§ 01 · The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Most people treat finding a business idea like waiting for lightning — something that happens to other people, rarely and by accident. Cedric Roberge did it in an afternoon, scrolling TikTok in a college dorm, and seven weeks later had $50,000 in his RevenueCat dashboard.
Where the time goes.
00:00 – 00:52
01 · Cold open — knowing where to look
Pat sets the hook: a college student found an idea in an afternoon and made $50K in seven weeks. Cedric confirms live.
00:52 – 01:13
02 · Who is Cedric?
Brief intro: Cedric Roberge, University of Oregon student, founder of pep.ai.
01:13 – 02:19
03 · App data and overview
Cedric screen-shares his RevenueCat dashboard: $33K last 28 days, MRR $11K, 2K active subscriptions, $51K total revenue. Pricing: $10/month or $45/year.
02:19 – 03:19
04 · Founder background
Previous app was a student marketplace at U of O — 800 users, zero revenue. Key lesson: find a specific niche with paying intent.
03:19 – 04:44
05 · Build timeline and tech stack
Two weeks to build using Replit + Claude + Firebase. Apple rejected repeatedly for implied medical advice. Expedited review request = 2-hour turnaround.
04:44 – 05:59
06 · Mid-roll: Starter Story Build iOS bootcamp
Sponsor segment — iOS bootcamp ad. Skip for content purposes.
05:59 – 06:51
07 · Finding the idea for Pep AI
Roommate mention + TikTok FYP hit = two convergent signals. No successful existing app in the space. Mined competitor reviews with Claude to define features.
06:51 – 08:09
08 · Identifying viral ideas
The magnifying glass approach: scroll social media until you find something multiple creators discuss that has no dominant app. Example: looks-maxing app on TikTok trend.
08:09 – 09:58
09 · The Viral Idea Playbook — Steps 1–3
Step 1: watch TikTok daily. Step 2: check App Store (some competition is validation). Step 3: read every competitor review, feed into Claude to generate your feature spec.
09:58 – 12:05
10 · Growth and marketing — Steps 4–5
Step 4: seed influencers before launch — 300-person waitlist from Reddit + Instagram. One story post = $1K; one feed post = $10K. Step 5: if you don't know your distribution channel, don't build.
12:05 – 13:52
11 · App demo
Cedric demos pep.ai: dosage calculator, injection site log, peptide research library with PubMed sources, Duolingo-style quizzes, lifestyle tracking (nutrition, weight, Apple Health).
13:52 – 15:13
12 · Advice to founders
Never give up. Vibe coding made this possible. Friends still mock the idea. Vision matters more than consensus.
15:13 – 18:20
13 · Pat and Gus reflection
Producer debrief: AI tools as the great equalizer; building on a trending topic is the single most underrated lever for a first-time app builder.
Visual structure at a glance.
Named ideas worth stealing.
08:09
list
The Viral Idea Playbook
- Watch TikTok and Instagram daily — find what multiple creators are genuinely obsessed with
- Search the App Store — existing apps validate demand; zero apps is still viable
- Read every review of every competitor app — feed into AI to generate your feature spec
- Seed niche influencers before launch — build a waitlist, not a cold launch
- Define your distribution channel before you write a line of code
A five-step repeatable process for finding a trending idea, validating it, and launching with built-in demand rather than building and hoping.
Steal for any first-time app builder or product validation session
Lines you could clip.
00:15
"The difference isn't luck. It's knowing where to look."
11:21
"First-time founders think about product, second-time founders think about distribution."
11:17
"Marketing and distribution matters way more than your idea, than your app, how great it is."
16:57
"Let's say he had a really crappy app, it still would make money if you just build it on something exciting."
Things they pointed at.
How they asked for the click.
04:44
product
"Inside Starter Story Build, we have our free iOS boot camp. In just a few days, we'll guide you on how to spot a good idea, how to build it, and how to get it ready for the App Store."
