Two college track athletes DM'd Pat Walls from Starter Story claiming their app makes $20,000 a month.
They're 19 and 20. They're still competing. And neither of them can code.
I watch a lot of founder stories for the podcast. Most "I built an app with AI" stories fall apart when you look at the numbers. This one doesn't.
Christian and Braylon built 3AK, an all-in-one training app for track and field athletes. Launched December 16, 2025. First month: $10,000. Six months later: around $70,000 total revenue, 40,000 users, a 4.7 rating in the App Store, and about $20K coming in every month.
Built in 2 weeks. For less than $500.
Here's the full story, plus the two things they did that most app founders skip (and why those two things made all the difference).
Watch the original story
Who are Christian and Braylon?
Christian is 20. He was at Texas Southern running track until he dropped out to go all-in on apps. Braylon is 19, runs track at Texas State. They met in high school and got close training together.
Before the app, they tried day trading. Lost about $3,000, bleeding money every day.
(Been there. My first attempts at making money online were just as ugly.)
Their backgrounds are heavier than most founder stories you'll hear. Christian's dad died when he was 15, so it was just his mom, and he had to work for everything himself. Braylon lost his mom at 12 and grew up bouncing between houses.
Braylon put it simply: money is cool, but it should never be the motivating factor. It should be the life you want to live.
Last year Christian says he was dead broke. Now bills are paid, and the app funds everything.
The app: 3AK, an all-in-one tool for sprinters
The idea is stupidly simple, which is exactly why it works.
There are thousands of fitness apps. Running apps. Gym apps. But almost nothing built specifically for track and field. Millions of kids run track, and nobody was serving them.
3AK does everything a young sprinter needs in one place:
- Training plans and workout tracking
- An AI form analyzer that scores your sprint (Pat ran on camera and got a 56, then a 68 after one fix)
- Meal analysis so athletes eat right
- A community to track progress against other runners
Pricing is where they got smart. $10 a month or $30 a year.
That yearly price looks way too cheap until you hear their reasoning: their users are teenagers. Kids don't drop $70 on a training program. They spend $10 to $20 here and there, the same way they buy V-Bucks and Robux.
They priced for their actual customer, not for what a SaaS pricing guide says. Most founders never do that.
How they built it with zero coding experience
Neither of them has ever written code. Here's their entire stack:
- Rork, an AI app builder they talk to like ChatGPT ("we want the UI to look like this" and it builds it)
- Claude and Claude Code to verify the output and fix whatever breaks
- Supabase for the backend
- RevenueCat for subscriptions
- An Apple developer account
That's it. Christian says you can build an app and have it live on the App Store for under $500. Theirs took 2 weeks.
The workflow is what caught my attention. They don't just prompt and pray. They use one tool to build and a second AI to check the work. When they hit a wall, they paste the problem into Claude and have it debug.
Two years ago this story is impossible. The building part of building an app is basically solved.
Which means building is no longer the moat. That leads to the real lesson.
The real playbook: they built the audience BEFORE the app
This is the part most people will skim past, and it's the entire reason 3AK did $10K in month one instead of $0.
Christian and Braylon had already built hundreds of thousands of followers posting track content. No ads, no marketing budget. Just videos in the niche they lived in every day.
Then they got sneaky with it.
Before the app even existed, they were seeding "3AK method" into their videos. It was on their Shopify store. It was in their bios. Their audience saw the name for months.
So when they finally dropped the app, the crowd was already waiting for it.
→ Distribution first, product second. They picked a niche where they already had influence, then built the product that niche needed.
Braylon said it directly: building doesn't really matter so much. What really matters is marketing, and they prioritized it over everything.
I see the opposite every week. Founders spend 6 months polishing an app, launch to zero followers, and wonder why nobody downloads it. If that's you, start with how to get your first 1,000 app downloads before you write another prompt.
The numbers
Quick recap of everything they shared:
- Launched December 16, 2025
- $10,000 in month one
- Around $70,000 total in 6 months
- Roughly $20,000/month run rate
- 40,000 users
- 4.7 stars on the App Store
- Built in 2 weeks for under $500
- Pricing: $10/month or $30/year
One more number that matters: zero. Zero dollars spent on ads, zero lines of code written by hand, zero coding background.
What it actually costs: the schedule
Before you romanticize this, hear their week.
When they shipped their football app (yes, they're already on app number two), they didn't sleep for 4 days straight. 50 to 60 hour work weeks on top of school and practice.
Braylon's day: wake up at 8, class, cafeteria, practice, then straight to work until late. Calls between classes. Calls on the walk to the cafeteria.
Christian's day: wake up at 9, work until practice, practice, then work until 3am. Repeat.
They survive it by tag-teaming. One works while the other is in class or sleeping. Shifts.
Christian's take: if you're in school and trying to do this as a solo founder, it's brutally hard. Having a partner who covers your gaps is what makes the schedule survivable.
That matches what I hear from solo SaaS founders every week. The hours are one thing. Having nobody to call at 10pm when you're stuck is the part that actually breaks people. It's half the reason I built a club for founders in the first place.
Their advice for anyone who wants to build an app
Two pieces, and they're better than most paid courses.
1. Monetize what you already do.
Christian's rule: take something already in your day-to-day life and make it profitable. You like gaming? Monetize gaming. You cook? Monetize cooking. You'll outlast everyone who's only in the niche for money, because you actually care.
2. Solve your future problems.
Braylon's version: when you hit a problem today, ask if you'll still have it in the future. If yes, that's your app.
They ran track, saw there was no serious track app, and had the audience to launch one. Idea, distribution, and domain knowledge all lined up in one niche.
Pat's tennis comment in the video proves how repeatable this is. Any sport, any hobby, any job with a specific skill you can analyze or plan for is an open lane now. If the no-code part still intimidates you, I broke down the tools in how to build apps without coding.
What I'd steal from this story
Three things, in order:
→ Pick a niche where you already have an unfair advantage (audience, credibility, or lived experience). The app market doesn't reward generalists.
→ Seed your product name before launch. The "3AK method" trick cost them nothing and gave them $10K in month one.
→ Price for your real customer's wallet, not your revenue goals. $30/year from 19-year-olds beats $200/year from nobody.
Anyone can build an app now. Getting 40,000 people to download it is the part you can't prompt your way through.
FAQ
What is the 3AK app?
3AK is an all-in-one training app for track and field athletes, built by two college sprinters. It includes training plans, an AI sprint form analyzer, meal analysis, and a community. It costs $10/month or $30/year and has around 40,000 users with a 4.7 App Store rating.
How much money does 3AK make?
About $20,000 per month. The app launched December 16, 2025, made $10,000 in its first month, and passed roughly $70,000 in total revenue within 6 months.
How did they build an app with no coding experience?
They used Rork, an AI app builder you prompt in plain English, then verified and debugged the output with Claude and Claude Code. Supabase handles the backend and RevenueCat handles subscriptions. Total build time was 2 weeks and the total cost was under $500.
Can you really launch an app for under $500?
According to Christian, yes. The main costs are the Apple developer account ($99/year) and subscriptions to AI building tools. The expensive part isn't building anymore. It's getting anyone to download the thing, which is why their audience-first approach mattered more than their stack.
What's the biggest lesson from their story?
Distribution beats product. They built hundreds of thousands of followers in their niche first, seeded the app name into their content before launch, and only then shipped. That's why month one did $10K instead of nothing.
Want more stories like this?
Every week on the Profitable Founder Podcast I break down how real founders got to real revenue, with the actual numbers and the playbooks behind them.
No fluff, no gurus. Just founders who did it.
