Copying a proven app into another language or country

TL;DR

• A proven concept nobody has localized is a ready-made idea. Tomer heard the Cal AI founder’s podcast in March 2025 and realized “it doesn’t matter that the app already exists if no one knows about it” in Israel.¹²
• The niche must be huge if the market is small. Fitness and nutrition work in any country; a tiny vertical in Israel would be too small.³
• Same core product, local everything else: Hebrew, how Israelis eat and talk about food, local content and design.⁴⁵
• Real moat = brand + distribution: if you acquire users for half what competitors pay, you can outspend them.⁴
• Result (self-reported): $1K first month (June 2025) → ~$81K/month by April 2026.⁶
• Symmetry did the same for gym tracking in Spain and Mexico: ~$160K/month, ~3M downloads in a year, “one of the most saturated app markets”.⁷

Details

Cal Buddy’s sequence (Tomer (Cal Buddy)).

1. Pick a proven winner in a big niche you know personally (he knew Israeli fitness).³
2. Build fast: working version in ~2 weeks with Cursor; ~2 months to App Store, mostly waiting for Apple’s developer programme and reviews.⁸
3. Make ads from the most viral content of similar US apps and the most viral local fitness content.⁹
4. Run Meta ads, which are profitable because Israeli CPMs are far below the US: ~$20K/month in four months.⁹¹⁰
5. With traction and social proof, sign local celebrity influencers on revenue share → $80K/month (Revenue-share partnerships with big influencers and creators).¹¹

Stack: Claude ($200/month), PostHog ($20), RevenueCat, Supabase ($35), Expo ($100).¹²

Starter Story’s take (Pat Walls). Other guests also start paid ads in cheaper markets (Argentina) for better metrics; the hosts frame “take popular apps and localize them” as a 2026 opportunity.¹³

Symmetry (Mauro (Symmetry)). Ex-fitness YouTubers built a Strava-like gym tracker (muscle ranks, streaks, social feed) for Spanish speakers; it grew mainly through UGC, with a January spike.⁷¹⁴¹⁵

Disagreements / caveats

• Jake Castillo would not build a straight Cal AI clone for the same market — you can take some share, but “never achieve anything truly great” without a better product (Copy or innovate? Differentiating in a "saturated" app category). Localization is a different market, so it isn’t the same as cloning.
• Market depth: Israel is small; the localized app’s ceiling is the local market. Tomer’s influencer rev share applies only to Israeli revenue.¹¹
• Self-reported revenue; Tomer had a marketing background and knew the influencer personally.¹¹
• For market choice, pricing by purchasing power and localization depth see International expansion — which markets, localization depth and local pricing.

See also

• Finding app ideas from search demand — the Tentacle Strategy — another way to borrow a proven app’s demand

Footnotes

1. I Copied A Huge App. Now I Make $80K/Month @ 02:32 — Tomer (Cal Buddy) ↩

2. I Copied A Huge App. Now I Make $80K/Month @ 04:06 — Tomer (Cal Buddy) ↩

3. I Copied A Huge App. Now I Make $80K/Month @ 04:06 — Tomer (Cal Buddy) ↩ ↩²

4. I Copied A Huge App. Now I Make $80K/Month @ 05:42 — Tomer (Cal Buddy) ↩ ↩²

5. I Copied A Huge App. Now I Make $80K/Month @ 06:31 — Pat Walls ↩

6. I Copied A Huge App. Now I Make $80K/Month @ 01:43 — Tomer (Cal Buddy) ↩

7. How I Built This $160K/Month Gym App @ 01:22 — Mauro (Symmetry) ↩ ↩²

8. I Copied A Huge App. Now I Make $80K/Month @ 03:18 — Tomer (Cal Buddy) ↩

9. I Copied A Huge App. Now I Make $80K/Month @ 06:31 — Tomer (Cal Buddy) ↩ ↩²

10. I Copied A Huge App. Now I Make $80K/Month @ 07:21 — Tomer (Cal Buddy) ↩

11. I Copied A Huge App. Now I Make $80K/Month @ 08:07 — Tomer (Cal Buddy) ↩ ↩² ↩³

12. I Copied A Huge App. Now I Make $80K/Month @ 09:48 — Tomer (Cal Buddy) ↩

13. I Copied A Huge App. Now I Make $80K/Month @ 12:13 — Pat Walls ↩

14. How I Built This $160K/Month Gym App @ 13:04 — Mauro (Symmetry) ↩

15. How I Built This $160K/Month Gym App @ 02:26 — Mauro (Symmetry) ↩