February 3rd 2009 I had a dumb idea. This happens a lot, but this time it seemed too easy to ignore. A Russian Roulette simulator for the iPhone, load the bullets, spin the barrel.

In about two hours I cutout a $6 stock photo of a revolver, spent $3 at Sound Dogs, designed the load screen, and made a motion-blurred state of the barrel spinning. That’s it, design finished. I went on Twitter and said:
I am in need of a iPhone developer for an incredibly small project, anyone interested? Email me.
Within twenty minutes I was talking with a developer willing to code it for a profit cut. A few days later he finished and submitted. And shockingly it was approved, the first gun simulator in the store. Silver Revolver went live in the store a month after I threw it together.
I was expecting to be rejected so I hadn’t prepared any sort of marketing, so as the app went live I sat at my desk with my iPhone and a horribly out of focus Flip camera to record a terrible video.
After that I sent out a few tweets and posted here. That’s all for marketing. So how did my stupid gun app do?
In one month I made $16,000.
I still don’t know how it happened, it just did. The app really blew up while I was in Austin for SXSW, during that week it danced around #50 on the charts and sold a thousand copies a day. I was absolutely blown away. I had nonchalantly been paid $4k/hour at the ripe old age of 17.
Two years later: it still makes enough to buy me lunch every day.
Don’t ignore your stupid ideas.
an idea, even if you think it’s stupid. Very inspiring testimonial!
It’s an older post...4K/Hour. Stupid app but awesome story.
TRUTH. Thinking is not enough. Talking about it is not enough. Craft it, build it, make it fucking happen.
//If everyone made even...ideas we had, we’d
loading…