App Expert: How to Build Viral Apps in 30 Days, Make Millions at 17, and Retire Before College

Today's guest made $20 million before

graduating high school. Last month, the

app generated just over $2 million. At

13, he built a website that let kids

bypass school restrictions and play

games online, selling it for $100,000 a

few years later. He then took the

profits and created Cal AI, a

revolutionary app that tracks calories

simply by taking a picture. He quickly

scaled the business to a million dollars

a month and hopes to replace My Fitness

Pal as the number one health app on the

app store. The space is at least big

enough where we could get to the 200

million my fitness fell is doing at

least. In this episode, we'll break down

his exact blueprint for creating viral

apps, explore how AI is reshaping health

and nutrition, and see just what it

takes to create a billiondoll product at

18 years old. I probably shouldn't share

much more about this because of the

specific copycats that will see it and

replicate the strategies that we have

done. But Zack Yadagari, welcome to the

Jack Neil podcast. Thanks for having me

on. Yeah, of course, man. Um, we're in

New York City right now, guys. I flew

out here to see Zach and a couple other

people. So, yeah, excited to talk to

you, man. Um, a good place to start

here. So, Zach, you're still in high

school. Um, how much money did you make

last month? Last month, the app

generated just over $2 million in

revenue. What is it projected to do by

the end of the year? By the end of the

year, it's projected to exceed $24

million in revenue. And you launched the

app 10 months ago. 10 months ago, and

you're still in high school. Uh you

graduate in a few months, I'm guessing.

So, what would that put your app valued

at? With these things, it's always

tricky. It's kind of subjective and

different companies could value it very

differently if they're looking to

acquire

it. But I would say without a doubt it

would have to be in the range of 40

to 120

million which is kind of broad but it is

more nuanced. Yeah, it's interesting

multiples especially with a subscription

model uh consumer app. But yeah, I kind

of want to talk about uh let's just give

people a taste of what your life looks

like. Uh like what did you what were you

up to before this podcast? Before this

podcast, I went to school, high school

today. And what did you

learn? I learned about integrals

and my physics teacher was actually

absent. Learned about inflation and GDP.

So some cool little takeaways.

Interesting. Okay. Um, and then kind of

give me your backstory on uh this app,

Cali. You made an app that it's ranked

number eight health app on the iPhone.

You made an app that lets people track

calories by taking a picture. I believe

today it's actually ranked number six in

the health and fitness section of the

app store. It's always changing. The

backstory to the app depends how far

back you want me to go, but growing up I

was always very skinny and I wanted to

put on weight to impress girls at my

school to be completely honest. And I

started going to the gym but quickly

learned the best way to gain muscle is

to eat in a calorie surplus. So I

started tracking my calories on one of

the most popular calorie tracking apps

at the time. This was about two years

ago, but three days after getting

started, I completely quit. It was

extremely tedious to weigh my food on a

scale, every single meal, type out each

ingredient that I ate. I knew there was

a better solution, but at the time, I

wasn't sure what it

was. The next year, all of these AI

models started being released. OpenAI

with Chat GBT, Anthropic with Claude,

and I also started experimenting

building mobile consumer apps. And so

then almost a year ago at this point, I

started speaking to my co-founder of

Calai, Blake Anderson, and we decided to

work on Cal AI. and kind of give me the

process of how did you get to that point

of like developing an app at such a

young age? I was obsessed with video

games. I wanted to play Minecraft,

Roblox all day. And by the time I was

seven, I actually wanted to create my

own video games. So, I begged my mom to

put me in a coding camp, which she did.

And that didn't teach me much as a

7-year-old, the few weeks there, but it

sparked the interest. And then for the

next couple of years, I would binge

watch YouTube videos all day, teaching

me how to create all kinds of different

games. By the time I was 12, I put my

first app on the app store. It's a

little soccer game where ball would fall

from the sky. You would just tap to try

to shoot in the goal. None of these

projects really went anywhere, but they

were filled with learning lessons, just

how to build

things. Then my freshman year of high

school, COVID happened. Chromebooks were

given out to all of the students to

reduce

contact. And unsurprisingly, students

started playing games during school. So

I saw a clear opportunity to capitalize

on this. Basically, all of these game

sites were scattered across different

websites and they would have these

obscure links be like

qrstuv.com and that would have games on

it or

mathisfunxyz.com would have a game on

it. So, I saw potential to combine all

of these games onto one hub site. I

called it totallyscience.co co so that

it would be unblocked and within the

next two years I grew that to 5 million

users and then sold it at 16 years old.

So when you were in middle school you

made a company that you sold for

$100,000.

I started it the end of 8th grade and

then it was making $60,000 a year my

freshman year of high school my

sophomore year and then I sold it my

junior year. And what were you doing

with the money at the time? At the time

I saved it. I didn't spend it on

anything. I actually didn't invest it

either. So it was just sitting in a bank

account losing value. But then when I

started working on new projects, I

reinvested it into marketing like Cali.

So tell me about Totally Science. So you

create this website uh and then all the

games you kind of sourced from other

code or how did that work? So these

games were mainly ripoffs of other

games. The popular games at the time.

Fall Guys was one of them. Minecraft and

people would publicly share this code on

GitHub. So, we took those files and put

them all on my site. And then how were

you monetizing? We put banner ads. It

was Google AdSense that supported it.

And I think there was a lot more

potential to monetize it. If I could go

back, I would have tried to strike

partnerships with a company like Voodoo,

get their games up, and then have a QR

code where people can download and then

negotiate a deal where I would get paid

X amount of cents per download. It was a

good amount of money for a kid for sure.

And you said we were you did you have a

team at the time? So, it was mainly

myself. I had one other friend who was a

developer. So, the two of us. I'm

curious like how did you know all this

stuff? Like I understand some of the

coding, but how did you know how to make

a website, monetize it, run banner ads?

Like were you just how did you know that

something like that could even make

money? A lot of learning on the go. I

built the site and grew it long before I

actually monetized it. So I left

thousands of dollars on the table by not

monetizing it sooner. I don't actually

remember what exactly sparked me to put

ads on the site, but I remember I had my

first month of 300,000 monthly active

users and I thought maybe if I put ads

I'll make I maybe like 20 bucks a day. I