This App Entrepreneur Made $10,000,000 By Cloning A Viral Game

About this video

Sam and Shaan discuss the viral Wordle app cloning saga, where a developer built a mobile version of the game and aggressively promoted it on Twitter, only to face severe public backlash and have his app removed. The hosts explore the risks of building in public, examine Pomp’s impressive crypto media empire, introduce their new daily crypto newsletter called The Milk Road, and discuss how finding work that energizes you—rather than just pays well—is crucial for long-term success.

Key takeaways

• Building in public can backfire: Zach Shakheed’s app grew to 30k downloads quickly, but his boastful tweets about cloning Wordle triggered a coordinated attack that got his app removed from the store, showing that visibility amplifies both success and backlash
• Strategic silence beats transparency with strangers: The hosts note that staying anonymous and quiet about success is often smarter than broadcasting it; Zach’s past tweets criticizing app clones made his hypocrisy an easy target when journalists discovered them
• Pomp built a diversified crypto media empire generating an estimated $5-7M+ annually through daily emails (70k paid subscribers), a job board, sponsorships, a course, a fund, and YouTube—demonstrating how consistent daily output compounds into influence and revenue over time
• Shaan and Ben launched The Milk Road, a daily crypto education newsletter that reached 16.5k subscribers in three weeks by explaining blockchain concepts simply; Shaan emphasizes project selection matters more than work ethic, and finding work that energizes rather than drains you is key to sustainability
• Burnout is normal and cyclical even for work you love: The hosts discuss how Tom Brady, Dustin Poirier, and other high performers experience fatigue despite success, but variability and breaks help restore motivation; the key is choosing a ‘roller coaster’ project you’re willing to ride

Episode details: published February 8, 2022 · 31K views · 54:15 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. The business ideas, figures and results discussed are the hosts’ and guests’ own claims, shared as brainstorming and entertainment — not verified facts and not investment advice.

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