49: Up Ahead - Daniel Gauthier
Transcript
Autogenerated by MacWhisper
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(upbeat music)
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Welcome to Launched.
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I'm Charlie Chapman, and today I'm excited
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to bring you the developer
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behind the delightful countdown app up ahead, Daniel Gauthier.
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(upbeat music)
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Daniel, welcome to the show.
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- Hey, thanks so much for having me.
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- This is gonna be a weird one
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because normally I have people on
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and a lot of times it's the first person,
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first time I've met them outside of Twitter
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or something like that.
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We've talked before and also I've been following you
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through this whole process of making this app,
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very, very excited.
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So I've been looking forward to recording this episode
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for I feel like for a very long time.
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So I'm excited to get into this.
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- I'm gonna have to make sure I'm not just retelling you
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all the same stories I've told you before.
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It's gonna be a bit tricky, but we'll make it work.
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- Yeah, we'll make it work.
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But before we get into Up Ahead,
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let's give everybody else a primer on who you are.
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So the three questions I always ask everybody
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is where are you from?
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Do you have a formal education related to what you do?
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And then we can talk about your career
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leading up to Up Ahead.
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- Yeah, so first of all, I'm from Ottawa,
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which is in Ontario, which is in Canada.
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Grew up here, I live here now.
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It's sort of a, it's the capital of Canada,
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but it's sort of a mid-sized city.
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Yeah, so I grew up in Ottawa,
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I ended up going to school in Southwestern Ontario near Toronto,
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a school called Western in London, Ontario.
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Then lived in and around Toronto for a little while,
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but then moved back here.
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Still have lots of family and friends here and stuff.
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Yeah, that's where I'm at right now.
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In terms of education,
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I guess I touched on that.
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At Western, I did a weird double major in
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both computer science and a degree called popular music,
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which is not, it wasn't sort of your traditional like performance oriented music degree. It was
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more about music production and music history and sort of, you know, the cultural impacts of music.
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So yeah, it was this really weird sort of split between, you know, lots of hard math and
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computer science stuff and like this really sort of broad degree about, you know,
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comparative literature and postmodernism and music production and just like...
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- That's quite the contrast. It sort of lives at the intersection of computer science and liberal
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arts. I feel like that's becoming like a joke on the show now. It's surprising how many people
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live at those crossroads it feels like.
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- Yeah. So, I mean, I don't know. I certainly really appreciated that. I don't know that it
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was the most like practical choice. But yeah, I was never really super - how do I put this?
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I don't wanna say not engaged, but not super interested in computer science for its own
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sake.
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I've always been interested in computers and it seemed like a sensible path to explore,
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but I was also very much into music and I really wanted to continue to stretch the creative
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side of my brain.
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So that kind of let me do that in these weird, sort of vague ways.
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So out of college then,
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you immediately dove into the lucrative career of music studies, I assume.
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[LAUGHTER]
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Yeah. Well, that was the funny thing is, yeah.
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I have no idea who the other people even were in that degree.
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I think a couple of people were actually really into
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music production and actually went on and made a career of it.
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But yeah, for me,
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that was never really going to be a part of where I headed.
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And I think probably going into it, I wasn't sure about that.
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I think what I was trying to do as a high school student trying to figure out what I
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was going to do with my life is I was trying to leave music open as a door.
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Maybe there was some way I could leave that door open and somehow combine programming
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with music in some interesting way.
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Or even, I'm sure at the time, I still had a notion that maybe I could somehow become
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a music producer or whatever that means.
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Anyways, but yeah, pretty quickly through school.
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I think I realized like that's not - I'm interested in that stuff but that's not really where
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my career is going to take me.
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So basically, once I finished school, I kind of had no idea what I was going to do.
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I graduated in 2012 and I think partly because of the time and also maybe just partly because
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of the degree in the school, I kind of came out of that degree with a base of computer
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science but no real practical skills.
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I kind of came out not really having any idea how I wanted to apply those skills or even
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like where I could apply those skills.
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But you know, sort of through those four years at school, I started to get really interested
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in the App Store and in iPhones.
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I think my first iPhone was an iPhone 4, which was, I don't know, something like 2011.
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Yeah, and I had like an iPod Touch before that and was very into, you know, all those
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early games, like big doodle jump fan. Yeah, all that good stuff. So yeah, I just like
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I started to become really interested in app development, but had no real like, through
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school, I basically didn't didn't really apply myself in any way to anything other than school,
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which like, in hindsight, probably wasn't the right thing to do. I was very focused
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on school and focused on getting good grades. And I write just not not not having really
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applied all that stuff in any real way. So all that to say after school, I basically
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I had had some like good part-time jobs in school doing kind of like research
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through the school and stuff.
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So I had a bit of money saved up and I basically decided to just take a year
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to teach myself iOS development.
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Basically after school, I sat down, I think I literally like went to a
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bookstore and bought a book about, you know, like how to, how to build
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for iOS five or whatever.
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So you just decided like, I want to make iPhone apps as kind of a,
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this is what I want to do.
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Pretty much.
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It wasn't a job opportunity.
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It was like, no, okay.
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It was just, this is something I want to pursue.
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I have no idea how to do it right now.
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So I'm going to go figure out how to do it.
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Why iPhone apps?
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Well, I think there are a couple of things going on there.
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One is I think I had this sort of ill-defined notion that I wanted to somehow
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like get into the startup scene, whatever that meant, right?
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There was, there was all this energy, especially around that time around the app
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store and around, you know, like
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people having these little app
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ideas and them blowing up
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into these lucrative
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businesses and lots of startups
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popping up all over the place and
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often mobile was becoming a bigger
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and bigger part of like that
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startup scene.
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So, yeah, I think part of me
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sort of young and naively just
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kind of wanted to get into that.
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And I don't think I really knew
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what that meant, but I knew I had
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to figure out how to how to build
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apps if I wanted to be involved in
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any of that stuff.
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But I think the other aspect of it too is just like, I think it goes back a little bit
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to my two degrees and those two sides that I was trying to balance, which is that I don't
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think I really wanted to just shuffle into...
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I never really know how to put this because I don't want to downplay any interesting work
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that programmers who don't build apps are doing.
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But I didn't just want to go and be a programmer somewhere.
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I was really interested in like the creative side of building apps for people who could
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like get them into their hands, you know, and certainly the design aspect of it too
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was really interesting to me.
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The craft of computer science as a thing wasn't as interesting as, you know, what computer
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science could then create afterwards.
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Yeah, exactly.
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And I think I always tried to think about, yeah, programming as just a means to an end,
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I guess like a tool that I can wield to build cool stuff rather than, you know,
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something that I'm really interested in for its own sake.
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Yeah, I definitely, that's, that's how I feel too.
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And I get that same feeling sometimes where it's like, yeah,
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you don't want to be like there is an art form and a cool stuff to programming
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too. It's just for whatever reason, it doesn't hit the same,
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the same notes for me in terms of like things that you would do on your own on
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the side and get you really excited.
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And interestingly, I think as I've as I've gotten older and sort of navigated
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this career, I think I think some of that.
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Some of that stuff has become more interesting to me in some ways, right?
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Like, I, you know, I think there's so much that I didn't really understand about
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sort of the craft of programming itself that has become more interesting to me
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that I have like explored deeper in the years since.
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But yeah, long story short, it's just like apps were really cool to me.
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I was really sort of energized and excited by them.
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And I sort of had this weird blank slate opportunity where I was just like,
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well, I have no idea what I'm going to do.
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So this seems like the coolest thing to do.
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So I'm going to try and do it.
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So did you go straight into trying to do something independent
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or did you find a job relatively quickly?
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No. So I spent a year without a job working on my own projects.
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So I built the first project.
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I'm trying to actually think what I tried to do.
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I think initially I did the classic beginner thing of like to do app
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What I was gonna say is like I went way too
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Big I
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Had the I had these notion that these ideas of just like I was gonna I honestly don't remember what the app idea was
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I wish I did but I had I remember like sitting in my parents basement the summer after
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after I graduated from school with like this iOS book open on the desk.
