98: Sequel – Romain Lefebvre

Romain Lefebvre:

As much as I've, you know, designed it to have that artwork first, you know, principle in mind, it was also because I wanted people recommending a media to someone else. If that person pulls out their phone and the app they use to get some information about the movie looks sleek and polished, I wanted the other person to go like, "Wow, what is this?"

Charlie Chapman:

Welcome to Launched. I'm Charlie Chapman, and today, I'm excited to bring you the developer behind the excellent media tracking app, Sequel, Roman Lefebvre. Roman, welcome to the show. You're laughing, so let's just-

Romain Lefebvre:

Sorry. I'm sorry.

Charlie Chapman:

No, no, no. No, no, no. This is the show. We're going to do this. So I just want the audience to know what you just had to endure for what? A good five minutes straight. And I've said it on this show before, but I really like that to try to get as close as I can to the correct pronunciation of somebody's name whenever we start this-

Romain Lefebvre:

You got close.

Charlie Chapman:

I got close. Yeah, that's very kind of you. Do you want to, for the record, tell people the actual correct way to pronounce your name so that they don't-

Romain Lefebvre:

Yes.

Charlie Chapman:

... have my horrible butchering as the version in their ears?

Romain Lefebvre:

Sure. Romain Lefebvre.

Charlie Chapman:

Lefebvre. Okay.

Romain Lefebvre:

So if you ever see it written, just ignore the B, and it'll be easier.

Charlie Chapman:

Perfect. So, yeah, I think this is maybe the second episode in a row where I've had to start it with somebody correcting their name, but I think it's a service that I provide here, is that I give people a medium to have the correct pronunciation of their name etched in audio form whenever you usually see them only in written form on the internet. I take that very seriously.

Romain Lefebvre:

Living in London, it's something I struggle with, so I'm very grateful.

Charlie Chapman:

Yes. And we'll get into that here in a second. But before we get too far, I want to give you an opportunity to give a quick elevator pitch for what Sequel is, just because I have a tendency to go down a lot of rabbit holes before we get to the actual app, and I feel like it's helpful for people to know where we're going. So just in a short form, what is the app, Sequel?

Romain Lefebvre:

Sure. It's a iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and even visionOS app. So very focused on Apple platforms for tracking your movies, your TV shows, but also your games, your books, and even your audio books. So instead of having to juggle between different apps, you'll just use one that has a uniform set of features. So you don't have to remember that this book tracking app that you're using has these features, but this other one doesn't, or these features on that other one are paid and these ones are free. So it sort of centralizes everything that essentially you consume during your downtime.

Charlie Chapman:

Perfect. And before we get into Sequel and the story of how you built that, I want to give everyone an introduction into who you are. So the three questions I always ask to start the show is where are you from? Do you have a formal education related to what you do? And then let's talk about what your career was leading up to you building Sequel.

Romain Lefebvre:

Sure. So in case you didn't catch it, I'm French. Born in Marseille, so that's the southeast of France. I'd never really grew up there. We moved a couple hours away from there to a much more rural area. I moved back to Marseille for university, and then to Oxford, where I studied computer science and software engineering.

Charlie Chapman:

Cool. So seems relatively relevant to what you do today.

Romain Lefebvre:

Yeah. Although interestingly, I was more leaning towards design when it came to choosing a career path because I've essentially been using Photoshop since I was, I think, 12 years old, not doing anything of particularly great ambition. I would hang out on community forums, and I think people would want little themed icons for their profiles and banners for their signatures. So I would basically just be making these for people. Initially, I wanted to go down the design-related routes, maybe CGI, or graphic design, or that kind of stuff. And then my parents pushed me towards a more engineer-related role. And I thought, "You know what? I like computers. I don't know that much about them, but I think I can do it." And so, yeah.

Charlie Chapman:

And so you got a computer science degree. Did you graduate and go into the engineering world and get a job at a normal company, or what was that like?

Romain Lefebvre:

So before graduating in my uni, we had to do internships. I did a couple internships. The first one didn't go too well. The second one was much more successful, but I did a couple internships as an iOS developer.

Charlie Chapman:

Okay. Had you done the iOS or were you an iPhone user before that?

Romain Lefebvre:

I was an iPhone user. We had a brief Objective-C course at uni.

Charlie Chapman:

Wow, very progressive.

Romain Lefebvre:

Very progressive. And also the fact that it didn't scare me off was probably-

Charlie Chapman:

All the square brackets didn't immediately push you away.

Romain Lefebvre:

I know. To me, they just made a lot of sense. Yeah, so I was an iPhone user. I feel like it's probably a bit typical, but I resonated a lot with Apple's design philosophy. And I think at the time as well, it's when I realized that my design skills could be used for designing the things I was developing. So in a group project, I would always end up being the guy who was doing the design. So it's a miracle that I managed to be an engineer by the end of that. But that's when I actually learned about UI design, UX design, and what it actually takes to create an interface that makes sense, and is usable, and achieves its goals. That wasn't part of the curriculum at all, but you just figure it out.

Charlie Chapman:

I do feel like if you are in that Apple, Mac, and then iOS community, it is a much more blended world than the other engineering communities that I've been part of, at least. I've had a lot of people on this podcast that are like... They're like, "I'm a designer that masquerades as an engineer," or, "I'm an engineer who masquerades as a designer." But people, even if they don't identify themselves that way or they don't see it as their specialty, they enjoy that sort of multidisciplinary way of thinking. And you're rewarded with that on the Apple platforms, I feel like, more, especially in the indie space, for being able to bring both together.

Romain Lefebvre:

Absolutely. I think even now, I still don't really know what I identify with. Even though I graduated as a developer, I just feel so strongly about design. And we'll get into it, but my career was actually as a designer, not as a developer.

Charlie Chapman:

Oh, okay.

Romain Lefebvre:

So I had very little experience, aside from this internship, as a professional engineer. So that was an interesting turn, I'd say.

Charlie Chapman:

Interesting. When you got into your career, going the design route, was that at software companies, though, I'm guessing?

