Teen App Millionaire to Saks to Building the Anti-TikTok | Coffeez Ep. 313
Coffeez with Joe Shalaby - Joseph Shalaby
In this episode of Coffeez with Joe Shalaby, host Joe Shelby sits down with Rodimus Ramirez, a teenage tech prodigy who built his first app at just 14 years old. The app,
Key takeaways
- Taste—rather than just technical ability—is now the key differentiator in a saturated market where anyone can build apps using AI.
- Authentic problem-solving rooted in personal need (like improving an ugly keyboard) often leads to widespread adoption without traditional marketing.
Main topics
- Teenage app development at age 14
- From personal need to million-user product
Notable quotes
"You can build anything, but do you have taste?" – Rodimus Ramirez on standing out in the age of AI-generated content.
"I woke up to it because I was like, okay, I know I want this. I know I need this." – On launching a product that solved his own frustration.
Conclusion
Rodimus Ramirez's journey from a teenage app developer to a multi-industry innovator underscores the power
Transcript preview
Speaker 3 (0:00) One, two. Speaker 1 (0:15) Thank Speaker 3 (0:15) you, thank you. My Speaker 1 (0:16) name is Alyssa. Radimus. Radimus, so good to have you. Welcome to Coffees with Joe, shall we? Speaker 3 (0:22) Excited. Do Speaker 1 (0:23) you like chocolate by any chance? I Speaker 3 (0:24) love chocolate. Tell me you have some chocolate. I Speaker 1 (0:26) have so much chocolate for you. I want you to choose what costs you. Oh, it's right here. It's right here, please. Speaker 3 (0:31) Take your Speaker 1 (0:32) pick. Speaker 3 (0:33) I gotta go with green. I gotta go with green. It's my favorite color. Green, Speaker 1 (0:35) awesome. Great choice, my favorite color too. I want you to take Speaker 3 (0:39) a Speaker 1 (0:39) bite of it. Okay. And I want to take your order. So what can I get you today? Speaker 3 (0:42) I'm particular. So hopefully you have it back there. Speaker 1 (0:45) Okay, which one? Speaker 3 (0:47) I want a white chocolate mocha. Speaker 1 (0:49) White chocolate mocha. Yeah, with some oat milk Speaker 3 (0:51) in it. Speaker 1 (0:51) Oat milk. I got you, I got you. While you're taking a bite of that, I'm going to get that ready for you. Okay. So where are you coming from right now? Speaker 3 (1:01) So I'm staying not too far from here. I think it's an area called, like, I don't know. Casa, Mesa, something like that. Casa Speaker 1 (1:09) Mesa. Is it wrong? Costa Mesa. Speaker 3 (1:12) Costa Mesa. I'm so stuck in Puerto Rico. You gotta bear with me. That's okay. Speaker 1 (1:16) Well, I'm gonna take you over to Joe. Let's head on back. Speaker 1 (1:33) What's up Speaker 2 (1:34) everyone, welcome to another episode of Coffees, I'm your host Joe Shelby and today we're sitting down with Rodimus Ramirez, a young tech founder who started his first company at just 14 years of age. who served millions of people. He now works with some of the biggest companies on the planet in over 150 companies, continues to dominate in every industry he touches. Please welcome the one, the only Rodimus Ramirez. Thank Speaker 3 (1:57) you, Joe. Thank you. I'm really, really happy to be here, man. It's an honor. Truly, truly. Speaker 2 (2:01) Absolutely. Thanks for flying in from Puerto Rico. How was your flight down? Speaker 3 (2:05) Easy, man. Easy. You know, I was excited to come here, feel the Cali air. So light, light flight. But, you know, how many hours? It was nine hours, actually, because I had to fly into Miami, and then I had to fly here. There's no directs. No directs from Puerto Rico. No Speaker 2 (2:18) directs, no directs. I'm sorry, man. Yeah, yeah. You got up early today, then. Speaker 3 (2:24) Yeah, well, I got up early today. I had some calls in the morning, but I flew in yesterday, just so I can get ahead of everything, to be very methodical, very precise about how I do my schedule. So, you Speaker 2 (2:34) know, Speaker 1 (2:34) it Speaker 3 (2:35) feels good. Energized, ready, you know what I mean? Let's go, Speaker 2 (2:38) baby. Yeah. So let's get into it. Rodimus, what's your morning routine? My morning routine, I do Speaker 3 (2:45) not dunk it inside of ice in a bowl. I'll tell you that. But I do spend a lot of time making sure that I, I think for me, making sure that I have time to start the day is super important, right? I think like waking up where you just have to go right out the door or just have to do anything is a little bit of, causes a little bit of anxiety. I think a lot of people don't realize that. So for me, I like to make sure I got an hour. I spend like 10, 15 minutes meditating, just being still, calm thoughts. and do some skincare and cook some breakfast. And, you know, depending, I also, like, during that time, no phone for the first hour. No phone? No phone. I mean, how many, you look at your phone, right, and you're just bombarded with all kinds of things, emails here, socials, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, right? And before you know it, you already downloaded so many other people's thoughts. You don't have time for your own in the morning. Speaker 1 (3:33) Yeah. So Speaker 3 (3:33) you clear that one hour, and then once you're ready, look at the phone. Speaker 2 (3:37) Then everyone's thoughts come in your head. Speaker 3 (3:39) There you go. Speaker 2 (3:40) All right. Well, you know, you have quite the interesting story. I mean, just looking you up, I'm shocked with what you've done. You've done a lot at a young age. You've really overcome a lot of tribulation. And your mindset now is really like trying to maintain and preserve your roots, which is really admirable. So we'll get into it. You know, you started, let's talk about your first company you started. 