Rebuild a hit US app in Hebrew for Israel, where no one offers it

Pat Walls… took the longest was getting Apple to review it." So if anyone is watching this right now and building something, get it done. Get it shipped to Apple. It might be another month. There's this back and forth and you finally get it approved. So yeah, I want to switch topics a little bit. What I loved about what you did is you took this popular app and then you localized it to your country. I'm just curious how you came up with the idea to do this.

TomerYeah, so it was March 2025 and I was actively looking for an idea. And when I heard the Cal AI podcast, it clicked immediately. Although my original plan was to build something big for the US market, the chance to take a proven winner and be the first to localize it to my local market was the simplest zero-to-one move for me, the way I saw it. And if you are going to localize an app for a small market like Israel, the niche has to be huge. Because the market is small, you can't be in a tiny vertical. So fitness and nutrition is one of the biggest niches in the world, and I happened to know it very well personally. So it was a perfect fit for me.

Pat Walls… your app that could be the next Cal Buddy. So, if you're ready to find your idea and get started building right now, just head to the first link in the description. You can grab this database 100% for free. All right, let's get back to the episode. But I'm curious, does your app do anything differently? Did you realize as you're building it, oh, it needs to do this differently because I'm in Israel? I'm just curious how similar it is to Cal AI.

TomerYeah, so honestly, it's not a one-to-one clone, but the product itself isn't very different. The same core experience as the other AI calorie trackers. You point your camera at a meal, you get calories and macros. So, the differences are in the language and a bunch of small modifications to fit how Israelis actually eat and talk about food. That's on the product side. The real differentiation, and I want to be very clear about this because I think a lot of builders are missing it, is the brand and distribution. Almost anyone can build an app with Cursor in 2 weeks. But, I think about it like this: if I can acquire a user for half what my competition pays, that means I have more cash flow than they do. And more cash flow means I can outspend them on growth.

Pat WallsI think that's a really good point. It's mostly the same based on the product, but it's widely different based on the language, the content that we're creating, the design, and that makes it basically a different app. It's the- it's the same concept, but it's like a plumber here in the US where I live is going to be way different than a plumber out in Israel. So let's talk about that. A lot of people are building apps right now, and they don't …