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I launched about 9 months ago and last month we made $25,000. This is Ben. He launched his first app about 9 months ago, and it brought in $25,000 just last month This is an app where you can learn a language, so this was my first experience. But here's the thing: oddly enough, he's not a developer. In fact, he found this idea in just one piece of content and turned it into a very simple and viral idea for an app This is an app where you can learn a language through songs, train with AI, and practice with people. The app itself, to be honest, is so brilliant that I realized: I have to invite him to the channel and analyze in detail how he did it. So in this episode, we'll dive into the app he built that's now making around $25,000 a month, how he
backed up the idea with a single Instagram post, and the simple plan he uses to grow his app every month. This will be interesting. Let's begin. I'm Gus, and this is Starter Story. Well, Ben, welcome to Starter Stories. I'm very happy to see you on the channel. Could you share with us who you are, what you have created and what your story is Well, first of all, thank you for inviting me. My name is Ben, and I develop Canary. This is an app where you can learn a language through songs. I launched about 9 months ago and last month we made $25,000. This is simply incredible. Congratulations. Could you tell us a little about Canary? What kind of app is this? Who are your users? How does it
work? So, yes, you learn a language through songs you love. For example, Stromae for French or Bad Bunny for Spanish. And you can also practice with people from all over the world. Most of our users are people who are trying to learn a language, but for some reason Duolingo doesn't suit them and they want something more fun or interesting. So, we currently have 50,000 downloads. We have 2,000 paid subscribers. And the business model is quite simple. We have a free version, as well as a premium subscription-$10 per month or $79 per year. And 60% of our users choose the annual package. If you watch our channel, you know
that this is the year of consumer apps. And honestly, I really don't think it's going to stop anytime soon. If you've always wanted to create an app but don't know where to start, we have something that I think will really help you. This is a list of over 200 proven ideas across dozens of app categories. By downloading this database, you can explore all the research, find your idea, and finally start developing. If you're interested, just follow the link in the description and download it completely free. Okay, back to Ben. Ben, could you show your revenue dashboard to prove to the audience that this is the real deal? So, in the last 28 days, we made about $25,000. Our monthly revenue (MRR) is almost 14,000. This is less than a month, because we
focus on annual subscriptions, so we actively promote them. And we had 23,000 active customers in the last month. I want to understand how you came to this? Tell us a little about your experience. How did you get to the point where you created an app with a revenue of $25,000 per month? So, I moved to the US about 13 years ago and then started a few businesses. Three years ago, I sold one of them, became a digital nomad, and also a content creator. I have gained about a million followers on social media. A year ago, I posted a video of me singing in French with lyrics and translation. I got a lot of engagement, mostly in the form of shares and people subscribing after this video. So I thought there was something to this. I created a
page just for this. The page started growing very quickly. There are now about 200,000 subscribers. I said to myself, "Okay, this is social proof that people want this kind of content and want to learn through songs." That's how I decided to make a minimum viable product (MVP) for this. You posted something that went viral, and you realized you had something that could potentially be turned into an app. One of the things we'll see in the comments is, "Oh, of course, he had a million followers. That's why he's successful." What do you think about people who might be skeptical about your app because you are a content creator?
I think having a community behind you helps a lot. But I really use my audience as a way to test the concept. Then I created a page that wasn't about me, didn't use my audience, and it just grew faster than my own personal page. She amassed about 200,000 followers in less than a year. Having an audience is good, but you can build one from scratch to test whether your idea is worth it, and it can go viral pretty quickly. Yes, I think we hear comments like that all the time. People say, "Oh, you're only successful because he has followers." But he also worked hard to gain those followers. So, you know, to some extent it's a chicken and egg question. Tell me how you
built it. What was the development schedule and process for creating this app like for you? I'm not a developer, so I hired a programmer. And about 5 months ago, I started writing code myself, and that was a turning point for me in terms of speed-making features quickly, getting feedback, and changing things in the app directly. The first MVP was ready in about a month, but it was very ugly. And very bad. But my approach is to just launch something and get feedback as quickly as possible. Yes, I think Cursor, Codex, and all these tools have greatly simplified the development process. You know, people like you and people like me who don't have a technical background can create something that looks good and works. By the way, what
technology stack or tools do you use to build and manage your business now? So, I'm using Firebase for the backend. That's $200. I use RevenueCat for subscriptions and testing paywalls. 260 per PostHog for analytics and experiments. 250 for Cursor for Web Coding. 200 for Beehiiv for emails. 169 by OpenAI for in-app AI features. So that's another 150 on top. AppsFlyer for install tracking. 97 for ManyChat, because I'm currently setting up automation on social media. And it's $30. Very economical. I like it. So I want to talk about the early days. You are currently earning $25,000 per month. But how did you first get it up and running?