Mid-roll placement after the build section — well-timed when the audience is most curious about how to replicate Cedric's process. CTA repeats at outro.
Word for word.
HOOK opening / re-engagementCTA the pitch metaphor analogy
00:00HOOKMost people spend years searching for a business idea. This college student found his in an afternoon and then made $50,000 in seven weeks.
00:09HOOKI'm a college student who built an app called Pep dot ai. We launched just seven weeks ago, and we've already hit $50,000 in total revenue.
00:16HOOKThe difference isn't luck. It's knowing where to look, and that's exactly what this episode today is about. This is, like, one of those things that it just blew up overnight, but that's kinda what I would do again is I would
00:29HOOKI asked Cedric, the founder, to come on to the channel to break down exactly how he did it. And in this episode, we'll cover the simple app he built in a couple weeks, the trending idea that helped him make over $50,000 in seven weeks, and how anyone can spot ideas like this that are blowing up right now and build fast.
00:47HOOKThis is one that you cannot miss. I'm Pat Walls, and this is starter story. Alright, Cedric.
00:53Welcome to the channel. Tell me about who you are, what app you built, and what's your story. Yeah.
00:58My name is Cedric Roberge. I'm a college student who built an app called pep.ai. We launched just seven weeks ago, and we've already hit $50,000
01:06in total revenue. Today, I'll break down exactly how I found this growing niche and turned it into an app that's helping thousands of people. Okay.
01:13So this app is super cool. It's super trending. We're gonna get all into that and why this app popped off and made over $50,000
01:19in basically about seven weeks. But before we do, explain the app. Show me some of your revenue.
01:24Show me that this thing is real. This is the app. Um, the main point of the app is tracking peptides for safety.
01:30A lot of people take peptides and don't really know what they're doing. So there's weight loss ones. There's some for tanning,
01:36skin care, and some of them also are for, like, uh, recovery. If you got injured, you can inject it in those spots, and it's supposed to help your recovery process. So the whole point of the app is to help people track their peptides safely.
01:48So this is our revenue cat dash dashboard. This is in the last twenty eight days. We have 33,000
01:54revenue, almost 2,000 active subscriptions. Our MRR is 11 k. Total revenue,
02:0051 peptides k. We have a yearly subscription that's $45 and a monthly subscription for $10, um, with a three day free trial.
02:08Alright. Cool. Well, thanks for sharing your revenue dashboard, being open and transparent about that, especially because your app is trending and taking off right now, which we're gonna talk all about that and maybe some of the reasons why this app grew so quickly.
02:19But before we do, I'm curious. This is the first app that you built. What's your background?
02:24How do you get to this point where you've made over $50,000 with an app in about seven weeks? Yeah.
02:28So, um, it's not the first app I've built. I built my first one in October. It was student marketplace app for the University of Oregon, and we just went around campus and kinda told people people about it and got, like, 800 users.
02:40But I always wanted to take it, like, to another level where I could actually make revenue because we didn't make any money with that app. The whole experience from the first app taught me that I needed to find a niche that was really specific to, like, a group of people that would be interested in it. So once I realized that, you know, I decided to find something that was really popular, and how I went about that was just scrolling social media until I found something that everyone was talking about and realized that there was no successful app for this.
03:05Alright. Yeah. I mean, I think one of the most common first business ideas when I talk to a lot of founders is building a marketplace.
03:11Obviously, that's really hard to do. It's hard to monetize. It's hard to get it to work.
03:14But an app like this, obviously, it worked out pretty quickly. So let's talk about that. We're gonna talk about how you grew it.
03:19But first, I wanna know how did you build it, and how long did it take to go from idea to working app? Yeah. It didn't really take that long, honestly, because vibe coding makes it so easy.
03:28I, uh, started on Replit, which was really easy because I would just explain what I wanted, and they would build it for me. I also had Claude as, like, my guide.
