$100k MRR and 25M Push-Ups with a mobile app (Complete Guide)

Over the course of roughly 12 months Mario (@null_deref ) and me scaled our app Pushscroll to $100k+ MRR and 1M+ Users across Android and iOS.

In this article I'm going to tell you how everyone (yes, everyone, including your abuela) can make bank with a mobile app.

This article was inspired by Mau's article for his Screen-time app "Prayer Lock", so make sure to follow him too: @maubaron

I'm going to go step by step with you so you can prevent all the mistakes we did, because I believe everyone here can do it as long as you do NOT give up.

This advice shold take you to 10-50k mrr if you apply it correctly. It might be the most honest article you will read, some tough pills to swallow, but the most realistic way to a big exit.

STEP #1: Finding a viral idea

Without a viral idea, you're fucked. Simple as that.

So make sure you're idea is doing 80% of the work in marketing, cause if you find the right idea, it really is gonna make marketing 10x easier.

I wrote an extensive guide on how to do this if you wanna go more into detail, but here's the basic gist of it:

A viral idea is an idea that makes your marketing 10x easier. You can post the worst, lowest effort video known to mankind and STILL pull millions of views, because the idea does the selling for you.

1. It solves a BIG and fundamental problem (think Maslow's pyramid). And the market has to be growing. Doomscrolling for example affects millions of teens and it's only getting worse.

2. It has high perceived value. Dream outcome x how likely your app actually delivers it, divided by time to results x effort needed. Maximize the top, minimize the bottom.

3. You can explain it in 3 words. Umax: face analysis. Cal AI: AI calorie counter. Pushscroll: pushups before doomscrolling. If you can't, people scroll. Assume maximum brain rot.

4. It's VISUAL. The brain processes images 60,000x faster than words. If 2 screens already show the value, you don't need to explain anything.

5. It passes the groupchat test. "Did you hear about that app that..." If your app doesn't finish that sentence naturally, it won't get shared.

How to actually find one:

• Warm up a fresh TikTok account in your niche and study what blows up

• Copy what already works and adapt it to a new niche (check Sensortower first, downloads ≠ revenue)

• Consume content from completely foreign niches, that's when your brain makes creative connections

Then validate it with TikTok content BEFORE you build anything. People don't care HOW their problem gets solved, only THAT it gets solved. If the video hits, build the app.

Once you have an idea, throw it into this tool i made to validate them:

Idea validator

STEP #2: Build an embarrassingly simple MVP (max 2 weeks)

Your validation video went viral? Congrats, you now have people BEGGING you in the comments to build the app. Don't make them wait.

We built the first version of Pushscroll in 1 week. It was 3 screens: a half-broken pushup detector, a screen to pick which apps to block, and a block screen. That's it. It was embarrassing. It got completely rewritten later. Doesn't matter.

I'm pretty sure you already know abotu Claude code and all of this, so no need to explain it, but with the drop of Fable 5 i'm pretty sure you can one shot a working MVP in no time.

Your MVP has exactly one job: prove that people will PAY. Everything else is fluff.

The launch playbook that got us 20-30k downloads from ONE video (and this only works if the idea is novel):

• Announce the launch with urgency: "everyone who downloads in the first week gets lifetime premium for free"

• That video converted at ~10% view-to-download (normal benchmark is below 1%)

• When the offer expires, hard paywall goes up. The video keeps getting pushed by the algorithm, and now everyone who watches it hits a paywall. That's your first revenue.

Speed is everything. App review bureaucracy alone takes weeks, so build fast and use that waiting time to prepare content.

Step #3: Find ONE winning organic format and milk it to death

Here's where we almost died: we took our first $5k and spent it ALL on influencers. The videos got views, nobody downloaded. Lost basically everything.

Broke and desperate, we started doing organic ourselves. Best thing that ever happened to us.