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Meanwhile, I was trying to learn Ruby on Rails because I was just deep down this rabbit hole.
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Like, well, I'm going to need to build a website and I'm going to need to build
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a back-end and I'm going to need to do this and this and this.
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I had no idea what I was doing.
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At a certain point, thankfully,
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not too far into it, I was like,
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"Okay, I need something simpler.
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I need to cut scope a little bit here."
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So at that point, I realized,
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okay, this is going to be more of a learning journey than like,
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I'm going to go and build something great and ship it to the world,
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and this is going to be my new job.
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What I ended up doing is the first app I ever built was an app called Sixth Note.
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I don't even know if I can remember why I called it that exactly.
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But the gist of the app is that it was a journaling app,
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But the sort of hook was that you could attach music to your journal entries.
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And so it had an actual music player built into it such that like if you were listening to music,
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you could open up this app and you'd see the music that was playing.
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And if you wrote an entry, that music would automatically be linked to your journal entry.
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So that if you went and reviewed entries later, you could like hit play on them.
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And it would play the music that you were listening to.
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- Listening to on your phone?
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- Yeah.
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- How did it know?
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- I mean, it's just like, what was music even called?
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I guess it was just like the iTunes app, right?
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Like you have hooks into--
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- Oh, okay, I didn't realize that.
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- Yeah, so there were ways to build
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sort of like third party music players
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where you could just like, you know,
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build your own controls to, yeah,
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to show what was actually playing.
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- And so that's how you made your first million then?
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- Yeah.
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(both laughing)
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So it's all been smooth sailing from there.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, anyway, so like I spent a long time on that app,
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just like, so this was objective C days
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and it was also just barely post-arc days.
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So when I actually started building this thing,
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I was actually having to learn specifically
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about like retain cycles and how to release things properly.
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So you actually understand all that then?
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- I guess so.
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Although again, like I was in so deep at that point,
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like I had no idea what I was doing
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on so many different axes that like,
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I don't know how much I was really absorbing.
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And certainly if you go and look at that code,
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it's just like, I have no idea what's happening in here.
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But yeah, anyway, so that was just like
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this interesting project where I was,
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I was interacting with a whole bunch of different,
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you know, like first party APIs.
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'Cause I, of course then I kept sort of
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scope creeping this thing where you could also add
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photos to your entries and well you could also add your location to your entries and
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it was a great learning app idea right because I was just interacting with so many different
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things and having to figure out how to piece all this stuff together. Yeah. Yeah. So anyways
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I released this first app and I mean yeah nothing happened of course. Did you have expectations
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going into it. I think I probably did have some like so just some very naive expectations
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based on just like a total misunderstanding of how this stuff works.
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And certainly the app store did work differently at the time.
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Like at that time, if for some reason I had somehow managed to get an app store
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feature, things would have been very different. Right.
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Yeah. Not so much the case now.
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But I had. Yeah.
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I just had no concept of like, you know, what that would take,
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what it meant to at all try to market your work.
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Like, I just kind of put it out and I crossed my fingers and was like,
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I hope people find this.
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And of course, people can't find it. Right.
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It's just not how it works.
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And also, to be clear, the quality also just wasn't there, of course.
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It was the first thing I'd ever built. It was kind of this weird Frankenstein
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mishmash of strange UI ideas and half-baked design.
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And yeah, so-- but again, it's just like it was such a great way to just hone
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what I was actually trying to do.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Anyways, enough about Sixth Note.
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I then turned around.
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So that probably took me something like six months.
00:13:46.580 --> 00:13:48.900
And then I turned around and was like, all right, well,
00:13:48.900 --> 00:13:50.020
Now I kind of know what I'm doing,
00:13:50.020 --> 00:13:51.460
I'm going to make something else.
00:13:51.460 --> 00:13:54.780
So I made a two-player word game that
00:13:54.780 --> 00:13:57.780
was managed through Game Center called Switchboard.
00:13:57.780 --> 00:14:02.660
And it was-- yeah, so you took turns basically placing--
00:14:02.660 --> 00:14:04.300
actually, how did it work?
00:14:04.300 --> 00:14:06.140
Gosh, this is so long ago now.
00:14:06.140 --> 00:14:08.100
Yeah, it was sort of boggle-like.
00:14:08.100 --> 00:14:10.700
So you had a bunch of words on a grid,
00:14:10.700 --> 00:14:11.980
and you were trying to-- or sorry,
00:14:11.980 --> 00:14:13.240
a bunch of letters on a grid, and you
00:14:13.240 --> 00:14:15.260
were trying to pick the letters off of the grid
00:14:15.260 --> 00:14:17.940
to create a good word, a good long word.
00:14:17.940 --> 00:14:19.260
Then if you created that word,
00:14:19.260 --> 00:14:20.680
it was basically like this.
00:14:20.680 --> 00:14:22.940
You were trying to capture areas on the board.
00:14:22.940 --> 00:14:24.440
So by using letters,
00:14:24.440 --> 00:14:27.020
those letters would turn your color.
00:14:27.020 --> 00:14:29.160
Then if the other person used those letters,
00:14:29.160 --> 00:14:30.540
they would turn back to neutral.
00:14:30.540 --> 00:14:33.900
So there was this, you're going back and forth trying to
00:14:33.900 --> 00:14:37.620
create words that would capture the right areas of the board.
00:14:37.620 --> 00:14:40.360
Anyway, to this day,
00:14:40.360 --> 00:14:43.180
I'm still fairly proud of that one.
00:14:43.180 --> 00:14:46.820
I think it's amazing just getting through
00:14:46.820 --> 00:14:50.580
sixth note and all the mess that that was and figuring out what I was doing and then coming
00:14:50.580 --> 00:14:55.300
out the other end and starting fresh. Yeah, it just made a huge difference. Like I kind of felt
00:14:55.300 --> 00:14:59.540
like, OK, I actually sort of know what I'm doing. I actually have some sort of identity that I'm
00:14:59.540 --> 00:15:03.140
trying to chase with this app. I actually kind of know what I want it to look like and how it
00:15:03.140 --> 00:15:07.300
should feel and how everything should fit together. So certainly if you go look at old pictures of
00:15:07.300 --> 00:15:11.780
that app, it was definitely a pretty blatant. I don't want to say rip off because the game
00:15:11.780 --> 00:15:16.020
was different, but aesthetically it was very, very similar to a letterpress. I don't know.
00:15:16.020 --> 00:15:22.400
I feel like that era I missed this era because I was in the Android land, but everybody references
00:15:22.400 --> 00:15:26.180
letterpress. It seemed like everybody like was what was the name of this one by the way
00:15:26.180 --> 00:15:28.140
I was gonna add a link in the show notes.
00:15:28.140 --> 00:15:32.340
Switchboard. Yeah, I don't know that you'll find much evidence of it anymore on the internet
00:15:32.340 --> 00:15:33.340
but.
00:15:33.340 --> 00:15:38.220
And letterpress was shoot what's his name the Tweety Lauren Brichter right?
00:15:38.220 --> 00:15:42.980
Lauren Brichter yeah. Yeah so that was just again it was just one of those sort of like
00:15:42.980 --> 00:15:48.340
famous App Store stories that as a young upstart dev, you're like, Okay, well, I can do that. I
00:15:48.340 --> 00:15:53.140
want to do that, right? Like, there must be some way that I can also have like a mega hit on my
00:15:53.140 --> 00:15:58.020
hands and somehow have millions of people playing my game. Which again, of course, that didn't
00:15:58.020 --> 00:16:03.060
happen. Not even close. But yeah, again, like I said, I mean, I was a lot more proud of that one,
00:16:03.060 --> 00:16:10.820
I did have some like, I did find a little bit of traction, just, just in the sense of like people
00:16:10.820 --> 00:16:15.300
who weren't friends and family. I actually saw them playing it a little bit like there were more
00:16:15.300 --> 00:16:21.220
users than just you know the 10 people I asked to try my app. Yeah. Anyway so that was something it
00:16:21.220 --> 00:16:26.420
was something interesting to me. I was like OK maybe maybe there's something here I can continue
00:16:26.420 --> 00:16:31.780
to do. Basically after that I decided all right it had been about a year. It's time to get a job.
