Rasty Turek built Vault Air, his first iOS app, in roughly three weeks using coding agents (Claude, Codex); six months after launch it averages $2–3K per day, with a peak month of $41K, despite zero paid ads or TikTok promotion.
The app: Vault Air
Vault Air is an iPhone app that encrypts files and photos on-device with no servers, no shared keys, and no recovery path — not even Apple or Rasty can access user data.
It is effectively “Dropbox but encrypted locally”; the app is free to download, with monetization via subscriptions (weekly $1.99, annual $19.99) and a lifetime tier ($39.99).
Lifetime purchases account for ~60% of buyers and >80% of revenue; MRR appears low because most users choose lifetime.
Total downloads have passed 60,000; day-1 conversion is only ~5.5%, but conversion rises sharply by day 35–60 as users trust the utility.
The FBI once contacted Rasty after a suspect allegedly used the app; he could not help because the architecture makes it impossible to know whether any data was ever stored.
Growth strategy: automated SEO and content marketing
Rasty ignores the “SEO is dead” narrative by targeting a hyper-niche category where incumbent apps (15+ years old, millions of users) neglect long-tail web keywords.
He built an open-source CLI library called gum (with MCP) that taps Google Search Console and Keyword Planner each morning, finds keywords where the site ranks but gets no clicks (e.g., position 50), and auto-generates a high-quality guide for each.
The system publishes roughly one guide per day; Google indexes it in 3–4 days, internal links from existing traffic boost the new page, and traffic correlates directly with revenue.
Web-to-app conversion is ~10%; the web now drives the majority of downloads.
Content quality is enforced: guides are not “AI slop” — they are structured, useful, and limited in volume so Google treats the site as authoritative.
Technical stack and operations
App: Swift with UIKit, native iCloud integration, no backend servers.
Automation: Codex and Claude handle ~99% of ongoing work (daily guide generation, publishing, internal linking).
Analytics: Posthog (free tier); minimal infrastructure, nothing to break as long as Apple services are up.
Costs are negligible; nearly all revenue is profit.
Founder background
Grew up in a Slovak village of 700 people; moved to Boston after high school.
Worked at Google on the Gmail team after his security startup was acquired.
Founded multiple ventures: a security startup, an entertainment company acquired by Amazon (tech still in use), and Pics — a venture-backed “copyright as a service” platform for music, sold in 2024.
Vault Air originated from his own need to store crypto wallet keys, IDs, and birth certificates securely on-device.
Key insights and advice
Start now — ideas that stay in your head don’t exist; the hardest part is shipping.
Don’t overthink “how things should be done” — Rasty had zero consumer-app experience (background was B2B/enterprise) and learned by building.
Simple, proven categories win — encryption utilities are a known demand; differentiation comes from trust, privacy architecture, and distribution, not novelty.
Consistent, low-volume, high-quality content beats mass AI publishing; Google rewards steady authority building.
Conversion can be delayed — a product with genuine utility and trust can convert users months after install, not just on day one.
Privacy-first design creates moats — the inability to comply with law-enforcement requests is a feature, not a bug, and attracts the core user base.
