This legend from Scotland built a $30k/month iphone app? 💀 | Starter Story

John built a train tracking app covering over 160 cities that has been downloaded more than 5 million times since 2017. He did it entirely solo with no previous developer experience. The app now generates around $30,000 per month in subscription revenue, with roughly 400,000 monthly active users and 75,000 ratings.

The accidental origin story

John did not set out to build a business. He was a university student in Scotland who wanted to know when his train would arrive. The official UK rail app was slow and cluttered, so he taught himself to code by building a simpler version for himself. He launched it on the App Store mostly as a learning exercise, with no expectation anyone would download it. The first version was basic — it showed live departure times for his local station and nothing more.

What happened next surprised him. People started downloading it and leaving positive reviews. He kept improving it based on user requests, adding more stations, then more cities, then entire countries. The app grew organically through word of mouth and App Store search. He never spent a dollar on marketing.

The solo developer operating system

John's approach to building and running the app reveals a clear set of operating principles that allowed one person to compete with teams of developers.