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Darcy is an offline-first budget tracking app powered by on-device AI. It eventually became number one on the App Store.
Discover how Darcy, an offline-first AI budget app, topped the App Store with no ads and a paid upfront model.
Key Takeaways
- Paid upfront apps with no free trial can succeed if they offer clear value and avoid subscription fatigue.
- Organic growth through social platforms like Facebook groups can replace paid advertising effectively.
- Leveraging AI tools accelerates app development and design, enabling rapid prototyping and iteration.
- Balancing free core features with optional premium subscriptions can sustain revenue without alienating users.
- Shipping early and iterating based on user feedback is crucial for app success and community building.
Summary
- Darcy is an offline-first budget tracking app powered by on-device AI that became #1 on the App Store.
- The app was built in a single weekend as a demo for a university talk and quickly gained paying users.
- Darcy uses a paid upfront monetization strategy, avoiding free trials and subscriptions initially.
- Optional in-app subscriptions offer cloud features like data sync and AI enhancements.
- No paid ads or complex marketing were used; growth relied on a public Facebook group and organic sharing.
- Development leveraged AI tools like Codex and Gemini's Nano Banana for rapid iteration and design.
- App Store screenshots were created using Figma and ChatGPT for optimized feature presentation.
- The app supports cross-device syncing through a subscription tier with server backend.
- Localization efforts are underway focusing on popular Asian markets including Japanese and Chinese.
- The founder emphasizes shipping early, iterative design, and community engagement for app growth.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction to Darcy and its success
- 00:36Marketing strategy without paid ads
- 01:18AppSprint tool for ad campaign tracking
- 02:07Darcy app features and AI integration
- 03:00Development tools and mascot design
- 03:45App Store screenshots and presentation
- 04:45Monetization strategy: paid upfront model
- 05:28Balancing paid app and in-app subscriptions
- 06:08User feedback and Facebook group marketing
- 07:21App design process and inspiration
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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Today's guest, Brell, built an app in a single weekend for a university talk, published it as a demo, and people started paying for it.
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They were willing to pay for something with no free trial. First month, $20,000 on iOS and Android. And this is not the usual free app with a paywall and onboarding conversion.
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No, this is a paid upfront app. That means that you have to pay before you download the app. This is a completely different game. That's why I wanted to share this story with you today.
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No paid ads, no complex marketing, and no servers.
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A public Facebook group. It gets recommended to their friends or family or connections on Facebook. It just appears on their feed.
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So, in this episode, we're going to talk about how he built an app in a single weekend and made $20,000 his first month. Why paid apps with no competition can top the charts easily.
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And finally, how he uses Facebook groups instead of paid ads to grow. This is the Tap and Swipe Podcast. I'm Arthur, founder of AppSprint, a mobile attribution tool for app founders scaling with paid ads.
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If you're running Apple Search Ads, TikTok Ads, Meta Ads, or even Google Ads, and you don't know which campaign actually drives revenue, AppSprint is for you.
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You just have to connect your app, pick the event you want to optimize for, and see which campaigns bring users who convert. And if you're a beginner launching your mobile app, you can also join the AppSprint
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community. We are a group of app founders shipping together. We do three group calls per week, and we are sharing what's working right now for us. That will be also in the description. Now, let's go back to today's guest. So, you
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built this app Darcy in a single weekend. Can you tell us a bit more about what Darcy is, but also why you built this app? So, Darcy is an offline-first budget tracking app powered by on-device AI.
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Um, that's Apple intelligence. And it allows users to track their finances from their debit cards, credit cards, and so on.
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And with a lot more features. And the reason why I built this app is I was invited to a talk at university about vibe coding. And instead of presenting a slide or pitch deck, I might as well show a
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demonstration of an app. After sharing it, it eventually became number one on the App Store. And you built it in a single weekend, which is crazy speed.
