I'm a serial app builder that's built

over 14 different apps in the past 5

years and my current app just recently

crossed five grand a month of revenue.

And the number one question that I get

in my comments is how do I come up with

an app idea on what to build? So in this

video I'm going to break down my entire

process about how to come up with ideas

as well as how to validate app ideas or

software ideas for you to build. Whether

that be to build your own micro SAS side

hustle of a couple hundred bucks a month

while holding down your day job or even

if you're trying to aim for something

bigger where you can turn your side

hustle into your main hustle. Now for

full context before we get into this I

want to give a disclosure and saying I

am not an expert. I'm a random dude on

the internet that just talks way too

much who so happened to have built a lot

of apps in the past who so happened to

have built a couple of apps in the past

couple years or so that gone to like$1

or $2,000 of revenue. And my most recent

one.ai AI is at around $5,000 of

revenue. But I'm not an expert by any

means. I'm not a 100 millionaire retired

in the Bahamas sipping on my margaritas.

But that might make me a little bit more

relatable to you than a 100 millionaire

billionaire giving you advice on how to

build a business because I'm only a

couple steps ahead of you, whereas

they're probably like a billion steps

ahead of you and me as well. That's

everything. Let us get into the video

and let's first talk about how to come

up with good ideas. Now, my biggest

piece of advice for anyone, especially

if you've literally never built an app

before, is to just build anything. But

build it really seriously. Like build it

with the intention to actually launch

and to actually try to market and grow

that app. And the reason why I recommend

this is just by building any app like

very seriously though. Not just as like

a fun little side weekend project, but

like actually very seriously, you're

going to run into a lot of problems and

a lot of annoyances that you face while

trying to grow and market your own app.

And those little annoyances and pain

points that you face along the building

and growing process will seed new

potential business or app ideas that you

can build. like, "Oh, what if I could

productize this?" Like, I didn't even

know that this is something that I could

productize. But this is a huge pain

point that I found when building and

trying to grow my own app. Chances are

they're going to be other builders and

other people out there that are going to

run into the same problems. And then

most likely for the first couple of

apps, they're going to be pretty bad.

Mine were absolute dog [ __ ] and they're

all dead now. So, then once you shut

down that app, you're going to have a

whole new list of ideas that you might

want to tackle. So, it's really just an

endless flywheel of ideas being

generated. The more you build, the more

pain points you come across, the more

app ideas and software ideas that you'll

come across as well. Now, outside of

just building a lot, another way that

you can approach ideiation, the one that

I think is probably the most effective

is actually just scrolling a ton on Tik

Tok and Instagram and social media in

general and to see what apps are trying

to target you with advertisement.

Because the thing is these days, the

algorithm is pretty good that they know

how to target the target user and target

customer demographic pretty well. So,

chances are any ad that you're going to

come across on Tik Tok and Instagram or

any form of social media is going to be

an app that is kind of catered to you or

potentially people like you. and these

apps that might look at you as a

potential customer or user because

chances are you know people that are

similar to you. So if an app is being

targeted towards you, if you do end up

building that app, you will then be able

to share that app with your friends who

are similar to you. I'll talk about this

more in the section of the video where I

talk about how to validate ideas, but I

am a really big proponent of just

copying ideas and apps that already

exist out there. More on that later.

Another example of a really great way to

develop app ideas is honestly just to do

a lot of side quests. I'm gonna be

honest. Chances are that if you are

watching this video, you are somebody

that's in your early to mid20s. You work

in tech. You have a nineto-ive job and

you don't really do much else. It's

really hard to find other pain points or

interesting ideas when you do the same

thing day in and day out and nothing

without any type of variety inside of

it. Because how do you discover

painoints if your life is so comfortable

and so chill and you're not doing

anything new. You're not going to

discover much pain points there. So try

to go on some side quests, do things

that are totally out of your niche or

meet people in other industries in other

domains and see just hang out with them

and eventually you'll start to see the

pain points that they're running into as

well. Let me give you a really

interesting example of someone who did

this really really well. So once again,

this is totally not a sponsored video

because this is really irrelevant to

probably all of my viewers, including

myself, but I came across this app right

here. It's called Freed. This is

essentially a app built for physicians,

people in the health care field to

automatically listen in on any patient

interaction and produce notes or charts

for these patients. Because, you know,

if you go to like a doctor, you talk to

them, they'll write some stuff down in

your chart, keep track of whatever

health issues you're having. Like, for

example, they see me, they're like,

"Fuck, this guy's so good-looking. Holy

[ __ ] like we've never seen someone like

him before." You know, normally they

would have to manually write that down

and type it themselves. But this app,

it's essentially an AI meeting

note-taking tool. It's an app on your

phone or computer. It listens in on the

patient interaction, generates a

summary, generates a note, like a

patient physician note to save into

their like electronic health record of

choice. And I believe the origin story

of this app goes that the person that

built it, their partner is in medicine

and they would see their partner

spending so many hours every single day

doing manual notes and manual charting.