Romain Lefebvre:

Yes. And it was completely... Not by mistake, but it wasn't intentional. The first company I applied to, which was in London, hired me technically as an engineer, but a design-minded engineer. So they knew that I enjoy design. They had seen a few prototypes of things that I had worked on, and they thought that was a nice compliment to their current engineering skills. So they got me through the door, and I think within a week of me joining, their designer left the company, and they were like, "Well, you can do design, right?" And so I don't think I touched a single line of code in that job.

Charlie Chapman:

Was that nice? Was it kind of like, "Oh, my gosh, I can't believe this opportunity opened up the door," or were you like, "I miss writing code"?

Romain Lefebvre:

Eventually that's what happened. I think initially, I was just like... You're keen to prove yourself. They throw a challenge at you, and you just want to rise to the challenge. And so you're just like, "Yeah, I'll design this feature for you." And I stayed at this company for... I think it was five or six years. I did design. And then as you tend to do... I don't know if you have any startup experience, but they throw more and more challenge at you and try to get more and more out of you. So eventually, I became-

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah, I'm very aware of that.

Romain Lefebvre:

... product manager. Yeah. So eventually, I became product manager, again, with no qualification whatsoever, learning everything on the job. And there was a point at which they hired a CTO who sat me down and he said, "You're going to need to choose between product management and product design because I think you can be great at either, but right now, you're not doing a good... You can be great at both, but you're not doing a good job at either because you're trying to do both." And I think for me, that's when I decided that design was what I wanted to do because I just have something about just creating something and being able to look back at the end of the day and say, "Yeah, I made this. Cool."

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah, I feel like product management or management of any kind, I think a lot of engineers listening probably have... That are later in their careers have gone through the experience of being an IC, individual contributor, engineer, and then growing into a leadership type role. And it's hard when you were in a role where you've tangibly had things you made sitting in front of you to transition to a role where when you look back at the year, you're like, "These are the things my team made," but nothing is yours the same way. And I feel like a lot of people on this podcast, that's when the indie app development thing started, because you needed a little thing to sit and mold yourself and be like, "This is mine."

Romain Lefebvre:

Yeah, I mean, that is basically it. And I think I did ponder this very dilemma, I guess, for myself. I was like, "Do I want to take more of a managerial role?" Which I did for a while, but I always felt like I need to be able to create something. And it is just a different type of creation. There is a creation by proxy that happens when you're managing your media team.

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah, the people who are good at it.

Romain Lefebvre:

Yeah.

Charlie Chapman:

I can tell you at RevenueCat, there are teams where even though the person leading it probably isn't doing 95% of the manual work themselves, the output is 100% them. You know what I mean? So there is a real craft to it, but I think it's also just a different skillset, and a lot of people are less interested or haven't built up that skillset, or whatever, and it takes a long time to build, just like it took a long time to build your skills in the craft of design, or software development, or whatever.

Romain Lefebvre:

Yeah. And I think different people will have different affinities for different types of tasks. You might not enjoy managing, or you might. You might be a developer, and you start putting your toes into management and you realize that actually, you're getting a lot of satisfaction out of it. I think that's great if it's you. I think in my case, it wasn't... I enjoyed the mentorship element. I didn't necessarily enjoy the management element of it.

Charlie Chapman:

So I guess in this case, you then went back into more design-oriented work at the individual contributor level. Were you doing your own side indie apps throughout all of this? Or at this stage, were you pretty much focused only on your day job when it came to software development and design?

Romain Lefebvre:

Halfway through that job, I think two or three years in, I started getting a itch for coding my own stuff again.

Charlie Chapman:

And that was like the code itself was the thing you missed, the actual...

Romain Lefebvre:

Yeah. For me, it's almost like the brain teaser part of it. It's like, "How can I make this happen?" And even from optimization of the code is like, "How can I make this the best code it can, in a way?" I missed that, but I was also worried that I was going down a path that wasn't my original degree, and I would slowly lose credibility as a developer as well in case-

Charlie Chapman:

If you wanted to go back, you wouldn't have that sort of fallback in terms of just like strategic employment opportunities?

Romain Lefebvre:

Exactly. Funny enough as well, so when I graduated, I think it was the year Apple announced Swift. Basically, I had no Swift experience.

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah, nobody did.

Romain Lefebvre:

Yeah. But two or three years in, I still didn't have any Swift experience. And so I was very much an Objective-C developer. And I thought to myself, "Well, I probably should have a little side project that I can at least be..." The goal was for me to familiarize myself with UIkit again, which after three years, I had forgotten. So the app was still coded in Objective-C as a proxy for me to just familiarize myself or re-familiarize myself with UIkit. And that's an app I released in 2019, not with much ambition. Again, basically I made it for myself and I thought-

Charlie Chapman:

What was it?

Romain Lefebvre:

It's called Remindly. It's an app to create Apple Reminders more conveniently than Apple Reminders would let you do.

Charlie Chapman:

And you got that-

Romain Lefebvre:

And the main reason...

Charlie Chapman:

... through to The Store, which was your first app you'd released to the store, then?

Romain Lefebvre:

It was. And it actually started as a set of shortcuts. And so I would basically... I had my own shortcuts. Being design-minded, it wasn't particularly pleasant to just tap options in shortcuts to be like, "Oh, I want to be reminded of this when I arrive at home." And there's three or four different selections you need to make. And so, I thought to myself, "Well, it could be a nice design challenge. I can make my own app, familiarize myself with coding again and get this out the door." But I literally didn't message anyone. I didn't have a social media presence, so it launched to no fanfare whatsoever, nor did I try.

Charlie Chapman:

Were you wanting it to be or was it like the goal mostly was to have an app in the store for the sake of going through that process/a portfolio piece, or something?

Romain Lefebvre:

It was mostly a portfolio piece. I added a tip jar to the app just on the off chance that anyone would find it useful and wanted to reward me for it. I think to this day, the only person who tipped me is still my mom. I didn't have the heart to tell her that Apple would take a cut out of that, so I don't think she knows, but, yeah.

