In late 2024 I quit my job as an engineer at Lyft to go fix my own doomscrolling problem. I put together a 4,000-word market-research report with 52 sources. Then I spent about 5 months building my first app and trying to market it. I gave it everything: filming TikToks, Product Hunt, ASO, and more.
It made $0,000,000.
But I learned.
The next app I worked on made $1,000,000.
The product wasn't really the difference. My first app was fine, even if very ugly. The people who used it liked it. What changed between $0 and a million was actually focusing on the things that matter.
You can verify the revenue here: https://verified.revenuecat.com/pushscroll
## Who I am
I'm Mario, a software engineer working on B2C apps full time since I left Lyft.
The first one was SpeedBump, an intentionally annoying app to help you scroll less. I built it alone, and I made every mistake below with it.
The second is Pushscroll, which I build with my co-founder Alejandro (@skyirezumi). It makes you do pushups before you can doomscroll: 28,572,256 of them so far, and $100k+ MRR.
## Before we start
Most apps fail. Mine did. I'm not a guru, and I don't really trust anyone selling a 7-step formula.
I'll also admit that luck is real. Years ago, as a clueless student, I made a silly Android app that got 5 million downloads. I had no idea what I was doing, the timing was just right (that's a story for another time). So I know some of this is random.
The 7 things below aren't, though. They're the part you actually control, and I got every one of them wrong before I got them right. You're probably making one or two of them right now.
## Mistake 1: I built the whole thing before doing any marketing
I wrote the app first and thought about distribution second. Months of code before I had a real way to get it in front of people.
To be fair, I did talk to users a lot, it wasn't just coding. I just hadn't figured out how to actually distribute the thing, and B2C is ruthless if you don't know marketing. You can build something people love and still watch it go nowhere, which is just... sad. If a tree falls in a forest but no one hears it, did it really fall?
This is the easiest mistake to make if you're technical. Building is the fun part, so marketing becomes something you'll deal with later. before writing so much code, I should have figured out how my app would spread, not just whether people wanted it.
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