This 19 Year Old Made $50M But Got Rejected from College | My First Million

0:00 The last time you caught on this podcast, you were in high school.

0:03 You, I think, were like between third and fourth period or on lunch break

0:07 and you did a podcast recording with us in front of, I don't know,

0:10 a quarter million people or something like that.

0:12 And now we fast forward, I don't know,

0:14 a year and change later and you just sold your company.

0:17 You just sold your company for how much money, Zach?

0:19 I can't reveal how much we sold for, unfortunately.

0:22 But I could tell you that right before selling,

0:25 we finished 2025 having done $30 million in revenue.

0:30 And now the company's grown um in January, we just did 5.7 million in revenue.

0:36 5.7 million in January.

0:37 So if you if you were to multiply by 12 and say like what we could do this year,

0:42 you're talking about like a you know 50 million plus uh revenue company,

0:45 but 30 million last year.

0:47 Dude, that's amazing.

0:48 Like, you know, just the way you say it,

0:49 you say it so um calmly and like a grown-up,

0:53 but like can we just take a second, Sam,

0:55 just to be amazed and just give the kids some some props?

0:58 Like that is incredible.

0:59 You're a teenager who built an app with your friends.

1:04 You got it to 30 million in in annual revenue and um

1:08 sold your company just now to uh to My Fitness Pal.

1:12 And last time we talked to you, you were on uh like I think literally

1:16 your lunch break and you were in high school.

1:18 Um I know that you were applying to college and on the podcast

1:22 you were like saying I think I'm going to go to college.

1:24 Are you are you like on your lunch break at college now?

1:27 Is that where you are?

1:28 Are you at a dorm?

1:29 I mean I'm not going to lie.

1:31 I'm miss I've missed like many classes this semester.

1:34 I I'm at the University of Miami.

1:36 I am a freshman but Okay.

1:38 So you're a freshman at Miami.

1:40 And I believe, by [laughter] the way,

1:42 I remember being outraged on Twitter by this.

1:44 I think I was I was one of your uh your defenders here where you

1:47 applied to a bunch of colleges you wanted to go to and you got rejected,

1:50 which is insane to be a teenager who's got a app that's

1:53 doing tens of millions in revenue and the college admissions office was like,

1:57 "We didn't like your essay or what, [laughter] you know, whatever.

2:00 Your SAT score doesn't show that you're exceptional." Obviously,

2:03 you were exceptional.

2:03 Can you tell that story of uh the maybe

2:05 facing a little bit of rejection and how that felt?

2:07 Yeah.

2:08 I mean, right after the podcast that we did last time,

2:11 yeah, I was submitting everything.

2:12 I applied to every single Ivy League school, Stanford, a few others.

2:16 Stanford was my top choice that I wanted to get into.

2:19 And just one by one, rejection, rejection, rejection, rejection.

2:23 And I mean, I tweeted about it because I had a 4.0 unweighted GPA.

2:28 At the time I applied,

2:30 my company was doing like I think 15 million a year when I applied.

2:36 And I had on paper what most people need

2:40 to get in, but I was just rejected from everywhere,

2:44 which I felt was pretty surprising.

2:47 [laughter] Why Why do you think that was?

2:48 Do you know?

2:49 There's no way to know really.

2:50 It's a black box, but do you have any suspicions?

2:52 There's no way to know.

2:54 Well, your post kind of went viral.

2:56 Did anything happen from that?

2:57 Did anybody reach out?

2:58 Yeah, to be honest, it was actually great that like it might have been

3:01 better that I got rejected from colleges

3:03 than gotten into any because I posted it

3:05 got like 40 million views on Twitter and I had a ton of really

3:08 cool people like the mayor of Miami texted me afterwards and we actually met up.

3:12 That's part of the reason I even decided to go

3:14 to you Miami was the support from him and a bunch

3:17 of other cool people like Alex O'Henan and a bunch

3:20 of others that had like reached out to support me after that.

3:23 [laughter] That's awesome.

3:24 Yeah, you kind of needed that.

3:25 Nobody wants a team that's too perfect and successful.

3:28 So, you kind of needed a little bit of likability,

3:30 a little bit of rejection uh in the backstory.

3:32 So, I think in the end it's it's a good thing.

3:35 Yeah.

3:35 But I didn't get any sympathy from the post.

3:38 They were just like all mad at me.

3:39 Yeah.

3:39 I don't think that you deserve sympathy.

3:41 Uh I don't think you deserve it.