00:16:31.780 --> 00:16:36.900
I'll kind of blow through some of this pretty quickly but basically I did end up trying. I
00:16:36.900 --> 00:16:41.180
I continued to have that idea of like I want to be in the startup world, I want to join
00:16:41.180 --> 00:16:46.980
some like high octane startup and do that whole thing.
00:16:46.980 --> 00:16:53.700
So, yeah, the first job I ever had without getting into too much details was just a bit
00:16:53.700 --> 00:16:54.700
of a mess.
00:16:54.700 --> 00:16:57.240
It was a lot of young people who had no idea what they were doing.
00:16:57.240 --> 00:17:01.100
I spent way too much time working.
00:17:01.100 --> 00:17:07.900
the culture was very much just like, you know, work all day and then work all evening. And then
00:17:07.900 --> 00:17:13.740
if you want work all night and then continue to work all day. And and yeah, that was just very
00:17:13.740 --> 00:17:19.660
much the vibe for no real reason. You know, in retrospect, it was just like, I didn't know any
00:17:19.660 --> 00:17:25.420
better. Exactly. It's just like, OK, well, I guess this is how this is. And, you know, there were
00:17:25.420 --> 00:17:31.500
plenty of good people there and I definitely had fun. But yeah, things went nowhere there.
00:17:31.500 --> 00:17:35.420
I was at, so I was at this small startup for about a year and a half. From there,
00:17:35.420 --> 00:17:40.940
jumped to another little startup in Toronto. That one was a lot more interesting and sort of legit,
00:17:40.940 --> 00:17:47.660
this little company called Volley. And we basically built, it's sort of stack overflow
00:17:47.660 --> 00:17:52.700
adjacent. It was a way for people to ask questions and get answers from a community.
00:17:52.700 --> 00:17:56.380
it was more centered around sort of like the business community, like small businesses and
00:17:56.380 --> 00:18:00.700
startups and stuff. And so I was sort of a Oh, I guess one thing I should mention in both of
00:18:00.700 --> 00:18:07.820
these cases is I was the one and only iOS developer, okay, which has kind of been a weird
00:18:07.820 --> 00:18:13.820
theme of my career is I, I've rarely had the opportunity to sort of join a big team and learn
00:18:13.820 --> 00:18:19.260
from people who know what they're doing. Like I came off of a year of just banging my head against
00:18:19.260 --> 00:18:21.100
to books and trying to figure out how to build apps.
00:18:21.100 --> 00:18:23.740
And then I, you know, wandered into these jobs where it's just like,
00:18:23.740 --> 00:18:26.260
OK, you're the iOS developer, go and build our app.
00:18:26.260 --> 00:18:31.260
So I just continued to kind of learn by doing and had no idea really what I was doing.
00:18:31.260 --> 00:18:34.020
But that can be a good way to learn, too, right?
00:18:34.020 --> 00:18:37.220
Because you know, yeah, the amount of responsibility that you have,
00:18:37.220 --> 00:18:40.740
even if the company ultimately doesn't quite succeed, is still quite huge.
00:18:40.740 --> 00:18:43.340
And you're having to think about and deal with.
00:18:43.340 --> 00:18:46.460
It's the breadth versus depth thing, right?
00:18:46.460 --> 00:18:50.660
Like at a big company, you can go really deep and learn from people and learn
00:18:50.660 --> 00:18:53.140
a something, you know, really, really well.
00:18:53.140 --> 00:18:57.820
But oftentimes at a big company, you're never going to look at app store
00:18:57.820 --> 00:19:01.500
connector, you're not going to learn about, you know, build systems or any of
00:19:01.500 --> 00:19:03.340
that stuff, because that's not your responsibility.
00:19:03.340 --> 00:19:06.420
And, uh, yeah, when it's all you, it's all you.
00:19:06.420 --> 00:19:07.580
Yeah.
00:19:07.580 --> 00:19:08.580
Yeah.
00:19:08.580 --> 00:19:11.060
So, so yeah, I worked at Volley.
00:19:11.060 --> 00:19:13.500
I was like a fairly, fairly short stint.
00:19:13.500 --> 00:19:17.340
And then that company sort of pivoted, I guess, in 2015.
00:19:17.340 --> 00:19:19.700
And that's the point at which I came back to Ottawa.
00:19:19.700 --> 00:19:25.460
And yeah, then to sort of wrap up this, the story of how my career has gone, I
00:19:25.460 --> 00:19:28.420
I spent a bit of time or sorry, not a bit of time.
00:19:28.420 --> 00:19:31.660
I spent a significant amount of time, about three and a half years at a company
00:19:31.660 --> 00:19:35.660
here in Ottawa called Shoebox, which is a really cool company that basically built
00:19:35.660 --> 00:19:38.180
hearing tests for iPads.
00:19:38.180 --> 00:19:42.220
So, you know, if anybody has ever had their hearing tested, like gone and visited
00:19:42.220 --> 00:19:47.740
an audiologist, traditionally what you do is you end up in this big sort of sound booth
00:19:47.740 --> 00:19:54.900
and it can be this kind of uncomfortable experience to sort of like respond to cues and get your
00:19:54.900 --> 00:19:56.900
hearing tested.
00:19:56.900 --> 00:19:59.580
But this was basically this little game you could play on an iPad.
00:19:59.580 --> 00:20:03.340
You just put on a calibrated set of headphones, play this game and it was - they were actually
00:20:03.340 --> 00:20:09.180
like - this was a medical company, like these were medically valid results that, you know,
00:20:09.180 --> 00:20:14.540
could use to modernize their practice and make it a lot cheaper, but also we sold to...
00:20:14.540 --> 00:20:20.140
There's a lot of industries where maintaining employees' hearing health is really important
00:20:20.140 --> 00:20:26.700
legally. And so, like construction, military, a lot of companies in those types of industries
00:20:26.700 --> 00:20:31.100
had a real interest in this type of product where they could quickly and easily test employees'
00:20:31.100 --> 00:20:36.140
hearing. Anyway, so yeah, there I was finally at more of a... Still a small company, but more of
00:20:36.140 --> 00:20:40.300
of an established company, joined an existing team. And yeah, by the end of it was kind of
00:20:40.300 --> 00:20:46.620
leading the iOS side of that company. And then yeah, maybe I'll sort of stop there. Because at
00:20:46.620 --> 00:20:53.100
that point, once I left that company, that's when I started to finally get back into independently
00:20:53.100 --> 00:21:00.700
developing apps. Yeah. Is this is this the point when you decided to start your blog, the like
00:21:00.700 --> 00:21:02.500
going in the blog series?
00:21:02.500 --> 00:21:03.820
Yeah, pretty much.
00:21:03.820 --> 00:21:06.300
So so I left shoebox
00:21:06.300 --> 00:21:08.100
in the summer of twenty nineteen.
00:21:08.100 --> 00:21:10.140
I was just totally burnt out like
00:21:10.140 --> 00:21:10.980
just.
00:21:10.980 --> 00:21:12.580
Yeah. Again, that was that was a
00:21:12.580 --> 00:21:13.740
great company, great people.
00:21:13.740 --> 00:21:15.340
But I was just I was trying to do
00:21:15.340 --> 00:21:16.860
too much there for too long.
00:21:16.860 --> 00:21:18.220
And I just kind of hit a wall at a
00:21:18.220 --> 00:21:19.440
certain point where it's just like I
00:21:19.440 --> 00:21:21.520
can't I can't keep doing
00:21:21.520 --> 00:21:23.220
this. So I just kind of quit
00:21:23.220 --> 00:21:24.740
cold turkey. I had no
00:21:24.740 --> 00:21:26.460
nothing lined up.
00:21:26.460 --> 00:21:28.460
Having quit that job, I
00:21:28.460 --> 00:21:30.680
sort of just had this idea
00:21:30.680 --> 00:21:34.380
that I could do some consulting work for a little while. And to be fair, I did have some
00:21:34.380 --> 00:21:38.500
like contacts that I figured I could get some work through pretty quickly. So it wasn't
00:21:38.500 --> 00:21:43.540
a complete like dive off the deep end by quitting that job. But yeah, and then I also kind of
00:21:43.540 --> 00:21:48.300
recommitted, I still had, you know, this whole time I'd had this idea in the back of my head
00:21:48.300 --> 00:21:53.420
that it'd be really nice to actually, you know, give building my own apps another go.
