The Story
David Attias spent seven years building trading algorithms for banks and professional traders. It paid well. It was not where he wanted to end up.
The shift came from a podcast. He watched three teenagers discuss their app, QUITTR - a product that had hit $200k per month in just three months. Curious, David downloaded it and paid for it. His reaction was not admiration. It was a question: if this quality of product can do those numbers, what could a well-built one do?
He went and built STOPPR - an app to help people curb processed sugar cravings, directly inspired by QUITTR's onboarding flow. Within two weeks of launch, he had crossed $5k in revenue on the back of two videos from influencers that went viral. Three months later, he was at $14k per month.
But the growth came with a cost. Managing influencers was consuming three-quarters of his day. With a 20% profit margin, the numbers were not matching the effort. He had the revenue milestone - but not the business he actually wanted.
He regrouped. Today, David works as a developer relations advocate at Adapty - a subscription infrastructure platform - while running two apps in parallel. His total monthly income is around $15k, with roughly 70% coming from the apps. He is building toward $100k MRR, and this time, the infrastructure is better built for it.
We hired one colleague for every department.
Last Tuesday, marketing asked Viktor to write the weekly campaign recap, pull performance from Google Ads and Meta, and format it as a PDF for the exec team. Done in four minutes.
That same afternoon, engineering asked Viktor to review three open pull requests on GitHub, cross-reference with the Linear sprint board, and flag anything blocking the release. Posted to private channel before standup.
At 9pm, ops asked Viktor to draft a vendor contract summary from three Notion docs and send it to the team. It was in #ops by morning.
None of them knew the others were using it.
Same colleague. Three departments. That's what changes when your AI coworker lives in Slack, where your whole company already works. It's not a tool one person logs into. It's a teammate everyone messages.
5,700+ teams. SOC 2 certified. Your data never trains models.
"Viktor is now an integral team member, and after weeks of use we still feel we haven't uncovered the full potential." - Patrick O'Doherty, Director, Yarra Web
Key Insights
The quality bar in consumer apps is lower than most developers think
David's entry point was watching an app of average quality perform extremely well commercially. The takeaway was not that quality does not matter - it is that in early-stage consumer apps, distribution and timing often determine the outcome more than the product itself. A genuinely better product, with the same reach, has a real edge.
A lean dev stack dramatically lowers the cost and time to launch
David built his first app using Cursor, Figma, Claude, and Firebase - with a designer friend handling the visual screens. The Figma MCP inside Cursor let him import screens and generate both front-end and back-end code from them directly. Even at the time of his first build, 70–80% of the output was production-quality on the first pass. Errors were fixed conversationally. What previously required a team now requires one focused developer with the right tools.
Spending less while building better is now possible
His first stack cost around $1k per month in tooling and services. His current stack, refined over a year, runs at under $200 per month. That is a significant shift for a solo operator - every dollar saved in overhead is a dollar that stays in margin.
Paying per post creates the wrong incentives - equity changes the dynamic
David's first influencer model paid a flat rate for eight posts per month with minimum view guarantees. It drove views cheaply, but influencers were working with competing brands in parallel. They had no skin in the game. His revised approach: find one or two genuinely influential creators in the niche and offer them equity instead of cash. The incentive alignment shifts entirely. To track performance, the team uses viral.app - which connects to influencer accounts, monitors in real time, and flags when a video starts gaining traction. When something shows signs of going viral, they immediately amplify with paid ads on TikTok and Meta to ride the momentum before it fades.
Most influencers do not know how to go viral - that is the real filter
David is direct about this: most people who call themselves influencers lack genuine influence. Going viral consistently is a learnable skill, and most creators have not learned it. His sourcing method is straightforward - he watches the For You feeds on TikTok and Instagram until he finds people who are already doing it. No marketplace. No platform fee. Just pattern recognition and direct outreach through DMs, email, Discord, or Telegram.
A job can accelerate a side business - if the roles are complementary
David's role at Adapty puts him directly inside the mobile subscription ecosystem. That gives him an unusually close view of what is working in mobile monetisation, and credibility within a community of developers who are his peers and potential users. The job and the apps are not competing - they are reinforcing each other.
The $10k/Mo Roadmap - In David's Words
David lays this out as a month-by-month action framework for the period immediately after you ship your app:
Skip UGC creators and brand ambassadors. They do not know how to go viral. Managing them at scale will consume your time without proportional return.
Find one or two genuine influencers in your specific niche. Size is not the only criterion. Repeatability of viral content is what matters.
Reach out through every channel available - DM, email, Discord, Telegram. Be persistent and direct about what you are offering.
Get them on a call. The equity conversation happens in person, not over text. It requires real negotiation.
Once you have a partner, monitor performance in real time and boost what is working immediately. The window on a viral moment is short.
What You Should Do Now
Audit the apps you use regularly. If you are a developer or builder, pay attention to products you find mediocre but popular. That gap is the opportunity David exploited. Consumer apps in health, productivity, and habit formation are still full of them.
Start your app with the smallest viable stack. You do not need a team. You need the right tools, a clear design brief, and the willingness to test each screen yourself. David's first version launched in a matter of weeks with a two-person setup. Perfection is not the goal - something real people can use is.
Rethink how you pay for distribution before you launch. If you are planning to work with creators, think carefully about whether flat-rate payments align their incentives with yours. Equity or revenue share arrangements are harder to negotiate - but they attract partners who are genuinely invested in the outcome.
Use viral.app to monitor influencer performance in real time. Knowing when content is gaining momentum - and acting immediately with paid amplification - is a meaningful edge over brands that review results weekly.
Find your influencer partners on the platforms themselves, not marketplaces. Watch the For You feeds in your target niche. The people who go viral repeatedly stand out quickly. Reaching out directly costs nothing and gives you a much better signal on who can actually deliver.
Track the margin, not just the revenue. David hit $14k per month and still had a problem - because 80% of his time was going toward managing it. Revenue is not the only number that matters. Time cost per dollar is equally important, especially when you are operating solo or in a very small team.
David shares his ongoing journey - tools, learnings, and revenue updates - on X and in his Discord community. Both are worth following if you are building in the mobile app space.
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Your next great hire lives in Slack.
Viktor is an AI coworker that connects to your tools and ships real work. Ask Viktor to pull a report, build a client dashboard, or source 200 leads matching your ICP. Most teams hand over half their ops within a week.