3:43 I I think I think I think it's things have worked out as they should.

3:47 Are you uh did the University of Miami or any

3:49 of um Did they ask you for a donation already?

3:52 [laughter] the first freshman to have a library that he donates.

3:57 No, seriously, cuz they they will they're they have really

4:00 good processes for identifying uh whales and reaching out to people.

4:04 Yeah, you you actually should hire one of them.

4:06 They'll they'll kind of help your onboarding flow.

4:08 The the university donation people are exceptional.

4:11 What's your dating life like?

4:12 Like when you're in college and you're 19 and you just sell an app for $100

4:16 million and even before that you own an app

4:18 that is doing tens of millions in revenue.

4:20 Are you by yourself all the time working or are you able to have fun?

4:25 And uh is is the world's easiest pickup line actually successful for you?

4:30 [laughter] So, I'd say the first semester I had way too much fun.

4:36 I was doing too many things.

4:38 We had thrown a bunch of parties.

4:39 Me and a couple of my other entrepreneurial friends

4:42 who were living in Miami with me at the time.

4:44 We all moved into this house together.

4:45 And so, every like every couple weeks we'd throw a house party.

4:49 And I'm not going to lie,

4:50 it was definitely like I had a lot of aura throwing these parties.

4:53 And the word got around in the college that this is

4:55 like the cal they call me the cali guy or calorie boy.

4:59 Those are like my nicknames.

5:01 [laughter] That's That's amazing.

5:05 Calorie Boy.

5:06 Okay.

5:06 So, by the way, we didn't say what your app is.

5:08 So, your app, Calai,

5:10 is basically a app on your phone where you could take a picture of the meals

5:13 that you're eating and it kind of uses AI to track and log your calories.

5:16 viously you don't have to type in that you had

5:18 6 ounces of chicken breast with the skin or whatever,

5:20 you know, you don't have to do all that logging.

5:22 You just take the picture and it does the thing.

5:24 And so that's what you guys had built.

5:26 And um for those who haven't seen the first episode,

5:28 give just the quick origin story.

5:30 You did the full one before, but just do the quick one here.

5:33 Sure.

5:33 So I started programming when I was 7 years old.

5:36 I was obsessed with video games and I wanted to learn how to make my own.

5:40 So started building by the time I was a freshman in high school.

5:44 I built my first company.

5:46 I built an unblocked gaming website

5:48 that let students play games in school unblocked.

5:52 It was actually kind of accidental that I

5:54 stumbled into turning it into a real company.

5:55 First I just built it for my friends at school,

5:58 but it spread really quickly and it grew to 5

6:01 million users through mostly me just making Tik Toks about it.

6:04 It was generating $60,000 a year by putting banner ads on the website.

6:09 And then when I was 16, I sold it for $100,000.

6:13 After that, I got into the app space, started building a few small projects,

6:18 and then Cali is really the one that I went all in on, and it really took off.

6:23 It

6:23 And you um just I mean, you're not like you started programming early,

6:27 but like you're not um Albert Einstein out here.

6:30 You're you're not Mark Zuckerberg,

6:31 you're not a prodigy in terms of coding, correct?

6:34 what makes you unique it seems like was the blend of good enough at building

6:39 and then you know good enough or great at marketing and the and just

6:42 being an entrepreneur and the combination

6:44 is what's important I think that's important

6:45 to call out because I remember when I was on the come-up I sort

6:50 of had this misconception that I needed to be some I needed to be

6:53 some sort of 900 IQ gigabrain in order to enter a space and what

6:58 I didn't really realize was that you know if you just kind of even

7:01 if you know nothing today if you just give it six months of full focus,

7:05 you'll be you'll be good enough to be dangerous.

7:07 And that's kind of all you need at at one of the skills.

7:09 You just got to stack two others.

7:10 And it's the combination of the skills that's really valuable,

7:13 not having to be world class at any one thing.

7:15 Is that was that your experience or was it different?

7:18 Yeah, I would definitely agree with you.

7:19 I mean, especially now,

7:20 like coding is just becoming easier and easier with AI tools.

7:24 And I'd say my skills now are being under being able

7:29 to code has really helped me understand how to lead a team.

7:32 Like I always think that the most important thing is the prito principle.

7:36 Learn the 20% that gets you the 80% of results.

7:40 And that's what's necessary to actually hire someone that's

7:43 smarter than you and being able to manage the team.

7:46 So I've I've pretty much done that in all of these different areas

7:49 and it's allowed me to build great people around me and put in the systems.