00:21:53.420 --> 00:21:56.800
And I kind of like started and stopped through the years, right? Like through these sort
00:21:56.800 --> 00:22:01.600
of startup years, I would try to spin up my own projects, and I just sort of run out of
00:22:01.600 --> 00:22:03.520
steam, don't have time to commit to it.
00:22:03.520 --> 00:22:07.120
Yeah, don't have any idea how to actually like, you know, I built two apps at that point.
00:22:07.120 --> 00:22:09.040
It's like, I have no idea how to market these things.
00:22:09.040 --> 00:22:11.000
I don't really know, like, why I'm doing this.
00:22:11.000 --> 00:22:15.760
Anyway, so I kind of Yeah, having left that job in 2019, I kind of wanted to recommit
00:22:15.760 --> 00:22:19.280
a little bit to get an app out into the world again.
00:22:19.280 --> 00:22:23.080
And just and yeah, sort of, I guess, get my name out there a little bit too, right?
00:22:23.080 --> 00:22:25.820
as like somebody who could actually build things
00:22:25.820 --> 00:22:27.020
as a solo developer.
00:22:27.020 --> 00:22:29.700
- Yeah, that's what, so I mentioned that blog series.
00:22:29.700 --> 00:22:34.260
You like wrote a series on, it's amazing
00:22:34.260 --> 00:22:35.300
and it's worth reading now.
00:22:35.300 --> 00:22:37.680
I was going back through reading it again
00:22:37.680 --> 00:22:40.220
in prep for this and it's, one, it's entertaining,
00:22:40.220 --> 00:22:45.220
but two, it's like, anybody who's done this has,
00:22:45.220 --> 00:22:47.180
obviously everybody has very different experiences,
00:22:47.180 --> 00:22:50.260
but a lot of the feelings are the same
00:22:50.260 --> 00:22:54.200
And this series in particular talks a lot about
00:22:54.200 --> 00:22:58.720
the feelings of trying to do the whole indie thing.
00:22:58.720 --> 00:23:02.800
Where did the idea of doing this come from?
00:23:02.800 --> 00:23:05.720
Because this came before,
00:23:05.720 --> 00:23:07.760
I mean I know it came before Obather,
00:23:07.760 --> 00:23:09.100
your first, or not your first app,
00:23:09.100 --> 00:23:12.340
but the app coming up I guess in the story came out.
00:23:12.340 --> 00:23:14.520
But was it, were you working on Obather
00:23:14.520 --> 00:23:15.660
and you started the blog series?
00:23:15.660 --> 00:23:17.380
Or what was the order there?
00:23:19.060 --> 00:23:21.560
And I guess really the question is, why did you do it?
00:23:21.560 --> 00:23:24.520
- Yeah, Obather certainly wasn't the first
00:23:24.520 --> 00:23:28.840
sort of idea I had for an app to build
00:23:28.840 --> 00:23:30.880
in this period of time.
00:23:30.880 --> 00:23:35.200
I had actually started down a path of building
00:23:35.200 --> 00:23:39.000
a sort of, yeah, without getting into too much details,
00:23:39.000 --> 00:23:42.760
basically a sort of grocery list type of app.
00:23:42.760 --> 00:23:46.440
I had some interesting ideas that I wanted to explore
00:23:46.440 --> 00:23:51.520
just around like sort of building an app around what you already have at home like building
00:23:51.520 --> 00:23:56.640
it around what's in your pantry and managing that rather than sort of managing recipes
00:23:56.640 --> 00:24:03.080
and you know grocery lists specifically. So I had actually like pretty seriously started
00:24:03.080 --> 00:24:09.880
down that road. I think when I started writing the blog posts I think that is actually the
00:24:09.880 --> 00:24:16.200
app I sort of had in mind that I was actively working on. Yeah. To answer your question
00:24:16.200 --> 00:24:30.440
why I started writing. I think like, so one part of it is just, I knew I needed an actual
00:24:30.440 --> 00:24:39.120
way to reach people. Because I had learned that you can't just not try to reach anybody
00:24:39.120 --> 00:24:44.080
and then release an app and expect it to reach somebody. I started to get more active on
00:24:44.080 --> 00:24:51.520
Twitter and I think just yeah from from that lens I figured writing about my experiences just being
00:24:51.520 --> 00:24:56.480
honest about what I was doing might sort of draw people in a little bit get people invested in
00:24:56.480 --> 00:25:01.440
what I was actually trying to build. So yeah that's just kind of the like I guess businessy
00:25:01.440 --> 00:25:08.880
answer but I've also always loved to write I mean back to school like a big part of that weird broad
00:25:08.880 --> 00:25:13.760
pop music literature degree was actually writing you know like I did a lot of writing in school.
00:25:13.760 --> 00:25:17.000
I took a bunch of English courses and writing courses.
00:25:17.000 --> 00:25:24.800
And yeah, I think alongside a lot of my big ideas about building my own apps over the
00:25:24.800 --> 00:25:30.680
years, I had also often had these big ideas about, you know, like writing for an audience,
00:25:30.680 --> 00:25:35.920
having some sort of blog that had an audience and enjoying that process.
00:25:35.920 --> 00:25:38.280
So yeah, it just kind of felt like a natural thing to do.
00:25:38.280 --> 00:25:40.320
It felt like and it just felt like a way.
00:25:40.320 --> 00:25:43.080
How do I put it?
00:25:43.080 --> 00:25:49.080
In some ways, it was almost like a bit of a defense because the tone of that blog is
00:25:49.080 --> 00:25:54.760
very much like, I have no idea what I'm doing and I don't know if this is gonna work.
00:25:54.760 --> 00:25:59.740
Actually I probably think it's not gonna work, but hey, we're gonna give it a shot.
00:25:59.740 --> 00:26:04.880
And I think like it actually, yeah, if I'm being blunt, I think it was a bit of a defense
00:26:04.880 --> 00:26:05.880
mechanism, right?
00:26:05.880 --> 00:26:06.880
To just...
00:26:06.880 --> 00:26:08.840
You know what?
00:26:08.840 --> 00:26:10.020
That tracks so much.
00:26:10.020 --> 00:26:15.020
I think that's part of what draws people like me
00:26:15.020 --> 00:26:18.520
to both the blog, but also a lot of the stuff you do.
00:26:18.520 --> 00:26:22.840
Like your humor has that sort of like Chandler
00:26:22.840 --> 00:26:25.280
from "The Friends" like self-deprecating
00:26:25.280 --> 00:26:26.580
defense mechanism thing.
00:26:26.580 --> 00:26:30.320
Like you almost are incapable of being sincere
00:26:30.320 --> 00:26:34.320
in a way that's very, what's the word I'm looking for?
00:26:34.320 --> 00:26:36.840
Like, I mean, I'm looking for the word
00:26:36.840 --> 00:26:38.280
for I am the exact same way.
00:26:38.280 --> 00:26:42.460
Like we're jumping ahead a little bit, but even like the way you announced up
00:26:42.460 --> 00:26:47.520
ahead was something like, I'm here to save the world with this countdown app or
00:26:47.520 --> 00:26:47.880
something.
00:26:47.880 --> 00:26:52.360
And it's like, it's like you're getting out ahead of like, I'm going to say
00:26:52.360 --> 00:26:57.080
something sincere, but like, I know this is a business and please don't, you know,
00:26:57.080 --> 00:26:58.640
hate me for it or whatever.
00:26:58.640 --> 00:26:59.040
Yeah.
00:26:59.040 --> 00:27:01.480
That's, that's really interesting.
00:27:01.480 --> 00:27:02.080
That's funny.
00:27:02.080 --> 00:27:04.120
It's, it's a really, yeah.
00:27:04.120 --> 00:27:07.320
I have always found that to be a really tough balancing act to be honest.