03:37So when it came to setting up RevenueCat for in app subscriptions, um, resend for sending out emails, Anything that I have no idea how to set up, I could just ask Claude, and he was, like, my senior developer. So using Claude and Replit, it took about two weeks to build out, um, and then I used Firebase for the back end, which we just store all of our user data.
03:57The hard part, though, is just Apple rejected rejected it, it, like, a million times because they don't really want you to give medical advice, and a lot of these features came off as that. So once we worked around it and found out how other kind of similar apps were doing it, we found, you know, the the good spot where Apple was happy, and they approved it.
04:13And now it's hasn't been an issue. So it's funny. It doesn't really take that long.
04:17Even if you're not technical to build an app these days, the longest process, at least for iOS, where I've talked to a lot of founders, is just getting it approved. How long did that process take? To get it approved, probably, like, a week, just back and forth.
04:27CTATo make it faster, I found out that you can expedite Apple reviews if there's something major. So we actually got one approved kinda quickly, and then there was a bunch of issues. So then I found out about this expedite review, which then they would review it in, like, two hours instead of two days, which kinda sped up our process.
04:44CTAI love what Cedric is breaking down right now, but the real secret behind his success, I think, is the power of AI. See, when you have an idea or you spot a trending topic like this, the most important thing is your ability to build and launch fast.
04:59CTAAnd with today's AI tools, this is more possible than ever before. So if you're wondering how you can get started, find an idea, and build it quickly, well, I have something for you. Inside Starter Story Build, we have our free iOS boot camp.
05:12CTAIn just a few days, we'll guide you on how to spot a good idea, how to build it, and how to get it ready for the App Store. You will build it a 100% with AI. You don't need to be technical, and you don't need to write a single line of code yourself.
05:24CTAIf you're ready to build, just head to the first link in the description, and you can get started for free. Alright. Let's get back to the episode.
05:38CTADidn't take that long. I think one of the most important things for a lot of people watching this channel is how to find the right idea, and I think that your app is the perfect example of finding a great niche, a great idea, a growing trend. So let's talk about that.
05:49CTAHow did you actually find this idea? How did you validate, and how did you know and have confidence that this is something that can make $50,000 in seven weeks? How it started is one of my roommates
05:59came up to me and was like, we should take peptides, and I had no idea what he was talking about. Like, a week later, I get a TikTok on my for you page about peptides. And so, you know, I started looking them up and found that they're huge on social media.
06:10There wasn't an actual peptide app out there to, like, really explain what all these peptides do and how to use them safely. And there there were a couple that had been out for a couple years, but none of them were successful yet. That's when I realized that there was, like, an opening there.
06:21So then I went through every single existing app, looked through all the reviews of the things like what do people like, what do they not like, what do they wish they had. And then from there, I just built the best version and had Claude do a bunch of searches so that we could build something that would be actually useful for people when they wanna take peptides or just learn about them.
06:38I think there's a couple interesting points you have there, which is, like, there was, like, a couple of signals, which is your friend told you about it, and you saw it in TikTok, and then you had genuine interest in it as well. Those are, like, three things that I think are really important. If anyone's watching this, what would be your advice to them on, like, how to identify,
06:55like, an idea like this? Tell me a little bit more about that. Yeah.
06:58It's hard to say because, you know, this is, one of those things that it just blew up overnight kind of, and then I just moved quick. But that's kinda what I would do again is I would scroll social media, find all these big content creators online, and what are they all talking about? Is there something you've never heard of that they're all talking about?
07:12Because if there is, there's a chance that it's something new and no one has done anything with it. Um, an example I have is, like, people were really into the looks maxing for a while and, like, just be trying to look as best as they can. And so this guy made an app where you, like, take a picture of yourself and it tells you what you need to do to make yourself look better.
07:28And that was just a trend on TikTok. So I think that if you can find any trend online, you can turn it into an app. What's super cool about your app, Peptides, is that you probably don't have to work that hard to market it right now relatively because peep it's just so popular right now that people are actually just searching it in the App Store and finding your app.
