Build a tiny practice app in 6 weeks to learn launching before the real one

GusAwesome, Ken. That is really cool to see. And I'm really excited to get into your background, how you even got to this place, how you grew this game. What were you doing before you were building Harpagia?

Ken… starting off, growing up, I took the traditional path. I went to college, studied computer science at UCSD, and started working in tech right after I graduated. I spent about 12 years in big tech, most recently as an engineering manager at Meta. Before that, I was a software engineer at Amazon. During the beginning of 2024, AI tools started gaining traction. At that point, I hadn't written a single line of code in over 4 years. And I wanted to see if I could build an app with AI assistants. I built my first app, which was a simple card game called Big 2 Wild, in about 6 weeks. I made this game because this was a really popular card game that my friends and I had played back in high school. I also wanted to make sure that the scope was small enough for me to complete in a short amount of time, to gain experience of actually shipping something. Building that game taught me a lot about AI-assisted development, building a product end-to-end, handling app store approvals, and what it actually takes to launch a product to the world. I took those lessons and applied them to my next projects, which became Harpagia.

GusI love everything that Ken is breaking down right now. He built and grew this game entirely by himself. He was just a guy who quit his job in tech to build this tiny game by himself, that's now making over $10,000 a month. We really love stories like this at Starter Story because it shows that sometimes there's something more than having a big, comfortable tech job. Sometimes, what really matters is going out on your own and building your own …