GeoSports revenue: About $40K a month (reported)

01

How much revenue does GeoSports make?

Each row shows the evidence grade and the source numbers from the list at the end of this page. The grades are explained in How Aiolum verifies.

A free daily game that the founder said makes about US$40,000 a month, four months after a 12-hour build with Claude, mostly from ads; every money figure is self-reported
Fact	Value	Grade	How we know	Sources
Revenue per month, September 2026	about US$40,000	D	The founder in a Starter Story video interview published 27 September 2026: "Right now it's making about 40 000 per month" (transcript). This covers all GeoGames titles. Only one dated source gives the total.	[1]
Run rate from the September 2026 figure	about US$480,000 a year	calc	Calculated: US$40,000 times 12. A figure built on one founder statement.	[1]
Programmatic ad revenue, September 2026	US$30,000 to US$35,000 a month; about US$1,200 a day	D	Founder, same interview: "closer to 30 000 35 000 in programmatic right now" and "We hover around 1 200 a day"; the ad account was not yet 30 days old. Calculated: US$1,200 times 30 days is US$36,000.	[1]
Pro subscribers, September 2026	about 1,800	D	Founder, same interview. He said Pro is "a smaller percentage" of revenue; the rest of the US$40,000, US$5,000 to US$10,000 a month, is calculated from his ad range.	[1]
Pro subscribers two weeks after Pro launched	about 1,000, worth about US$47,000 a year	D	MadRobot, 10 October 2026, citing Sportico, which disallows Claude agents and was not read. The launch date of Pro is not given. Calculated: US$47,000 divided by 12 is about US$3,917 a month.	[2]
Monthly active users, September 2026	about 700,000	D	Founder in the Starter Story interview.	[1]
Unique players in the first month	about 1 million	C	The founder in the Starter Story interview ("over 1 million unique players in less than one month") and MadRobot citing Sportico (1 million unique users by the end of May 2026, about 95,000 players on weekdays).	[1, 2]
First seven days	366,000 plays, 150,000 peak daily players, 165,000 referrals from X	D	The founder's X post of 11 May 2026, read as MadRobot quotes it ("366k total plays", "150k peak DAUs", "165k referrals from X", "$0 marketing spend").	[2]
Players on days one, two and three	79, then 575, then more than 4,000 daily players before noon	C	Founder's newsletter, 6 May 2026. Day three came after a widely read sports newsletter featured the game.	[3]
Share rate	53% of daily players share their score	D	Founder in the Starter Story interview: "a 53 organic share rate".	[1]
Traffic from the founder's own posts	about 2,000 clicks a day, about 2% of traffic	D	Founder in the Starter Story interview: one question posted daily on X and on his Instagram story; "The other 98 is daily players that probably don't even know that I'm the founder". Calculated: 2,000 clicks at 2% implies about 100,000 daily players.	[1]
Founder's audience	more than 4 million followers across social media	C	Founder in the Starter Story interview; MadRobot says he runs sports channels with millions of followers. VAQIRA repeats "400 万+ 粉丝" (translation: 4 million+ followers) from the interview.	[1, 2, 8]
Rounds played by 2 September 2026	more than 15 million	D	The founder on X on 2 September 2026, as MadRobot reports it.	[2]
Build time of the first version	12 hours with Claude Code (newsletter); about 8 hours on a Sunday, then a Monday (interview)	C	The founder's two accounts differ in hours; both say one weekend and Claude.	[3, 1]
Team	four people at Rhino Studios	D	MadRobot, 10 October 2026, citing Sportico: development "has since moved from Claude to the four-person team at Rhino Studios". The founder still writes the questions.	[2]
Outside funding	US$500,000 at a US$4 million valuation, in 2025	D	Sportico, as quoted on Starter Story's GeoSports profile: "In 2024, Smith founded Rhino Studios to house his game operations which, he said, raised $500,000 at a $4 million valuation a year later". Sportico itself was not read.	[7]
Operator	Rhino Studios Inc., terms under New Jersey law	C	Privacy policy (updated 19 August 2026) and terms. The App Store lists the seller as Rhino Studios, Inc.	[4, 6]
Advertising network	Playwire LLC	C	Privacy policy: "All or partial advertising on this Website or App is managed by Playwire LLC."	[4]
App Store rating, 1 November 2026	4.9 from 616 ratings; age rating 4+	C	App Store page of GeoGames, read 1 November 2026. MadRobot saw 4.9 from 453 reviews on 10 October 2026. The site's terms require users to be at least 13.	[6, 2, 4]
Time from launch to the September 2026 figure	4 months	calc	Calculated: May 2026 to September 2026.	[3, 1]

How to read this table: a grade D value is one founder statement with one date, or a figure that only one source gives, with no second source to check it. A grade C value comes from the company's own pages, the App Store, or founder statements that two sources repeat. A "calc" value was computed on this page from the rows above it. No value is grade A or B.