00:27:07.320 --> 00:27:07.620
Yeah.
00:27:07.620 --> 00:27:08.080
It's hard.
00:27:08.080 --> 00:27:09.340
I mean, it's really hard.
00:27:09.340 --> 00:27:13.040
So, I mean, hearing you talk about this is a familiar feeling of like.
00:27:13.040 --> 00:27:20.420
You can, you can look at the world and look at the sort of business plan that
00:27:20.420 --> 00:27:24.220
you're trying to go with and be like, all right, I know what I need to do to like
00:27:24.220 --> 00:27:29.780
get attention, but then you also don't want to be that guy, you know, whatever
00:27:29.780 --> 00:27:31.000
that guy means in your head.
00:27:31.560 --> 00:27:36.560
And it's really hard to be sincere without draping everything
00:27:36.560 --> 00:27:39.860
in apologies for being sincere.
00:27:39.860 --> 00:27:44.560
And so I think taking the like silly,
00:27:44.560 --> 00:27:46.140
goofy approach around it,
00:27:46.140 --> 00:27:49.400
lets you do that without it being annoying in the same way.
00:27:49.400 --> 00:27:50.440
Which is interesting,
00:27:50.440 --> 00:27:53.240
'cause I feel like I'm just on the annoying side usually.
00:27:53.240 --> 00:27:54.160
(laughing)
00:27:54.160 --> 00:27:56.900
Where I just qualify everything too much.
00:27:56.900 --> 00:27:58.980
Yeah, that's--
00:27:58.980 --> 00:28:01.080
- Yeah, I think that's a pretty solid analysis
00:28:01.080 --> 00:28:03.040
of my entire Twitter brand at this point.
00:28:03.040 --> 00:28:05.280
(laughing)
00:28:05.280 --> 00:28:11.320
- So, okay, so before we get into "Oh, Bother Itself" then,
00:28:11.320 --> 00:28:12.160
did it work?
00:28:12.160 --> 00:28:16.440
Like, do you feel like writing the way that you were
00:28:16.440 --> 00:28:17.280
was worth it?
00:28:17.280 --> 00:28:18.320
- Yeah, absolutely.
00:28:18.320 --> 00:28:22.880
And for genuinely a couple reasons.
00:28:22.880 --> 00:28:26.000
It did work in the sort of cynical sense
00:28:26.000 --> 00:28:30.320
that it did garner some attention,
00:28:30.320 --> 00:28:35.400
Specifically, I wrote one post at some point about imposter syndrome.
00:28:35.400 --> 00:28:39.800
Which I don't think is really even the right term for what I was writing about.
00:28:39.800 --> 00:28:42.540
But yeah, but if you want SEO, that's the word.
00:28:42.540 --> 00:28:46.080
I was basically writing about
00:28:46.080 --> 00:28:48.480
to some extent, I'm writing about exactly what we're talking about right now.
00:28:48.480 --> 00:28:52.220
That post was very much about like the extremely uncomfortable feeling
00:28:52.220 --> 00:28:56.160
of like trying to put yourself out there on Twitter and trying to get people's
00:28:56.160 --> 00:28:59.720
attention as somebody who's not typically an attention seeker.
00:28:59.720 --> 00:29:04.720
Anyways, and yeah, that did garner, you know, some some interest.
00:29:04.720 --> 00:29:07.920
So yeah, cynically, sure, I gained some followers through doing that.
00:29:07.920 --> 00:29:13.800
But genuinely, I also like, actually really enjoyed that process.
00:29:13.800 --> 00:29:20.400
I wrote quite a bit for a while there over the span of about a year.
00:29:20.400 --> 00:29:26.240
All those posts had like these very silly drawings and I cannot say enough like anybody
00:29:26.240 --> 00:29:29.640
listening, you should seriously just I'll have a link in the show notes.
00:29:29.640 --> 00:29:35.000
worth reading, they're entertaining. And if you're anything like me, at least, it's nice to
00:29:35.000 --> 00:29:39.320
see somebody else feeling the same way that you feel about these things. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
00:29:39.320 --> 00:29:44.760
Yeah, well, thank you. And yeah, so that so they were, they're just a lot of fun to write. And
00:29:44.760 --> 00:29:49.800
to this day, I still, I lament the fact that I haven't written now in about two years.
00:29:49.800 --> 00:29:54.280
That was going to be my biting follow up question is then why have you not?
00:29:54.280 --> 00:29:56.920
Yeah, you know, done it going forward.
00:29:56.920 --> 00:30:04.600
And the answer is literally just time. I really want to have been writing this whole time. I am
00:30:04.600 --> 00:30:08.600
currently thinking about this is jumping way ahead, but I think I'm going to try to write
00:30:08.600 --> 00:30:12.840
something about the up ahead process. I think there's a lot of interesting stuff to write
00:30:12.840 --> 00:30:19.960
about there. But basically, the last post in that little blog series was, it was me writing
00:30:20.520 --> 00:30:25.520
just like very broadly about, I guess about 2020.
00:30:25.520 --> 00:30:27.680
- Yeah. - Oh yeah.
00:30:27.680 --> 00:30:29.800
Almost all of this took place in 2022.
00:30:29.800 --> 00:30:32.520
- Yeah. - 2020 as well.
00:30:32.520 --> 00:30:34.000
Can't say 2022.
00:30:34.000 --> 00:30:36.120
- So yeah, the last thing I wrote was basically like,
00:30:36.120 --> 00:30:38.520
I just had a baby and you know,
00:30:38.520 --> 00:30:41.360
like I don't have time to do anything anymore.
00:30:41.360 --> 00:30:44.000
And yeah, hopefully I can get back to it at some point.
00:30:44.000 --> 00:30:46.740
And as of now, I have not gotten back to it yet, but.
00:30:46.740 --> 00:30:49.020
- Yeah, it's all caps, or not all caps,
00:30:49.020 --> 00:30:51.260
but exclamation point, identity crisis.
00:30:51.260 --> 00:30:52.820
- Yeah, yeah, that's the one.
00:30:52.820 --> 00:30:54.240
Yeah.
00:30:54.240 --> 00:30:56.060
Yeah, so that's when I ended up going
00:30:56.060 --> 00:30:57.780
and getting a real job again.
00:30:57.780 --> 00:30:59.700
But anyways.
00:30:59.700 --> 00:31:01.980
- Yeah, so, okay, so rewinding a little bit then,
00:31:01.980 --> 00:31:04.640
through this process of writing these,
00:31:04.640 --> 00:31:08.500
you, sounds like, pivoted and started up a new app,
00:31:08.500 --> 00:31:10.340
which eventually became "Oh, Bother."
00:31:10.340 --> 00:31:13.140
So what's the sort of story there?
00:31:13.140 --> 00:31:15.740
- Yeah, so the story, that is very much a pandemic story.
00:31:15.740 --> 00:31:18.020
So basically I was, so the timing here, again,
00:31:18.020 --> 00:31:21.980
I started working on this weird sort of grocery app idea
00:31:21.980 --> 00:31:24.060
late 2019, worked on it for a couple months.
00:31:24.060 --> 00:31:25.540
Again, I was doing a lot of consulting work
00:31:25.540 --> 00:31:28.460
at this time too, so it certainly wasn't like a,
00:31:28.460 --> 00:31:30.600
it wasn't getting a ton of time and attention,
00:31:30.600 --> 00:31:33.440
but I was chipping away at this new app idea.
00:31:33.440 --> 00:31:35.820
But then March 2020 happened,
00:31:35.820 --> 00:31:39.260
which meant that my wife was working from home,
00:31:39.260 --> 00:31:43.220
so it was no longer just me alone at home every day
00:31:43.220 --> 00:31:44.300
doing my work.
00:31:44.300 --> 00:31:45.620
And we found that we were stepping
00:31:45.620 --> 00:31:47.460
on each other's toes a lot, right?
00:31:47.460 --> 00:31:51.000
Like just, you know, not realizing the other person was on a call and making a bunch of
00:31:51.000 --> 00:31:55.180
noise in the kitchen or just like, you know, going and talking to somebody right in the
00:31:55.180 --> 00:31:59.840
middle of like when they're really deep in work or trying to finish a thought or whatever
00:31:59.840 --> 00:32:00.840
it might be.