14 years old, man. That is like crazy. And you had millions of users. Yeah. That's insane. So let's chat about that. What was your first company and how did you get such widespread adoption at that young of an age? I mean, you didn't even have marketing talent. Yeah, honestly, it's funny. So 14 Speaker 3 (4:23) years old, I've always been curious. I think one of the biggest themes I have kind of walked through all my life is just innate sense of wonder, wondering why my hand doesn't go through the table, wondering why computers go whizzing and whirling, wondering these things and trying to find out why that is. And I remember when I was 14, I got my first Android device. My mom had, you know, finally got it for me. And it was hideous. Like, the operating system was ugly. I didn't like how the keyboard looked. And I'm like, this keyboard is very ugly. I need to change it. So I just sat in my room for a couple days, and I pulled the app, the default app from the phone, and I reverse engineered it, and I created my own version. of the keyboard so I can change it into any color I want. I can add patterns. I can do all of this. So that's how Speaker 2 (5:12) it kind of started. Yeah. Yeah. And then how, so you built this app. Yeah. And then how did you get on the app store? Speaker 3 (5:20) So it's funny how it actually worked out. So I'm, I'm, you know, 14, man. So I'm in my, I'm in the room doing, I'm running out. I run downstairs. I'm like, mom, check this out. Like that ugly keyboard gone. Look at this. She's like, whoa. This is really cool. I'm like, I know, right? I'm like, I don't have to look at it again. Like your money's saved. So she starts chuckling and she's like, you need to sell this. And I'm like thinking about it for a second. And I'm like, wait a second. I do need to sell this. There's tons. There's millions of people and they all like different things. Pink's blue cheetah. I'll be right back. Fly upstairs. I don't come down for two weeks. I finished all the apps and I do all the research. How do I get on the app store? What does the app store need? It was back and forth. I needed to learn all these things to be like an official application. Now that I think about it, like I guess they were fine with me being like 14 or maybe I lied. I have no, I don't remember, but I got on there and I launched the, I launched the app and it was like overnight. I guess it was just one of these things that everybody fell at the time. No one had made a solution. So downloads were just going crazy. And I put up for 99 cents initially. And it was just out of this world. I couldn't even believe what was happening, you know. And it was right at the end of 14 going into 15. So I'm in high school. And yeah, it was crazy time for that. Yeah. Speaker 2 (6:39) So you built an app that you needed. You loaded the app on the App Store. It didn't need marketing. It's like people come up with apps all the time, and the App Store is just full apps. Like how did people know to use that app? Speaker 3 (6:49) So Speaker 2 (6:50) what I did was at the time was Speaker 3 (6:52) at the time you could kind of label the app whatever the category was, right? And the customization category at the time on the – they didn't call it Google Play Store at the time, right? At that time, it was very thin. It was like you had really dumb stuff like widgets and it didn't exist. There was no other person creating an app that allows you to change your keyboard. So it really was just that. That's why I was just so confused because I woke up to it because I was like, okay, I know I want this. I know I need this. Put it on the categories. flew up within three or four days. I'm in number one in customization, number one in themes and personalizations. And then I'm making more. I'm spitting them out. I end up hiring a couple of friends. They start devving. They work for me now. I have my first two employees at 15. Yeah, it's crazy. You had a startup at 15 years old, man. Speaker 2 (7:49) You're the first person I've ever met that's done that. I mean, like, that's pretty impressive, you know? Thanks, man. Thank you. Speaker 3 (7:57) It's very dear to my heart that that starts my whole career especially because You know it resulted in me saving our home and Your Speaker 2 (8:09) family was going into foreclosure at the time. Yeah, Speaker 3 (8:11) and they weren't like Transparent with me about it, right? They they wanted to shield me from the stress and they were wanted to make sure that I was focused on school but Speaker 3 (8:24) When the money