Rafael Kramer - this 14 yr old makes $100k/mo PROFIT building apps with ai (here's how)

Spot a meme early (DaBaby's head as a car, seen the day it came out), pull an all-nighter building a simple game around it in a no-code builder (Buildbox), and put it on the App Store; then hire Unity developers once money comes in. A game makes a 2D meme interactive (you can be DaBaby), which is funnier and gets shared. Rafael ran this playbook on many meme games (e.g. a vegan teacher game).

On his personal TikTok (a couple hundred thousand followers), Rafael posted 'Day X of making a DaBaby mobile game' devlogs showing new characters, and added features commenters asked for. He A/B tested hooks, words and frames in early videos to find what worked; the main driver was that the topic was trending, as long as the video wasn't boring. The game was built to look good in a TikTok video. About nine videos, 100K-1M views each.

Google AdMob only, no in-app purchases: an ad pops up every second time you die, and players who want to revive and keep going watch a 30-second ad. Ads earn even at a few hundred to a few thousand daily players. Games were gimmicky with very low retention.

Reached the Skibidi Toilet creator (DaFuq!?Boom!) early, at ~5M subscribers, and built a game with him on a 50/50 split. His audience followed a saga of characters but could only watch it; the game let them enter that world. He made one YouTube Shorts promotion; word of mouth did the rest. Good fits have an inside joke or a universe the game can extend, and comments that show a real community rather than follower count.

Relationship managers once cold-emailed 50-100 influencers a day. What worked better: build a credible Instagram profile (decent posts and follower count, maybe a blue check, many mutual follows with influencers) so you look like one of them, then DM. Keep DMing influencers regularly just to build connections.

The studio made a game with every influencer it could get on a 50/50 split, across roughly 50 games. Many influencers' audiences weren't interested in a game: one with 5M followers and ~2M views a video saw his game completely flop. Over time they learned what the hits had in common (audience fit, an inside joke or universe, active comments).

Give the influencer real ownership (50% of the game) and make them feel it's their game: weekly update calls, sending character updates, letting them contribute ideas even if not all get built. Don't script them; incentivize them to make lots of videos and let them figure out how to get views, since they know their audience.

About eight faceless TikTok accounts posting slideshows, run by hired people paid on a CPM basis and left to figure out views themselves. Found them through a friend running the same strategy for a height app, who passed on a contractor who knew more.

First proper paid campaign: make a bunch of TikTok ad videos and scale the ones doing well, for an app concept no one else had built yet.

From doomscrolling looksmaxxing content: under bloated-to-not-bloated transformation videos, ~100 people ask 'How do I debloat?'. The comment section is a strong indicator of how real a problem is; the only existing solutions were products like pills people don't trust. Built an app for it.

Onboarding asks the user to take a face picture before the paywall (sunk cost), then shows a slightly exaggerated bloat rating ('you're really bloated... you have to fix it now') followed directly by the paywall. Framing is aimed at the user's insecurity; social proof also used.

Made TikTok ads for Amanda AI (relationship coach with text-screenshot analysis). Some ads were restricted and suppressed, apparently because of the relationship-advice category.

Spotted a hyper-realistic AI influencer account posting looksmaxxing before/after transformations (viewers asked 'how did you do this transformation?'), DM'd the operators as soon as they launched the page and proposed launching an app together. Also training more people to make the same kind of videos.

Outsource editing as early as possible (low-leverage task) but keep scripts in-house: outsourced script writers weren't good. Hire one editor per whole video, judged on making it entertaining rather than on captions or motion graphics; you send the script and idea. Upwork gave few gems; better sources are a Twitter post asking for editor referrals, friends' editors, and Discord servers where people seek gigs and will do a free sample video.