Charlie Chapman:

Okay, so you had that. And I guess before moving on, how do you feel about the worth of doing that project? 'Cause I think, at least to lead the witness a little bit, I feel like having a sort of muse side project as a engineer or designer who wants to keep up your engineering jobs or whatever, that alone is super valuable. But getting it into the store, going through that whole process, and then having a thing that you can update as iOS versions come out, what have you, just that alone, even if nobody's using it, feels to me like a valuable thing to have just as a way... It's almost like doing code katas or something. It's just a nice exercise to keep you sharp and keep your skills ready for the next thing.

Romain Lefebvre:

Yeah, I agree. The surprising challenge, I think, in releasing this app was I made the functionality I needed for myself. It's because it started as a project mostly for myself. And so I made the functionality I needed. And then I was like, "Well, it would be nice if I released it on the app store." And you quickly realize that you can't just release this to the app store-

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah, it's not like a web thing where you just drop it into a S3 bucket, and now, it's available to the world.

Romain Lefebvre:

No, and even beyond that, it's just like, "Well, you kind of need... Obviously there's all the hoops Apple makes you jump through from the Ts and Cs that you need to set up somewhere, and the app store screenshots you need to take. Creating app store screenshots is like, "Well, what do I talk about?" For this project that is mostly made for me, it's like, "How do I market this thing?" Even though I didn't necessarily have big ambitions for it, you still think about, "Well, if I'm going to do it, I might as well at least give it a shot, an honest try." And a preferences screen and trying to think about what people might want out of this to configure, and the things they... Because I can't just hard code my home address into the app forever. Right?

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah, exactly.

Romain Lefebvre:

Eventually. I need to let people be able... So there was a bunch of features like this that I had to suddenly consider, which wasn't completely alien to me because obviously I was doing UI and UX design as a job. So these were consideration I had in my day-to-day job. But when it comes to your side project, I think it feels strange to almost relinquish it and say, "Well, actually, someone else is going to need to use this now."

Charlie Chapman:

You feel like it took away from the... It almost was worse for you because you know how to make it work for other people, too?

Romain Lefebvre:

I don't mean to say this in necessarily a negative way. It wasn't necessarily worse, it was just when you're creating this, you have a certain mindset. And when you realize that other people need to use this, your mindset shifts. And I think that was the interesting and useful skill that I gained by doing this part, even though I wasn't trying to make a big deal out of it or I didn't have any ambitions to make big money out of this, thankfully. Otherwise, I'd be very disappointed. But even though I didn't have big ambitions for it, it was still a useful shift of mindset that allowed me to think about how do I ship something? How do I market it? Beyond the technical process of archiving your expert project, and sending it to App Store Connect, and doing all of that. It's just that this is going to be used by people. What do I need to change about my approach in this product to make this usable?

Charlie Chapman:

Okay. So you released that, and I don't even know if that's... It sounds like maybe that is still in the store, but it's not like a-

Romain Lefebvre:

It is still in the store.

Charlie Chapman:

... major part of your app portfolio.

Romain Lefebvre:

No. I checked earlier, actually. To this day, it has less than a thousand downloads.

Charlie Chapman:

Hey, even though-

Romain Lefebvre:

There's a milestone [inaudible 00:20:25]

Charlie Chapman:

... more than a hundred feels like it's kinda cool that there's probably people out there using it or, at least, playing with it. But that's not the app we're here to talk about. So what's the journey from where we left off to building Sequel?

Romain Lefebvre:

Yeah. So after that initial startup job, I joined a separate startup in finance, still mobile app. But I think, very quickly, I started getting another itch. And it was a bit different this time because I think there is so much design you can do with a financial product. In terms of UX, there's so many ways you can show a list of transactions to people. And, sure, there's a bunch of transactional screens, but they're very sort of... Make sure you're conveying the purpose and the result of what they're about to do from a financial perspective.

And so it's not particularly exciting to me at any rate. And so I started thinking about getting another project out this time that would be more visual. And that's when I remembered one of the prototypes I made when I was looking for a full-time job, which was for a movie tracking app. And at the time, I was... A bit less so now, but I was very into movie trailers. And I felt like they were this unique art form in themselves. I think trailers nowadays are not nearly as excited.

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah, I feel like... I'm trying to think. I mean, this would've been later, but still, this is more in the air of the social network trailer or a lot of Christopher Nolan trailer. The Dark Knight, I remember, was one of the big ones.

Romain Lefebvre:

I must have watched The Dark Knight trailer at least a hundred times at the time.

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah. It's funny when you think back on the... 'Cause there was the separate trailers like app, right? At least on the Apple TV.

Romain Lefebvre:

Yeah. Yeah, actually, Apple had trailers app.

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah, and it was awesome.

Romain Lefebvre:

It was great. It was great. But I think the trailers app could only show you trailers in 720P, if I remember correctly. And I think [inaudible 00:22:40]

Charlie Chapman:

Hey, that's high definition.

Romain Lefebvre:

That was high definition at the time. But I did find out that they actually had 10 HP versions of these trailers, and I was able to just download these trailers [inaudible 00:22:51]

Charlie Chapman:

Oh, interesting. Okay.

Romain Lefebvre:

Which was glorious at the time. Anyway, tangent aside, I was very into trailers, so I wanted to make an app to track these movies I was excited about. And I never coded anything. It was purely a design challenge for me. And so when it came to find a project that was more visually appealing than a list of financial transactions, I started thinking about that project again. And I was at a different stage of my life, and I started thinking like, "Well, tracking movies is fine, but, actually, I also need to track my games because I buy too many games on sales, and don't have time to play them all, and lose track of which ones I've got." And the same would happen for movies because the company had a generous book allowance. Sorry, the same would happen for books because the company had a generous book allowance, so I would buy-

Charlie Chapman:

So you had to use that and you're like [inaudible 00:23:49]

Romain Lefebvre:

So every month is-

Charlie Chapman:

And then you forget what you have.

Romain Lefebvre:

Every month I would buy new books, and I would have these bookshelves of books, and not really know which ones I had read and which ones I hadn't. And so that convergence made me think like, "I wonder if I could make something that allows me to track all of these things in a single place." And I think that was an interesting challenge because these media types are consumed differently. If you look at a game tracking app, it usually behaves quite a bit differently than a TV show tracking app, or a movie tracking app, or book tracking app. And I thought to myself like, "Well, if I can create an experience that is," I don't know, "That goes to the core of what all of these are, but still offer unique capabilities..." Basically, the interesting challenge for me was to not design for a lowest common denominator.

