How to reach $4M ARR in 8 months with an indie app

Josh’s interest in e-commerce started in high school with selling items on eBay. This early experience laid the foundation for his future roles in various startups, including his notable position as the head of Uber New York. There, he played a pivotal role in developing the mobile app for ride-sharing, a project that would later influence his approach to app development.

Josh transitioned into app development to use his extensive business background in a new and exciting way. His first project was a simple yet effective app for the Uber office in 2015. This initial success ignited his interest in the field, prompting him to teach himself engineering and explore AI-powered applications.

The popularity of AI played a crucial role in Josh’s journey as an indie developer. The inspiration for the app he was planning to work on came from the notion of making AI language models more accessible. The idea was to use a third-party AI service and create a user-friendly interface for interacting with it in the most convenient and useful way possible. That’s how Wave: AI Note Taker appeared.

The working process was pretty simple and intuitive: the app recorded audio, transcribed it, and summarized the transcription. Such an approach proved to be super useful at business meetings, brainstorms,  lectures, and many other cases. As the development process advanced, new features were added like phone call recording or separate audio file transcription.

The first concept of the app was aimed at iOS, so Josh chose Swift. Although Swift made coding easier, creating a full-scale app was still a challenge for a non-professional developer. Josh found his solution in OpenAI’s Chat GPT.

The AI language model was incredibly powerful for coding. Even the first iteration of ChatGPT allowed Josh to work independently without consulting anyone else. He would break down large chunks of code into smaller parts and ask the AI to write each segment. This method worked so well that the first concept of the app was ready within one day!

Focusing on iOS app development, Josh faced typical challenges, especially creating an infrastructure for in-app purchases. Building a server wasn’t an option, so he chose a third-party solution to integrate IAPs and add extra features. However, this solution lacked consistency, with some revenue-growing features being inconvenient third-party add-ons.

Seeking a better alternative, Josh found invaluable support from Adapty. The SDK integration took just a few days and opened up numerous possibilities. The main reason for choosing Adapty was having in one place mobile analytics, paywall builder, and A/B testing tools. All this made the launch and iteration of paywall A/B tests quick and painless – which was the key to the app’s growth.

Josh happened to be using Adapty’s paywall builder since its launch – the 1.0 version, despite being less functional than it is now, in his opinion was much more convenient and useful than the 3rd party solution provided by the competitor he had used.

Being in a constant state of searching for a better and more effective paywall concept is a vital element of growth. The heavy use of Meta ads for acquisition proved an effective promotional strategy for Wave and made proper A/B testing possible. So from a financial perspective, early investment in user acquisition for an indie developer will be rewarded.

It’s truly impressive to see what heights Josh managed to achieve with the app being a sole creator. Apart from design and ad promotion, all the aspects of the app are developed and maintained by Josh. He even does the customer support work himself, meticulously replying to every user’s email.

Thanks to Adapty and strategic ad promotion, Josh achieved remarkable success with Wave: AI Note Taker, reaching $4M ARR in 8 months. The substantial use of paywall A/B testing helped optimize subscription rates and improve conversion. The willingness to experiment and adjust strategies based on user feedback played a significant role in this achievement.