How I Built and Sold Two Apps for $265,000 After Teaching Myself to Code

TL;DR: After quitting a summer bank job he hated, 19-year-old Nico spent time experimenting with e-commerce and dropshipping, learning Facebook ads in the process. When his freelance work dried up, he locked himself in a hotel room for 2 months to learn coding. Over the next year, he built 17 apps using a rapid prototyping approach with hard deadlines. Most failed, but two succeeded: MakeLogo.AI ($85K total - $26K sales + $65K exit) and ToNotes ($277K total - $77K sales + $200K exit). His success came from four key strategies: validating with unscalable MVPs before building proper infrastructure, using Facebook ads when others said they wouldn't work for apps ($20-100/day spend), creating organic-looking ad creative that didn't feel like ads, and setting hard deadlines to force focus on essentials only. He grew ToNotes to $7K MRR and 10K users primarily through paid ads, proving that small budgets can work when paired with the right creative strategy.