The actual creator of this was in tech

and he was like, "Oh, we can just build

something to help make your life

easier." So, this is an example of

someone that knew people in a different

industry, saw other person's pain point

really, really intimately and was able

to help build a solution for that. Cuz

if you really look at this tool, like

it's really not all that different from

like a Cluey if we're being honest and

it's not all that different from a

granola. They're kind of the same thing.

But because this is so hyperargeted

towards physicians and physicians don't

have as much bleeding edge tech that the

tech world does, when this came out,

they were like, "Wo, I didn't know you

can do this. This is crazy." But to

everybody else, it's like, "Bro, it's a

Cluey dupe." Or, "Bro, it's a granola

dupe." you know, not all that different,

but that's a really great example of

just going going on side quests, knowing

people in other industries really

intimately. Hey yo, and building

solutions for other people with your

technical background. Now, this does

have some cons that I'll talk about a

little later as well in like the

validation section, but this is a really

reasonable strategy that probably a lot

of people have taken to go out and build

really successful apps out there. One

thing I've been thinking a lot about

lately in terms of how to get an edge

when you're building an app that has AI

in it is hyperpersonalization. In this

day and age where any app can be built

with AI and every app has AI in it, I

think personalization is the most

important thing that will make any app

stand out compared to the other

competitors that it has. For example,

let's talk about my app that I'm

building which is called Yorby and it's

a social media marketing tool. Our big

standout feature right now is a content

remixing tool, which is a tool that lets

users get any video on the internet,

take that original viral video and remix

it to fit their brand, their niche,

their audience more while still

maintaining that same viral format. And

right now for users to do this, they

have to manually enter in their entire

business details into a prompt to remix

whatever video that they want to remix

to market their business on social

media. But imagine how magical of an

experience it would be if during the

onboarding process, the user enters in

their business name and what they do.

And then we're able to kick off like

some type of research flow to get all

the information about their business and

create all these remix prompts and

audience ideas and get all so many

details about their business. And then

when they want to use our content

remixing feature, they don't have to

type in anything and we already have all

that information about them and we remix

the video for them immediately. We would

need to programmatically Google a user's

business and get all the results and

create some really big research report.

But unfortunately, Google does not offer

an API for that, but the sponsor of

today's video, SER API does. SER API

lets you conduct programmatic Google

searches using any query and any

location, giving you hyper relevant and

even hyper localized results. Whether

you want results from Google Maps or

Google search or even search results

from another major search provider like

YouTube, SER API probably has an API

endpoint for you. Think of the various

use cases this unlocks. Number one is

researching a company to provide a

really hyperpersonalized product

experience in your app. Number two,

fetching real-time data to train AI

models. A third scenario is monitoring

price queries across major retailers

like Amazon, Walmart, eBay. A fourth use

case could be automating copyright

checks for whatever proprietary tech

that you are building. They handle the

headaches of capta and proxy rotation so

that you don't have to worry about

scraping the web. All you need to do is

make a simple API call and SER API

actually handles all the data fetching

and returns the results for you. Just

make a simple API call to SER API to get

the data that you need. You can check

them out at this URL right here. And

once again, thanks to SER API for

sponsoring today's video. I'm also a

really big fan of actually just

recreating your own favorite apps. Don't

have an ego. Don't try to be like, I

need to create something new. I'm an

artist. Like, no, dude. just build

something that already exists and people

use and pay for it. So, chances are

there are a couple of apps that you use

very regularly and that you pay for as

well. So, that's honestly a really great

strategy to coming up with a really good

app idea. If you are a power user of a

certain tool, you can kind of just

rebuild the same app or like in a

slightly different way, but yeah, you

pretty much rebuild and copy that app.

Make yourself put a slight twist to it.

