Teen founder's influencer army built $30M app

Zach Yadegari, a 19-year-old founder, built Cal AI into a viral calorie-tracking app generating over $30 million in revenue in two years before its acquisition by MyFitnessPal in March. Speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt, Yadegari credited a paid influencer strategy, targeting creators with tight communities and negotiating performance-based payouts. An early post driving roughly a thousand new users in two days confirmed the approach. Yadegari has since launched Persona, a new AI assistant startup that has raised $10 million, with plans to build a hardware ecosystem around the product.