started coming in, my mom had a talk with me and she's like, hey, it would be really nice if you could help out, that kind of stuff. Still not really giving me all the things about what's going on. But I'm like, sure, no problem. And then I started thinking, why is the house always so cold? We couldn't afford oil. Why is this? And I started putting all the pieces together. And then, yeah, our lives just changed dramatically in just a short span of a few weeks. So we were able to fight off the foreclosure. Speaker 2 (8:54) That's unbelievable. Like you helped your parents. I mean, I hope I get kids like that. I mean, my kids aren't developing no apps now. Speaker 3 (9:00) Well, hey, listen, if I had AI when I was a kid, could you imagine what I would be able to build? So I'm sure they're going to be able to be into something and look who's their dad. Yeah. Speaker 2 (9:12) Hopefully. I mean, that's just unbelievable. That's so cool, man. Thank you, man. Thank you. Parents must be really proud. They are. Now, what do you think? is hard to build right now for you. Is it a great product or a great company? Speaker 3 (9:24) I think that in the day and age that we are in, you can build anything. Speaker 3 (9:33) but do you have taste? I think that's the big, like that's the line. You can build anything, but do you have taste? And the taste aspect is really going to allow you to get this distribution, be different, stand out, get those users, get the people to come to your restaurant, whatever that is. So I think right now it's a little bit more difficult when you have more people pushing out more applications because AI allows anybody to build. anything, even if the application is not good underneath, you can just, you know, talk to cloud code. You can do all these things now. So in a never endless stream of slop that we have, specifically in the tech world, you know, I think it's now more than ever, taste is the big Speaker 2 (10:17) distinguisher between success and failure. Speaker 2 (10:22) Now, right now, what's one technology that you think people are really overestimating? I Speaker 3 (10:31) think AI. I think as someone who's been in technology for so long, I see what AI is doing to the world. What do you see? I see that it's kind of cannibalizing certain companies or spending more money on... AI than they are employees thinking that Speaker 2 (10:50) they're optimizing something when they're not. There was a study that came out that said that CEOs are paying more for AI than the employee itself. It's actually that there are deficits. It's Speaker 3 (11:00) like Speaker 2 (11:00) double what an employee would cost. 100%. Speaker 3 (11:02) 100%. And I think that's mostly an organizational error. What I mean by that mostly is that people think, it's like you have this super powerful sword that can cut anything and any material and you just hand it to a five-year-old. They're swinging it around, knocking buildings down. You're like, whoa, calm down, right? That's where we are. We need to harness that power in a way that makes the most sense. Like, this is how you use a tool properly so you're not causing a lot of damage. So I see the tool being kind of a double edge, and I think more people need to understand that AI is also trained to please you. So you use this thing, you're thinking you're in God mode. You're like, man, this app's going to change the world. It's like, yeah, you just did all this neural network. It's just giving you jargon because you want to feel like you're the best tech guy in the world. When in the end, everything's broken. It's not really set up, you know, and this is what these organizations face because they're just spitting. They're just using all these tokens. Right. And the company is just paying for it, paying for it, pay for it, pay for it. So I think that there's going to be a lot of opportunity for individuals who are training real humans how to be AI augmented. It's a difference between using AI and being AI augmented. One is going to fleet. The other one is going to thrive. Speaker 2 (12:12) Yeah, I mean, it's crazy. It's a crazy world. Now, you're developing your next – it's a next company or next app? Yeah. Tell me about the next company you're starting right now. So right now what I'm doing is Speaker 3 (12:24) it's called – it's my name. It's called Radames Studios, and it's a creation studio. Speaker 3 (12:31) If you look at my life and my career, I've built across every vertical you can think of. And I like to call myself a synthesis. So, you know, it doesn't matter if it's a brand, a product or technology, I can create it. So the studio is now a testament to the exact thing I just said. How do you build with taste in a digital age? And what does that mean for organizations, entrepreneurs, startups, anything, the mom and pop shop? So the studio is now open and I'm really excited. I'm already working with really, really awesome companies across, again, different verticals. So that's what the current thing is. But we can get into Vala too, the app that I launched this year as well. So what's Speaker 2 (13:17) that Speaker 3 (13:17) app? So Speaker 2 (13:18) it's