Great idea to build. And in general,

when you're coming up with a bunch of

different ideas, I think a really strong

habit that I have that I've really

worked on over the past couple years is

to relentlessly write down every single

idea, whether it be an app or a

business, somewhere on my phone. I'll

check right now. I have a notes, Apple

Notes app folder of probably over

50 different apps. I have literally I

don't know if you see this, but I have

over 220 different ideas in my ideas

folder. And this I've been doing this

since let me see probably since 2020

since 2020 like for such a long time.

And this is honestly harder than you

would think because there's so many

times I'm sure you've been there. You

had a great idea in the shower. You had

a great idea in bed. You're about to

fall asleep. Your mind is wandering.

You're like, "Oh my god, that'd be such

a sick idea if someone built that." And

then you fall asleep and you can't

remember the app idea forever again. But

I have really trained that muscle that

no matter how tired I am, no matter what

I'm doing, I will always write down that

idea to make sure I don't forget it.

Now, 99.99999%

of the apps that are in that note folder

are garbage. They're horrible. But it's

still just a good habit to get into just

to keep track of things so that you

never forget any potential idea that

comes up. Okay, so that is some general

strategy on coming up with ideas for

things to build. But once you do come up

with an idea, this is the step-by-step

framework that I personally use to

validate whether or not I should

actually build that app. The number one

thing I ask myself, the very first thing

I ask myself before anything else is,

can I market it? Do I know how to market

this app? If the answer is no, there's

no use for you to build it. I have made

this mistake so many times in my past

and honestly even though I say this

mistake now, probably you're going to

make the same mistake too. Doesn't

matter. You have to it's a process. It's

a right of passage. You have to go

through this as well. But there have

been so many times where in the past I

built something. I thought it was a cool

idea. I built it to completion. I was

like, how do I how do I get users? I

don't know how to market this app. An

example of this is that one of my very

first apps that I built. It was an audio

journaling tool where you journaled

three things every single day. Something

beautiful, something annoying, and

something surprising. those three things

every single day. That's it. It was

something that I did for a long time for

probably over a year or so. So, I was

like, "Oh, let me digitize this this and

productize this." I did it. I built it.

No idea how to market it. It was a total

waste of my time because I was just

wasn't the right person to build it,

especially as a solo developer, you

know, back then. So, you need to figure

out, can you market it? And obviously,

there are so many different ways to

market it, but I'll go over a quick

little list of some of the different

ways that you could potentially market

an app. I'll probably make a much more

longer in-depth video diving into

marketing strategies for apps, but I'll

give you a quick little rundown of some

general marketing strategies that you

could use and maybe some tools that you

might find helpful to pursue this

marketing avenue. Full disclosure, none

of this is sponsored. These are all just

products that I think are pretty useful

that I've personally used in the past as

well. So, the first one that I want to

talk about is Reddit marketing. You know

that stuff? It's like you get onto

Reddit and you try to comment or make

posts to target or plug your app. Now,

Reddit marketing definitely works. I

know people that have had success with

it, but you already know how those

Reddit mods can be. They can be a little

aggressive. And you know, let's just say

I've been I've been banned from a couple

of subreddits for trying to plug my

product. So, you got to be careful with

how that's done. But, this is a really

useful tool that I have used in the

past. And a couple of my friends who

have also done Reddit marketing have

used to do Reddit marketing.

Essentially, it's this tool called

F5bot. It is a tool that essentially

monitors Reddit or Hacker News. I don't

know. Lobsters. Is this like an open

claw reference? I'm not too sure. But

it's essentially this tool that helps

you monitor for certain keywords in

Reddit or Hacker News to these various

websites. And then whenever new posts

come up that have these particular

keywords, they send you an email alert

and like, hey, these are some posts that

you might want to comment on. So then

you can quickly go in, leave a comment

providing insights, providing value, and

plugging your app as well. Very popular

tool and it works pretty well if you

want to take Reddit marketing seriously.

Reddit marketing pros, it works. It's

pretty much free. It's very, very low

cost. Cons is the fact that certain

subreddits are really particular about

uh what kind of content you can post and

whether or not you can plug your

product. So, be careful. All right, the

next potential marketing avenue I want

to talk about is SEO. So, this is a tool

I've played around with in the past.

We'll talk more about it later, but with

SEO, it's search engine optimization.

Basically, trying to come up and appear

on search results like Google more

quickly. And the pros of this is is one

of those things where if you can figure

out SEO, it's basically free traffic

every single month. like you make

something once, a piece of content one

time and it basically lasts forever and

you'll always get free visitors from it.

