I built a $50M AI app in high school (and just sold it for...)

**Sam Parr** (0:00)
Zach, we gotta set the table. Zach, how old are you?

**Zach Yadegari** (0:03)
I'm 19

**Sam Parr** (0:04)
And you just sold your company. You just sold your company for how much money, Zach? All right, what's up? Zach, you're here, 19 years old. The last time you called on this podcast, you were in high school. You, I think it were like between third and fourth period, or on lunch break, and you did a podcast recording with us in front of, I don't know, a quarter million people or something like that. And now we fast forward, I don't know, a year and change later, and you just sold your company. You just sold your company for how much money, Zach?

**Zach Yadegari** (0:40)
I can't reveal how much we sold for, unfortunately, but I could tell you that right before selling, we finished 2025 having done $30 million in revenue, and now the company's grown. In January, we just did 5.7 million in revenue.

**Sam Parr** (0:57)
5.7 million in January. So if you were to multiply by 12 and say like, what we could do this year, you're talking about like a 50 million plus revenue company, but 30 million last year. Dude, that's amazing. Like, you know, just the way you say it, you say it so calmly and like a grownup, but like, can we just take a second, Sam, just to be amazed and just give the kids some props? Like, that is incredible. You're a teenager who built an app with your friends. You got it to 30 million in an annual revenue and sold your company just now to MyFitnessPal.

**Shaan Puri** (1:33)
And last time we talked to you, you were on, like, I think literally your lunch break and you're in high school. I know that you were applying to college and on the podcast, you were like saying, I think I'm going to go to college. Are you, are you like on your lunch break at college now? Is that where you are? Are you at the dorm?

**Zach Yadegari** (1:50)
I mean, I'm not going to lie. I miss, I've missed like many classes this semester.
I'm at the University of Miami. I am a freshman, but yeah.

**Sam Parr** (1:59)
Okay, so you're a freshman at Miami. And I believe by the way, I remember being outraged on Twitter by this. I think I was, I was one of your, your defenders here where you applied to a bunch of colleges you wanted to go to and you got rejected, which is insane to be a teenager who's got an app that's doing tens of millions in revenue and the college admissions office was like, we didn't like your essay or whatever, or your SAT score doesn't show that you're exceptional. Obviously you were exceptional. Can you tell that story of the maybe facing a little bit of rejection and how that felt?

**Zach Yadegari** (2:28)
Yeah, I mean, right after the podcast that we did last time, yeah, I was submitting everything. I applied to every single Ivy League school, Stanford, a few others. Stanford was my top choice that I wanted to get into. And just one by one, rejection, rejection, rejection, rejection. And I mean, I tweeted about it because I had a 4 unweighted GPA. At the time I applied, my company was doing, I think, $15 million a year when I applied. And I had on paper what most people need to get in, but I was just rejected from everywhere, which I felt was pretty surprising.

**Sam Parr** (3:09)
Why do you think that was? Do you know? There's no way to know, really. It's a black box. But do you have any suspicions?

**Zach Yadegari** (3:13)
There's no way to know.

**Sam Parr** (3:15)
Well, your post kind of went viral. Did anything happen from that? Did anybody reach out?

**Zach Yadegari** (3:19)
Yeah, to be honest, it was actually great. It might have been better that I got rejected from colleges than gotten into any because I posted it. It got like 40 million views on Twitter. And I had a ton of really cool people, like the mayor of Miami texted me afterwards. And we actually met up. That's part of the reason I even decided to go to U Miami was the support from him and a bunch of other cool people like Alex Ohenian and a bunch of others that had reached out to support me after that.

**Sam Parr** (3:44)
That's awesome. Yeah, you kind of needed that. Nobody wants a team that's too perfect and successful. So you kind of needed a little bit of likeability, a little bit of rejection in the backstory. So I think in the end, it's a good thing.