called Vala, V Speaker 3 (13:19) -A-L-A. Speaker 3 (13:22) It's a new social experience. So it is a social media application with shorts on it. So it's like a Speaker 2 (13:29) YouTube or a... Yeah, Speaker 3 (13:30) it's like a Reels meets TikTok meets kind of a new experience. There's a lot of different features on there that don't exist. Is it live? It's live, yeah. How many Speaker 2 (13:41) users Speaker 3 (13:41) do you have on Speaker 2 (13:41) it? Speaker 3 (13:41) So right now we just crossed over 10,000. So we just crossed over 10,000. Speaker 3 (13:47) They're global, right? So that's one thing that's really interesting is that they're completely all over the world. Speaker 2 (13:52) It's really interesting to see. How are you gaining market share versus like why would people go on your platform or stay on TikTok? I mean, you saw a lot of companies try to launch, like Blue Sky tried to launch. Sure, sure. It's hard to gain market share in social because attention is hard to grab. Speaker 3 (14:09) Yeah, I see that. So we launched the second version of the application this year. That was the first V1. That was a slight different product. It was more financial focused. We have a lot of the digital payment rails already done inside the app. So we completely kind of revolutionized how you cross-section content and monetization across borders. Speaker 2 (14:32) Is that kind of like a WeChat in China? Speaker 3 (14:34) Well, no, not really. Because, I mean, WeChat... In the sense of that they've figured out how to monetize social rails, yes. In the sense that it's not really kind of like a video-based social app, no. But you asked an important question, which is the distinction between what I've built and what's out there. So I built this AI-based algorithm, and it's called Vision. And it uses the best technology when it comes to video understanding. So I basically created an algorithm that understands vibe and that's a really important distinction because vibe What is your intention of posting your intention? I want to flex I want to inform I want to promote I know all that What is the emotion in the video? What's in the video? What objects are in the video? Where does it go from left to right? 30 different languages are supported Speaker 3 (15:36) and this has surfaced some really interesting things where we're moving into something called VibeLock. Like your Speaker 2 (15:42) vibe. Speaker 3 (15:43) Yeah, like your vibe. Isn't Instagram doing that? Okay, so they do a portion of it, but the problem is Instagram has advertisers to answer to, and advertisers want engagement that isn't necessarily in your best interest, right? The whole thing is we want you to feel better, not bitter, and we have the capabilities. If you saw some of the toggles that I have, I want to know what Instagram has. They're not going to surface it, though. Any of their algorithm customization stuff has only been surfaced so that they can appease the European government and stuff like that. All of these organizations that are like, we need you to be more transparent. They're like, fine, Speaker 2 (16:17) I'll add a slider that says don't show me this. Speaker 3 (16:19) But they have all of it, right? And we're not really optimizing all of the algorithms and engagement for you to just click or rage. We want you to resonate with the content, right? And that's what is the most important for us. That concept is interesting. It's why I'm also here, amongst other things, is the concept of how do you get people to feel this new experience of content that understands you? That's not just, I like the Ferrari, I'm going to show you Ferrari content. Speaker 2 (16:47) Yeah, so it's understanding vibe, but I feel like that's what the algorithm is. It's understanding the person who's scrolling. I Speaker 3 (16:55) think when you think about traditional algorithms, when it's understanding... Speaker 3 (17:00) The person who's scrolling I think Speaker 1 (17:02) let's talk about texture Speaker 3 (17:03) Right. So you have let's say you have this musician in Portugal and this musician makes reggaeton so Latin genre Right, and they have a certain aesthetic that they are consistently using they have like they wear a lot of neon green and all this stuff, right and They start posting their videos, right? You'll have Instagram it's gonna go to the most basic things. What are they? What does it sound like? Okay, we're gonna put it in the same bucket as like what I get dong music, right? But what if it's what if his video gets served to some people in Japan and they're on the same wave? They wear like red neon colors and they're also making Latin music, but they're both not Latin, right? And it combines them and it shows them the videos to each other. So you get this really interesting mix of allowing content to flow cross border, where it's not just based on hashtags and based on like a rudimentary stuff. But I will be honest, like, you know, Instagram and TikTok have been getting really like up with their AI and integrations and stuff like that. So we'll see what they do. But, you know, really proud of it, really proud of it. Speaker 2 (18:09) Do