07:44100% organic, and, you know, that's one of the huge benefits of finding a trend before it takes off.
07:51There's actually there's been a couple competitor apps that have come out since we started. Like, everyone's copying ours kind of and, like, creating apps called, like, Peptide AI now. One of them, like, there was a post on x that blew up about that.
08:01People started looking up Peptide AI, but ours was the top search, and we got, like, a bunch of, like, just traction from that. So it puts us in a good spot. Building on a growing trend.
08:10Let's dive a little bit deeper into that. If you were to start over right now, peptides are already reached the top of their trend curve, and you have to find a new idea. What would be your step by step?
08:20If you're starting over in middle of twenty twenty six, finding a new trend and building an app, what would be your process? I would probably just live on social media. Every free second I have, I would just go on there, scroll TikTok, scroll Instagram, and just find what everyone's talking about.
08:34This is what a lot of successful people have done is finding things that are just blowing up, but I would literally just step one is watch TikTok every single day and find out what people are just genuinely obsessed over. If multiple people are posting about it, it's probably gonna be something that you can turn into a tool that people would use.
08:49Um, step two is to investigate whether these apps already exist in the space. And if they do, I think it's actually a good thing because it kinda validates that this is something that people want. If there is zero apps, it's still a 100% can be popular and done well.
09:03But I think if there are a couple apps, that's a good sign because they people have built it, people want it, just no one's really marketed it, like, successfully yet. Uh, next step is what I would do is look for these other apps and come up with ideas off of it. I would literally go through every single review on all these apps, um, like I said before, find what people like, what they don't like, what they wish the app had, and then take all that and give it to Claude or ChatGBT and have them come up with your app idea so that you have at least a foundation of what you wanna build.
09:32This is genius. I actually just talked to a founder who completely rebranded their entire app based on past, uh, they took all their reviews. They took all their cancellation reasons in Stripe.
09:43They took all their support requests. They pumped it into Claude, they completely rebranded their app. And then after the rebrand, they grew, like, 350%
09:50or something like that. So go on and look at the existing even if you have competitors, go take their reviews, put it into Claude, build your own thing. You might be able to do it better.
09:59I like that. What's the next step? Step four, I would say, is to find influencers in that niche and get them posting about it before you even launch.
10:07We reached out to a couple people, had them made a couple posts just to see, like, are people interested in this? And all of them said yes. We made some Reddit posts, and we had a wait list with, like, 300 people on it before we launched.
10:18So we knew that this was something people were really gonna be interested in. And and one thing I also did was when I first got interested in peptides, I was watching a lot of people on social media, and everything that these guys would say, I believed and trusted, which is kinda what gave me the idea that if I trusted them and if they were promoting an app, I would totally download it.
10:35So if I just got to them before anyone else and got them to post about my app and be like, this is the tool I use, everyone's going to listen to that. So the results were what really blew me away. We had one guy that had made one story post, and from that, did a thousand dollars in revenue, which is insane for one story post on Instagram.
10:52And then when he made his actual first post, it got 50,000 views, and we did, like, $4,000 in revenue just from that day. We think that we did, in total, over 10,000 revenue from that post. So that's really what made me realize how important the influencer marketing is.
11:08I mean, I I feel like that's one of the little secrets also of finding something trending is there's also, like, influencers that are maybe realize how powerful or realize how big their following is because the trend is still so early. And that's a great example of that.
11:22I'm guessing you couldn't attribute all the revenue, but $10,000 from a single post is insane. What's the final step? Step five, though, and I think the most important part about building an app, is marketing.
11:32I I think marketing and distribution matters way more than your idea, than your app, how great it is. If you don't have a vision for how you will market it and distribute it, then I just don't even think it's worth building. I got this advice from some other podcasts that I watched of other successful app founders, and that's their biggest piece of advice is just if you don't know how you're gonna market it and you don't have a plan for influencer marketing, ads, whatever it is, that's the biggest thing.