The process:

1. Look at competitor content and steal the HOOKS (not the videos)

2. Test daily until something hits

3. Rinse and repeat the winner until it stops working

4. Always have 3-4 formats rotating, every format fatigues eventually

Our winner: the over-the-shoulder format. "Bro is doing pushups at 2am to scroll reels 💀" filmed like a stranger caught you in the wild. Curiosity does ALL the work. Why is this guy doing pushups in the rain at 3am?? People HAVE to watch. One video went to 8.6M views and printed ~$20k. From ONE video.

What actually matters:

• 80% of your energy goes into the hook. Not 50. 80.

• Track your skip rate (% who leave in the first 3 seconds). 30% = dead format. ~18% = winner.

• Once they're hooked, go FULL ad mode. People don't care that it's an ad if you're solving their actual problem. Our shameless ad versions converted way better than the cinematic artsy ones.

This only works once you'r idea is actually viral, most people fail here cause they skipped step 1.

Step #4: Obsess over your onboarding and paywall

Once downloads are flowing, THIS is where money is made or lost. We double conversion without touching the app itself. Just the onboarding.

Treat your onboarding like a viral video: hook, retention, payoff.

• It's a conversation, not a quiz. Mirror their answers back so it feels custom built for them.

• Apply Hormozi's value equation on EVERY screen: crank up dream outcome and perceived likelihood, crush time delay and effort.

• Our secret weapon is the "what have you already tried" screen. They select greyscale, app timers, deleting apps... then we show them why each one failed (with actual citations). Now we're the experts and the last option standing.

• Stack micro-commitments before the paywall. We literally made people sign their name at one point.

• Let them USE the core feature during onboarding. A demo beats a description every time.

• Trigger the review prompt right after their first completed exercise, at peak excitement. Most users will never pay you, but their 5-star review prints free organic downloads forever (@maubaron goes into more detail on this, i recommend checking him out).

Paywall learnings (we A/B tested all of this, trust the data not your gut):

• Hard paywall. Free users are a charity, you're running a business.

• A video paywall beat every static design we tried. The paywall is content too.

• Someone abandons the purchase? Show an exit offer with a discount. Recovered carts are free money.

• Test trial lengths, durations, designs. ARPU is the ONLY north star, single metrics will lie to you.

• Segment your paywall by geo. US users pay roughly 2x what Europeans pay, showing everyone the same price is burning money. Geo + demand based pricing gave us a ~30% ARPU lift alone.

Step #5: Scale with UGC and paid ads

Organic proves the format. UGC and ads scale it. NEVER the other way around.

UGC:

• Base + view based bonus is usually the best payment method for ugc to keep them hungry to produce fire videos without chasing the base pay bag.

• If you're European like us: hire US-based creators with US sim cards. The algorithm distributes to their region, and US users are worth ~2x.

• Make creators warm up their accounts for 3-4 days before promoting anything, or enjoy your shadowban.

• Make them post the viral formats that you yourself found earlier or through competitors

Paid ads (minimum starting investment here is 10k USD):

• Only start ads once your funnel converts, otherwise you're lighting money on fire

• Feed Meta fresh creatives every week and let the algorithm pick the winners. Do not panick change it when you see a bad day, let meta cook.

• Don't get reckless with spend, go slowly when you see it makes sense, when you increase spend it's like shifting gears in a car, you need to build the revs back up to shift to the next gear.

• KISS, keep it stupid simple, all the bidcap and costcap people have no clue what they're talkign about and are trying to sell you a BS course.

-> keep it broad and let meta cook.

Step #6: Building for the exit / a tough pill to swallow.

Tough pill: consumer subscription apps don't sell on revenue multiples. They sell on EBITDA multiples. Nobody tells you this. Your $100k MRR means nothing to a buyer if you're spending $95k to get it.

So make sure you're profitable, otherwise what look big on paper, actually gives you a lower exit than your local McDonalds worker would earn in 12 months.

Also be prepared to commit minum 12-18 months, acquirers wanna see the renewal rate of your yearly subs, otherwise your multiple goes from 5x to 2x if you're lucky.

That's the whole playbook. It's simple, but it's not easy. Remember the 7%? The only variable you actually control is not giving up.

Now stop reading articles and go post your first video.

Links

• skyirezumi.com/idea-validator