Founder Playbook · Starter Story
8 tactics from David Adius
I Vibe Coded a $12K/Month Mobile App (Stoppr Breakdown)
Watch the full episode“I went on Google Trends I was looking for a keyword such as stop sugar and because for the past five years the trend of those keywords is basically going higher and higher and higher and then I check for the same keywords on Tik Tok and Instagram and I saw that there were a ton of women influencers”
Validate A Clone Niche With Google Trends Plus TikTok And Instagram Creator Volume
David validated the niche switch before writing any code by confirming a 5-year upward search curve on Google Trends, then verifying creator-side supply on TikTok and Instagram. Two cheap signals — rising keyword + active influencers in the niche — were enough to greenlight building a clone targeted at that audience.
“My first step was to download Twitter to take some screenshot of each screen What I wanted to see is basically like how we go from screen one to screen two to screen three So I was continuing cursor Please make the same screen with the same visual elements with the same color with the same image In two weeks and a half I did one full copy”
Screenshot Every Screen And Walk Cursor Through The Flow To Vibecode A 1-to-1 Clone
David screenshotted every screen of the target app, walked Cursor through the flow one screen at a time, and instructed it to match visuals, colors and assets exactly. Full clone in 2.5 weeks plus a week for Apple review. Today he'd use mobbin.com to bulk-download screenshots and the Figma MCP to cut build time roughly in half.
“I am using a tool which is called topy yappers.com which is basically a SAS that scrap a Tik Tok and Instagram and YouTube to find the exact profile that I need of influencers that worked with other apps before”
Launch By Scraping Niche Creators With Toppyappers, Auto-Reach Via Lindy, Amplify With Spark Ads
David's launch wedge was a geo+niche combo (France, women quitting sugar) where no local competitor existed. He reached the right creators by scraping TikTok, Instagram and YouTube for influencers who had already promoted similar apps via topyappers.com, piped contacts into Lindy.ai for outreach, then amplified winning videos with TikTok Spark Ads at roughly $100/mo.
“I've been working mainly with French influencers because I noticed that there was no one in France doing something like to help women by cutting a sugar process”
Pick An Untapped Geography Where No Local Creator Already Owns The Niche
David's edge wasn't the product, it was geography. By cloning a proven English-language app into France, where no local creators were already covering the quit-sugar angle, every French influencer collab was greenfield reach for the category. The original keeps the English market; he owns France uncontested.
“Fastest way to make some money right now is to do one-to-one copy of a very successful app... I change black by pink I replace add content by sugar and then done.”
Clone The App Screen-For-Screen But Switch The Niche So You Inherit The Playbook Not The Audience
David found a $200K/month app for quitting porn (Quittr), cloned every screen and word, then swapped the niche to quitting sugar for Gen Z women. The 1% different change wasn't the product — it was the customer base, which meant inheriting proven onboarding and paywall mechanics without competing for the original's audience.
“We have a monthly subscription. We have a weekly and we have [yearly] with a trial as well.”
Run A Weekly Plus Monthly Plus Trial-Annual Paywall To Catch Every Commitment Tier
Stoppr monetizes 13-25 year old women with a three-tier paywall: weekly, monthly, and annual-with-trial. Converting ~1.5% of 60K downloads into 900 paying subs at this mix drives $12K/mo — the weekly catches impulse buyers, the trialed annual locks in committed quitters.
“When I had downloaded the Quitter app I was very pleased by their onboarding and I did one exact copy of their onboarding because it was so good.”
Copy The Whole Onboarding Of The Proven App Because That Is Where Paywall Conversion Happens
Rather than designing onboarding from scratch, David screenshotted every screen of the $200K/mo Quittr app and had Cursor rebuild it identically, swapping only colors and the niche keyword. Onboarding is the highest-leverage surface to clone because it's where activation and the paywall conversion happen.
“We have the ultra plan of cursor which cost $200 per month on mix panel Last month I paid around $100 and for the Tik Tok spot ads... cost me around $100 per month So after five months my profit margin for stopper is 35%.”
Run A $12K-Per-Month Cloned App On Roughly $400 Of Tools At 35 Percent Margin
David's entire stack — Cursor Ultra, Mixpanel, RevenueCat, and TikTok Spark Ads — runs at roughly $400/month against $12K MRR. The 35% margin reflects Apple's cut plus influencer payouts, not infrastructure. The clone playbook is capital-light enough to bootstrap from a job.