GeoSports prices on 1 November 2026: the site's Pro page loads its prices by script, so the prices come from the App Store listing of the GeoGames app (grade C)
Plan	Per month, billed yearly (US$)	Per month, billed monthly (US$)	Limit
Free	0	0	today's five questions, daily leaderboard, streaks and stats
GeoGames Pro	3.33	4.99	past days, featured and random rounds, sport-specific games, Pro leaderboard; US$39.99 a year

The daily round is free and needs no account. One Pro subscription covers every game in the GeoGames app. MadRobot reported the same plan at US$5 a month or US$40 a year. The site and the app also show ads; the App Store page marks the app "Contains Advertising".

02

When did GeoSports launch, and how did it grow?

From a sports creator's first small games in 2020 to a daily game with a million players in its first month, in the founder's and the press's words. Each entry carries its grade.

2020DSmith starts as an independent short-form sports video creator, and the same year launches his first game, Five Card Draw, which he says about 110,000 people played. [1]
2024DHe founds Rhino Studios to house his games, according to Sportico as quoted by Starter Story. [7]
2025DRhino Studios raises US$500,000 at a US$4 million valuation, as Smith told Sportico. [7]
Early May 2026COver one weekend he builds a sports version of the map game MapTap with Claude Code and ships it after 12 hours. Day one: 79 players; day two: 575. [3]
6 May 2026CA widely read sports newsletter features the game; it passes 4,000 daily players before noon, the founder writes. [3]
11 May 2026DSeven days after launch the founder posts 366,000 total plays and 150,000 peak daily players, with no marketing spend. [2]
End of May 2026CAbout 1 million unique players and about 95,000 players on weekdays, as Sportico reported and MadRobot repeated. [2, 1]
2026, date not statedDPro launches; two weeks later it has about 1,000 subscribers, reported as worth about US$47,000 a year. The founder turns down sponsorship offers, mostly from betting and fantasy sports companies. [2]
19 August 2026CThe privacy policy names Playwire as the advertising manager and Stripe for Pro payments. [4]
2 September 2026DThe GeoGames app launches on the App Store and Google Play, to send a daily reminder; the founder reports more than 15 million rounds played. [2]
27 September 2026DStarter Story interview: about US$40,000 a month, about 700,000 monthly active users, about 1,800 Pro subscribers, as the founder said. [1]
10 October 2026CThe iPhone app has 4.9 stars from 453 reviews and is number 60 in the US free trivia chart, MadRobot reports; development is now with a four-person team. [2]
1 November 2026CThe site and the app are live; the App Store shows 4.9 stars from 616 ratings. [5, 6]

03

Why did GeoSports work?

Four causes, in the order they mattered. Each one is a reusable lesson.

01

A known format with a new topic

The founder said he got the idea from MapTap, a daily map game he played for weeks, and made what he called a remix of it for sports. The rules needed no teaching: tap where it happened, and the score depends on distance.

02

No friction, built to be shared

A round takes about a minute and needs no email address or sign-up, the founder wrote. The result is a row of colored dots that players post. He said 53% of daily players share their score, and that people could find, play and share it without leaving X.

03

A creator's account for the first push

The launch reply under one of his own posts on X went viral, he said: about 40,000 players, then 150,000 the next day. He says his posts now bring only about 2% of traffic, and that sports media people and athletes who host a day's questions bring new players when they repost it.

04

Ads first, subscriptions second

The founder said in September 2026 that most revenue is programmatic ads and a smaller part is Pro. Ad income grows with the number of daily players, so the habit of coming back every day matters more than any single sale.

How it was built

These details come from the founder's newsletter, his Starter Story interview and the site's privacy policy. The interview transcript is automatic and writes "Cloud" for Claude. [3, 1, 4, 2]

He first gave regular Claude a long description of the game and asked it to research MapTap, then wrote a spec; whenever he got stuck he asked Claude and referred back to the spec.
His newsletter says he used Claude Code and went back and forth with it hundreds of times; the first playable version took 12 hours.
He is not technical and relied on screenshots: he sent Claude pictures of the Vercel and domain screens and asked what to do.
Stack named in the interview: a Claude Max 20x plan, Vercel Pro hosting, a domain bought from Vercel, MapLibre for the globe, Upstash Redis for leaderboards and stats, Google Sheets for the questions and Stripe for Pro.
The privacy policy also lists Neon for the database, Resend for email, PostHog for analytics, the X pixel for ad measurement, Playwire for advertising and Google sign-in.
Development has since moved to a four-person team at Rhino Studios; the founder still writes the questions himself, MadRobot reports.