00:32:00.840 --> 00:32:06.800
And yeah, I guess this sort of strange little idea just struck me and pretty quickly - well,
00:32:06.800 --> 00:32:10.400
actually, maybe first I should talk about what the idea was.
00:32:10.400 --> 00:32:16.080
Basically, what Obother was, was a really simple way to let people know the idea was
00:32:16.080 --> 00:32:17.640
specifically your housemates, right?
00:32:17.640 --> 00:32:19.200
So your spouse or your roommates
00:32:19.200 --> 00:32:20.960
or whoever you're living with.
00:32:20.960 --> 00:32:22.560
Let people know when you're botherable
00:32:22.560 --> 00:32:24.320
and when you're not botherable.
00:32:24.320 --> 00:32:26.320
Yeah, I think pretty quickly, I just,
00:32:26.320 --> 00:32:29.600
I realized, once that idea struck me,
00:32:29.600 --> 00:32:32.760
I sort of realized that this other app
00:32:32.760 --> 00:32:36.600
I had been chipping away at was going to take a long time.
00:32:36.600 --> 00:32:40.240
It was just, it's one of those app ideas that like,
00:32:40.240 --> 00:32:43.420
you know, I could have continued on it,
00:32:43.420 --> 00:32:46.740
but it probably would have taken a year plus
00:32:46.740 --> 00:32:48.620
for me to get to any sort of finish line
00:32:48.620 --> 00:32:49.460
that I would be happy with.
00:32:49.460 --> 00:32:50.540
- It's like a mature space,
00:32:50.540 --> 00:32:53.860
so there's so many features that people consider baseline.
00:32:53.860 --> 00:32:54.700
Yeah.
00:32:54.700 --> 00:32:57.620
- Yeah, when this little idea hit me,
00:32:57.620 --> 00:32:59.220
I pretty quickly decided, you know what,
00:32:59.220 --> 00:33:02.620
I'm just gonna try to build this thing in like a month.
00:33:02.620 --> 00:33:04.900
'Cause I was getting a little bit impatient, I think.
00:33:04.900 --> 00:33:06.260
I just wanted to get something out there.
00:33:06.260 --> 00:33:08.340
Again, I was trying to build a bit of momentum
00:33:08.340 --> 00:33:11.740
with the blog and try to, yeah,
00:33:11.740 --> 00:33:16.300
just get people interested in what I was building. I didn't want to drag that out for, you know,
00:33:16.300 --> 00:33:21.660
18 months. So yeah, I decided to just try to build this little thing. I basically tried
00:33:21.660 --> 00:33:27.680
to - I tried pretty hard to timebox it to like a month. Like I really just poured effort
00:33:27.680 --> 00:33:32.900
into it and tried to get it out the door in a month. I think I actually managed to do
00:33:32.900 --> 00:33:39.140
it in about a month and a half, which in retrospect makes no sense. Like I don't know how I did
00:33:39.140 --> 00:33:42.260
especially coming off of Up Ahead, which took me like a year and a half.
00:33:42.260 --> 00:33:43.940
Oh, this is pre-baby.
00:33:43.940 --> 00:33:47.140
It was pre-baby and I didn't have a full-time job at the time. So I was
00:33:47.140 --> 00:33:51.860
much more able to just kind of, yeah, put my head down and focus for big chunks of time.
00:33:51.860 --> 00:33:56.980
Obather was just this fun little project. I will say I didn't have any grand illusions
00:33:56.980 --> 00:34:02.020
with that one at all of like it catching on in any real way or making me any sort of real money.
00:34:02.020 --> 00:34:05.300
That was very much like a, let's just get something out there. Let's like
00:34:05.860 --> 00:34:10.660
exercise those muscles again of like actually following something through and getting it
00:34:10.660 --> 00:34:17.220
out the door. And again, hopefully, you know, get get some interest, get people interested in what
00:34:17.220 --> 00:34:22.180
I was doing and like who I was as an independent developer, right, sort of what my, my sort of
00:34:22.180 --> 00:34:28.020
style was in building apps. And I do think it largely succeeded at that, like, I was really
00:34:28.020 --> 00:34:33.300
happy with the response I got from that. So I feel like I mean, it's still in the store, right?
00:34:33.300 --> 00:34:37.860
I think I still have it on my phone. Yes. Yeah, it's still up there. I definitely feel like
00:34:37.860 --> 00:34:46.740
it established a very unique, like your unique sort of visual style and playfulness. Yeah.
00:34:46.740 --> 00:34:50.660
Because it was one of those apps where like my wife was a teacher. It didn't necessarily
00:34:50.660 --> 00:34:58.180
wasn't a required or useful thing for me for how I live my life. But I just loved playing with it.
00:34:58.180 --> 00:35:00.580
Like that was the thing about it that really stood out.
00:35:00.580 --> 00:35:05.620
And especially with the crowd of people who are reading your blog and
00:35:05.620 --> 00:35:14.500
our other iOS developers, it was just a very inspiring piece of work.
00:35:14.500 --> 00:35:19.140
I almost called it a piece of art, which I guess is the thing I was meaning for.
00:35:19.140 --> 00:35:19.700
But I don't know.
00:35:19.700 --> 00:35:21.300
It sounds too highfalutin, but it really is.
00:35:21.300 --> 00:35:27.700
You could feel the craft and personality in a way that really, really stood out.
00:35:27.700 --> 00:35:30.860
Yeah, well, thank you. And yeah, that was that was absolutely the intention.
00:35:30.860 --> 00:35:34.980
It's just like, can I can I just narrow scope
00:35:34.980 --> 00:35:39.260
to the nth degree, just like build this tiny thing, but really, really polish the
00:35:39.260 --> 00:35:43.520
heck out of it to just sort of show myself and other people sort of what I'm
00:35:43.520 --> 00:35:48.100
capable of. And that in that particular aspect of a building apps was just really
00:35:48.100 --> 00:35:49.740
like the stuff I love, right.
00:35:49.740 --> 00:35:54.300
The stuff I care about and the stuff that I think I've continued to kind of hone
00:35:54.300 --> 00:35:55.300
over time.
00:35:55.300 --> 00:35:59.140
- So did you treat this one, like you talked about,
00:35:59.140 --> 00:36:02.660
you'd started the blog in part with the idea of,
00:36:02.660 --> 00:36:05.300
I need to build a little bit of a following
00:36:05.300 --> 00:36:07.620
and use this as a way to market something.
00:36:07.620 --> 00:36:10.260
Did you try to market this?
00:36:10.260 --> 00:36:14.540
Did you talk to the press, try to push it out there?
00:36:14.540 --> 00:36:17.460
- Yeah, short answer is no.
00:36:17.460 --> 00:36:21.500
I think the short answer is I basically relied entirely
00:36:21.500 --> 00:36:25.340
on Twitter, which at the time wasn't a lot,
00:36:25.340 --> 00:36:28.500
or like I didn't really have much of a following.
00:36:28.500 --> 00:36:32.080
So yeah, no, I didn't really think about that too much.
00:36:32.080 --> 00:36:34.860
And in fact, I think I wrote a blog post
00:36:34.860 --> 00:36:37.220
that basically just like stepped through
00:36:37.220 --> 00:36:40.420
all of the weird things that happened after I launched it
00:36:40.420 --> 00:36:42.140
that I could have handled so much better
00:36:42.140 --> 00:36:45.980
if I had like, you know, known what I was actually doing.
00:36:45.980 --> 00:36:47.660
And again, I'm not sure how much any of this stuff
00:36:47.660 --> 00:36:49.700
would have necessarily moved the needle on anything,
00:36:49.700 --> 00:36:56.700
But for example, you know, somebody reached out to me midday like Obather was actually on launch day.
00:36:56.700 --> 00:36:58.900
It gained quite a bit of traction.
00:36:58.900 --> 00:37:04.260
It sort of went quote unquote viral in the sort of small bubble that we that we operate in.
00:37:04.260 --> 00:37:06.180
And yeah, someone messaged me at some point.
