01 · Consumer software

CleanTube app icon

CleanTube

A consumer Android product I designed, built, and have run solo for four years.

Role
Founder & Engineer
Timeline
2022 — present
Stack
Kotlin · Node.js · Flask · AWS
Platform
4.9M+
downloads
650K+
monthly active users
120K/mo
new users acquired
60%
store-listing conversion
130M+/mo
backend requests
5-fig/mo
monthly revenue
CleanTube app running on three phones — home feed, search results, and a creator channel
figure - CleanTube UI
The short version

CleanTube started as a personal fix and turned into an app that 650,000+ people open every month. I still own all of it — product, backend, and the business behind it.

Growth

Growing to millions without spending on ads

Every install came organically. I treated the store listing as a product surface of its own — iterating on positioning, screenshots, and keywords through ASO — and grew roughly 300% year over year to 4.9M+ downloads. That listing now converts at 60% and brings in 120,000+ new users a month, with a 4.4-star rating across 50,000 reviews. No paid acquisition.

Keeping it alive

A backend that answers 130M+ requests a month

Running a product at this scale alone means the operations are the job. The backend — Node.js and Flask on AWS — handles 130M+ requests a month, and the whole thing sustains five-figure monthly revenue at roughly a 98% margin. Nobody else is on call.

A judgment call

Rewriting to native, and cutting crashes 60%

The app began in React Native. As usage grew, stability mattered more than velocity, so I re-architected it into native Android with Kotlin and Java. Crashes dropped 60% — the kind of call you only make well when you have to live with the consequences.