Florian Vates spent years building apps nobody used.
The first one, an event planning app called CORDI, took two years to build. He wanted it to be perfect before launch. When it finally went live, the only users were friends he had pressured into signing up. He shut it down.
Most people in that position either quit or go again with the same approach. Florian did neither. He changed the approach completely. Smaller apps, faster launches, real business models from day one. He started sharing everything on Twitter. Revenue trickled in. Then plateaued again.
Then in 2024, a message arrived from a content creator in Colombia named Charlie Alvarez. Charlie had found Florian's Twitter handle inside the app settings and reached out.
Within two months of that partnership, Florian's main app, MonAi, went from $300 MRR to $12,000 MRR. Today the number sits somewhere between $40k and $60k a month across his portfolio. He quit his job in January 2026.
$300 MRR before partnership | $12K MRR after 2 months | $50K+ Monthly revenue today |
Turn AI into Your Income Engine
Ready to transform artificial intelligence from a buzzword into your personal revenue generator
HubSpot’s groundbreaking guide "200+ AI-Powered Income Ideas" is your gateway to financial innovation in the digital age.
Inside you'll discover:
A curated collection of 200+ profitable opportunities spanning content creation, e-commerce, gaming, and emerging digital markets—each vetted for real-world potential
Step-by-step implementation guides designed for beginners, making AI accessible regardless of your technical background
Cutting-edge strategies aligned with current market trends, ensuring your ventures stay ahead of the curve
Download your guide today and unlock a future where artificial intelligence powers your success. Your next income stream is waiting.
What MonAi Actually Does
MonAi is an expense-tracking app, but not the kind loaded with dashboards nobody reads. The whole design philosophy is subtraction. Remove friction, remove clutter, make logging an expense something you'll actually do in the moment rather than reconstruct at the end of the month.
Florian also builds other small apps: Mindr, a widget for repeating tasks that don't have a deadline but still need doing; Re-Frame, which turns an old iPad into a digital photo frame; and Max, a prioritization tool that estimates how to fill a block of time. Each one solves a narrow problem and nothing else.
The paywall on MonAi used to be freemium. Bad reviews said it felt too restrictive. Florian switched to a free trial with a hard paywall at the end. Revenue improved and reviews got better. Sometimes the fix is simpler than you expect.
How the Partnership Actually Works
Charlie Alvarez, now Florian's business partner, creates story-driven videos about MonAi for Instagram and TikTok. The content is in Spanish, which is why the user base is mostly in Latin America and why the product-market fit there has been stronger than in the US, where they are still experimenting.
The numbers from that channel are unusual. A 14% trial-start rate and 40 to 50% trial-to-paid conversion from social traffic. Most apps would consider a 5% conversion rate a win.
The reason Charlie's videos work is that they don't chase virality. They're not optimized for maximum reach. They're optimized for the right people watching and deciding they want the app. High-quality storytelling at a smaller scale consistently outperforms broad reach with shallow content.
"We don't try to create viral videos with hundreds of influencers. My partner creates high-quality videos. They don't get millions of views, but they convert at very high rates."
They've since started testing paid ads, using short modular videos with interchangeable hooks and endings. The challenge is that MonAi's price point makes paid ROI harder to close, so they're still dialing in the format. Honest, ongoing work, not a solved problem.
What's Worth Taking From This
Your product's settings page is distribution. Florian's Twitter handle in his app settings is what got Charlie to reach out. Small things like that are worth doing.
Freemium problems are often paywall design problems. If users say the free tier is too restrictive, the answer isn't always to give more away. Sometimes switching to a proper trial converts better and earns better reviews simultaneously.
A content partner who tells stories is not the same as an influencer. Charlie's videos don't reach millions of people. They reach the right people and convert them at rates most paid campaigns can't touch.
Build small things with real pricing from the start. CORDI failed because it was big, free, and perfect. Florian's other apps work because they're narrow, priced, and shipped quickly.
UX skill is now a genuine competitive advantage. As Florian puts it, the barrier to building apps has dropped significantly, but that means the bar for polish has risen. Design thinking separates products that get used from ones that get deleted.
His Stack (Simple on Purpose)
Florian develops natively for iOS only, with Android handled by a separate developer. His tools are Xcode for development, Figma for design, RevenueCat for subscription management and experiments, Appwrite for backend and auth, and Helm as a friendlier App Store Connect interface.
He doesn't over-engineer the infrastructure. Most complexity lives in the product decisions, not the technology behind them.
Florian is not trying to build a unicorn. He wants a small, focused team making software people enjoy using. His long-term model is closer to a craft studio than a startup. That's a real business choice, not a consolation prize.
You can follow him on X, or follow his partner Charlie Alvarez on Instagram to see exactly how their content approach works. If you want to try MonAi, it's worth a look at how a well-designed narrow app can outperform bloated competitors.