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What tools did you use? Probably AI tools? This was my first time building an app that is mascot driven. I used Nano Banana from Gemini. Um, I used a reference image of Bulbasaur and I added a prompt to make it look like
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a tarsier, which is an animal here in the Philippines, and gave it a baseball cap, a t-shirt to make it look cute. For the development itself, I primarily used Codex. Um, although I have some templates for my React Native
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applications, I used Codex to quickly iterate on what I wanted. I posted on my socials that I would be interviewing you, and I asked if people had a few questions for you, and I got a few times the same one. What did
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you use to create your App Store screenshots? Because I think they look very nice, and I was not the only one thinking that. What I use for it is I just use Figma. For the mockups, there's a free plugin on Figma that
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I use. I use ChatGPT to give me an outline of the heading title, the subtext. I took advantage of the 10 screenshot limit. I just focused on the features that would drive more users to the app.
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On the first, I think the first three are quite important. What makes your story very unique is your monetization strategy.
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Instead of the regular free app with a paywall and onboarding conversion, you went on a completely different path. Your app is paid upfront. Why did you do that?
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The truth is, it was easier that way. I didn't have to set up separate paywall accounts or set up all those things.
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I just let the App Store do the monetization part on it. No extra integration parts on my end like for RevenueCat or for other payment providers. That was really primarily the main reason: speed.
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The second thing is since it was an experiment, and I found out that people were willing to pay for something when there's no free trial. So, I think part of the reason for that is the users
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because the market right now is full of freemium apps, right? That gives you everything as a subscription now, and I feel like users feel like it's a breath of fresh air that there's a new app that
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gives you unlimited accounts, unlimited things you can do in the app, and doesn't require a subscription. So, that's, I think, a unique selling point as well.
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What's also really interesting is that the app is paid upfront, but you also added some premium features inside the app behind the paywall. So, what's inside the app behind that paywall? And also, second question, don't people think it's quite bad because they paid
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upfront and they again have to pay inside the app? So, how do you balance between the features that are accessible upfront with a premium first payment and what is available after the paywall conversion?
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The app is a paid app, but it also has optional in-app purchases which have subscriptions.
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So, the reason it has subscriptions is it has cloud features where users upload their profiles, bill splitting, and a lot more like AI features. And these services cost me money to operate.
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I'm not advertising it directly that they should buy this. The way I advertise it is that it's optional quality of life features. They get to experience the full app even without purchasing it.
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Everything I advertise on the app from the App Store description to the screenshots, they get that once when they paid for the app. So, I don't advertise the cloud features at all on the screenshots because that might be misleading to customers, right?
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So, because it's paid upfront, you do not have recurring revenue. Basically, what is your marketing strategy because you do not run any paid ads? So, how do you get more and new users?
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Within Tarsier, there's a link in the settings. There's no feedback form because I encourage users if they want to leave feedback, they can just use the App Store review. I added a link to a Facebook
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group, a public Facebook group for the app where they can post their questions, suggestions, and feedback.
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The great thing about a public Facebook group, when users interact with it, it gets recommended to their friends or family or connections on Facebook. It just appears on their feed. So, that's free marketing for me that has been really
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helpful for me. And I haven't really done any paid marketing. I just use what channels I have available, mostly on Facebook and Threads. You started your app completely offline, so without any databases for convenience, I guess.
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But, do you plan to add a database and maybe features around APIs? I guess with the AI features, it's already the case, but do you have more ideas around new feature integrations?
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Actually, I added now for the subscription tier. Users get to sync their data and sync it across their multiple devices from Android or iOS. I have a server running and that's what drives these new features. Let's quickly
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talk about design because as a developer, we are usually pretty bad on that part. So, how do you get inspiration and how do you create your different components inside your app?
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There's a basic prototype for it. It absolutely was an iterative process. I don't use any prototyping tool or Figma.
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I just reiterate through the app through the prompt, that way it's faster for me compared to designing it on a prototyping tool and
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on their Instagram story, similar to Strava where you like post your runs per day.
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And it it had a lot of engagement, [music] um, from people uh, giving laugh reacts or and so on and it drove so many shares and into the community.
