The Story
Sebastian Ro built Habit Kit, a visually appealing and simple habit tracking mobile app, to $15K/month. He quit his corporate programming job to pursue indie development, struggled for 6 months, went back to work, then finally hit $15K MRR and quit again for good.
As Sebastian explains: "I quit my job with no idea, just 12 months of runway."
The Journey
"After 3 years of being stuck in the same project at my regular job, I decided it was time to quit my job and focus on indie development for at least 12 months."
"The first 6 months were really challenging. I didn't have a lot of revenue so I kept in touch with the people at my old job and after my 12 month deadline was over I decided to go back to my old job and continue doing my app business on the side."
"I felt like a failure and like a success because I had at least some revenue. It's already a huge success if you have a side business with $1,000 revenue."
The Timeline
- •End of 2023: Reached $3,000 MRR
- •End of 2024: Achieved $15,000 MRR
- •Start of 2024: Quit job the second time
"I'm finally able to have complete control over my time and work on whatever I want."
What Habit Kit Does
"It's a visually appealing and very simple habit tracking mobile app that helps users build and maintain their daily habits."
"When I started, I focused on the core functionality. It was a tile-based grid chart for the users' habits with a clean and super simple interface."
"I built it with privacy in mind. All data is stored locally on the device. There's no sign in required, no authentication. The users have complete control over their data."
Building the MVP
"I had the idea for Habit Kit in summer of 2022. I immediately started building the app and I used Flutter for this. That's a cross-platform framework that allows you to deploy your apps to iOS and Android with a single codebase."
"I also decided to share the development progress on my social media. And after posting the first screenshots and seeing a positive reception, I knew that I should really hurry up and bring the app to the app store."
"I kept it really simple and clean and just banged it out in 2 months."
App Store Optimization (ASO)
"App Store optimization is basically editing your app store metadata like keywords, app name, or subtitle or even the screenshots in the way that you're more likely to rank in the top spots when people search for certain keywords."
"I'm focusing on the habit tracker keyword and that's why I put it right at the start of my app name."
Gathering Reviews
"I instantly show the native review dialogue right after the first habit was checked off for a user. So that's their first success moment, and I asked them right at this situation and most people just gave it five stars and you gain a lot of reviews and ratings."
Growth Strategy
"In the beginning, building in public was huge for me. I shared my journey and development process across multiple platforms like X, LinkedIn, Blue Sky, and Threads."
"I tried to create authentic content, share about my wins, failures, successes and so on that led to unexpected opportunities, being guest on podcasts, being featured on videos or having good connections to other app developers."
"I run a super simple and low-budget Apple Search Ads campaign. I only spent $100 per month on it. I just used this as a potential ranking boost strategy because I have the hope that Apple favors developers who also run ads on their platform."
Business Numbers
- •$15,000 MRR
- •300,000+ downloads (iOS and Android combined)
- •2,000+ reviews and ratings
- •Top 5 ranking for "habit tracker" in multiple countries
Tech Stack
- •Flutter (cross-platform framework)
- •Cursor (AI-powered IDE)
- •Astro (keyword research for ASO)
- •App Figures (analytics and marketing)
- •Revenue Cat (subscriptions and purchases)
Costs
- •Revenue Cat: 1% of revenue
- •Other tools: ~$200-300/month
- •No employees, solo operation
- •90%+ profit margins
Key Lessons
"I was super surprised that I was able to compete in the App Store and Google Play with bigger companies or people that are super long on the app store. I reached top five in super important keywords which drives a ton of organic traffic to my apps."
"If you manage to secure a good ranking on the app store, you don't need a big marketing budget and you can compete with bigger brands."
Advice for Beginners
"Save money for sabbatical to focus on development of your app business like I did. I saved some money and I just quit my job and set myself a deadline for 12 months to do something that works."
"I couldn't find motivation to code on my own apps after I programmed for 8 hours on my regular job. So quitting my job was actually the only chance to get this started."
"At the end of the day, you can just go back and get another job."
Resources
- •Habit Kit: App Store/Google Play
- •Follow Sebastian on Twitter