Tools named in the sources

Each one opens its page in the Tools tab, with every story that uses it.

Claude CodeC MapLibreC Next.jsB VercelC NeonC UpstashC Sign in with GoogleC StripeC PlaywireC Apple App StoreB Google PlayB X AdsC XB InstagramC ResendC beehiivC PostHogC Google AnalyticsB Google SheetsC

04

Who tried this before GeoSports, and why did they fail?

Four companies in our database of failed startups tried to earn money from games or sports fans whose attention was easy to win and hard to keep. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.

Died 2013 to 2020Burned US$27M

QuizUp

The promise

Real-time trivia battles on mobile across many topics.

Why it died

Its first virality did not last: the content and features did not change enough to keep players coming back, and it could not earn enough from a large user base.

No Market Need

Died 2009 to 2013Burned US$2M

Hitpost

The promise

A social app for sports fans with polls and real-time discussion.

Why it died

It could not build steady revenue, and Twitter added the same sports conversation with a much larger audience.

Competition

Died 2012 to 2015Burned US$2M

LVL6

The promise

Addictive mobile games paid for by in-app purchases.

Why it died

The market filled with similar games and clones, and its games did not become viral enough to stand out.

Competition

Died 2010 to 2016Burned US$100M

Viggle

The promise

Rewards for watching TV and listening to music, paid for by advertisers.

Why it died

It paid users more for their attention than advertisers would pay for it.

Unit Economics

The failed startups come from our database of 1,749 dead startups, retold here in our own words. Its entries are AI-assisted summaries of public sources, so these cards carry no evidence grade.

What changed

QuizUp and LVL6 show that a game which spreads fast can lose its players just as fast, and that copies arrive quickly. Hitpost and Viggle show that sports fans' attention is cheap to win and hard to sell for more than it costs. GeoSports has the same exposure: it is a free daily game that lives mainly on ads, and the founder said players forgot to come back until the app could send a daily reminder.

Two things differ. First, the cost: the founder built the first version in a weekend with Claude, with no programmer and no paid marketing, so the game did not need millions in funding before it earned anything. Second, the format: a daily game is short, the same for everyone, and its result is made to be posted, so each player who shares it acts as an ad for the next day. Whether that habit lasts longer than QuizUp's is not yet known after four months.

05

Can one person copy GeoSports now?

The build, yes. The distribution, only partly.

A non-programmer can now build a simple daily web game in a weekend with an AI coding tool, as this founder did. The hard part is the first few thousand players: GeoSports had a newsletter feature on day three and a viral post from an account with millions of followers. The sharing design is the part anyone can copy.

Where it is still open: Daily map or trivia games for other fan groups: other sports and leagues, music, film, history, cities and travel.

1Take a daily format that people already play and apply it to a topic you know well and whose fans talk to each other.
2Write a spec first, then build with an AI coding tool, and send it screenshots when a hosting or domain screen is unclear.
3Make the round short, with no sign-up, and make the result a short text that players want to post.
4Invite people with large followings in your niche to write a day's questions, so each of them shares it once.
5Add a cheap subscription for extra rounds and past days, and an app or email reminder so players come back.

What could go wrong for GeoSports?

The risks are the mirror image of the causes above.

What is not verified

The headline figure of about US$40,000 a month rests on one source: the founder, Frank Michael Smith, in a Starter Story video interview published on 27 September 2026, where he also showed his ad and Stripe dashboards on screen. Starter Story's own GeoSports profile shows an estimated ~US$40K a month, compiled by automated research from public sources, so it is not a second source. The ad split, the 1,800 Pro subscribers, the team size and the funding also rest on one source each. A reader could look for a payment-processor profile, a Stripe figure from a later interview, or a second dated revenue figure from the founder.

Most revenue depends on ad networks

The founder said US$30,000 to US$35,000 of the monthly revenue comes from programmatic ads, and that the ad account was less than 30 days old at the interview. The privacy policy names Playwire as the network that manages the ads. Ad prices change with the season and with the network's rules, and a free game with fewer daily players earns less from ads at once.

One creator's audience at the start

The founder has more than 4 million followers, he says, and the launch came from a reply under one of his own posts on X. He says his daily posts now bring only about 2% of traffic and that 98% comes from word of mouth in group chats. He also asks sports media personalities and athletes to host a day's questions, which spreads the game through their accounts.