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah, exactly.

Romain Lefebvre:

Because that's the risk.

Charlie Chapman:

'Cause you could just make a database, essentially, that is essentially a glorified Excel... Well, at the end of the day, I mean, most of our apps are glorified Excel sheets, but you could take that to its extreme in either direction where it's a really plain Excel sheet that they all look exactly the same and they maybe have a square image or something that's exactly the same. Or you could go the other way where it's completely open database, but it's not a refined experience. And the challenge, the fun, I think the reason why these types of apps are a joy for designers in particular, kind of like the old Twitter world, is it's like you have this set of challenges that you can solve in different ways, and you can put your own stamp on that, right?

Romain Lefebvre:

Exactly. And so then it comes down to, "Well, if I design a screen for looking at the details of a movie, that's great. But then how do I design a screen for looking at the details of a games that still feels like it belongs to the same app?" If you've been tracking movies, and suddenly, you decide to track a game that you don't feel lost because it's completely different in its interactions... And so yeah, that was what attracted me to that particular project, is the visual aspect of it because media is so rich, and I thought I can do something really interesting with this. And the sort of, I guess, challenge of finding an experience that can encompass all of these media types together.

Charlie Chapman:

So at this time, 'cause this is probably 2020, 2021. It wasn't that much-

Romain Lefebvre:

2021. Yes. I think I started working on it in 2021.

Charlie Chapman:

So by this point, there definitely were... This was almost a genre of app, to some degree, some different kinds of tracking apps.

Romain Lefebvre:

Yeah.

Charlie Chapman:

Right? Were you looking at those and being like, "None of these solve a specific problem I have"? Or were you almost trying to be like, "I want to just build my thing in a silo, to some degree," based on your way of solving that problem?

Romain Lefebvre:

I think it was a little bit of both where I started looking at... I guess you can call it competition. See what's out there. Because I used a movie tracking app, and I used a game tracking app, and book tracking app. And so I had experience using these apps. And so that sort of merging of the genres, I guess, came from me wanting something that felt a bit more unified.

Charlie Chapman:

And was that your central thesis, so to speak, for the app, the differentiator in your head of like the main problem you're trying to solve is the unification, bringing them all into a cohesive, singular app experience? Or were there other driving forces at the beginning that were like, "Input needs to be way smoother than these," or, "The experience of viewing them needs to be better," or something? Was there a specific thesis that was driving it? Or it almost sounds like... The way you're talking about it, the unification was kind of the big thing.

Romain Lefebvre:

Yeah, the unification was the main thesis. When it came to actually building the app, that input was extremely important to me. I spent countless days, I think, at the time, creating a single text field where you could search for something and the app would hopefully surface the actual item you want across all of the data sources it uses. So you wouldn't have to go, "I'm adding a movie," or, "I'm adding a game." It just goes, you start typing, and immediately, you get the results you expect at the top, hopefully. I don't think the first version was particularly good at doing that. I think it got significantly better as time went on, and my skills and observations of what was going wrong improved. But, yeah. So the main thesis was definitely the unification. And I think I would be remiss if I didn't call out the excellent Sofa app as well by Shawn Hickman, which I think you had on your show before.

Charlie Chapman:

Yes. Yeah, he's been on the show.

Romain Lefebvre:

Yeah. And I think... I can't remember if his app came out around the time I started working on Sequel much long before, but I think it was out when I started my work on Sequel, and I think it was one of the apps I evaluated. And for me, I wanted something that would be more visual. Another main thesis, and I think there was the main, actually, requirements when I started working app that I brought down, it was the ease of input. And the second one was artwork first. And it was always putting forward the uniqueness of the media you're tracking so that you're creating a space that is reflective of each individual piece of media that you're tracking.

Charlie Chapman:

So I like that you said you think you wrote that down. So you were coming at it... I ask this question a lot, and a lot of people sometimes sit and think about it, but I'm curious... That was a thing at the beginning before you started building, you thought through what the real thesis or principles of the app were, and importantly, where the priorities lie when you have to make a trade-off. You made those decisions beforehand?

Romain Lefebvre:

Yes. And I feel like that must be my short stint as a PM, to almost lay down the requirements for the product you're about to build or the feature you're about to build where I thought, "I need to be able to articulate why I'm doing it and what I'm about to try to achieve."

Charlie Chapman:

I think that's... To me anyway, not that I would say I'm this great product person, so maybe everything I'm saying is dumb, but I feel like the people I've worked with who, I think, are the best at product stuff are the ones who... Whether it's very explicit, and written down, and intentional at the beginning, or something that they build internally in their brain as they're going, is the ones who are able to understand that set of priorities, and have it nice and solidified in their brain so that when you start building, and you run into all these compromises and choices you may have to make, you have this thing to fall back to, and it's consistent. And you make that same choice throughout. I think that's where you end up with a product, at the end of the day, that has what makes the great indie apps that we talk about.

It has this feeling of intentionality and personality because it's like, "This is what is a priority to this person," and you can feel it throughout. And I think making those choices early... I think it's a really good exercise for anybody, even if it's just a little side project that you're doing for a portfolio piece. When I built Dark Noise, I didn't think anybody was going to actually use it, but I did the same thing. I wrote, "These are the three principles." And everything comes back to that. And I will make choices that feel almost silly, but I'm going to prioritize this over everything else, always. And I think that's a useful thing to do, and it helps you not fall into the trap of solving things the same way as all the other people that you're looking at as examples.

Romain Lefebvre:

It is very useful. And I think it makes you say no to a bunch of stuff, especially for V1, because you think about a movie tracking app, there is countless things I could have added to the app. The first version didn't even have cast and crew details because V1, it didn't even have synopsis or anything like this. No trailers-

Charlie Chapman:

Because it wasn't in that list of priorities you had.

Romain Lefebvre:

Because if you-

Charlie Chapman:

[inaudible 00:33:04] you input it faster, and it doesn't make it visually more appealing necessarily.

