I built a $99K/month AI app

I built an AI platform that makes almost

$100,000 a month.

This is Dustin and just two years ago,

he came across an idea that changed his

life.

I saw very quickly where the world was

headed and almost like a revelation saw

what the next 3 years would look like.

So, he did something crazy. With no

money and no coding experience, he

taught himself how to build apps and he

built an MVP.

I made $3,000 in that first month.

2 months later, he made $10,000 a month

and a year later, he was making $30,000

a month. I brought Dustin onto the

channel to break down exactly how he did

it. And in this video, we'll dive into

the not so obvious problem his app

solves and why it's so successful, his

8-week no code build process from idea

to launch, and why he thinks everyone

should be building an AI right now. All

right, let's get into it. I'm Pat Walls

and this is Starter Story.

All right, Dustin, welcome to the

channel. Tell me about who you are, what

you built, and what's your story.

My name is Dustin. I built a little tool

called Magi. I built the app in 8 weeks

and had my first customers on the first

day that I released it. So, 2 and a half

years later, we're doing well over a

million dollars in revenue, over almost

$100,000 a month.

All right. Well, before we get into the

idea and the app that you actually

built, I just want to get a little bit

of background on you. How do you get to

this point?

I grew up in smalltown Pennsylvania. Mom

and my stepdad always worked hard to try

and provide a good life for us. I wanted

to be an actor. So I moved out to

California to pursue acting. Hated

waiting tables. So ended up starting a

business instead. Found that I had a

knack for social media and technology.

And so I taught myself web design,

taught myself marketing, and starting an

agency. Very quickly though, I learned

that uh I'm a bit of a perfectionist and

that didn't scale very well for me. So I

found that if I focused all that

perfectionism into building digital

products, I could help hundreds of

thousands of people rather than one

client at a time. And so I started

building digital products. My first

digital product was in 2014. Started a

WordPress plug-in company with a couple

of partners. We kind of grew apart as

partners and I made my exit to start a

couple other products that failed

miserably and then found myself in a

place where I was uh not sure if I had

anything left to give but uh kept moving

forward anyways and then uh the idea for

Magi is uh what started this whole new

season of life.

All right. Well, let's dive into that.

How do you come up with the idea for

Magi, this business that's now making

over $100,000 a month? Where do you even

get this idea?

You know, having been through several

different technology booms, I saw the

writing on the wall. I saw that the

whole world was about to change. And so,

as I started using Chat GPT, I realized

that there were some things missing.

There was some features that I wish were

there. You know, at the beginning, you

couldn't search your chats. You couldn't

put things into folders. All these

little quality of life things started

piling up. I knew that I could make

something better and I can improve it.

And thanks to, you know, the journey

that I had been on, I had kind of taught

myself enough about how to develop

working apps using no code tools. And

having some experience with customers in

the subscription SAS space, I knew that

people were completely burnt down on

subscriptions. And seeing all these

different AI companies pop up, I went to

myself, people are going to need like

five or six different subscriptions just

to get the best of the best AI things.

What if I could solve that one problem

for them? And then on top of that, all

these quality of life things that I'm

having with Chat GBT. So that was really

the genesis of the idea.

I want to now get into how you actually

built this thing. That's something that

we really try to dig into at Starter

Story. You didn't have a technical or

big-time developer background, but you

built this amazing SAS software tool.

Take me through the actual build and

launch of Mage AI. How did you do it?

How did you go from zero to really great

product?

Yeah, so you're spot on. I I'm not a

developer. So when I was at the point in

my life where I was broke, no ability to

hire uh developers to help me, when I

had this idea, I had to find a way to

build it myself without spending any

money. And so I actually found a really

great uh online course and I just

started learning as much as I could as

fast as I could. Within 8 weeks, I had a

full MVP built on a combination of

Bubble and a handful of code that I

understood how to build myself. I

launched it thinking nobody would buy

it. But to my surprise, in the first

month, we made uh $3,000. Uh second

month, 4,000. Third month, we were at

10,000 a month. And then after one full

year, we were doing 30,000 a month in

revenue.

Okay. Well, on that note, I think a lot

of people watching are wondering, okay,

once you actually launch it, get those

first users, how did you then scale it

or grow it to $100,000 a month? What

were the growth tactics or the marketing

strategies you employed? The most

important marketing strategy that I

could say that I utilized at the

beginning was having built a personal

brand for the last 10 years. You need to

be building in public. People want to

see the journey. Even if it's not

pretty, if it's not Instagram polished,

people want to see. So for the last 10

years, I had a personal blog that had

over 10 years accumulated over 100,000

email subscribers. So when I launched a

product, I had a built-in audience. And

so that carried me doing no advertising,

doing no real marketing aside from just

building in public. I will also say that

I think a big contributor to the initial

momentum that we had was right away I

built an affiliate program into the

product and it was a very generous one.

