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Chapter 1: How did Zach Yadegari achieve a $50M app in high school?
Zach, we got to set the table.
Chapter 2: What lessons did Zach learn from college rejections?
Zach, how old are you? I'm 19. You just sold your company. You just sold your company for how much money, Zach?
All right, what's up?
Zach, you're here, 19 years old. The last time you called on this podcast, you were in high school. You, I think, were like between third and fourth period or on lunch break. And you did a podcast recording with us in front of, I don't know, a quarter million people or something like that. And now we fast forward, I don't know, a year and change later. You just sold your company.
Chapter 3: What advice does Zach give about selling a company?
You just sold your company for how much money, Zach?
I can't reveal how much we sold for, unfortunately, but I could tell you that right before selling, we finished 2025 having done $30 million in revenue. And now the company's grown. In January, we just did $5.7 million in revenue.
Wow.
5.7 million in January. So if you were to multiply by 12 and say like what we could do this year, you're talking about like a 50 million plus revenue company, but 30 million last year. Dude, that's amazing. Like, you know, just the way you say it, you say it so calmly and like a grownup, but like, can we just take a second, Sam, just to be amazed and just give the kids some props.
Like that is incredible.
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Chapter 4: What are the dos and don'ts of entrepreneurship according to Zach?
You're a teenager who built an app with your friends got it to $30 million in annual revenue, and sold your company just now to MyFitnessPal.
And last time we talked to you, you were on, I think, literally your lunch break, and you were in high school. I know that you were applying to college, and on the podcast, you were saying, I think I'm going to go to college. Are you on your lunch break at college now? Is that where you are? Are you at a dorm?
I mean, I'm not going to lie. I've missed many classes this semester. I'm at the University of Miami. I am a freshman.
Chapter 5: How did Zach's early decisions impact his app's valuation?
Okay, so you're a freshman at Miami. And I believe, by the way, I remember being outraged on Twitter by this. I think I was one of your defenders here, where you applied to a bunch of colleges you wanted to go to, and you got rejected, which is insane to be a teenager who's got an app that's doing tens of millions in revenue, and the college admissions office was like...
We didn't like your essay or whatever. Your SAT score doesn't show that you're exceptional. Obviously, you were exceptional. Can you tell that story of maybe facing a little bit of rejection and how that felt?
Yeah. I mean, right after the podcast that we did last time, yeah, I was submitting everything. I applied to every single Ivy League school, Stanford, a few others.
Chapter 6: What innovative ideas does Zach suggest for app development?
Stanford was my top choice that I wanted to get into. And just one by one, rejection, rejection, rejection, rejection. And I mean, I tweeted about it because I had a 4.0 unweighted GPA. At the time I applied, my company was doing, I think, 15 million a year when I applied.
And I had on paper what most people need to get in, but I was just rejected from everywhere, which I felt was pretty surprising.
Why do you think that was? Do you know? There's no way to know, really. It's a black box, but do you have any suspicions?
There's no way to know.
Your post kind of went viral. Did anything happen from that? Did anybody reach out?
Yeah, to be honest, it was actually great. It might have been better that I got rejected from colleges than gotten into any because I posted. It got like 40 million views on Twitter, and I had a ton of really cool people, like the mayor of Miami. Texted me afterwards and we actually met up.
That's part of the reason I even decided to go to U Miami was the support from him and a bunch of other cool people like Alex Ohanian and a bunch of others that had like reached out to support me after that.
That's awesome. Yeah, you kind of needed that.
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Chapter 7: Where is Zach investing his money after the sale?
Nobody wants a team that's too perfect and successful. So you kind of needed a little bit of likability, a little bit of rejection in the backstory. So I think in the end, it's a good thing.
Yeah, but I didn't get any sympathy from the post. They were just like all mad at me. Yeah, I don't think that you deserve sympathy.
I don't think you deserve it. I think things have worked out as they should. Did the University of Miami or any of them, did they ask you for a donation already?
the first freshman to have a library that he donates?
No, seriously, because they have really good processes for identifying whales and reaching out to people. Yeah, you actually should hire one of them.
They'll kind of help your onboarding flow. The university donation people are exceptional.
What's your dating life like? When you're in college and you're 19 and you just sell an app for $100 million, and even before that, you own an app that is doing tens of millions in revenue, Are you by yourself all the time working or are you able to have fun? And is the world's easiest pickup line actually successful for you? Yeah.
So I'd say the first semester I had way too much fun. I was doing too many things. We had thrown a bunch of parties, me and a couple of my other entrepreneurial friends who were living in Miami with me at the time. We all moved into this house together. And so every, like every couple of weeks we'd throw a house party and I'm not going to lie.
It was definitely like, I had a lot of aura throwing these parties and the word got around the college that this is like the Cal, they call me the Cal AI guy or calorie boy. Those are like my nicknames.
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Chapter 8: What skills does Zach believe he needs to improve?
I built an unblocked gaming website that let students play games in school unblocked. It was actually kind of accidental that I stumbled into turning it into a real company. First, I just built it for my friends at school, but it spread really quickly. And it grew to 5 million users through mostly me just making TikToks about it.
It was generating $60,000 a year by putting banner ads on the website. And then when I was 16, I sold it for $100,000. After that, I got into the app space, started building a few small projects, and then CalAI is really the one that I went all in on, and it really took off. It exceeded all expectations.
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And you just, I mean, you're not like, you started programming early, but like, you're not Albert Einstein out here. You're not Mark Zuckerberg. You're not a prodigy in terms of coding, correct? Like, what makes you unique, it seems like, was the blend of good enough at building and then, you know, good enough or great at marketing and just being an entrepreneur.
And the combination is what's important. I think that's important to call out because... I remember when I was on the come up, I sort of had this misconception that I needed to be some sort of 900 IQ gigabrain in order to enter a space.
And what I didn't really realize was that, you know, if you just kind of, even if you know nothing today, if you just give it six months of full focus, you'll be good enough to be dangerous. And that's kind of all you need at one of the skills. And you just got to stack two others. And it's the combination of the skills that's really valuable, not having to be world class at any one thing.
Is that, was that your experience or was it different?
Yeah, I would definitely agree with you. I mean, especially now, like coding is just becoming easier and easier with AI tools. And I'd say my skills now are being under being able to code has really helped me understand how to lead a team. Like I always think that the most important thing is the Pareto principle, learn the 20% that gets you the 80% of results.
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