Romain Lefebvre:

Exactly. And the way I like to design products is with an end goal in mind. So even though the first version didn't have these things, I knew, maybe not exactly, but I knew of a few directions I could take once it came time for me to incorporate these features that are maybe more media-specific. Because it comes down to that unification requirement, right? It's like I've unified it, and the first version was very basic. You would open up a piece of media and you would see the screen was a big artwork harking back to that artwork first principle, the poster in the middle, and there's some very key detail, and basically, you were able to add it to your library, mark it as watched, or completed, or in your backlog. And that was it.

Because the point of the app was to be able to track these things effortlessly and to never lose track of the things you're actually excited about. So another requirement was, again, that tracking of the things you're excited about. There was that feeling I wanted to capture when we're talking about media trailers. And so the app was designed around this upcoming section at the top. And when something came out, you had this big carousel saying, "Out now." That highlights the thing, again, you're excited about. But beyond that, it didn't have all that many features, but they all fed into that set of requirements I had set for myself upfront.

Charlie Chapman:

And so as you're building this first one, were you thinking this is very similar to your last app, this is not... "If I put a tip jar in and my mom's the only one who buys it, that's totally fine"? Or were you like, "Let's make a run at this as a little side business"? And did you try to do some more marketing and think through things in that way?

Romain Lefebvre:

Yes. I never really thought I would become an indie out of it. That was a different happenstance, I guess. But I did want to give this an actual shot. And when I started working on it, I was like, "Well, I think there's a couple ways I can potentially monetize this." And so I tried to keep this in mind, even thinking, as I was creating features, thinking what should be a paid feature, what should be a free feature. I knew I wanted a free tier because I think media consumption, there's a lot of word of mouth around the media you're consuming. And so I feel, "Well, the more people can use the app, the better." The challenge I had with V1 is that there wasn't very many features I could put behind a paywall. And so I started a bit more narrow. I think there was two or three features. One of them was the notifications for new releases, which is still a paid feature today. But the other one was you could only track up to... I think it was 25 media items.

Charlie Chapman:

You could probably use it for awhile, I guess, 'cause it's only 25 upcoming, then, right?

Romain Lefebvre:

No, it was 25 total.

Charlie Chapman:

Okay. So you'd have to roll once-off?

Romain Lefebvre:

I wish I had that idea of only doing 25 upcoming, if I'm honest. That is actually quite an interesting idea.

Charlie Chapman:

But you do want people to run into the paywall, otherwise, it's just free software, which is fine. But if the goal is to make this into a little business, then nobody's going to upgrade if they never run into it.

Romain Lefebvre:

Exactly. And I think the problem with that particular paywall or set of paid features is I think it went against that variety of media where I think people would open the app and realize like, "I'm going to have to pay for this at some point." And I think it might as well have been paid upfront because of it. Unless it was 2,000, I feel like people would be... 25, or 50, or 100 would think this is a paid app.

Charlie Chapman:

I think it depends on your audience, but I do think that a lot of people on the app store, especially indies who are marketing probably through their channels, and so it's reaching a more nerdy Apple enthusiast crowd. That group is extremely tuned to think, from the very beginning, like, "How am I paying for this?" It's one of the reasons why I think showing the paywall as part of your onboarding is better. There's a lot of reasons for that. One of them is it converts better, blah, blah, blah. But even just from a pure... If your goal is not make the most money, people just... It gets aggravating when you open an app and you're just like... It's just like, "Hey, this is free and you can use it." And if you're one of these people who uses software a lot, you're like, "I know there's something coming. Where is it? I need to find it so I can decide, am I going to invest in this or not."

And so having a free tier that you could use, even if it's super limited, you could use that indefinitely, and it's good, versus a free tier where you run into a limit eventually. That's not so much a free tier as it is a trial. And people will make that conversion in their head. At least certain cohorts of users, I think, make that conversion in their head. And so, yeah, sometimes I think it's better to be more limited but unlimited within that set versus give everybody access to everything and then they hit a paywall eventually. But I don't know, it can go either way, but you should think of it more like a trial than a free tier, then.

Romain Lefebvre:

Exactly. And I think part of my thinking as well was, "Well, I will keep working on this app. I will add more features." I already had some ideas for paid features, and I thought, "Well... To me anyway, I don't know if you'd agree, but I think it's easier to turn a paid feature into a free one than it is to take away a free feature and make it paid.

Charlie Chapman:

Certainly. Especially-

Romain Lefebvre:

And so-

Charlie Chapman:

... if you want to grandfather old users in, and then there's just a lot of hairiness, technically, to do that.

Romain Lefebvre:

Yeah. In my head, the number of items as a limit was never really meant as a final feature to paywall, if you will. I knew it was probably going to go away because, again, I wanted to leverage that sort of... I want as many users to use Sequel as possible because I've built it in a way that more users doesn't really incur more cost to me beyond my living cost. And so supporting a free user doesn't cost me all that much.

Charlie Chapman:

You mentioned it earlier, and I wrote it down, I want to bring up, is the data sources. So this is not just a database app where every user doesn't have any sort of server hit. When you do a search, and you try to find a movie and those posters, they're all coming from somewhere. Where is that coming from? Is that somewhere that costs you money or is it one of the free movie database kind of things?

Romain Lefebvre:

So the movie and series is partly coming from... Well, it's almost wholly coming from the Movie DB, so TMDB, which when I started, was a free database. They introduced a paid plan, which luckily doesn't sink my whole business, which is always the risk when you're relying on third party APIs like this.

Charlie Chapman:

Speaking of what we say where you use a thing and you're like, "There's going to be a payment somewhere." I feel like API access is one of those where even if something's free now, unless it's built into the charter of that thing, you should probably set yourself up to be prepared for the fact that maybe it won't be at some point in the future.

Romain Lefebvre:

Yeah. And I think for people who want to use that API, I think they still have a free tier if you're not making any money out of it.

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah, I think that's right.

Romain Lefebvre:

Yeah. And then the games come from IGDB, which I believe is a subsidiary of Amazon or Twitch, or I guess both via a weird chain of-

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah, acquisitions.

Romain Lefebvre:

... subsidiaries. Yeah. Which is completely free, if I'm not mistaken. And then the Books API, for better or worse, is coming from Apple Books, which is obviously free-

Charlie Chapman:

Oh, I didn't know they had a API.

