I've experienced it

Pretty much everyone who's building anything experiences it

I see it all the time with people we bring on the channel and people who want to build stuff

Let's talk about that for a second

You said you built 40 apps

You probably got pretty good at building apps

What was your process to build over 40 apps

That seems crazy

What was your process

The highest leverage thing you could do is to find a great idea

So you start from the marketing

So you reverse engineer the value proposition that you want to show in your app first

Then you could think what would the app look like

if you want to attract a user in three seconds

Then you go to Figma wireframe it design it

feed the designs to Cloud Code in your IDE and code it

The entire process usually takes around four to five hours

to actually get a good app built out without the backend

Personally I love Benji's process for building apps

Why Because it's a simple proven system where he can ship things fast

If you've gotten to this point in the video

you might be thinking about your app that you're going to build

Well that's why we launched the free iOS bootcamp

In just a few days this bootcamp will walk you

from idea to a real working app in the app store

You'll learn how to think about the right ideas

how to build with AI and how to actually ship

So if you're ready to actually build your next app

just head to the first link in the description

and you can get started for free

All right let's get back to the episode

You mentioned something crazy

which is you're building apps in four to five hours

I expect you to say like four to five weeks or something like that

You've built so many apps you probably have like a nice little tool set

What are those tools

Yeah it's pretty much a streamlined approach for me right now to build apps

So I use Cursor as my IDE

I use Cloud Code Max to code pretty much the entire thing

I use GoDaddy to host my app's domain

I use Loops to send out emails to churn the users

users so that I can convert them back to the app

I use Superwall to A B test my paywalls

I use Mixpanel to track whether my onboarding process is good enough or not

I have an Apple developer account Figma subscription

and finally I host everything on Superbase as my backend

On a separate topic before we get into the whole build

and how you build stuff and how you grow it

how do you think about ideas now

How to come up with a good idea that could make 30 000 a month like yours

YouTube and Twitter is a great source of inspiration

inspiration because you just see people making money from all sorts of different ideas

And I think you can discover pinpoints that are underserved

and actually impacts you as a person

person Or you can go on Sensor Tower to search for ideas that are making a lot of money

