Founder Playbook · Starter Story
12 tactics from Evan
I'm 14 And I Built A $14K/Month App
Watch the full episode“a friend told me about how he was struggling to stay on task and motivated. So that sparked an idea.”
Validate Your App Idea by Listening to Real Friends' Pain Points
Evan didn't do formal market research. After two apps that went nowhere, the idea for Locked came directly from a friend describing a real problem he was having. Building around that specific pain — rather than a market gap — gave the product an authentic foundation from day one.
“A friend told me about how he was struggling to stay on task and motivated So that sparked an idea I didn't want another boring habit tracker So I gamified the whole experience with leaderboards XP badges and even characters”
Gamify Your Core Loop to Make Behavior-Change Apps Actually Sticky
Evan saw a crowded habit-tracker market and chose differentiation through gamification rather than features. The result was character selection on onboarding, XP rewards for completing tasks, and a leaderboard — elements borrowed from games that drive compulsive return visits and make the app feel nothing like its competitors.
“idea to live in the app store It took about a month and a half”
Ship from Idea to App Store in Six Weeks Using AI Coding Tools
Evan's team spent two weeks in Figma designing from scratch, then transferred everything to Xcode using YouTube tutorials, prior knowledge, and Claude Code. The entire cycle — from blank canvas to a live, monetized app — compressed into roughly six weeks, proving AI coding tools have fundamentally lowered the build time floor.
“if they X out of this paywall or escape it will take them to a transaction abandoned paywall which is basically just a discounted offer for only $20 a year”
Use an Abandoned Paywall to Capture Price-Sensitive Users With a Discount
Evan runs a two-tier paywall: the primary offer is $40/year or $7/week with a 3-day free trial. Anyone who exits without converting is immediately shown a 50%-off fallback. This salvages revenue from users who balked at full price without cheapening the main offer for users willing to pay it.
“From the start of the onboarding you have to choose your character to get started”
Force Character Selection at the Start to Create Immediate Identity Investment
Locked is a gamified fitness app with leaderboards, XP, badges, and levels. Rather than starting with habit setup or permissions, the very first onboarding step is picking a character. This creates personal identity investment before the user ever sees the core features, making early abandonment far less likely.
“We also give users some basic tasks to start Check one off you get 100 XP”
Seed New Users With Pre-Built Tasks So They Earn XP Immediately
After onboarding, users land on the main screen with their level, XP, and a pre-populated task list. Rather than leaving them to figure out what to track, the app gives them starter tasks ready to check off. The first action earns a reward, delivering a dopamine hit before the user has invested any personal effort.
“he shows the app within the first 15 seconds. That's always something that you should require influencers to do.”
Require Influencers to Show Your App Within the First 15 Seconds
Evan's best-performing influencer deal generated around $3,000 and 1,800 downloads from roughly 1 million cross-platform views. A key non-negotiable in his contracts is front-loading the app demo — audiences who see the product immediately convert at far higher rates than those who encounter it buried mid-video.
“Jeremiah Jones has great engagement and his videos are filled with high quality comments. That's how I know he has an amazing audience which is arguably the most important factor.”
Vet Influencers by Comment Quality Not Just Follower Count
Evan explains why he chose a specific creator for a paid integration. Raw view counts matter less than the quality of the audience — evidenced by the comment section. This distinction helped him generate $3,000 and 1,800 downloads from a single video, proving that comment quality is a more reliable proxy for conversion than follower count.
“The third deal is a minimum view clause deal where you offer something like $500 with a 500,000 minimum view clause. This is the deal I almost always go with and it helps keep the CPM under your RPM.”
Use Minimum View Clauses to Guarantee Profitable Influencer Deals
Evan outlines four deal structures for influencer partnerships, but the minimum view clause deal is his default because it protects downside. The creator must hit a view threshold before getting paid, which mechanically keeps cost-per-thousand views below what the app earns per thousand — turning influencer spend into a guaranteed-positive-margin channel.
“Going into this channel I realized my RPM was around $2 to $3 So I knew I had to close creators at a CPM lower than that Typically it would be between the dollar and $1.50 range”
Negotiate CPM Deals by Knowing Your Own RPM First
Before reaching out to a single influencer, Evan calculated what each thousand views was worth to him in revenue. That number became his hard ceiling for every negotiation, turning influencer spend from a leap of faith into a math problem with a clear profit margin on every deal he closed.
“a habit tracker like Sebastian's that we had chatted with a few months ago that ranks well in ASO so iOS uh app store optimization.”
Use App Store Optimization as a Sustainable Moat Alongside Paid Channels
After the interview, host Pat Walls frames two winning strategies for crowded app categories: viral social media content (Evan's approach) or strong App Store Optimization. He presents ASO as a distinct, sustainable moat — a different growth vector that compounds organically and works independently of influencer spend.
“From a young age you are sighed into thinking there's only one path Go to school get good grades go to a good college then get a stable job and you'll be happy Most people are very hiveminded and follow that path without even questioning it If you can see through that early you gain a huge advantage”
Question the Default Life Script Before It Becomes Your Identity
Evan's closing advice reframes conventional schooling not as bad but as unchallenged default programming. He argues that the act of questioning the script — not necessarily rejecting it — is itself the competitive edge, because most people never stop to ask whether the path they are on is the one they actually chose.