What growth marketing drivers did you use at the initial stage to move beyond initial validation and start growing your app? I'm a big fan of AB testing and even ABCD testing. I'm trying to test a lot of things. So I tried to publish content on every platform, in different formats. I also spent a lot of time exploring other apps and listening to podcasts from the founders. In fact, my routine during my gym sessions was to listen to your "Startup Stories" every day and take notes on things worth testing. I tried Google Ads after hearing one of your founders talk about it.
I even reached out to some of your guests, like Nicole and Pedro, for advice to improve the onboarding and product. So, basically, every day I tried to learn something, release something, and test something. Yes. It's really cool to hear that you drew inspiration from Startup Stories and even reached out to other guests, because since they came to the show, there's a good chance they're willing to share more knowledge than others. So, you start to have some success, improve the product, and publish information about it everywhere. So how did you go from that to making $25,000 last month?
You need to choose your platform because you don't want to be overwhelmed by everything at once. My main ones were Instagram and TikTok, and Reels worked best for me. So I decided to focus on Instagram. You add some tools, for example, for me it was ManyChat, to convert engagement into traffic. And when you see content that performs well organically, you can always promote it through social advertising. Meta Ads are very powerful because you can test many different elements: creative, audience, captions, and then scale successful ads and turn off those that don't work. This is a kind of guide to action. You publish a lot of
content, find a successful one, make variations, promote the winner through paid advertising, disable the unsuccessful option, look at the numbers and just repeat. I like how simple this structure is. You know, publish a lot, understand, iterate, look at the numbers and just keep doing it over and over again. What advice would you give to viewers who are trying to find their first app idea? Yes, for me it's, uh, social media. I think it's a great place to find ideas because you can spend time looking at content from a niche that you like, that you might want to create a product for, and see what people
are complaining about or what they're struggling with. For me, it was like this: a lot of my followers were using Duolingo, but they didn't learn anything when I asked them, "Okay, say something in French." And they were embarrassed. The only thing they remembered was "Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?". It's not because they want to sleep with me, it's just that they remember the lyrics, you know? So I thought, "People memorize lyrics. So maybe we should make an app for that." So yes, social media is a great place to find ideas. This is very smart. We have so many founders come to us and say, "I found my idea just by scrolling through my feed, and it came to me after that." So for those of you scrolling through the feed
: just stop for a moment and try to see if there's an idea hiding there. I want to see the application in action. Can you show us a little demo of Canary and how it works? So, this is Canary. The first thing you'll see is a feed with a bunch of songs you can enjoy, and you can see the lyrics, the translation. Uh, you can type any words. So you can save them to your vocabulary list. You can take quizzes, like game elements. Uh, you can sing karaoke for practice. We have a game that will also help you practice: you have to translate every word you see very quickly. And we also have a social aspect, our community here, where you can
practice with people who speak the language you're learning and are learning the language you speak. So it's kind of a coincidence. That's all, actually. Again, I think this is a really cool and simple idea. That's why I wanted to invite you to the channel. Our final question we ask our Starter Story guests: if you could go back a year, or if you were addressing someone who is just starting out, what is the biggest lesson or piece of advice you would give yourself back then, or to this person watching this video? I truly believe that perfectionism is the enemy of good performance. You just need to launch something, even if
it looks ugly or doesn't work correctly at first, to get to market, get feedback, and then improve the product. I have many friends who are much smarter than me. They have been working on their app for several years now, and it still hasn't launched. I ask : "Why?" They answer: "No, it's not perfect yet." "He's not ready yet." And I do n't believe it. I say that readiness is always a process. So just start something. I like it. This is very excellent advice. Ben, congratulations on your success Canary. Very cool app. Thank you very much for visiting Starter Story, and we'd love to see you again when you reach $100,000 in monthly revenue.
Thank you very much, Justin. Thank you for inviting me So, I just had a chat with Ben about learning languages through music. I think this is just an incredibly smart and brilliant idea. This is one of the reasons I wanted to see him on my channel. The false conclusion that can be drawn from this video is that he is just a content creator who had a lot of followers, and that is why he achieved success. Of course, we had a lot of people on the channel with a large audience, and that certainly played a part in its success. But, in my opinion, what's even more interesting is the fact that he had been creating content for a long time before the idea for this app came to him. It was from one of
these videos that he developed the idea for an app that now brings in $25,000 a month. So the lesson for me is to create content that resonates with people and share your creative work. I believe it's an opportunity to connect with people, generate ideas, and hopefully find that business idea that will potentially change your life. Of course, this is not easy to do, but it is quite possible to figure it out. So, if you're interested in simple iOS app ideas, we have a link in the description below with a database of proven iOS app ideas where you can get inspired and start developing your own. Well, that's all for this issue.
Leave a comment if you have something to say, or a question if you have one. I read every one of them, even the negative ones. So don't worry, it doesn't offend me. But, you know, I would be grateful for a few nice comments. That's all for this issue. See you next time. See you later.
