Summary
A first-time founder with no coding background explains how he built and grew a fitness app to roughly $55,000 in monthly revenue in about five months. In this Starter Story interview, 18-year-old Lino Leiden describes AbMax, an app that builds personalized ab-training plans, and shares his RevenueCat numbers: about 16,000 downloads in 28 days and just over 3,000 paying subscribers.
Leiden explains how he found the idea at the gym, noticed that no dedicated app served people who wanted visible abs, and chose to niche down rather than build a general workout tracker. He built the first version in Lovable despite having never written code, and the discussion covers the tools and build journey behind it.
The growth story is the other half of the conversation. He describes giving equity to a creator with social media distribution instead of paying for many small influencer deals, then cutting UGC and influencer spend to double down on Meta ads running at about 2 to 2.5x ROAS. Moving the same creatives to TikTok ads reportedly delivered 4 to 5x ROAS because of the younger audience. He closes with advice on finding a niche through Sensor Tower, following founders on X, and validating with organic TikTok slideshows before building.
📺 Source: Starter Story · Published October 04, 2026
🏷️ Format: Interview