Romain Lefebvre:

They have an iTunes API, which works for music and also books, which I would be amazed if anyone at Apple looked at it in the last 15 years.

Charlie Chapman:

Is it still powered by web objects or whatever that's called?

Romain Lefebvre:

I don't know, but I don't think I want to know. There was a week where essentially, the API stopped working, and it took them a couple of weeks to actually get it back up.

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah, to learn where it's hosted.

Romain Lefebvre:

And run it-

Charlie Chapman:

To find somebody who has access to change anything there.

Romain Lefebvre:

Yeah. Yeah. So I guess someone touched something at some point, and did not realize they broke the API, which was fun.

Charlie Chapman:

That's really funny.

Romain Lefebvre:

Yeah. So that's the main three databases I use. Thankfully, none of them are priced outside of what I could afford. But there is always the risk of what if any of these shut down at some point as well?

Charlie Chapman:

Have you built things in a way where there's an abstraction layer where you could try to swap out what the provider is?

Romain Lefebvre:

Yeah. So actually, when was speaking about unification, that was also almost part of it, which was, "How do I build an interface that can accommodate any data source and any media type?" At least with V1, it was very straightforward to add a media type. I think it would still be straightforward to do so. And if I wanted to change the source for a media type today, I could if I needed to. And that's also including keeping your old media items on the old data source in a way that isn't going to completely nuke everything, but slowly migrating to a new data source. That's more with experience, that wasn't the day one. But it's the kind of stuff that when you're starting to build a business, you're starting to think about what are existence-threatening risks for your business, which I don't know if I'm fully equipped for any of these, really. I've put stuff in place here, and there, but-

Charlie Chapman:

I think there's a bit where you can... Especially as an indie, way overthink about those. There's a degree of being prepared for things, and then there's a degree of you're spending all of your time preparing for a disaster that might not happen instead of just moving forward and growing, which is probably the thing that makes you more defensible than anything. Especially when you're doing pricing decisions, that's a smart thing to think about, is like, "Okay, if this thing that's free becomes paid, how can I weather that storm?" And having a way to make money is a big part of that.

Romain Lefebvre:

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Charlie Chapman:

But we're still talking about the V1 here, which is on brand for the show. So let's get to the title of the show, the launch itself. So you're treating it more seriously, it sounds like. You have at least some desire to make this into a product that people other than your mom will download and maybe even pay for. What did you do to try to market that launch? And then how did the launch itself go?

Romain Lefebvre:

Honestly, again, fairly little. I would call myself naive, I guess. I thought, "Well..." I was proud of it. And I felt, for the most part, if you build something great, people will come, which maybe, but I did one thing, which is I reached out to a few Mac and app-oriented websites about the app. And thankfully, it was MacStories who picked it up. And it was only a... Well, I don't want to sound ungrateful. It was a mention on the members' newsletter, but it still made a significant difference when it comes to numbers. I think-

Charlie Chapman:

When you're starting at just, "It's on the app store," and you hope you get some search keywords that work out, that is an actual source of distribution that actually exists.

Romain Lefebvre:

Exactly. And it wasn't a massive influx of users, but I had at least enough users that, for the first time, I was getting feedback from people saying, "It would be nice if your app did this or if it did that." That was actually very nice. It's worth mentioning as well, at that point, I had quit my previous job. Well, quit is not exactly the word. I volunteered for redundancy.

Charlie Chapman:

That's such a British way of phrase.

Romain Lefebvre:

Well, I think it's an important distinction in that I would not have gone full-time on Sequel otherwise, because it gave me a runway where I thought, "Well, this app is... The V1 is almost done. I have an opportunity to break free from that job and focus on this side project I've been working on for nearly a year." And I thought, "Well, I'll give it a try. If it works out, great. If it doesn't work out, at least I have a little bit of a runway, financially, to course correct if I need to."

Charlie Chapman:

And a portfolio piece that makes it easier to get a job.

Romain Lefebvre:

Exactly. And so, I launched it, I think, in the first eight month. So I say eight months because it took me eight months to release V2, which was, to me, the real launch of Sequel in a way, because that's when it actually took off. And so in the first eight month, I made a thousand dollars, I think.

Charlie Chapman:

So plenty to sustain you living in London, right?

Romain Lefebvre:

Plenty to sustain my London lifestyle. Absolutely. It was clearly not enough. And I think I thought, "Well, I'm going to release V2, and if I can make 1,000 pounds in the first month of launch for V2, I'll keep going."

Charlie Chapman:

What was it, as you were building V2, and also, I guess, what was in V2? But what were you thinking would make that make a difference? Was it just features or was there some marketing stuff also in that?

Romain Lefebvre:

A mix of both. From a feature perspective, there was the obvious emissions from V1, things like checking the synopsis, checking being able to look at trailers, being able to track individual episodes, which I don't think V1 did. That sort of stuff that actually makes it not just a brain dump of like, "Oh, I want to watch movie X, let me put it in this app," but actually lets you keep up with the stuff you are actually tracking. Especially when it comes to series, tracking a serie and not being able to remember which episode you stopped on, or even know when a new episode comes out was a little bit limiting. And so that was the main one. And all of that came from also feedback from the initial wave of users, is, "What are the priorities for my first users? And that was vital in guiding where the app needed to go. Another one was, "Your app is great, but I'm opening it, and there is nothing for me to add. I have to remember myself." So I added a fledgling browsing feature where you could see what was trending and what was popular.

Charlie Chapman:

Just like a better empty state.

Romain Lefebvre:

Yeah. So that at least if you're coming fresh, you have stuff to add if you want to. So essentially, it was focused on the initial experience, focus on the continued experience to make sure that you could actually track these things. And that's when I also switched the paywall to allow for unlimited items as well, because now I had more features to put behind the paywall. But for the launch, that's where I said earlier I was a bit naive because obviously you reach out to a few media, some of them will pick it up. But that's when I realized maybe I should be on social media. I still am not really a social media person. I don't particularly enjoy posting, I guess.