00:37:06.180 --> 00:37:09.420
I was like, hey, I just put your I just put Obather on product hunt.
00:37:09.420 --> 00:37:13.460
And it's like I think it ended up like at the top of product hunt that day.
00:37:13.460 --> 00:37:15.140
And like I didn't even do that.
00:37:15.140 --> 00:37:16.940
Right. Like I didn't craft that page at all.
00:37:16.940 --> 00:37:20.140
I didn't get the chance to write it or like put my own screenshots in there or anything.
00:37:20.140 --> 00:37:21.740
It was just somebody who threw it up.
00:37:21.740 --> 00:37:25.900
Um, and then I kind of scrambled to, you know, try to respond to questions on there and stuff.
00:37:25.900 --> 00:37:33.420
Similar thing happened with like the, all the, uh, Apple subreddit Sunday stuff where
00:37:33.420 --> 00:37:37.780
like, I, I really dragged my feet on that and then it took hours for it to get through
00:37:37.780 --> 00:37:41.300
the mods and then it did get through, but it was like the end of Sunday at that point.
00:37:41.300 --> 00:37:46.300
And like, I, yeah, timing is, uh, well, everything with that subreddit is,
00:37:46.700 --> 00:37:48.340
It feels like luck.
00:37:48.340 --> 00:37:49.180
- Yeah.
00:37:49.180 --> 00:37:51.020
- But yeah, getting it early,
00:37:51.020 --> 00:37:52.660
getting lucky that for some reason
00:37:52.660 --> 00:37:54.180
it doesn't get taken down.
00:37:54.180 --> 00:37:55.020
- Yeah.
00:37:55.020 --> 00:37:57.100
- But I will say that that one,
00:37:57.100 --> 00:37:59.620
there is a potential upshot that's pretty high.
00:37:59.620 --> 00:38:01.340
- Yeah, for sure.
00:38:01.340 --> 00:38:03.240
So yeah, I mean, I got a little bit of traction there,
00:38:03.240 --> 00:38:04.500
but again, I just sort of didn't really
00:38:04.500 --> 00:38:06.660
like control that properly.
00:38:06.660 --> 00:38:09.100
At some point, like I wrote about the process
00:38:09.100 --> 00:38:10.780
of building this thing and it ended up
00:38:10.780 --> 00:38:13.040
quite highly ranked on Hacker News at one point,
00:38:13.040 --> 00:38:15.020
but like I didn't even have a Hacker News account.
00:38:15.020 --> 00:38:19.620
And then I started to try to answer questions on Hacker News and then I got rate limited
00:38:19.620 --> 00:38:20.620
like immediately.
00:38:20.620 --> 00:38:22.900
They were just like, "You're posting too many comments."
00:38:22.900 --> 00:38:24.820
So I couldn't answer any more questions.
00:38:24.820 --> 00:38:26.260
It was just all this stuff.
00:38:26.260 --> 00:38:31.480
It was just sort of a comedy of errors and me trying to react to what had happened instead
00:38:31.480 --> 00:38:34.260
of having any cogent plan.
00:38:34.260 --> 00:38:38.940
So yeah, I mean, learning experience, I guess.
00:38:38.940 --> 00:38:42.600
I learned what not to do to some extent.
00:38:42.600 --> 00:38:52.500
But again, it also wasn't really my motivation to have this sort of breakout and have a bunch
00:38:52.500 --> 00:38:53.500
of people use it.
00:38:53.500 --> 00:38:56.000
Because honestly, I never really had...
00:38:56.000 --> 00:38:59.560
And I think I was right about this.
00:38:59.560 --> 00:39:07.360
I never really thought that it was an app that had legs as anything more than what you
00:39:07.360 --> 00:39:11.680
sort of mentioned, as something that is playful and fun to play with.
00:39:11.680 --> 00:39:13.020
And it's like, oh, this is really cool.
00:39:13.020 --> 00:39:14.220
And it's like a fun idea.
00:39:14.220 --> 00:39:15.320
And it was topical, right?
00:39:15.320 --> 00:39:16.720
Because the pandemic had just started.
00:39:16.720 --> 00:39:17.720
I think that's part of why.
00:39:17.720 --> 00:39:18.820
There's some novelty.
00:39:18.820 --> 00:39:23.120
Yeah, it had some legs initially, but I just aside from, you know,
00:39:23.120 --> 00:39:25.620
there are definitely some people who I think still use it today.
00:39:25.620 --> 00:39:30.220
But like it's not the type of app that's really sticky for most people.
00:39:30.220 --> 00:39:32.520
It would be hard to build a business off of it.
00:39:32.520 --> 00:39:34.020
Exactly. Yeah.
00:39:34.020 --> 00:39:35.320
No, that makes sense.
00:39:35.320 --> 00:39:38.080
The last thing with Obata then is
00:39:38.080 --> 00:39:41.820
You got that like Apple themselves tweeted about it, right?
00:39:41.820 --> 00:39:43.880
Yeah. Yes.
00:39:43.880 --> 00:39:47.160
Which is a hilarious story.
00:39:47.160 --> 00:39:48.660
I'll tell it here. So
00:39:48.660 --> 00:39:52.400
this is sort of another example of me
00:39:52.400 --> 00:39:55.700
just reacting to things happening and not having any idea what's going on.
00:39:55.700 --> 00:40:00.000
So initially I did get get sort of the standard
00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:03.580
like generated email from Apple that's like, we may feature your app in the App
00:40:03.580 --> 00:40:05.740
Store. Yeah. So send us your assets.
00:40:05.740 --> 00:40:08.160
And then I'm like scrambling to download Photoshop
00:40:08.160 --> 00:40:10.620
because apparently they only accept Photoshop files.
00:40:10.620 --> 00:40:12.520
And I have no idea how Photoshop works.
00:40:12.520 --> 00:40:14.920
And so I did all that stuff.
00:40:14.920 --> 00:40:17.720
I don't know that any of that was ever actually used.
00:40:17.720 --> 00:40:23.100
But then a few days later, my dad texts me and forwards me
00:40:23.100 --> 00:40:23.600
an email.
00:40:23.600 --> 00:40:26.680
And he's like, I got this weird email about your app.
00:40:26.680 --> 00:40:28.420
I don't really know what it is.
00:40:28.420 --> 00:40:30.720
And it's just like this completely sort
00:40:30.720 --> 00:40:34.080
of unofficial looking email addressed
00:40:34.080 --> 00:40:37.960
to my dad, like with his first name, it's like, hello.
00:40:37.960 --> 00:40:39.760
It's a different first name than yours.
00:40:39.760 --> 00:40:41.560
Yeah, exactly.
00:40:41.560 --> 00:40:45.080
And it's like, you know, we're I don't remember what the exact wording was,
00:40:45.080 --> 00:40:48.080
but it's like, we're going to feature, you know, your app.
00:40:48.080 --> 00:40:52.720
Oh, bother on Apple's social media accounts.
00:40:52.720 --> 00:40:56.180
So send us a demo video that you'd like us to use.
00:40:56.180 --> 00:41:00.260
And it's just like and it was just like no, like no official looking
00:41:00.260 --> 00:41:02.380
anything whatsoever, just like some person.
00:41:02.720 --> 00:41:07.820
But the some person had an Apple address and I looked them up on LinkedIn and
00:41:07.820 --> 00:41:11.060
managed to find them and it was some sort of person who seemed to actually work at
00:41:11.060 --> 00:41:11.560
Apple.
00:41:11.560 --> 00:41:15.420
And I couldn't really figure out like it just it looked like total spam but I
00:41:15.420 --> 00:41:19.420
couldn't really figure out how anyone would benefit from me sending them a 30
00:41:19.420 --> 00:41:21.220
second demo of my app.
00:41:21.220 --> 00:41:25.260
So I was just like all right well first of all I don't know why you sent this to
00:41:25.260 --> 00:41:26.460
my dad.
00:41:26.460 --> 00:41:28.260
I don't know how you know my dad.
00:41:28.260 --> 00:41:30.940
Like that to this day that makes no sense to me.
