Every traditional path to making money asks you to prove yourself first. A resume. An interview. References. Someone deciding whether you're allowed in before you ever get the chance to show what you can do.

The App Store doesn't work that way. It doesn't ask how old you are, where you went to school, or whether you have relevant experience. It asks whether the app works and whether people want it. That's the entire filter.

That's exactly why teenagers with no technical background are competing on equal footing with anyone else building something in the same category. Rork removed the technical barrier. What's left is just the idea and the willingness to actually finish it — no gatekeeper standing between you and publishing something real.

This is a genuinely different kind of opportunity than most of what gets sold as one. There's no application process. No one to convince you're worthy of trying. You build it, you publish it, and the market itself tells you whether it was worth building — faster and more honestly than any interview ever would.