11:56So unless you feel very confident in how you'll market it, I wouldn't even build it. There's a famous quote, which is first time founders think about product, second time founders think about distribution. Let's switch topics a little bit and actually take a look at your app.
12:09I'd love if you could show me the app that you built, the app that made $50,000 in seven weeks. Could you just, like, walk me through a demo of the app?
12:16Yeah. So the core features of pep.ai is the main feature is peptide tracking.
12:22You know, people wanna be safe about what they're tracking and know how much to take. The first feature I would use on the app is go to the calculator, where there you can put in your vial amount, then you can add your backwater
12:33and how much you're wanting to take. And then from there, it tells you how many units to pull to. After that, you could go to adding your peptide,
12:43then you put in how much is in that one, how much water. But then once you get to there and you have everything inserted, then you can actually log a dose. And from the calculator, you know how much you would be taking, um, and then choose your injection site, which is a really important part because you want to remember where you did last time.
12:58You don't wanna do the same spot over and over. And then after that, the other really important feature is just our research. You know, we have a kind of like a Duolingo type feature where you can take quizzes and teach yourself everything about peptides.
13:10And then we also have a research library where you can look at different type of peptides, you know, the overview, the research focus, how it works. Um, and then we have sources in there from PubMed, which is a source everyone likes for reading about peptides where you can see the real information about it.
13:26And then, uh, yeah. Then we have a lifestyle feature where you can, like, do meal scanning, tracking nutrition, weight tracking,
13:32Apple Health integration, progress photos. And, yeah, that kinda sums up what the app does, so it's pretty simple.
13:38Cool. I was, uh, just searching peptide tracker on the app store right here on my phone, and looks like there's a couple ads, but you've come up number three, which is awesome.
13:48Congrats. Last question that we ask all founders who come on here. What would be your advice if you could go back back in time before you had this successful app that was making money, maybe after you had that first app that didn't really work out?
13:58What advice would you have for your younger self or for anyone watching this that wants to build a profitable app like you? Yeah. My biggest piece of advice and the advice I've given myself this entire time is just literally never giving up on myself.
14:10I've always been very, like, an entrepreneurship type of person, and I've always wanted to have my own company building apps or video games. And so it's always been my dream. And so once vibe coding became a thing, I knew I could do it.
14:21And so I've just never given up, and I was literally never gonna stop until something became successful. It just happened a lot faster than I thought it would, but I still wanna scale even farther. I wanna make this a $1,000,000
14:32a month app, and so I gotta keep telling myself the same advice. Just never give up. Fully believe in yourself.
14:37I've had literally a lot of my friends that I'm really close to that have just make fun of my app ideas. Even what it is now, they still think it's funny and not a serious thing. But I have a vision, and I know where I want to be.
14:48So it's just never giving up on what you really believe in. Well, that's awesome advice. Thanks for coming on the show.
14:54Congrats on your success. Think it's gonna grow and become a lot bigger, and you'll hit that 1,000,000 a month. Maybe we'll have you back on the channel.
15:00Put a comment there below if you'd like to see Cedric come back on when he's hit a 100 k per month or maybe 1,000,000 per month. Otherwise, thanks for coming on and sharing this. It's amazing what you can build in seven weeks with the right idea.
15:10Thanks for coming on. Yeah. Thank you for having me, guys.
15:13Alright. Gus, producer of Starter Story. What'd you think of this one?
15:17That was cool. I mean, I don't know anything about peptides. So first of all, I feel like I learned a lot.
15:22And then second, I just love seeing a young kid who just kinda, like, saw an idea, built it fast. He talked at the end about, like, how his friends are, that's kinda stupid or maybe aren't, like, fully bought in, and he's just like, I'm gonna do it anyway. So Yeah.
15:33That's kinda, like, not a big lesson about everything he shared, but that's something that's sticking out to me right now. He sort of mentioned this right at the end. I'm not sure if it'll get into the final edit, but he said, like, I don't know if I would have been able to do this without AI coding tools.
