Founder Playbook · Starter Story
5 tactics from Flo
How This App Makes $35K/Month
Watch the full episode“We have a percentage of the profits and a fixed monthly retainer. Since it's profit-based, he's incentivized to actually do what's best for the app — he's constantly thinking about what to do and how to make the greatest videos.”
One profit-share influencer takes app from $300 to $35K MRR in one year
Flo structured his influencer deal around profit-sharing rather than flat fees or revenue percentage, which he found didn't scale well. Because the creator has real skin in the game, he acts more like a co-founder on growth than a contractor delivering videos.
“We only offer a 7-day trial right now. We used to be premium. With A/B testing we figured out that hard paywall with free trial works best for us.”
7-day hard paywall trial outperforms freemium in A/B tests
Flo runs Monai as a subscription app and experimented with different monetization models via RevenueCat A/B tests. He found that removing the freemium tier and gating everything behind a short trial converted better than giving users a permanent free tier.
“Before that I built an app that took me 2 years and in the end I launched it and obviously no one cared about it. So I wanted to improve that and launch it very quickly. I think it took me a month or two to get the first version and then I continuously iterated over it.”
Ship in one to two months or a two-year build leads to zero traction
Flo had already learned the hard way that long build cycles don't guarantee success. With Monai, he deliberately capped his initial build time to one or two months to get real market feedback before over-investing in features nobody asked for.
“I tried many different expense tracking apps over the years and always quit them because they were just too cumbersome to use. I combined AI to make it a more frictionless experience — voice input or automations automatically create the transaction, add tags, add the category.”
AI voice input removes the friction that causes expense app churn
Flo identified that the core reason users churn from expense trackers is the manual logging burden. His solution was AI-powered voice entry and Apple Pay Shortcuts automation that log transactions the moment a payment is made, eliminating the step most users skip.
“What worked for me is that you should add your social handles on your profile. This is the first step you should probably do when you build an app. I think this will become increasingly important because the popularity of apps is getting bigger. More content creators will see the value in collaborating with a developer.”
Adding social handles inside the app lets influencers find and pitch you first
Flo's influencer partnership started because the creator found Flo's social links inside the app itself and reached out first. Being discoverable flipped the power dynamic: inbound interest gave Flo better negotiating leverage than cold outreach would have.