I don't really know what it is, but I don't necessarily want to show my work too early, or I never think people have anything to not learn from me, but I always feel like I don't have anything worth saying, which is kind of funny now that I'm on a podcast, spending the last hour talking. But that was at least the head space I was in at that time. And so I wasn't on social media and I realized, actually, I need to be on social media. And so I slowly started, briefly mentioned the app here in there, sharing a few screenshots from what I was building.

Charlie Chapman:

As you're building it, kind of a build in public style thing?

Romain Lefebvre:

Yeah. I wasn't doing quite as much as some of the more prolific build in public community members, I guess. But it was me dipping my toes in, joining a few communities, and just eventually getting the upcoming update actually noticed, which was a big change from just releasing something and praying that it would get an audience, but actually releasing something knowing that people had seen it, that people had enjoyed it made a massive difference. And that's when, again, the good people at MacStories actually wrote a full-on review about the 2.0 update, which having been a reader of MacStories for years, I was just blown away. And that is essentially where Sequel actually took off.

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah. MacStories is, I feel like [inaudible 00:51:52]

Romain Lefebvre:

The patron saint of indie developers.

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah, that's the... I've been looking for a good phrase. I always say they're like... It's like the taste makers. They're not the biggest. In some ways, a 9to5Mac blog post will drive more numbers' cause it's just bigger readership and everything. And I love everybody at 9to5Mac. But there's something... Maybe it's just because of... I listen to a lot of Relay podcasts, and so I've listened to Federico, and then I listened to App Stories, and John, and that crew for a long time. I think the other thing is that their articles are a work of art a lot of times in a way that-

Romain Lefebvre:

They put a lot of efforts into these.

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah. I'm sure you had the same experience, but I've read them for a very long time. And it wasn't until I read them writing about my app that I realized how deep they go 'cause they brought up things that I've never tweeted about. I never thought anybody would notice. And little details that I was proud of. And I'm like, "Wow, they get it in a way that's pretty special." And because they aren't as prolific in terms of the amount that they're writing, I think they can spend more time writing longer form things and doing that.

Romain Lefebvre:

Yeah. And I think to an extent, they wrote about my product better than I could have ever done myself.

Charlie Chapman:

Yes, I 100% felt the same way.

Romain Lefebvre:

In a way that I'm just like, "Yeah, this is probably what I would've said if I could actually write properly." I mean, it's just like if I could write a review of my own app in an unbiased way, it's probably the things I would want to be called out. And so the fact that they would automatically pick up on this... Because obviously you reach out to them... You don't give them talking points. At most, you say, "This is what's new. This is what I focused on." And they'll do the work. And the fact that they would call out the things you are proud of is just quite, I don't know, not refreshing, but gratifying.

Charlie Chapman:

Yes.

Romain Lefebvre:

In a way.

Charlie Chapman:

Now I'll say, at least the advice I generally give people is most people aren't MacStories. And I don't mean that in a skill level, I mean that in a... Like I said before, most people need to write things really fast. So if you're reaching out to press, it is generally better to provide them as much resources, pros, explanations of features. The things that you think are important or cool to call out, it's better to highlight those to people. And that will increase the likelihood of people writing about you. But with all of these things... I'm sure because that's a community you care about, you built this app with a lot of their ideals in mind just because you share those, 'cause you've grown up reading their stuff. But there's nothing you can do to guarantee any of these types of features. It's all like, "Build something great. You do not have to reach out, but you definitely increase your odds by reaching out." But it kind of, to some degree, ends there, other than building something that you know fits that audience.

Romain Lefebvre:

Yeah, absolutely. And the reason I credit MacStories for Sequel taking off is actually because now with a review, it got in front of many more people. And that's when people started recommending the app to other people. The first event of this happening was Quinn Nelson of Snazzy Labs, who... I think he was just asking on social media for cool apps that are not very well-known, that people really enjoy. And I wasn't even aware he asked on social media. And I watched his video, and he highlighted Sequel, and he said Sequel was by far the most recommended app. And I was just, "What do you mean? Surely not." Someone likes Snazzy Labs, who has, I don't know how many viewers he has, but probably millions. And I just thought, "What do you mean it was the most recommended app? It's not possible."

And then the second one, which I thought was funny, is David Pierce of The Verge. Every week, he installed a newsletter. And I think it's on Thursdays where he asked people in general what they've been enjoying that week. And there was a week where he asked specifically for how people kept track of their media. And I thought to myself, "It would be really cool if David highlighted Sequel." And I thought, "Well, I'm working on this beta. It's almost ready. Maybe I'll email him to say, 'Hey, I've got this app, and it might be of interest,'" so I did. And he replied, I think within a couple hours saying like, "Oh, my God, I absolutely wanted to email you because your app is the most recommended media tracking app in my replies."

And again, I was just like, "Why would David Fierce want to email me about my app?" Actually, he invited me to just chat with him, and we had a call, and it just felt very surreal when you're coming from making this app. And for the first eighth month there is not no one, but a very, very small audience. And very grateful for that audience because they helped me shape the future of Sequel. But going from this to people actively recommending the app to essentially taste makers was surreal.

Charlie Chapman:

And if I put on my growth marketing RevenueCat hat, it feels like the primary distribution mechanism, then, for Sequel, is through organic press and then organic sharing within that. But even that, maybe it's happening between people the same way, but at least the ones you've highlighted, it's more like you've built something that resonates with the press and with the community. And because of that, they write about it, more people find out about it. And when they want to reach out to their audience for things, people are suggesting it because it resonates with that specific audience, and that becomes a distribution mechanism, in a way.

Romain Lefebvre:

Yeah, exactly. And I think I've vaguely tried Apple App Store search ads, and I was just like, "This isn't for me." So I did not put a lot of money in it. I think I used the $100 free credits, and that's basically it. And the way I see it, and I also appreciate how fortunate I am to be in this position, but if I have to hustle over social media posts and ad campaigns, this isn't the job I want to do. And I know that's a very fortunate position that I'm in. I know there's plenty of indie developers that have to crack that social media outreach. And I haven't had to do any... I post on social media, but it's very much just, "Nah, I'm going to release this." And-

Charlie Chapman:

It’s casual. And in some ways more aimed at, again, the kind of community press side.