The downside is the fact that SEO takes

a long time. So, it's hard to get really

quick validation. I think with Reddit,

you get a lot quicker validation of

whether or not someone thinks your tool

is useful. SEO, in my opinion, is one of

those more longer term plays that

benefits from multiple months of doing

it over and over and over again and

letting your link and your website build

credibility. Not as great in terms of

getting immediate feedback from users.

But, this is a tool that I've used in

the past. It's called Outr Rank. It's

essentially an AI SEO tool where it'll

like autogenerate content for you when

you talk about your your website or the

product that you're building and

autopublish blog posts for you. It's AI

slop. I don't know. I think AI slop is a

derogatory term. I think AI can be

really good, too. When I used it, I did

get a couple of um couple of good

results from here. I did get actual

traffic from the posts that I have used

from Outrank. Admittedly, though, I

haven't done it recently. Haven't really

used it too recently just cuz we're

investing in primarily like organic

social media like Tik Tok and Instagram

for our marketing, but I have used this.

It worked decently well and it's a

pretty good tool and it's something that

you might want to check out if you want

SEO done on autopilot. Another really

popular industry standard tool, hrefs.

This is like the goat all time best

search engine optimization tool to get

insights on how your competitors are

doing search engine optimization and

what keywords that they're going for.

really sweaty, not as much autopilot,

but basically the ultimate sweat tool if

you want to get super serious about it.

So SEO, it works. It's a gold mine if it

works well. Downside is just that it

takes a kind of a long time for it to

work. Next potential marketing strategy

is paid ads. Paid ads in theory works

great. You put in $1 in and you can get

$2 out. Holy [ __ ] that sounds amazing.

But paid ads can get very, very, very

expensive. I've lost thousands of

dollars on paid ads just cuz it didn't

really quite work out for me. But if you

do go down the paid ads route, you could

use a tool like Atria. It's essentially

an ad spy tool to see what other people

in your niche, competitors are doing.

And then you can like save those paid

ads post, brainstorm, create ads from

within here as well. Overall, I'm not

super experienced with paid ads, but in

general, when it works, it is really

good and it's like an unlimited growth

engine essentially. On the downside,

it's really expensive. I think you got

to invest at least a couple of thousands

of dollars to really get that first

initial run of validation to figure out

what paid ad strategy works for you. And

then the last marketing strategy that I

personally like to use is uh organic

social media on both Tik Tok and

Instagram. And this is actually the tool

that I'm building your B.AI which

actually serves to help that purpose.

And primary way that we do this is with

this content remixer tool. And

essentially the way that this works is

you can find any viral video on the

internet upload it onto our platform.

Like this is a video that I posted for

some founder marketing. I really like

the format of it. I thought it performed

pretty well. And then you can

essentially tell Yori to remix a certain

piece of video, certain piece of content

to fit your niche, your audience, your

brand specifically while still

maintaining that same viral format of

the original video. So it just makes

marketing a little bit easier where you

don't have to think of new content

ideas. You just copy what's working for

other people. Just remix it to hit your

brand, your niche instead. Organic

social media is great because it's low

cost. You can get really quick and fast

validation. And the biggest con is the

fact that it's hard. It's a skill.

Making videos is a skill. Making a good

video, making a good video script is a

skill as well. So, that's just a really

quick overview of the various early

marketing ideas and marketing strategies

that I've applied throughout the apps

that I've built. Let me know in the

comments down below if you want a more

in-depth video where I go really

in-depth of like ranking, deep diving,

analyzing all the various marketing

tactics that you can use to market your

app. So, after you validate that you

know that you can market that app, the

next validation step that I take is can

you technically actually build it? I

think that this is less of a concern

these days because AI is so good you can

kind of build anything but still

something worthwhile to think about like

can you actually build this technically

honestly not much more to say there can

you build it or not is it a skill issue

or not you got to decide that now the

next step which I think is one of the

most important steps in the validation

process is does it have existing

competitors in the space I mentioned

this earlier but I think a lot of people

first-time builders get into the trap of

wanting to be original like I'm a

builder I can't copy like I'm an artist

I need to be first I had that mindset

for sure but my personal take on this

which once again I'm not an expert. I'm

just a dude on the internet that the

app's a little bit too much is as a solo

developer or a really really small team.