A simple game is easy to copy

GeoSports is itself a sports version of MapTap, the founder says, and it was built in 12 hours by a person who cannot code. Anyone with an AI coding tool can build a similar game for sports or another topic. The founder's answer so far is spin-offs (GeoHistory, GeoFooty) in one app, and a daily habit with streaks and groups.

Players forget to come back

The founder wrote on X on 2 September 2026, as MadRobot reports, that the most common feedback was that players forgot to play; the app was launched to send a daily reminder. In the interview he said the team was unprepared on retention after the viral launch.

Not a one-person business any more

The first version was built by the founder with Claude, but development has moved to a four-person team at Rhino Studios, a company that the founder told Sportico raised US$500,000 at a US$4 million valuation in 2025. The page shows it as a small, funded team.

Betting: offers refused, one wrong claim

MadRobot reports, citing Sportico, that the founder turned down sponsorship offers, mostly from betting and fantasy sports companies, to keep the game "pure". Starter Story's automated profile says GeoSports has affiliate deals with PrizePicks and Polymarket, but the quotation it cites is from a Sportico article about a different game and its founder. No betting ad or link was seen on the GeoSports pages read on 1 November 2026; the ads are served by a network and can vary.

More in Learning and study

Other businesses in the same group, best evidence first. All 29 stories in the group, 14 with grade-A revenue.

AI language tutor app · Canada

Verbi

Evidence A

$251K in 6 months

Team of 2 to 10 · 6 months after launch, revenue falling

The tutor is an AI model, so the company pays for computing and has no teacher to pay by the hour. That allows a yearly price of US$47.99 to US$79.99. Customers came from a very large number of short videos on TikTok and Instagram: first slideshows that the founder's own tool generated and that two people posted from about 12 accounts, then videos by paid creators. Yearly plans are paid in full on the first day, so the cash arrived early. Half of all revenue came in September 2026, and daily sales have fallen since.

6 grade-A facts · 5 that failed before it

AI child avatars for interview training · Norway · Funded

Innsikt.AI

Evidence A

$209K revenue in 2025

Team of 2 to 10 · 20 months after launch, revenue growing

Seven years of research at a Norwegian university produced the method, the training data and the avatar before the company existed. The founder is the professor who led that research, the university licensed the technology to her company, and public bodies that must train staff in child interviews are the customers. The filed accounts show revenue of NOK 816,000 in 2024 and NOK 2,176,042 in 2025, at a loss.

8 grade-A facts · 4 that failed before it

AI reading assistant: ask questions to your own books and documents · United States

Myreader

Evidence A

$187K revenue since 2023

Solo founder · 39 months after launch, revenue falling

It launched in July 2023, when the ChatGPT plugins for PDF stopped at about 300 pages and Myreader took a whole library. It sold a cheap subscription limited by pages and questions, and it got its users from Google: the TrustMRR profile says the business has good SEO and about 30 sign-ups a day, and the site has a page for each kind of reader, from medical students to seminary students, and a free page for each of more than 40 public-domain classics.

4 grade-A facts · 5 that failed before it

Built with the same tools

Businesses whose sources name tools that GeoSports also uses: Next.js, Claude Code, Stripe, Apple App Store. Every tool has its own page in Tools.

AI audio mastering from text prompts · Turkey · Funded

SoundBoost.ai

Evidence A

$218K in 12 months

Team of 2 to 10 · 32 months after launch, revenue growing

For its first 20 months the product brought in about US$3,500 a month. Then three things came together: phone apps with weekly plans from August 2025, web plans with unlimited use at US$4 a month billed yearly, and a new group of customers, people who make songs with AI generators such as Suno and need the last step done for them. Monthly revenue rose 7.2 times between January and July 2026. No source states which of the changes caused the rise.

7 grade-A facts · 4 that failed before it

Live AI voice translation for churches · Cyprus

Glossa.live

Evidence A

$182K in 12 months

Team of 2 to 10 · 16 months after launch, revenue growing

Churches with members from many countries meet every week, and the older solutions cost too much for most of them: an interpreter for each language, or radio receivers to hand out and collect. Glossa charges US$5 for one hour of speech in one language, counts by the minute, and charges nothing for silence, songs or extra listeners, so a small church can start with four free hours and then a few dollars a week. The product is shaped for this one buyer: captions go into ProPresenter and OBS, which churches already run, and a church can fix how names, Bible quotations and its own terms are translated. A very small team can offer this because the speech recognition and the voices are rented from model companies and paid by use.