Romain Lefebvre:

Enthusiast. Yeah.

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah, exactly.

Romain Lefebvre:

And so I haven't had to do any of that. And the bulk of Sequel's growth has come from media coverage and also word of mouth. As you pointed out, I get a lot of emails of people saying, "I love Sequel. I recommend it to all my friends and family." And that was also intentional. The media detail screen, as much as I've designed it to have that artwork first principle in mind, it was also because I wanted people recommending a media to someone else. If that person pulls out their phone, and the app they use to get some information about the movie, or will add it to their library from their recommendation, if it looks sleek and polished, I wanted the other person to go like, "Wow, what is this?"

Charlie Chapman:

Have you done anything with that on the digital front? Have you thought about screens or built-in features aimed around screenshotting or something so that... Trying to get people to like... If they're sharing a movie that they're excited about, they're sharing a screenshot of the app because it's the most fun way to share that, and then you get that, "What's the app?" question.

Romain Lefebvre:

I haven't. I think there's about 500 tickets in my backlog of things I want to do. This is one, and if you look at the things I've done with Sequel in the last few years, that actually heading towards this kind of feature, the thing for me, and maybe it's a fault, but before I want to allow sharing, I want to be able to localize the app. But before I want to localize the app, I want to make sure it hits a certain standard of quality that I've set for myself. The idea being that if you're going to share it and people are going to hear about it, if it's not localized, the outreach is going to be limited anyway, so I might as well do localization first.

But if I'm going to increase the outreach, then there are a few features that regularly come back from feedbacks like, "You should have this feature, you should have that feature," that I'm like, "I should include these," because if people hear about Sequel and dismiss it for not having these features, then I don't really want to hear about Sequel until it's ready, if that makes sense. Which is a bit of a... I don't know, it might be a bit of a chicken and egg problem, or maybe trying to reach perfection.

Charlie Chapman:

I think it's a little bit of that. Yeah.

Romain Lefebvre:

A little bit of that. But I think that's who I am. That's how I create something, where I always want to put my best foot forward, I think. And so before I localize the app, I'm absolutely just like, "I need these two or three features before I do this." Unfortunately, there were very big features that took me a very long time to build, but I'm getting there when I don't get sidetracked by redesigning my media detail screen for the fifth time. But yeah, eventually, I'm sure you'll be able to take a screenshots and share that. What I want to do, actually, is use App Clips.

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah, but I think if the idea is social, if it's social sharing, it's like... Images and screenshots, I think, are the mechanism that really works.

Romain Lefebvre:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think, to me, they would go hand in hand. There would be a screenshot that you share and there would be a link, a Sequel link that you can tap and essentially get started immediately using the app, and experiencing what the app is like. I don't see App Clips in the wild. Maybe there's a reason for it, but I don't know. It's my master plan, App Clips.

Charlie Chapman:

Perfect. All right. Well, I'm very excited to see all of these 5,000 tickets come out in the next couple weeks because now we have Fable or Soul, or whatever the latest-

Romain Lefebvre:

Fable 5. Yeah.

Charlie Chapman:

Just stick the AIs on it, and you should knock that out before this episode comes out.

Romain Lefebvre:

Yeah, I'll check that progress just after this. I'm sure they've knocked it out of the park without any intervention.

Charlie Chapman:

But for real, this is super fun, talking through all of this. It's funny, you said that the other app came out in 2019. I thought Sequel came out in 2019, 'cause that's when Dark Noise came out. And I feel like I've always thought of Sequel as part of this... I feel like there was this surge of-

Romain Lefebvre:

Waves.

Charlie Chapman:

... indie. Yeah, Wave is a better word, of indie apps that came out in that 2019, 2020 era that... I've now seen it comes in these different waves, but that was this specific crest. But Sequel is actually a little bit younger than I thought it was.

Romain Lefebvre:

2022. Yeah.

Charlie Chapman:

Well, from the beginning, it may have been whenever MacStories wrote about it, if I'm being honest [inaudible 01:04:12]

Romain Lefebvre:

Maybe not V1, maybe V2. Yeah.

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But, no, it's been really fun to watch, and obviously, use the app as well. And so before I end the show, I got to ask the question I ask in the show every time, which is what's a person or people out there that have inspired you and your work?

Romain Lefebvre:

Yeah, I've got a couple. I think one of it isn't necessarily very original, but I would have to say David Smith. To me, he is the quintessential indie dev, right? And the craftsmanship he puts into his apps, and the level of consideration, and respect for his users is just like everything I aspire to do. And I do say aspire because I think it's a long way for me to get there. But, yeah, if I have a North star, I think it's David. And the second one would be Nick Leith from Remind Me Faster, who also released Moods Faster recently, which is respectively his marquee app. I guess Remind Me Faster, is an easy way of entering reminders into the Apple Reminders app, which is very similar to my very first app.

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah, I was about to say.

Romain Lefebvre:

Yeah, they came out at the same time, and he's done an incredible job, way better than anything I could have ever done. And he has such a skill at creating interactions that are so focused. They could be boring, but he makes them all delightful. And so for anyone who wants a masterclass in design interaction, just go and check his apps. They're just beautifully made and really, really, really thought-out.

Charlie Chapman:

Fantastic. All right. Well, thank you again for your time. This was super fun. Where can people find you and your work?

Romain Lefebvre:

Yeah, I'm on most meaningful social media platforms these days, mostly Threads and Mastodon. I think I'm on Bluesky too. But if you search for @RLFB, as a way to avoid people mistyping my last name, I've just taken to shorten it to LFB. So either roman_lfb on Threads or RLFB on Masterdon.

Charlie Chapman:

All right, perfect. And thank you all for listening. Launched is part of the RevenueCat podcast family. If you want to learn more about the growth side of the mobile app business, you should check out Sub Club, which is hosted by my good friend and colleague, David Barnard. You can check out revenuecat.com to learn more about the easiest way to grow and monetize your mobile app business. And, of course, you can go to launchedfm.com to learn more and find more episodes of this here podcast. And a reminder, this is a video podcast as well. So we're on YouTube, and you can see our beautiful offices here and smiling faces. That's it for now. So I will see you all again in two weeks. Bye.