Kevin Liu

app founder | 150K mrr

[Kevin Liu @kevinliutalks]

Day 1 of building in public

Give tips pls

[Kevin Liu @kevinliutalks]

“Every app is different. Test shit out yourself. But in general if people are paying for your product without even trying it out they either - are stupid”

Yes.

They are stupid, and almost universally so. I don’t know why people are so confidently like this. It’s clear as day that all of health and fitness (the average x app) is hard paywall.

If it didn’t work for you, that’s fine. But don’t turn people off what works for the vast majority of successful apps.

[Aadhav Sundar @1Aadhav]

"yo hard paywall is the move bro I started making so much more money"

STFU.

Every app is different. Test shit out yourself. But in general if people are paying for your product without even trying it out they either

- are stupid
- trust you A LOT
- already know what it is because there are a million apps for it

also you probably didn't make more money. look deeper into your stats.

[Kevin Liu @kevinliutalks]

Fundamental attribution problem.

The reason you make $100/day has nothing to do with the 1k organic.

And let's not promote "not going viral." That's how you stay at $100/day.

[Ethan Cajigas @aureliuscajigas]

Going viral is dead 💀

I literally get 1000 views on my organic posts
And make $100/day

Just do more of what works

Not what everyone else is doing

[Kevin Liu @kevinliutalks]

@rihntv people can tell. even if you can't tell they are suspicious. just make the ai fruits for slideshows like normal people

[Kevin Liu @kevinliutalks]

That's not great at all. If I made 5x that much I would still think I was broke.

The only people who think this live in Bangkok.

But this is shoebox-tier rent in Manhattan.

Let's not delude ourselves into thinking we're the shit.

[Will @athcanft]

what $10k MRR from an app actually nets:

- apple tax 15-30%
- ad spend 30-40%
- refunds ~2%
- api costs, tools...

you keep maybe $2.5-3.5k

still f*cking great for a solo founder

just don't compare your profit to someone's revenue screenshot

[Kevin Liu @kevinliutalks]

@roasmaxer Ts just happens some times. If I didn't do anything and I can't find anything then I won't lose sleep.

[Kevin Liu @kevinliutalks]

Indie developers believe that marketing is some dark magic that the layman will never understand.

But the reality is that 15 year old ecom bros do this. It's not easy, but you are psyching yourself out.

Post the damn reel, run the damn ad.

[Anas @Anas_founder]

Hot take:

Coding is no longer the most valuable skill in tech.

Marketing is.

[Kevin Liu @kevinliutalks]

@buildwithiso If you're working hard, then think hard for 1 day out of the week.

[Kevin Liu @kevinliutalks]

You made $33.6 in two hours. After apple tax, that's $28.56, not including ops or any marketing cost.

And out of that 28, only 9 is new revenue.

That is less than federal minimum wage.

Maybe the app is failing? Perhaps there may still be a marketing issue.

[Ethan Cajigas @aureliuscajigas]

your app isn't failing

you're just terrible at marketing it

[Kevin Liu @kevinliutalks]

My first few weeks into the app, I woke up to 50 downloads from India. I averaged 5 a day before.

India was growth, I thought. My emails were full of Indian support requests and other time sinks. A population of 1.4 billion must be worth catering and localizing to!

How wrong I was. Months later, only after hitting 10k/mo had I recevied my first Indian sale.

[Financial Dystopia @financedystop]

After 11 years in business, this entrepreneur realized that clients with the smallest budgets are often the most demanding and explains why

[Kevin Liu @kevinliutalks]

@roasmaxer How significant? How much volume do you have? What channel are you running? My conversion fluctuates depending on a lot of things. Maybe audience changes from T1 to worse, maybe new format is less performant, maybe there is a bug.

[Kevin Liu @kevinliutalks]

@erbybody 😭😭😭 LOL

[Kevin Liu @kevinliutalks]

One of the best things I ever did was set up a robust QA pipeline.

After testing in dev, my EAS production builds cannot start unless I sign a checklist. Then they automatically go through tests, then get shipped to another phone (not the one used for development) to be manually tested.

It's impossible to test everything manually, but it's good to cover the onboarding/paywall + whatever was changed at minimum.

Write tests and gates for youself. I want to be lazy, but have made it so I can't be.

[Kyan @kyanbuilds]

When no one subscribes to your app for 30 minutes straight and you panic thinking you broke something

[Kevin Liu @kevinliutalks]

I thought I was slick for putting an exit offer here - turns out nobody cares. It makes like 4 bucks a day.

Being creative with native features is often playing smart, not being smart. If it were so easy to make money, more people would.

[Luna @LunaBitar]

10 days ago I added this feature to both my apps.

I’ve had a blast talking to users who ask me abt the app or call out minor inconveniences which I get to fix right away.

Lmk how yall communicate to app users best… particularly for app feedback.

[Kevin Liu @kevinliutalks]

The joke has gone too far.

[Peter Steinberger 🦞 @steipete]

Are we still talking loops or did we shift to graphs yet?

[Kevin Liu @kevinliutalks]

@snickers_candee No openclaw, just raw codex. It alone is really quite nice with /goal and a mobile desktop client

[Kevin Liu @kevinliutalks]

Maybe you hate your OpenClaw. That’s fine.

But I have come to enjoy the beauty of an always-on Linux dev environment created from an old laptop.

Remotely checking in on long-running goals from my phone at the cafe is peak.

[vas @vasuman]

Every man has two lives.

The second one begins when he finally admits he was wrong about OpenClaw and sells his Mac Minis.

[Kevin Liu @kevinliutalks]

Queen of vagueposting.

Just shill the SaaS and leave. This charade isn’t it.

[Anum  @anumness]

GUYS!!! Im building something really exciting for the little guys who are struggling to promote their apps and don't currently have a ton of budget for advertisement.

Watch this space. I'm going to make a little announcement soon.

[Kevin Liu @kevinliutalks]

@snickers_candee My thoughts exactly

[Kevin Liu @kevinliutalks]

Feels like fighting an uphill battle.

Some people make it work. But it’s so highly edited and hard to get right. They need to cut every 2 seconds, intersperse hella images, maintain character coherence, etc.

At some point why bother? If you are paying top dollar for editors you might as well reach for humans.

If you want cheap and automated, go with slideshows.

If you want more expensive but converting, do human UGC.

AI UGC is not cheap, not automatic, and you still need to manage/ideate creative yourself.

The juice is not worth the squeeze.

[Nick Lawton @nicholasnlawton]

Thoughts on AI UGC?

Be honest.