$18K/Month From This Ridiculously Simple App Idea

Ryan, a former product designer who left a $200,000 job, built a Pomodoro timer app called CatOnChair that now makes over $18,000 a month. The twist: when you start a focus session, a cat jumps onto a chair and stays with you; when you finish, it leaves a gift. The app has crossed 127,000 downloads and earned roughly $80,000 over eight to nine months. Most revenue comes from a $29.99 lifetime purchase option. The episode explores how a deliberately playful, handcrafted app can succeed in a market flooded with generic productivity tools, and what that means for founders building with AI.

From Designer to Builder

Ryan spent years as a product designer at various tech startups but felt constrained by only doing design work. He quit to build his own business, though it took time to find his footing. When AI coding tools became viable for iOS development about a year ago, he decided to try building an app—his first ever. He used Cursor (Pro plan) for coding, RevenueCat for paywall and subscription management ($10/month), and Nolt for user feedback (free). The first version took months: he started in May 2025, got a simple Pomodoro timer working after a few weeks, then spent the summer fleshing out cat animations and mechanics. By August, he invited thousands of people on RedNote (a Chinese social platform) to beta test. The app launched August 27th with about 3,000 downloads i