From Imagination to the App Store: How a 14-Year-Old Queens Entrepreneur Turned Years of Building Into His First Launch

At 14 years old, Liron Zavolunov is only beginning his freshman year of high school. But while balancing classes, sports, friends, and everyday teenage life, the Queens native has spent years doing something considerably less typical: turning ideas into things people can actually use.

On August 15, 2026, just six days after his 14th birthday, Zavolunov launched Apex, a fitness app designed to take much of the confusion out of starting and maintaining a workout routine.

For Zavolunov, however, Apex wasn't where the story began.

An Instinct to Build

Long before he understood software development, entrepreneurship, or artificial intelligence, Zavolunov was fascinated by making ideas tangible.

As a first-grader fascinated by Transformers, he decided he wanted an Optimus Prime costume that could do more than simply look like the character.

Using cardboard boxes, hot glue, and spray paint, he constructed separate pieces around his chest, arms, and legs. He designed the costume so that by positioning his arms and crouching down, he could transform himself into the shape of Optimus Prime's truck form.

It was an elementary-school project, but the instinct behind it would remain remarkably consistent:

If something he imagined didn't exist, his first reaction was to try building it himself.

Years later, that instinct moved onto a computer.

From Building Things to Building Software

During sixth and seventh grade, Zavolunov became increasingly interested in creating games.

He experimented with platformers, clicker games, parkour games, shooters, and other small independent projects. Among them were a Mario-inspired platformer and clicker games built around concepts such as cookies and candy.

Eventually, he brought the projects together on a website where students could access and play them.

What started as experimentation became something his classmates actually used. Zavolunov estimates that roughly 80 students in his grade visited the site.

For the first time, building wasn't only about creating something because he found it interesting. Other people were interacting with what he made.

At the same time, software wasn't consuming his entire childhood.

From sixth through eighth grade, Zavolunov played on his middle school's basketball team, balancing the projects he was building at home with school, sports, and friends.

That balance—living the normal life of a student while privately working toward something much larger—would eventually become an important part of how he approached entrepreneurship. 

A New Year's Resolution

One of the most important moments in Zavolunov's entrepreneurial journey didn't begin with an app.

It began with a conversation with his father.

Around New Year's, Zavolunov told his father and biggest role model, Ilya Zavolunov, about a goal he had set for himself: he wanted to make $10,000.

His original plan was vending machines.

His father challenged him to think differently.

Rather than pursuing a business model that had existed for decades, he encouraged his son to pay attention to how quickly technology was changing. Artificial intelligence, he argued, was creating an entirely new era of opportunity, and rather than being intimidated by that change, his son should find a way to participate in it.

The conversation stuck.

Instead of buying vending machines, Zavolunov began thinking seriously about software, artificial intelligence, and businesses capable of reaching far more people.

His parents remained supportive as those ideas grew, with his father becoming particularly influential in the way he thought about business.

“My dad is my biggest role model,” Zavolunov said.

From Games to Applications

By eighth grade, Zavolunov had begun thinking beyond games.

One of his first major application projects was Clotho, an app centered around fashion and personal style.

The concept was simple: instead of staring at a closet wondering what to wear, users could photograph their clothing and receive outfit suggestions. The app also included the ability to schedule outfits and browse popular clothing and fashion items.

Building Clotho also introduced Zavolunov to a less glamorous part of software development.

At one point during development, the changes he had made seemingly disappeared. The project appeared to have reverted to a version from roughly two weeks earlier.

For days, Zavolunov believed a significant amount of his work might simply be gone.

Eventually, the newer version appeared again in the project's version history, allowing him to recover his work and continue development.

He finished Clotho.

But he didn't release it commercially.

Instead, he moved on and built again.

Learning When to Move On

His next major project was Black Card, an application concept designed to connect people seeking assistance with certain legal claims to attorneys.

After Black Card came further experimentation, including a local-services marketplace where people could find others willing to complete jobs and everyday tasks in their area.

Again, Zavolunov reached the point where the applications functioned as completed development projects.

And again, he chose not to turn them into businesses.

The decision taught him another side of entrepreneurship: finishing something doesn't necessarily mean it should be launched.

There were already established companies addressing many of the same problems. Zavolunov wasn't convinced his products were different enough to persuade people to switch.

Rather than continuing simply because he had already invested time into the projects, he moved on.

It would take experiencing a problem himself for that to change.

