This guy makes $3M/year from 20 different projects | Starter Story

John Rush spent a decade working for VC-backed startups, but he felt bored and unhappy with that life. So he threw it out and started building his own apps as a solo founder. Over three years, he has launched and now runs more than 20 different projects, generating around $3 million per year in revenue. In this Starter Story episode, he walks through his exact process for coming up with ideas, validating them before writing code, and managing a portfolio of apps without burning out.

The operating system: small bets, fast launches

Rush does not build startups. He builds what he calls "projects" — small, focused apps that solve a single problem for a specific audience. His typical project takes between two days and two weeks to build, not months or years. The goal is to get something live and generating revenue as quickly as possible, then decide whether to invest more time into it.

The secret, he says, is that "the secret of running 26 stores is you don't run 26 stores." Most of his projects are simple enough that they require almost no ongoing maintenance once launched. He uses standard templates and frameworks so that building a new app is mostly a matter of swapping in new content and design. This lets him launch frequently without accumulating technical debt or operational overhead.

How he picks what to build