It was a affiliate program that was

built on recurring revenue. So it's not

just a onetime commission. If they refer

a customer that pays us 12 times, they

get paid 12 times. And apart from that,

I'm very grateful to have some really

great friends in the industry. some

really great marketers who are friends

of mine. I built relationships in the

industry. I I genuinely care about

people. I'm an extrovert. So, like I

really do love people. So, those were

really the three biggest keys to to

growing magi from 0 to 100,000 a month

in revenue. One of the reasons I love

Dustin's story is because he built his

idea fast. He didn't spend months

learning to code and spend a bunch of

money on hiring developers. And I wanted

to mention this because I see a lot of

people getting stuck in the build phase

for months. Well, that's where Rocket

new comes in. Rocket helps you go from

just a few sentences to a full stack

app. No coding required. Just describe

your vision once and get a complete

functional app with back-end

integrations and productionready code.

You can even import designs from Figma,

add integrations like Stripe and

Superbase, and download an actual mobile

APK to test on your phone instantly. And

the best part, you own all the code

forever. Over 400,000 users in over 180

countries are already building with

Rocket because it turns ideas into apps

in minutes, not months. If you're ready

to build your AI app idea without months

of development, check out rocket.new at

the first link in the description. Thank

you to Rocket for sponsoring this video.

I love what you guys are building. All

right. Now, back to the story. All

right. Well, now I mean I would love to

see what you built. Can you give us a

quick demo of Magi? What it does, how it

works. Give me the breakdown of the app.

I'd love to see it in action.

Yeah. So, just like any other chat app

you've used, Chat Petite, Claude, etc.

You open up Magi and you get a input

place where you can start typing to the

AI. You could say hello to the default

model. Now the difference with Magi is

unlike the other apps, you don't just

get to access the one company's AI

model. We give you access to all of

them. So if you look in the top left

corner of the app, you can open up the

full list where all the top models in

the world are accessible. So if you

wanted to chat with GPT5, you just

select GPT5 and then all of a sudden

you're now chatting with GPT5. So you

started the conversation with Claude and

then you brought GPT5 into the

conversation. So yeah, it gives you

access to all of the best AI models in

one subscription, one dashboard. The

other great thing is you're not limited

to just large language models. We also

have image and video models as well. So

we have Dolly, Flux, GBT image, we have

idoggram, all of the top image and video

models as well. So if you wanted to flip

over and create a uh photo of a cat

playing cards, you can do that with Flux

right inside that same chat

conversation. So most of what you're

seeing on the front end is built with

bubble. On top of that, we're using

Stripe as our payment processor.

ConvertKit is our default email

marketing system. Open router is sort of

our central access point for all these

AI models. They've created a unified

technology platform that allows you to

access all the different LLMs with one

API called format. And foul.ai is also

similar. They put all of the image and

video and audio models in one place.

Now, some of the models I do have direct

API connections to. Uh, in fact, with

OpenAI, I have the highest tier. And

then on top of that, it's just your

standard Google Analytics to track, you

know, how users are using the app. Uh, I

use ahrefs as our SEO platform to uh to

kind of monitor our keyword ranking and

uh, you know, how we're doing from an

SEO standpoint. Thanks for showing that.

The other question I have is how do you

monetize this? Are you on a subscription

model? Is there premium free trial?

What's worked for you? Yeah. So, we have

a strictly a paid model. Uh we don't

have any premium. We have a $20 a month

plan for solo users and it gets you the

average amount of usage that you might

need in a given month. So, if you want

to blast through that, we give you the

option to add more usage as you go if

you need it. We have a team plan. It's

$40 a month. Gives you up to five users.

Uh you all share. There's three times as

much usage. And again, you can purchase

more. Uh you can also add team members

for $20 per team member per month if you

need more users. And so that's great for

enterprises who need to scale up to, you

know, a thousand or more users. You can

do that easily right from within the

app.

Well, thanks for sharing that. The last

question that I have for you is if you

could go back in time, stand on Dustin's

shoulder, or share any advice with

anyone who's watching this channel who

wants to do something amazing like

you've done, built a million-doll AI SAS

product. What would be your advice?

I think the biggest problem that

founders face is letting their past

failures define them. I had a lot of

confidence when I launched my first

software company and by the grace of God

it was successful out of the gate with

very little effort. But then I left that

business and I had two more ideas that

completely failed to launch and crashed

and burned. And so my confidence was

shot and those failures were so heavy on

me that I I lacked the confidence that

that I should have had. People rejected

the products. They didn't reject you.

Cool. Thanks for coming on the channel,

Dustin. Amazing story. Hope to have you

back on sometime. Thanks for sharing

everything.

My pleasure.

All right. Thank you, Dustin, for coming

onto the channel. I think one of the

most powerful feelings in the world is

taking an idea from up here in your head

and bringing it to life, just like

Dustin did with Match AI. And this is

exactly why we have Starter Story Build.

It's our program where we will show you

how to build fast using the latest AI

coding tools. And in just a few days,

you'll go from a simple idea to a real

working app. If you're interested in

this, we'll head to the link in the

description and check out Starter Story

Build. All right, that's it for this

episode. Thank you guys for watching.

We'll see you in the next one. Peace.

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