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How to Build a $200M App Without Showing your Face w/ Chris Josephs
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From IRIS to Autopilot: The Pivot and App Store Launch
At 7:54 · chapter starts 6:30
As the world reopened post-COVID and passive investing replaced active trading as the dominant consumer behavior, Chris Josephs and his co-founder Brian saw the writing on the wall for IRIS. People didn't want to follow their friend buying Apple — they wanted to follow the best performers. The evolution into Autopilot, which lets users automatically mirror top traders' portfolios, was, in Chris's words, 'so obvious when you look back.' While building the new product in 2023, Chris discovered an App Store mechanic: you could list an app for pre-downloads before it launches, giving you months of audience-building time to stack up Day 1 momentum. They built the Pelosi Tracker on Twitter from zero, drove pre-downloads, and when they finally launched in January 2023, they made hundreds of thousands of dollars on day one and hit number 2 in the App Store — losing only to Cash App, a company Chris half-jokingly DM'd to promise he'd pass one day.
When Autopilot officially launched in January 2023, the app made several hundred thousand dollars on day one and hit number 2 in the App Store.
Autopilot reached $1.5 billion in assets under management, driven almost entirely by organic content marketing.
Just as Uber made taxis feel absurd, Chris Josephs believes peer-led investing platforms will make DIY stock picking feel outdated within a few years. When you can find a vetted stock picker, see their track record, and auto-copy their trades for $150 a year, why would you ever do it yourself?
