Dumb iPhone Apps Are Making People Rich Again (Here’s how)

TL;DR

Pat from Starter Story discusses why simple iPhone apps are becoming lucrative again, driven by AI coding tools that reduce team size to zero and TikTok as a discovery platform. He advocates validating an app idea by creating a viral TikTok video before building the app. The broader opportunity spans health, wealth, relationships, productivity, and self‑improvement categories.

Key insights

• Six out of twelve founders Pat interviews per week are succeeding with iOS apps; examples include an app that forces pushups before allowing social media (Push Scroll) and a stop‑vaping tracker (Puff
• The canonical playbook: create a fake‑app‑demonstration video on TikTok, let it go viral, then scramble to build the actual app – reversing the traditional build‑first approach.
• Apps are the new info products: any small, gimmicky app in health, wealth, relationships, productivity, or self‑improvement can be profitable because AI coding tools let one person (or zero team membe