Building More Than a Workout App

The goal behind Apex was to create more than a library of generic workout plans.

Zavolunov wanted the app to function as a digital fitness companion: helping users understand what to do while also giving them reasons to remain consistent.

Apex incorporates personalized workouts, workout reminders, streaks, progression systems, body and muscle-group ranks, levels, and home-screen widgets designed to keep users connected to their progress.

One feature Zavolunov is particularly proud of is Squads.

Squads allow friends to communicate and compete around their fitness progress. Members can work out alongside one another, build streaks, climb a leaderboard, and compete for the top position within their group.

Every Monday, performance within the Squad determines its champion.

For Zavolunov, features like Squads represent a larger vision for Apex: fitness shouldn't only be something users track. It can become something they participate in together.

Four Rejections Before One Approval

Building Apex took only several weeks.

Getting it onto Apple's App Store proved considerably less straightforward.

Zavolunov worked across the product—from development and design to the infrastructure surrounding its release. He experimented with designs in Figma, built the product, prepared its App Store presence, created the supporting website and privacy materials, and worked through the submission process.

There were plenty of mistakes.

At one point, Apex's Squad functionality wasn't working correctly. Users couldn't reliably create or join Squads because the feature hadn't been properly synchronized with the database.

Then came Apple's review process.

Apex went through four unsuccessful review attempts as Zavolunov worked to understand how the application's subscription implementation and submission process needed to function.

He had never done it before.

Each rejection meant going back.

Finding the problem.

Learning something new.

Fixing it.

And submitting again.

Finally, on August 15, 2026, Apex was approved for distribution on Apple's App Store.

Zavolunov had turned 14 only six days earlier.

Seeing the application publicly available felt like “a weight off my shoulders,” he said.

Apex itself had taken only weeks to develop, but the moment represented considerably more than a few weeks of work.

It was the first public release after years of progressively larger experiments—games, websites, applications, abandoned business ideas, technical problems, and projects that most consumers would never see.

For the first time, one of them had made it all the way out of his computer and into the hands of the public.

Thinking Bigger Than One App

Behind those projects was an ambition that had already begun growing beyond any individual application.

Zavolunov created VortexAI LLC with the intention of building something larger than a single product.

He serves as the company's CEO, while his father serves as CFO and helps guide financial decisions.

Zavolunov's long-term ambitions for VortexAI are intentionally enormous. He hopes to eventually develop it into a major technology and artificial-intelligence company capable of operating alongside companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic.

His ambitions for Apex are similarly larger than its current form.

He envisions Apex eventually developing beyond an application into an entire fitness community—one that could encompass software, apparel, personal training, and even physical gyms.

Those remain ambitions rather than accomplishments.

And Zavolunov knows he is still at the beginning.

Apex has reached the App Store. The next challenge is getting people to discover and use it.

A Freshman When the Laptop Closes

Despite the scale of those ambitions, Zavolunov's everyday life remains remarkably normal.

After playing basketball throughout middle school, he made his high school's soccer team as a freshman.

He goes to class, spends time with friends, plays sports, and handles the same school responsibilities as his peers.

Then he comes home and returns to building.

For Zavolunov, the contrast isn't a burden. It's part of what he enjoys.

“You get the best of both worlds,” he said. “You could be in school, relax with your friends, learn, gain knowledge, live a normal life of a teenager, and then you come home. When you get the chance, you get to work.”

He doesn't see entrepreneurship and having a normal teenage life as mutually exclusive.

He wants both.

The Fear of Being Average

Ask Zavolunov what keeps him working when a project breaks or an idea fails, and his answer is straightforward.

“The fear of being average.”

He thinks frequently about his future—not simply what job he might have, but what kind of life he wants to create for himself and eventually his family.

He wants a future in which his family doesn't have to make everyday decisions based primarily on what they can afford. And he worries that following a conventional path simply because it is conventional could leave him wondering what might have happened if he had been willing to take bigger risks while he was young.

That translates into an intense approach to his projects.

“Nothing will phase me. Nothing will get me to stop,” Zavolunov said. “I won't go to sleep until I know I did something meaningful.”

There is still an enormous distance between the ambitions Zavolunov describes and accomplishing them.

But at 14, that may be precisely the point.

Apex isn't the conclusion of his story.

It's the first project he decided was ready to leave his computer and enter everyone else's world.