Summary
- Host Manny talks with builder Dan Kempe and Replit designer Victoria Kim about shipping real iOS apps without a dev team.
- Kempe explains how he built Flash News, a speed‑reading news app, for Replit’s mobile Buildathon.
- They walk through how Replit Agent, Expo, and the new mobile tools make App Store deployment far less painful.
- Victoria shares design advice for mobile: small‑screen constraints, haptics, and learning directly from Apple’s guidelines.
- The group digs into mobile app marketing: using existing audiences, social platforms, and strong visuals to get early downloads.
Flash News, the speed‑reading app Dan Kempe built during Replit’s mobile Buildathon, was the center of our latest Builder Spotlight webinar. The session was a live case study in what happens when a nontechnical builder grabs Replit Agent, a new mobile stack, tight deadlines, and then decides to ship anyway. Victoria Kim, a product designer on the Replit team, also joined to walk through the new mobile experience.
Our very own community manager and host Manny Bernabe sat down with Dan and Victoria to unpack how a solo builder went from idea to a real iOS app with just under 300 downloads, plus what’s coming next for mobile on Replit.
Big takeaway: non-technical builders can prototype, ship, and iterate production‑ready mobile apps entirely on their own in Replit.
From SaaS founder to solo builder
Kempe has spent more than a decade in SaaS; mostly as a designer, photographer, and marketer, not an engineer. Until recently, shipping new products meant:
- Hiring full-time developers
- Waiting weeks for first versions
- Paying developer salaries just to try new ideas
Discovering Replit flipped that script. Now Kempe can sketch an idea in the morning, brainstorm it with an LLM, and have a clickable version in Replit later that day.
Kempe described the shift like this:
“Ever since I came across Replit, now I can build everything myself… I’m absolutely loving it.”
That shift from “I need a dev team” to “I can build this myself” is what made Flash News possible for Kempe.
Shipping Flash News for the mobile Buildathon
Flash News is a speed‑reading app for iOS that Kempe built for Replit’s mobile Buildathon. It pulls in news stories and lets you read them one word at a time, with the middle letter anchored so your eyes don’t have to track across the screen.
The origin story is very on‑brand for builders:
- Kempe saw Replit’s mobile Buildathon and (incorrectly) assumed it was a three‑day hackathon.
- He’d been seeing “speed reading” ideas all over X and wanted a simple, focused version he’d actually use.
- Replit’s new mobile flow plus Expo made it feel realistic to go from idea to TestFlight in a weekend.
Kempe pushed the first version to TestFlight, shared it in the Replit Discord, and quickly moved to the App Store.
Reflecting on his quick start, Kempe explained:
“I saw you guys were doing the mobile build a thon thing. And for some reason, I thought it was a three day hackathon. So I thought, well, I’m gonna get to work.”
Reception came fast too:
- The CEO of Replit, Amjad, retweeted Kempe’s launch post.
- Flash News climbed to just under 300 downloads soon after.
- Early users gave feedback inside the Buildathon Discord, helping Kempe refine the experience.
Kempe says Flash News isn’t some huge venture‑backed product. It’s a useful tool he built for himself that happened to resonate with other people trying to read more.
How he actually built it
Kempe doesn’t start in a design tool. He starts in a conversation.
- Brainstorm the idea in Claude. He explains the concept, lets Claude poke holes in it, and refines the core value.
- Ask for a structured prompt for Replit Agent. Once the idea is sharper, he has Claude draft a detailed prompt that describes the app’s pages, flows, and style.
- Paste that prompt into Replit. The agent generates a first pass at the mobile app using Expo and the new Replit mobile tooling.
- Iterate in Replit + Expo Go. Kempe tweaks layout, colors, and interactions, then tests on his phone using Expo Go until it feels right.
Flash News isn’t a huge codebase, but there are still details that would have taken a traditional dev team real time: the reading logic, word positioning, transitions, and the overall polish of the UI.
With Replit and Expo handling the heavy lifting, those details came together in hours instead of weeks.
Kempe contrasted this with the old way of hiring a dev team:
“You’re looking at over a month, I would think… For something like Flash News, I’d have been looking at over a month with a traditional dev. I know people sometimes talk about how much the credits cost, but to be honest, it’s nothing in comparison to paying a full time developer.”
From Kempe’s perspective, building with Replit wasn’t just about speed. He keeps coming back because the cost of credits feels tiny compared to paying a full‑time developer.