15:47This is the kind of classic example of someone who, like, has a cool idea, but maybe wouldn't have been able to build it or would have gotten lost with crappy developers or something like that even two years ago. But he's able to build this with AI tools and it's marketing focused and
16:04execution focused. He mentioned that he just had an idea and built it as quickly as possible. That's usually a sign of a great builder or founder or entrepreneur is someone who just built it.
16:13I mean, we've said this over and over again on this channel or whatever, but, like, really, these AI coding tools are really just game changers for regular old people. I'm not saying he's a regular old guy, but like me or or or like him or people who have ideas, they can just, like, go build it really fast. And but, yeah, that that was that that was, like, a it's a good lesson.
16:32Like, you can have any idea and just, like, everything's there for you to go build. Just go build it. The other underrated theme of this, and hopefully, it really comes out in the video because I think it's probably one of the most important things you can do, especially if you're building your first app, is build on a growing trend.
16:46You get so much free juice when you do something like that. Right?
16:51Peptides is one of those trending things that everyone is talking about if you're in the, you know, the pop culture or whatever. Everyone's talking about it, and you're just getting so much free users revenue just by building on that space.
17:06Let's say he had a really crappy app, it still would make money. It still would be successful if you just build it on something exciting rather than something that's dying, like, I don't know, newspapers or something like that. So I think that is, like, hopefully, the biggest lesson you can walk away from this video.
17:18Don't know your thoughts on that. Yeah. I mean, he said, like, I just scroll, and it's, like, kinda boring.
17:23But I think he had sort of this sort of, like, , I think, that most people don't. So, yeah, I think if you're, like, really wanting to build something and wanting to, like, create something like he did, you just really have to have this, like, magnifying glass on social media instead of just, like, I don't know, brain rotting.
17:37CTAPeople online are always talking about something new or something interesting or something trending. And if you're paying close enough attention, you can, like you said, get that that juice. Yeah.
17:46CTAWell, if you're looking to build something as well, I think a great idea is, as you mentioned, go on social media, browse it for an hour. You might just find something. And when you do, you gotta build it.
17:55CTAYou gotta build that iOS app. I think building iOS apps is a great platform to be building a business right now. And if you're looking to do that, check out the link in the description for our iOS boot camp.
18:04CTAWe'll teach you how to come up with an idea, build it, and get it live and approved on the App Store in just a matter of weeks. Click that link there down in the description if you wanna check it out. Otherwise, we'll see you in the next one.
— full transcript
§ 05 · For Joe
Find the trend first, build the app second.
WHAT TO LEARN
The variable that separated a $50K seven-week launch from a $0 marketplace failure was not effort or code quality — it was whether demand already existed before the first line was written.
- Organic App Store search is free distribution, but only if the search volume already exists — building on a trending topic means demand arrives before your marketing budget does.
- Existing competitor apps in a niche are a positive signal, not a threat; they confirm that people want the product and are willing to pay, which is a harder thing to create than a better version of an app.
- Reading every negative review of every competitor and feeding the patterns into an AI model produces a product specification faster and more accurately than user interviews, because the pain is already articulated.
- Pre-launch influencer seeding with a waitlist removes the cold-start problem: the day you go live, you have a crowd rather than an empty room.
- A single niche Instagram feed post from a micro-influencer can drive $10,000 in revenue in one day — the return on early-trend influencer relationships is disproportionate because their followers trust them before the mainstream arrives.
- If you cannot articulate how you will distribute the app before you build it, the product is not ready to build — distribution clarity is the actual green light, not feature completeness.
- Apple's expedite review request is a real, usable mechanism that compresses a contested rejection cycle from days to hours — most first-time founders do not know it exists.
- AI coding tools changed the accessibility of app entrepreneurship not by making code easier but by making the non-technical founder viable at all — the bottleneck shifted from build to distribution.
