Founder Playbook · Starter Story
5 tactics from Max
I Make $10K Per Month From 28 Apps
Watch the full episode“When I do my research I make sure the keyword has at least 20% of popularity and 60 or 70% difficulty...I check top competitors and look at their monthly revenue...my benchmark is at least 100 or €200 per month. If the competitor does less...there's not that much money in that market.”
Gate Every Idea Behind 20 Percent Popularity, Sub-70 Difficulty, And €200 Competitor Revenue
Max's idea filter is a hard numeric gate, not vibes. He uses Astro to surface keywords meeting his popularity-difficulty ratio, then verifies on Sensor Tower that the top competitor already earns at least €100-200/mo. Any keyword failing either test gets dropped before he opens an editor.
“If you take study apps you can target physics AI, chemistry AI, math AI — these are different keywords but they are related to students. That gives me an opportunity after creating one app to quickly jump into the closely related keywords...For some apps I basically copy like 90% of the code which gives me the instant time for the building.”
Cluster Adjacent Keywords In One Audience So Each New App Reuses The Last
Max maps adjacent keywords around a single audience (e.g. students: physics AI, chemistry AI, math AI), so one built app becomes a template he respins for each sibling keyword. ASO learnings compound, code reuses, and what looks like 28 separate apps is really a few base templates fanned out across keyword clusters.
“I drag and drop some UI elements, custom buttons, views, screens. So instead of building a new setting screen over and over again I just drag and drop, and same with onboarding and paywall. And for some apps I basically copy like 90% of the code which gives me like the instant time for the building.”
Drag And Drop A Reusable Paywall And Onboarding Into Every New App For Two-Hour Builds
The two-hour app speed isn't AI magic — it's a personal component library. Paywalls, onboarding flows, and settings screens get copied wholesale, so each new app only needs the one differentiated feature wired in. Activation and monetization arrive on day one without any UX redesign.
“When you just ship the app you get this famous app store boost but then over time it fades away and then I see if it keeps going down or it's kind of stabilized or even growing and if the app is not sinking it means it has potential...I do revisit apps that show organic traction or retention...I start improving them do some polishing do some bug fixes and add ads.”
Use The App Store Launch Boost As A Free A/B Test For Which Apps Deserve Investment
Max treats every launch as a data probe: ship lean, watch what the App Store's launch boost reveals, and only reinvest in apps whose curves flatten or grow after the bump fades. Winners get polish, bug fixes, and paid ads; losers stay shipped-and-forgotten — turning the portfolio into a self-selecting investment funnel.
“Don't waste your time on polishing it up thinking about adding one more killer feature that would definitely get you a ton of users. No, don't do it. Get it ready, bugs free, just one single feature — ship it and let users tell you what they think about it while you're building another app.”
Ship One Bug-Free Feature And Let Users — Not Your Roadmap — Pick The Next One
Max's one-line MVP rule: scope to a single feature, fix the bugs, then move on. He explicitly rejects the urge to add 'one more killer feature' pre-launch — the next app is the better use of that time, and real users will tell you what to build next. The portfolio approach only works if each app reaches users fast.