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How This 17-Year-Old Quietly Built a $1.12M/Month AI App

I stumbled upon his exact strategy from A to Z and it's brilliant.

Jano le Roux
The Startup
8 min readDec 3, 2024
An abstract illustration of a vast, dreamy desert landscape under a starry night sky. A small figure sits by a campfire, dwarfed by the large silhouette of a serene face blending into the sand dunes, creating a surreal and contemplative atmosphere.
Illustration by CDD20

What were you doing at 17?

If you’re like most people, it probably wasn’t making $1.12 million a month. I was busy figuring out how to parallel park and deciding whether buying a BlackBerry was a good idea (spoiler: it wasn’t).

Meanwhile, Zach Yadegari is quietly crushing it. He’s the mind behind Cal AI, an app that tracks calories using a simple photo. No logging. No spreadsheets. Just take a picture, and boom — calories calculated.

When I heard about this, I had to know: How does a teenager build something like this? Turns out, Zach didn’t stumble into success. He engineered it, step by step.

In a recent interview, Zach shared his process and showed us how he pulled it off. Let’s dive into what he did and how you can apply his strategies to your own projects.

1. Viral products aren’t born — they’re designed

Cal AI is designed to make people say, “Wow, that’s cool.” This is key: people love sharing things that make them look smart or introduce something new to their circle.

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Jano le Roux
Jano le Roux

Written by Jano le Roux

An award-winning marketing consultant who helps high-growth brands craft marketing that doesn’t feel like marketing. Open to help—jano@likeflare.com—Join me ⤵️

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