I don't think you really have the luxury

of creating a net new product or a net

new industry. That is something you got

to leave for the VC boys, the rich boys,

the ones that have millions of dollars

to burn and burn cash for. It is not

easy. And I think that you are way

better off. you're going to like 10x

your chances of success in making your

first dollar on the internet, making a

side hustle, making your own app that

makes money. If you build an app that

already has a lot of competitors in the

space, the reason for this is if there

are a lot of competitors in the space,

that means it's an industry that has a

validated market of people willing to

pay for a solution for the problem that

you're trying to fix. These days, in

2026, if a current idea you're trying to

build truly has no other competitors, I

think that's more of a red flag than a

green flag. Like, that is a crazy uphill

battle. And if you're not funded and

you're a solo person, I don't know if

it's really worth trying to fight that

uphill battle. So really look for

competitive markets, look for validated

markets, that's a really good sign

because then that means you can build

some tool and get some customers and

know that customers are willing to pay

for that and it's not a market risk.

There's zero market risk and instead it

just boils down to product and execution

risk which is something that you

actually can control a lot more. And

then the next validation that I would

then begin to think about is can you

differentiate your product from the

other competitors in the space. I

actually don't think this is really

important in the early stages. I think

you can straight up copy a product. You

can copy Yorbby like what I built and

you can make like at least a hundred

bucks, probably at least a thousand

bucks. I actually did this a lot in a

lot of my various apps. I built an app

called Monty. It was a meeting

transcribing tool, like a meeting

note-taking tool. Literally just copied

the other existing apps out there. Zero

differentiation. And it peaked at like

15 to 1,700 bucks a monthly recurring

revenue, which is pretty impressive.

Now, obviously, we peaked there and we

had a hard time growing past it because

we didn't differentiate after that. But

once again, like that's a separate

issue. Like going past your first

$1,000, that's like when you start

beginning to scale a slightly a little

bit. Whereas you're still first 0 to

$1,000. I am personally believer you can

just copy a product that already exists

on the internet, make at least $100, if

not at least $1,000 as well. But then

after that, if you want to scale more, I

think you do have to think about how are

you going to differentiate from the

competition out there. But I also think

that differentiating is a lot easier

than you actually think because these

days I personally think moes true moes

in like the business sense in the

classical business sense don't really

exist that much anymore because with AI

you can build anything. Technical modes

hardly exist anymore. Yeah. I don't

know. I just don't think Moes exist. So

really you can differentiate in a lot

more some people might say like

superficial ways right. Your moat can be

a better designed app. Your moat can be

a better priced app. your moat can be

better customer support or a more

delightful and magical experience. So,

in general, I think when you're building

an app, one way you could differentiate

is focusing on your TTV/TF,

time to value or time to fund. And I

think that's honestly one of the

strongest ways that you can

differentiate in this day and age with

so many different competitors coming out

because software is so easy to build.

Often times, I think it's the tool to

give the best experience the fastest to

be the ones that win me over as a

customer personally. And the last

validation advice that I have is are you

a user of your own product? I have tried

both strategies. I've tried to build

something where I was not a user and I

thought that I saw an opening in like a

different industry and I also built the

tools that I personally am myself am a

user for. And at least for me once again

just do it on the internet. I find it

way easier to build something that I am

personally a user for because in my

experience I found that no matter what

you're building a business period is

really really hard and you're going to

have hard times. And I have found

personally that my motivation to

continue on building something that I'm

not really a user of and that I'm

building just because I see an edge or

an opening for it's really hard to find

the motivation to do that. So I

personally love building apps that I'm

personally a user of. I'm constantly dog

fooding and trying out my own product. I

think that helps build a better product

as well. So that's one personal

validation step that I have that I think

is really useful. Like can you build

something that you are a user of? And

that's why kind of going back to one of

my favorite ways of ideating and coming

up with ideas is recreating your own

favorite apps that you personally use

because you're building an app that has

a validated market because you're

already paying for it and you're already

the user for it and most likely you know

other people that also use that similar

app or who would find that app useful so

you know how to market already. It's

kind of a winner right there. I actually

think that's the best way to ideulate

and validate an app all in one step. So,

that is my quick little video breaking

down how I come up with app ideas and

how I validate them to make a little bit

of money on the internet. Let me know

your thoughts on the video. If you

enjoyed it, pros, cons, give me some

feedback, both good and constructive, as

well. Leave them in the comments down

below. I'll try my best to answer as

many of them as I possibly can. But

that's all I got for today. Thank you so

much for watching and I'll see you in

the next one. Peace.