10 grade-A facts · 5 that failed before it

AI assistant inside messaging apps · Switzerland

Notis

Evidence A

$13.5K MRR in October 2026

Solo founder · 35 months after launch, revenue falling

It reached people inside the chat app that they already open all day, so capturing an idea on a phone took one voice note. It aimed first at Notion users, whom the company told that ideas get lost on the phone. Ads on Facebook and Google then paid for fast growth in early 2026, until the founder stopped them in August 2026 because the costs were larger than the revenue.

6 grade-A facts · 5 that failed before it

Same pattern: Built with AI

AI is the tool here, not the product: one founder or a small team runs an ordinary product and uses AI to do the work of a larger team, for example to write the code. These stories do not count in the site's revenue totals, which are for businesses that sell AI. All 13 stories with this pattern, 4 with grade-A revenue.

Open-source social media scheduler for people and AI agents · Israel, company registered in Hong Kong

Postiz

Evidence A

$3.2M/yr run rate

Solo founder · 27 months after launch, revenue growing

Said US$245K a monthRecords US$263K MRRSaid less than the records

The founder took a twenty-year-old product category with no open-source entry and open-sourced all of it, which gave him millions of Docker downloads and 37,000 GitHub stars without a marketing budget. Revenue stayed small for a year. It multiplied when he turned the product toward people who automate their posting with n8n workflows and, from late 2025, with AI agents, which need an API-first scheduler and keep paying because they post without human effort.

6 grade-A facts · 5 that failed before it

Local SEO software for agencies: rank tracker, directory listings and AI-written articles · Canada

LocalRank

Evidence A

$730K total, now $21K/mo

Team of 2 to 10 · 19 months after launch, revenue falling

Said 500+ paying agenciesRecords 207 subscriptionsDid not hold

The founder had an audience before the product existed: a daily YouTube show about SEO since 2023 and an X account that has 62,000 followers today, so the first customers cost nothing. A developer co-founder built the software with AI coding tools. The product started as one plain rank tracker at US$19 a month, grew into a bundle at US$57 to US$2,997 a month, and by July 2025 the first payment of a new customer from a paid ad covered the cost of that ad.

5 grade-A facts · 5 that failed before it

Step-by-step guides and interactive walkthroughs from screen captures, with AI writing, voiceover and translation · India

Guidejar

Evidence A

$85.1K in 12 months

Solo founder · 36 months after launch, revenue flat

The first customers came from a lifetime-deal sale on AppSumo, at a time when the product had no AI at all. That gave about a thousand users, word of mouth and a Powered by Guidejar link on every free guide. From April 2024 the founder sold subscriptions instead, and added AI writing, voiceover and translation to the paid plans, metered in credits.

5 grade-A facts · 4 that failed before it

Sources

The grade next to each source is the best grade that the source can support. "Read in full" means that the text of the page was downloaded and the numbers were checked in it.

D Starter Story, 27 September 2026: I built this website in 8 hours with Claude. Now it makes $40K/month
Read the page and the full transcript. A founder interview, not marked as an estimate. Source for the monthly revenue, the ad and Pro split, users, share rate, traffic, the build and the stack.
C MadRobot, 10 October 2026: A sports creator vibe-coded a trivia game in 12 hours, and a million people played it within a month
Read in full. A news article by Priya Sharma that quotes the founder's newsletter, his X posts of 11 May and 2 September 2026, and Sportico. Source for the first-week numbers, the Pro launch, the team, the refused betting sponsors and the app.
C FMS Newsletter, 6 May 2026: I locked in and created a viral mini game
Read in full. The founder's own newsletter. Source for the build with Claude Code, the 12 hours and the first three days.
C GeoSports privacy policy (updated 19 August 2026) and terms and conditions
Read both in full (the terms are at https://geosports.app/terms). Source for Rhino Studios Inc., the service providers, Playwire, Stripe, the age limit and New Jersey law.
C GeoSports home page and How GeoSports works page
Read in full, 1 November 2026 (home page at https://geosports.app/). Source for the rules, the scoring and the founder's name.
C App Store: GeoGames - Daily Challenges
Read in full, 1 November 2026, reached through geosports.app/get. Source for the Pro prices, the rating, the age rating, "Contains Advertising" and the seller.
D Starter Story: GeoSports: Revenue, Growth & Monetization (researched profile)
Read the page and its source quotations. An automated profile; its revenue figure is an estimate and is not used. Used only for its quotation of Sportico on the 2024 founding and the 2025 funding round. One of its claims, on betting affiliates, cites an article about another game.
D VAQIRA: GeoSports listing in its data files (约 $40,000/月)
Read the GeoSports entries in https://vaqira.com/data.json and https://vaqira.com/llms-full.txt, downloaded 1 November 2026. A Chinese-language directory that repeats the Starter Story figure; not a second source.
C Database of failed startups, local export
Local export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.