And you can literally copy the same app but make it 10 better

A great example of this would be HeightGPT that I built

After we launched HeightGPT there were around 20 different copycat apps

but they're also making hundreds of thousands of dollars

dollars because they have a better user interface

they have better marketing they have better funnels

So ideas don't really worth much

if you cannot provide the product to the end user in a better way

Thanks for sharing that

Ideas are worthless but they're also kind of everything

You still got to have a good idea

But if you can launch the HeightGPT app and there's 20 other competitors

you need something else

And this is what everyone in the comments are going to say right now

Starter story you don't talk enough about marketing

Building is easy now

So let's talk about it

Specifically what we did is we ran UGC campaigns at scale

and then turn those creatives into paid ads

So essentially how this works is you reach out to a bunch of creators first

and then filter them one by one by interviewing them

to see whether they have that virality built in them

And typically we get a 10 conversion rate

So for every 100 creator we interview we get actually like 9 to 10 good ones

Then you put them on a monthly retainer plus a CPM structure

and then you test them

If they're doing over 50 000 views per video

then those are great videos that you can run on meta ads

So you can set up test campaigns on meta ads

and then figure out the ROAS on it

So if your ROAS is greater than one

that means you're making money from your app

And meta ads is not a linear growth structure

meaning that if you're making 10 profit margin

when you're spending 100 a day on meta ads

it does not imply that if you spend 200 then you get 20

because there's diminishing marginal return

So you have to see whether your ads are fatiguing or not on meta ads

and then basically pump out more creatives

so that you can test more options

and to figure out the most optimal creatives to run on meta ads

I like that because yeah working with UGC creators

is a pain over the very long term

and switching over to paid ads when it starts working is smart

because you don't have to deal with as much of that headache

headache of rehiring and the churn and all that

We're going to get into the paid ad side of things

things but I'd love if you could just show me an example of the UGC that you did

maybe a successful post that led to actual revenue for your business

As you can see this video is soft selling the app

I seriously can't believe she just put them on snag for free

So this video got 240 000 views

What we typically see is with every 100 000 views

we can make around 1 000 to 2 000

that we can directly make from subscription profits

Thanks for showing that kind of shows how simple these videos can be

This video got 240 000 views

and I'm sure you created a bunch of other videos like that

that also crushed it

You mentioned that then once the video like that works

then you run paid ads on that specific TikTok video

How does that work

There's a two step approach that we usually take versus we set a test campaign

So we spend around 50 a day

We just test whether a specific creative is worth it

or not to keep running and to scale up

And if you have a greater than one ROAS or a really high CTR

then you could assume that it's gonna probably do pretty well

when it's ran as paid ads

So you just gradually scale up the number from there

So you start off with 50

next day 100 200 300 for this ad

We place around 3 000 in total for this ad

before the ROAS became negative

That's why the number of creatives matters a lot

lot when you're running paid ads

so that you get more tickets to the lottery

Thank you for showing that

and thanks for sharing some of your numbers

I wanna switch topics a little bit

since you've launched so many apps

For anyone watching this right now

let's say you had to start over from scratch

What would be your playbook

for building a consumer mobile app in 2026

Keep in mind that this literally worked for me

for even my first app

and I didn't really have any money as a college student

So this would actually apply to everybody

So step one is figuring out an idea that is actually scalable

and that you can implement properly

This is probably the highest leverage thing you could do

Think of it like this

A good product doesn't really need much

quote unquote marketing

People convert at a higher rate

and people don't wanna cancel subscription on your product

because your product is providing so much value to them

For Snag it was very simple

You pay us a few dollars a month

month and then you get access to products

products that are worth hundreds of dollars

and hence why I think we have a very high conversion rate

Yeah I agree with that

My favorite apps are apps that help you make more money

or help you save more money

This is a very simple value proposition

I'm happy to pay for that

What's the next step

Step two is to start building

So open your IDE and start using cloud code

to actually code out your app

Most likely when you're starting off

you're probably gonna be building single use case apps

where it's pretty much like a API wrapper

which is perfectly fine

All you have to do is use the API properly

make sure the app is actually functioning

and make sure that there's a way for you

to authenticate the user

for them to create an account

account so that you could actually get approved on App Store

That's pretty much it

In building nowadays according to you

and basically everyone else we talked to

on Starter Story takes four to five hours

So this part shouldn't be hard

What's the next step

Step three would be distribution

So if you don't have money to hire UGC creators

or influencers start filming them yourself

I filmed probably thousands of videos

for my previous apps by myself

And then you can find an editor

editor to edit your videos at scale

have a package deal to run them as paid ads

So yeah the greatest skill I think right now

is the ability to create content

and know how to get views and engagement

in this sort of algorithmic TikTok world that we live in

That is probably my favorite one

What is the final step

The final step is just iterating on the product

so that you have a better product

so that you get higher LTV lower CAC

So focus on generating real value to your end users

because ultimately business is the transaction of value

They give you the money you give them the value

Okay thank you for sharing that

Last question that we ask all founders

who come on Starter Story

if you go back in time while you were in college

or thinking about going that traditional career path

what would be your advice to your younger self

or your advice to anyone who's watching this

who's in a similar spot

Definitely create your own luck and meet the right people

I'm able to learn so much in the past few months

months because I met a guy called Blake Anderson

If you work with great people like that

you tend to want to improve yourself

so that you can match their pace

and then to provide value

I'm not saying to do meaningless networking

but create your own luck

meaning that just keep doing what you're doing right now

iterate learn from mistakes

and then you're gonna be at a point

point where you're able to work with great people

and great people leads to great opportunities

in which would just enable you to learn even more

One of my favorite phrases

is that you are the average of the five people

you surround yourself with

just by surrounding yourself with people

that are crushing it like Blake

who has built a ton of cool stuff

It just makes everything easier

when you're surrounding yourself with ambitious people

Thanks for coming on to the show

Love what you built

Hope to see it keep growing

and you can come back on Starter Story and share more

Thanks for coming on

Thank you for having me

All right Gus producer of Starter Story

What did you think of this one

Yeah Benji was awesome

When I first talked to him I really liked

He's super chill first of all like personality

but loved hearing just like this proven system he has

He knew what he was talking about

He had the numbers he had the creatives

everything in his head there

So that was really cool

He's not worried about the things

that can go wrong or doing things wrong

He built 40 apps very kind of straight into the point

You do this do this do this

Let's not really like overcomplicate it

And this is how smart builders act

is like instead of worrying about

is my idea not gonna work

What are people gonna think about me

Build apps get your ROAS up to this point

and you're good to go

So hopefully people watching this realize that

hey it can really be this simple

It's math

On that note you still gotta find your idea

You still gotta build something

So I'll put a link in the description down there

If you wanna build an app

we'll help you come up with an idea

We'll help you build it

We'll help you ship it to the app store

Put that all down there in the description

You can download it and get started building right now

Hope you guys enjoyed this one

We'll see you in the next one

Peace

tarter Story

About

Support

Privacy

Website Terms of Use Terms

Get Access To All Startup Data Right Now (it's free)

Join our free newsletter to get unlimited access to all startup data. We just need your email:

Email address

If you are a human, ignore this field

tarter Story

Want to discover ideas that actually make money?

Get our 5-minute email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.

Email address

If you are a human, ignore this field

It's free and read by 200,000+ founders

Email Address

Have an account? Login by entering your email or continuing with Google.

Please sign in.

Email Address

Password

Create A Password

If you are a human, ignore this field

Email Address

Password

2 + 2 = ?

Check your email for a link to sign in

Check your email

We've sent you an email with a link to sign in. Click the link in the email to access your account.

If there's a Starter Story account associated with that email you'll get an email with a link to automatically log in. The link will expire in 24 hours.

Your existing password still works, should you want to log in with it later.

tarter Story

Unlock the secrets to 7-figure online businesses

With Starter Story, you can see exactly how online businesses get to millions in revenue.

Dive into our database of 4,418 case studies & join our community of thousands of successful founders.

tarter Story

Get The Report

tarter Story

Build a business that changes your life, in less than 5 weeks.

Discover a proven system to find, validate, and build your $1M business idea—alongside a community that won't let you fail.

Our next sprint starts soon...

tarter Story Build

With AI, you can build anything

Come up with an idea, build it, and ship an app that gets users and payments—in just a few days.

Join thousands of builders who are turning their ideas into real products.