How TikTok + Influencers Drove 400K App Downloads

Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?

Hey! I’m Kylan O'Connor. I am a mobile app builder and the co-founder of Iterative. We are a small app studio that builds products people actually want to use.

I run Iterative with two amazing co-founders: Jayden Francis, who helps me handle the heavy technical lifting, and Justin Rausch, who is our marketing mastermind. We don't have massive venture capital funding. We are completely bootstrapped.

Today, our portfolio of apps has crossed 400,000+ total downloads.

Our two biggest hits are:

1. RidePal: The #1 mountain biking ride tracker. It combines trail maps with ride tracking and social features. It has over 200,000 users.

2. AutoLab: A viral AI app for car lovers. You take a picture of your car, and our AI instantly shows you what it would look like with a new paint job, spoiler, or body kit.

Instead of chasing the standard Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) that most software founders want, we unlocked a totally different level. Recently, we hit $10,000 in Weekly Recurring Revenue (WRR).

Here is exactly how we built this app empire.

The Backstory and Validation: How did you come up with these ideas?

We look for places where users are in pain. We want to find a group of people who are passionate, but the tools they use are old and clunky.

Validating RidePal:
Mountain bikers are super passionate. They ride every single week. But for the last 10 years, they had to use apps that were slow, ugly, and hard to use. They were frustrated. We realized if we built an app that looked beautiful, tracked their speed and trails perfectly, and let them show off to their friends, they would use it every ride. We didn't need to guess; the complaints about the old apps were our validation.

Validating AutoLab:
Car lovers spend thousands of dollars on custom parts. But before they buy a $5,000 body kit, they want to see what it looks like. Before AutoLab, they had to pay a 3D artist or try to use a video game to guess what their car would look like. We saw that AI could do this in seconds. We validated it by showing early AI pictures on Twitter. People went crazy for it.

First Version & Tech Stack: How did you build the apps so fast?

We are a tiny team of three. To build massive apps that can handle hundreds of thousands of users, we have to move faster than big companies.

Our Tech Stack:

• Coding: We use AI tools like Cursor heavily. It is our secret weapon. It helps us write code 10 times faster.

• Mobile Apps: I love using Apple-native SwiftUI for iPhones. It just feels smoother. For Android, we use cross-platform tools to port the apps over quickly.

• Web & AI: We use Next.js for websites. For AI, we hook into tools like OpenAI and Replicate.

• Payments: We use RevenueCat. It makes handling App Store subscriptions super easy.

Question: How long did it take to build?
We don't spend months building in secret. For the Android version of RidePal, we used AI coding tools to build a working version in just 16 hours. We push the ugly version out to real users as fast as possible.

Launch & First Customers: How did you get your first users?

A lot of people think you need a massive "Launch Day." We don't do that. We get our first customers by building in public and going straight to the fans.

1. Twitter and Building in Public
For AutoLab, I posted videos on Twitter showing a boring car turning into a cool street racer in one click. Developers and tech fans loved the "magic trick" and immediately downloaded it to try it on their own cars.

2. Niche Forums
For RidePal, we didn't just put it on the App Store and pray. When our beta test was ready, we shared it directly in mountain biking groups and forums. We gave it to the hardcore riders first.

3. The Android Surprise
When we finally launched RidePal on Android in December 2025, it was an instant hit. On Day 1, we got 35 paying customers and made $250. This proved our app was solving a real problem.

Growth Channels: How are you getting customers today?

Getting to 400,000 downloads requires a machine. Justin, our CMO, is a genius at this. Here is our breakdown:

1. Influencer Marketing (The Big Engine)
We find popular mountain bikers on Instagram and TikTok. We pay them to make authentic videos using RidePal. These videos act as high-converting ads. One format we used got 400,000 views in just a week, sending thousands of downloads to the app.

2. Product-Led Content (Viral Loops)
AutoLab does its own marketing. When someone uses the app to put a crazy spoiler on their Honda Civic, they want to show their friends. They share the "before and after" picture on social media. Our watermark is on that picture. Their friends see it and download the app. The product is the marketing.

3. SEO and App Store Search

We make sure our App Store names are exactly what people search for. We don't use confusing names. If someone types "mountain bike trail map" or "AI car mods," we want to be the first thing they see.

4. Free Web Tools
We build free, fun websites (like an open-source tool I made called Face Looker). Thousands of people visit these free sites, see our company name, and click over to buy our real apps.

Pricing & Revenue Model: The $10k WRR Secret

This is the most important part of our business. Most software founders talk about MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue). We care about WRR (Weekly Recurring Revenue).

Our revenue model is Freemium. The apps are free to download, but you pay for premium features.

The Weekly Subscription Strategy:
If you try to charge a regular person $15 a month for an app, they might say no. It feels like a big commitment.

Instead, on AutoLab, we offer a Weekly Subscription for just $4.99.
To a user, $4.99 feels cheaper than a cup of coffee. They pay it without thinking twice so they can mod their car for the weekend.

The Math:
To make $10,000 a month, you need about 667 users paying $15 a month.
But to make $10,000 a week, you only need 2,000 users paying $5 a week.

Because our apps reach hundreds of thousands of people, finding 2,000 fans who will pay $5 a week is very doable. This high-speed cash flow lets us reinvest in the business immediately.

For RidePal, our churn rate (the number of people who cancel) is less than 5%. Because mountain biking is a habit, they keep the app forever.

Mistakes and Challenges: What went wrong?

1. The Seasonality Trap
We learned that mountain biking is seasonal. When winter hits, people ride less. We saw our usage dip. To fix this, we had to focus on getting users in warmer parts of the world to balance it out.

2. Chasing Perfection
In the early days, I would spend days trying to make a button look perfect. I learned that users don't care about perfect code. They care if the app works. Perfection is the enemy of making money. Ship it fast.

3. Platform Risk
Building apps means Apple and Google control your fate. To protect ourselves, we collect emails from our users. If Apple ever changes their rules, we still own our customer list.

The Ultimate Secret: Advice for Other Builders

If there is one thing you take away from our story, it should be this: Don't build for everyone. Build for a specific niche.

The riches are in the niches. Don't try to build the next Facebook. Build the best app in the world for a very specific person (like a mountain biker or a car modder). Deliver a product that is 10 times better than what they are using right now.

My top 3 pieces of advice:

1. Use AI to code: You can build a whole app in weeks, not months, if you use AI coding tools.

2. Charge weekly: Test weekly pricing. It is a cheat code for consumer apps.

3. Market through habits: Build a tool that people need to use every time they do their hobby. Retention is more important than getting new users.

There has never been a better time to be a small team building software. Stop overthinking your idea. Open your laptop, build the ugly version, and get it into the hands of real people today.