César Pinto Castillo's $150 Mac could not build iPhone apps
- Growth
César Pinto Castillo built Ambre to test CloudKit and forgot about it; Sofia Larsson, a textile engineer, rewrote it to learn Swift — and it ended up featured on the App Store.
RevenueCat author Charlie Chapman
Author’s posts
Matt Birchler’s Apps folder has 99 folders. Most were never meant to ship.
- Growth
Matt Birchler used a Sketch template, SwiftUI, and rough early AI tools to become a native app developer — and today, his software earns more than either his blog or his YouTube channel.
How a $100 ad budget and a MacStories review turned Sequel into a hit
- Growth
Romain Lefebvre spent $100 on ads, refused to hustle on social media, and still built the most recommended media tracker on the internet — because he designed the app to market itself.
"What do you want me for then?" The icon designer's dilemma in the age of AI
- Growth
Matthew Skiles has spent 15 years hand-crafting the app icons you see all over WWDC videos — and he got his start with no portfolio, no formal training, and a lucky break.
A 19-day ChatGPT wrapper that made $10,000 in 36 hours
- Growth
Joe Fabisevich left Twitter three days before the Elon Musk acquisition to build a link-saving app — but a scrappy side project taught him the true power of a single well-placed press email.
Announcing Shipaton 2026: Ship an app, win big, join the fun
- Company
Shipaton 2026 — RevenueCat's global hackathon for mobile app builders, August 1 to September 30
A patron plan with no extra features outsold expectations — and proved design alone can be a business
- Growth
Andy Allen built a 2-person app studio whose most expensive subscription tier unlocks essentially no extra features — and it outsells expectations every year.
He turned down 75K for his app with 12K in sales. It hit $1M two years later.
- Growth
Eric Duffett had done $12,000 in total sales when a company offered $75,000 for his side-project golf app — and told him they'd crush him if he said no.
Why you should build another to-do list app (with a little help from Claude)
- Growth
Austin Blake built a task manager in the most crowded category on the App Store — and it got featured in the Apple Newsroom.
The three-week COVID pivot that saved an 11-year indie business
- Growth
Daniel Kennett nearly lost his house, his car, and his friendships building his first indie business — and then spent 11 years quietly building another one.
The Hail Mary pitch that launched a #1 App Store hit
- Growth
Bria Sullivan pitched a focus timer to Hank Green at the end of a meeting that was already over — and it hit #1 on the App Store.
Apple’s new monthly subscriptions with a 12-month commitment: useful, but probably not magic
- Engineering
A practical look at Apple’s new monthly annual subscriptions, what Google Play already supports, and where 12-month commitments might actually help.