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And um, but I still shipped it, um, in the latest update and [music] um, but also the people also can share how much they save, but there's no actual values, just percentages, um, on their Instagram and then uh, they they post their stories and
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then also that uh, leads to more conversions as well for the app because um, I have my app name um, as like a watermark on the on the social sharing feature and I feel like that helps as well.
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You also both on iOS and Android. You told me that it took two to three weeks before releasing on Android, but do you think it's worth it to release your app on Android because a lot of developers are only focusing on iOS? What are your
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thoughts? So, do you adjust your price maybe a bit lower? How do you manage your your prices on Android? For me, it's worth it. Part of the reason why it I got delayed on publishing to Android was there's a new requirement where you
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have or you need at least 12 users using the app for 14 days straight before you can publish it. I really had no plans before on publishing to Android and uh I just put up a wait list uh I just a simple
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Google Form and I got 900 responses for the beta testing. So, these are potential sales. And the funny thing is, since they are beta testing, I would expect that they can use the app for free and I didn't know how to set
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that. [music] And um they still purchase the app even though it's in beta. Uh that also drove sales uh even if the app hasn't been published yet. App uh is $2 less.
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Um the the reason for that is not because it's on Android. Uh the reason for that is because Android has fewer features than the one on iOS.
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[music] It lacks like the receipt scanning feature, Apple intelligence, because those are not uh natively available on Android devices. So, I felt like that was a justifiable um price adjustment for for for them.
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You've now built a second app, which is a trip planner app, I would say. Did you follow the exact same playbook?
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I did. Um and it's also the number one travel app on the paid category, which meant my strategy worked. Um there's less competition for paid apps. Um and then uh I I built a community around it as well. Uh but one thing that's
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different about this one is I didn't have the bandwidth to like handle two apps anymore.
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Um cuz I I also have a third app incoming. [music] Um I delegated to some of it uh some of the development uh to my friends for some equity.
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And uh they're the ones uh maintaining the community and adding other features for that as well.
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That's amazing. Now, [music] the interesting part, can you share with us some numbers or maybe your App Store Connect dashboard?
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So, the app was published um if I'm not mistaken, last month, March 17th, um it app review was taking some time before when when it's a new app. Um right now it's sitting at 14 .9 [music] um USD.
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Uh for for like a month or more. And that's just for iOS. Uh for for the [music] app.
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And in total with iOS and Android, how much I think around 19 or 20. The there's fewer sales are on uh Google Play. And uh it's just been around for 3 weeks.
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[music] Okay, that that's crazy. Do you plan to actually extend your current Facebook community around new languages, for instance Spanish or I don't know?
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Uh definitely. Um localization is in the works. My um my But I'm starting first with a um popular Asian countries. Um I'm adding Japanese support, um Chinese support, and then eventually going through the other uh markets.
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And my last question that I ask to every guest, would you have any tips to share with the audience because we have a lot of builders actually.
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[music] They are really passionate about building apps, building products, but sometimes they struggle on the revenue part. So, what would be a cool tip to share with them?
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I I saw a quote quote about this. If [music] you think that your your app looks good, then you probably shipped too late. And [music] that's the the the the thing about my app right now is um I got a lot of flak
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from other developers for um publishing my app too early without proper testing and so on.
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[music] And that's the thing. Um with AI I get to iterate fast based on feedback [music] and to validate the idea first compared to um other developers out there who um who have clean code but zero sales. Uh AI is
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really an amplifier. Um it gets me to um validate my ideas fast. And uh two two builders are out there looking to do the same.
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Um just just ship your idea uh cuz the the only people validate validated would be the ones who're going to who's going to be using um your app and it's never going to be perfect. It's always going to be a work
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in progress. So, uh yeah, just you know, ship it and let the world uh see what you've built.
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Thank you so much for everything. Thank you. Thank you, Arthur. Don't forget to check out App Launch if you're currently running paid ads and the community if [music] you want to connect with other app founders. Both links in the
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description.
Topics:Darcy appbudget trackingoffline-first appon-device AIpaid upfront appapp store #1no ads marketingFacebook group marketingapp development AImobile app monetization
