Sebastian Rohl is a 31-year-old solo developer from western Germany, north of Cologne. He has a bachelor's in computer science and a master's in software engineering. He discovered the Indie Hackers podcast while at university, and the seed was planted: someday he'd build his own thing.
He worked as a software engineer for three years, focused on web and cloud development. In early 2022, he quit, giving himself 12 months to make indie apps work. His first app was Liftbear, a fitness tracker. It took six months to build. After launch: 10 downloads per week. He had spent half his runway on a product nobody wanted.
After Liftbear, Sebastian gave himself just two months for the next attempt. The idea was simple: a habit tracker that visualizes consistency using a GitHub-style contribution grid. He decided to build in public on Twitter, sharing early screenshots and gathering feedback. By the time HabitKit launched in November 2022, people were already waiting. First month revenue: $1,500. More than the previous six months of Liftbear combined.
Three years ago today, I launched @HabitKit, and it changed my life completely. Its success enabled me to quit my job and pursue indie app development full-time. I couldn't be happier!
But it wasn't enough to live on. When his 12-month indie deadline expired in April 2023, HabitKit still couldn't support him full-time. He went back to his old company, working four days a week and keeping Fridays for his apps. He described this period as deeply demotivating.
Then something unexplained happened. In June 2023, HabitKit suddenly started ranking top 5 for "habit tracker" in multiple App Store regions: Germany, UK, then eventually the US. Sebastian didn't change any metadata, didn't run any ads, didn't do anything different. He still doesn't know why it happened. But downloads jumped and revenue accelerated.
By February 2024, the numbers were strong enough. Sebastian quit his job again, this time for good. In the first five months of 2024, HabitKit made $110,000. Then in December 2024, a 30-second mention on MKBHD's "The Studio" channel (1M+ views) catapulted downloads even further. Sebastian didn't reach out to them. The editor found him on Threads. December became his most successful month ever: $33,000+. January 2025 hit $112,000 in a single month, riding the New Year's resolution wave plus the MKBHD aftereffect.
Today, HabitKit sits at $31K MRR with $600K+ in lifetime revenue. The entire app is built with Flutter and SQLite. No server, no backend, no account required. All data stays on the user's device. Sebastian runs the whole thing solo. The app that was supposed to be a two-month experiment now ranks #2 for "habit tracker" on the US App Store.
Awesome achievement at the start of the year. My "small" indie app business reached $30k MRR. 0 - 10k: 2.5 years 10 - 20k: 2 months 20k - 30k: 1 year