Zach YadegariFounder

Last month, Cal AI made just over $2 million. By the end of the year, it's expected to exceed $24 million.

I was always very skinny and started going to the gym to impress girls at school. I learned I needed to eat in a calorie surplus, but tracking calories was boring and hard. So I thought, what if I could just take a picture of my food and it tells me the calories?

I wanted to make games when I was seven, so I begged my mom to send me to a coding camp. That camp didn't teach me much, but it sparked my interest. I started learning from YouTube and built my first app at age 12.

During COVID, schools gave out Chromebooks and students used them to play games. I combined all the scattered unblocked game links into one site. I called it TotallyScience.co so it wouldn't get blocked.

At first, I didn't even try to make money. When I finally added Google AdSense banner ads, I made over $100 on the first day.

I saved it at first. Then later, I used it to invest into building Cal AI. I put $130,000 into it.

I believe with good co-founders, you can go much further. Everyone is motivated and has equity, so we all push hard. We're faster and stronger as a team.

I started with marketing in mind. I focused on one powerful feature—take a picture of food and get calories—and built the whole app around that. Then we worked with influencers in the fitness space to get attention.

We made the app very simple. It just had a calories-left page and a settings page. Also, we launched fast, used influencers, and knew our users really well.

We built internal tools to help predict ROI. Followers don't matter—views and engagement do. We look at things like audience age, gender, niche, and loyalty.

Yes, we give them full creative freedom. They know what gets views. We just ask them to naturally include Cal AI in their usual content.

They don't know how to predict if the influencer will bring results. Many brands spend too much without tracking ROI properly.

We offer a yearly plan that's much cheaper—$30 per year or $10 a month. Most people choose the yearly plan, and we haven't had many renewals yet, so churn isn't showing yet.

Our influencer network. We have exclusive deals with over 250 influencers. Also, our app is much simpler. MyFitnessPal is bloated with too many features.

It's harder to relate to people my age. There are fewer people I can connect deeply with. But I'd still choose this path every time.

I don't think it was luck. We built five apps before it. We kept learning and trying. I told my co-founder, "If we keep going, one will take off." We weren't going to stop until it happened.