7:52 I think your biggest skill is your audacity.

7:54 I think that uh what Sean left out was maybe the most like one of the more

7:57 interesting things is that uh like when you

8:00 were starting to build I think you made

8:02 a tweet or a video and you said uh in the next 3 years I think

8:06 you were 15 I'm going to have an app that does 50 or 100 million in revenue.

8:10 you said some audacious thing and then I think you even tweeted that out and so

8:15 there's this like interesting combination of audacity

8:18 to think that somehow you a young kid

8:21 are good enough to like figure this out and then also

8:24 the tenacity and IQ and get after itness to make it happen.

8:29 We found that video of you in your kitchen basically when you're I don't know 13

8:33 14 years old saying I will do

8:36 this Matt sort of speaking the words into existence.

8:40 Yeah, I mean it was honestly pretty crazy like looking back that I did that.

8:44 My plan was that I was going to make a YouTube series out of it,

8:47 but I just made that first video saying that I

8:49 was going to make a million dollars before graduating high school.

8:52 That was my goal.

8:54 And I always I I kind of from a young age

8:57 always believed in my heart I was going to do it.

9:00 I just I wanted it so badly that I needed it to be true.

9:06 And I think self-belief has gotten me so far because it's

9:09 helped me get over so many part points of life where I

9:12 could have just said like ah like if no one like

9:15 I have to go to college before I'm able to do this.

9:18 Like I have to take a class.

9:19 I have to get a degree.

9:20 Like no way I could do it before.

9:21 But no, I always believed like I can do it.

9:23 I can do it.

9:23 You forgot to add the uh per week.

9:25 I want to make a million dollars before I graduate high school per week.

9:28 [laughter] Uh so so you said like I always had that.

9:33 But I'm going to I'm going to question that for a sec

9:35 cuz you know maybe some of it you were born with.

9:37 Maybe some of it you just kind of came out of nowhere.

9:39 It's just aura natural aura as you would say.

9:42 But but me and Sam, we've both been on our our little motivational arc, right?

9:46 Like I was a big Tony Robbins guy.

9:48 Went to the seminars.

9:49 I used to listen to the audio tapes and go for walks and he

9:52 had this like walking series where you would walk and he'd be like,

9:55 "All right, every four steps you're going to say this thing.

9:57 You're going to believe this.

9:57 I'm going to ask you this question.

9:58 whatever comes to your mind.

9:59 And it's, you know, I got Tony Robbins in my ear and Sam,

10:02 I'm sure you had a similar um sort of self-braining where you worked on it.

10:06 You practiced the muscle of self-belief.

10:08 I'm curious, Zach.

10:09 I don't know you very well, but I'm curious.

10:11 Did you work on the muscle of self-belief in any way?

10:15 It's honestly a great question.

10:16 I of course I had doubts like in my head

10:18 I was like like like this is a crazy goal.

10:21 Can I actually do this?

10:22 And I remember there's this one story that or when I was really young,

10:28 I was in the car with my mom and I asked her like,

10:32 "Mom, if I'm rich, um, if I'm rich when I'm older,

10:36 I want to do this." I said something along those lines.

10:38 And then I was like, "Wait." And I changed it.

10:40 I was like, "When I'm rich, I'm going to do this." And I think I've been always

10:45 conscious about like shifting my language to a when, not an if.

10:48 Even though I of course I had doubts.

10:50 I was like, can I really do this?

10:52 But yeah, I had those doubts.

10:53 And the motivation arc, dude, I used to be obsessed with motivational content.

10:58 I still am, but not as much.

10:59 But especially, it was like the year before I started Cali.

11:03 I curated my TikTok for you page.

11:05 I would only interact with videos of motivational speakers.

11:08 And so my entire feed was just David Gogggins yelling at me, "Get back to work.

11:11 Get back to work." And all these other people.

11:14 And that's actually why I started my first app,

11:16 which was a motivational alarm clock where you could choose people.

11:20 Basically, I identified by watching these Tik Toks,

11:22 everyone in the comments was like, "This got me so pumped up.

11:25 I want to make this my alarm clock.

11:26 How can I do that?" And there was no way to really easily do that.

11:30 And I was like, "Shit, I want to build an app cuz I want this for myself,

11:33 too." And all these people clearly want it as well

11:35 that lets you set these motivational sounds as your alarm.

11:38 And so that was the idea behind Grind Clock.

11:40 Grind Clock.

11:41 Gr [laughter] and thus grind clock was [music]