Design taste still matters
Replit Agent will get you a working layout. It doesn’t automatically give you taste.
Kempe’s process for making Flash News feel like a real, native app:
- Start with references. Browse Dribbble, Behance, and the App Store to see how the best apps in a category look and feel.
- Tell the agent what you like. Instead of vague prompts, describe concrete patterns: card styles, spacing, typography, motion.
- Use screenshots as input. Drop images of reference UIs into your LLM so it can describe components and visual language back to you.
- Aim for iOS‑level polish. iPhone users expect apps that feel at home on their device, not like generic templates.
Flash News’s App Store listing – screenshots, color palette, and branding – came from that design‑first mindset. The functionality matters, but the packaging decides whether people even give it a chance.
Getting the first 300 downloads
Kempe’s approach to getting users was shaped by his SaaS background.
Building is only half the battle. You still need people to care.
Kempe’s marketing tips come directly from his experience promoting Flash News, not from the hosts.
Because Kempe has spent years in SaaS, he already has a network of founders, marketers, and tech folks. His approach:
- Build for people you already know. New projects are easier to launch when they solve problems your own audience feels.
- Use X and TikTok instead of ads. Posting short, honest updates about the build, plus clean visuals, gets attention without a budget.
- Tell the solo builder story. People respond to “I used Replit to build this myself” more than to faceless product announcements.
For Flash News specifically, the boost from Amjad’s repost plus that existing network was enough to get the app into the hands of a few hundred people quickly.
Summing up his approach to early traction, Kempe told us:
“People don’t care until other people care. If you can reach the right people and be in the right circles, you’re going to win more often.”
Inside Replit’s new mobile experience
After Kempe shared his story, Victoria – a product designer on the Replit team – walked through how the new mobile experience is structured. Vic covered both the process of getting your app onto the app store, as well as designing for mobile experiences.
Creating mobile apps and the app store
For creating mobile apps, she breaks it into three big pieces:
- Building the app itself. Replit Agent has been tuned to generate mobile‑ready React Native apps that feel at home on iOS.
- Getting to the App Store. Historically, provisioning, signing, and review have been painful. Replit now leans on Expo so you can go from Replit to TestFlight to the App Store in a guided flow.
- Extending what the app can do. Native features (camera, maps, haptics) and Replit’s own connectors and models let you add serious capability without wiring everything by hand.
One example Victoria shared: she built a weather app that uses the iPhone’s camera plus an image analysis model to analyze the sky, all wired up through Replit.
The goal isn’t just “you can technically build a mobile app here.” It’s “because you’re on Replit, shipping a mobile app is dramatically easier than doing it the old way.”
Designing for small screens
Victoria’s advice for people who are new to mobile design:
- Study Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines. They’re not glamorous, but they teach you how native components, spacing, and motion work.
- Think in constraints. Phones have very little real estate. Every element has to earn its place.
- Pay attention to feel, not just layout. Haptics, transitions, and timing make the difference between “this works” and “this feels native.”
- Use plan mode as a design partner. When you’re not sure what a component is called or how to structure a screen, ask Replit Agent in plan mode and let it explain the concepts back to you.
Mobile isn’t just “your web app, but smaller.” It’s its own medium. The new stack is about giving you the right tools and patterns without forcing you to memorize every detail up front.
What’s coming next for builders
During the Q&A, Victoria called out a few areas the team is focused on next:
- Making it easier to have a web app and mobile app share the same underlying project.
- Smoother support for in‑app payments and subscriptions using tools like RevenueCat.
- A better path for Android publishing, so the same codebase can reach both major app stores.
If you want early access to that work – and a direct line to the team – Victoria encouraged builders to join the Replit Ambassador Program and early access cohorts.
Why this matters more than one app
Flash News is a neat app. But the bigger story is what it represents.
A solo founder who once had to hire and manage a full engineering team can now:
- Use Replit Agent and a transcript to build a working mobile prototype quickly, without waiting on a dev team.
- Iterate on design and UX directly in Replit and Expo Go.
- Ship to TestFlight and the App Store with a guided path instead of a pile of ad hoc scripts.
- Market the app as a story of what’s possible for nontechnical builders, not just as another tool.
That’s the real builder spotlight here: the shift from “I wish someone would build this for me” to “I can ship this myself and see what happens.”