00:41:31.180 --> 00:41:32.860
Like no sense to me at all.
00:41:32.860 --> 00:41:39.180
But yeah, I ended up sending them this video and then sure enough, like the next day.
00:41:39.180 --> 00:41:44.940
Yeah. From like the app store, like the official Apple app store, Twitter account
00:41:44.940 --> 00:41:47.620
tweeted specifically about Obather.
00:41:47.620 --> 00:41:51.340
And I think it got posted on Facebook as well, which was really cool.
00:41:51.340 --> 00:41:54.060
You know, that that account has millions of followers.
00:41:54.060 --> 00:41:56.260
That's a pretty neat, a neat thing to have happen.
00:41:56.460 --> 00:42:01.220
Yeah, it's like ignoring whatever results that might have.
00:42:01.220 --> 00:42:02.940
It's kind of a validating feeling.
00:42:02.940 --> 00:42:04.820
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:42:04.820 --> 00:42:05.620
That's awesome.
00:42:05.620 --> 00:42:07.820
Did now, did it have any impact on sales?
00:42:07.820 --> 00:42:08.640
Nope.
00:42:08.640 --> 00:42:09.560
Really?
00:42:09.560 --> 00:42:13.900
Like, like really, like really not, really not at all.
00:42:13.900 --> 00:42:14.860
I was shocked.
00:42:14.860 --> 00:42:17.780
That is very, that actually is really surprising to me.
00:42:17.780 --> 00:42:18.360
Yeah.
00:42:18.360 --> 00:42:20.300
Now that was a paid up front app, right?
00:42:20.300 --> 00:42:22.620
No, bother was free.
00:42:22.780 --> 00:42:27.220
I just basically had a little like plus tier inside and a tip jar.
00:42:27.220 --> 00:42:28.160
Wow.
00:42:28.160 --> 00:42:31.160
That legitimately surprises me.
00:42:31.160 --> 00:42:32.660
Yeah, it was really strange.
00:42:32.660 --> 00:42:35.820
You'd really think that like that's hitting a lot of eyeballs
00:42:35.820 --> 00:42:37.400
and a lot of people are going to click through.
00:42:37.400 --> 00:42:39.140
Yeah. Like I get that.
00:42:39.140 --> 00:42:42.340
It's not you know, it's not like a traditional marketing channel,
00:42:42.340 --> 00:42:47.540
like how many people are really following it and what level of intent would they have?
00:42:47.540 --> 00:42:50.580
But still, just the the size of the net
00:42:51.140 --> 00:42:55.980
And what I assume being a small indie app project,
00:42:55.980 --> 00:43:00.520
it's not like you had this massive, you know, user base.
00:43:00.520 --> 00:43:03.520
You'd think you'd notice a decent bump.
00:43:03.520 --> 00:43:04.900
That's interesting. Huh.
00:43:04.900 --> 00:43:07.940
And yeah, I mean, there were certainly there was some sort of bump.
00:43:07.940 --> 00:43:12.160
But yeah, it's just like really, really not at all what I would have expected.
00:43:12.160 --> 00:43:16.700
Yeah, it's like probably a difference of like maybe a thousand,
00:43:16.700 --> 00:43:18.500
couple thousand downloads, maybe,
00:43:18.500 --> 00:43:21.700
and certainly not translating into much in terms of in-app purchases.
00:43:21.700 --> 00:43:22.900
So yeah.
00:43:22.900 --> 00:43:24.180
Very, very cool.
00:43:24.180 --> 00:43:29.220
And like, maybe you're not like this, but the couple of features
00:43:29.220 --> 00:43:33.140
in that vein that I've gotten before, although I've never had that, it's like,
00:43:33.140 --> 00:43:38.980
it's the type of thing that your family that isn't technical.
00:43:38.980 --> 00:43:42.660
It kind of like feels like, no, no, for real.
00:43:42.660 --> 00:43:47.540
Like, look, you can go to their official page and it has the thing that I made.
00:43:47.540 --> 00:43:51.300
Yeah, I actually do real things. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
00:43:51.300 --> 00:43:59.460
That's awesome. Okay, so Oh, bother. Definitely a success story, I would say for sure.
00:43:59.460 --> 00:44:04.260
From your perspective. There was obviously there was a law we've mentioned that you had a baby
00:44:04.260 --> 00:44:08.020
at this point in between, but like, did you come off of Oh, bother saying like,
00:44:08.020 --> 00:44:12.260
All right, I'm going to start my next thing. Or were you kind of like, I'm taking a break.
00:44:12.260 --> 00:44:16.500
I was back and forth on this a little bit. But I certainly wanted to do more with Oh,
00:44:16.500 --> 00:44:22.100
bother than I ended up doing. I had I had plans to continue to chip away at that for
00:44:22.100 --> 00:44:26.540
a little while. Add some additional features to it like the specific thing that I actually
00:44:26.540 --> 00:44:33.060
got really close to finishing building and it's I'm sad it never got out the door but
00:44:33.060 --> 00:44:38.100
I wanted to build some calendar integration so that you know you could hook up at the
00:44:38.100 --> 00:44:41.580
start of the day you could just sort of like import when your meetings were and it would
00:44:41.580 --> 00:44:46.340
automatically flip you from unbotherable to botherable throughout the day based on your
00:44:46.340 --> 00:44:51.220
calendar. So yeah, I had some ideas like that that I wanted to continue working on. So I'm
00:44:51.220 --> 00:44:56.580
trying to think about what the timeline was here again. But I guess I think I'll bother shipped
00:44:56.580 --> 00:45:03.620
somewhere sort of like summer, like early summer 2020. And yeah, I became a dad in September of
00:45:03.620 --> 00:45:09.700
2020. So there wasn't really a lot of time there before everything just kind of changed for me,
00:45:09.700 --> 00:45:16.020
right? It's just like, yeah, my time kind of went out the window. And yeah, I think at a certain
00:45:16.020 --> 00:45:20.740
point, I don't know exactly when, but I just kind of resigned myself to the fact that,
00:45:20.740 --> 00:45:24.940
you know what, like, I think Obothers kind of find the way it is. And it's probably not
00:45:24.940 --> 00:45:31.580
something you know, with my more limited time now, it's probably not something worth continuing
00:45:31.580 --> 00:45:39.540
to work on again, because like I had, unlike when I actually built Obother in around September
00:45:39.540 --> 00:45:46.940
of 2020 I got back into full-time work. So that plus a kid was just sort of a complete
00:45:46.940 --> 00:45:51.140
change to my ability to actually do any work on that thing.
00:45:51.140 --> 00:45:54.880
Let's fast forward. So you at that point, you know, you get back into full-time work
00:45:54.880 --> 00:45:59.940
and you're you're doing that happily getting no sleep at all, but you have a little bundle
00:45:59.940 --> 00:46:08.020
of joy with you. So we fast forward, I guess a couple years and then how does up ahead
00:46:08.020 --> 00:46:11.140
or some kind of project end up coming into being?
00:46:11.140 --> 00:46:13.260
Were you looking for a project again?
00:46:13.260 --> 00:46:15.940
Or like, what's the origin story here?
00:46:15.940 --> 00:46:18.620
- What is the origin story of Up Ahead?
00:46:18.620 --> 00:46:21.180
I think I was in search of a new project.
00:46:21.180 --> 00:46:23.180
I think that's probably the best way to put it.
00:46:23.180 --> 00:46:24.780
Like I said, I kind of decided Up Ahead
00:46:24.780 --> 00:46:27.540
probably was not sort of the thing to,
00:46:27.540 --> 00:46:30.620
it wasn't the thing for me to try to take the next step.
00:46:30.620 --> 00:46:32.940
Whatever like ambiguous next step that is,
00:46:32.940 --> 00:46:35.700
just like in terms of trying to get more users,
00:46:35.700 --> 00:46:37.340
trying to build something better,
00:46:37.340 --> 00:46:39.380
trying to become a better independent app developer,
00:46:39.380 --> 00:46:41.820
Oba, there probably wasn't going to be the thing to do that.
00:46:41.820 --> 00:46:46.020
Yeah, at a certain point once life calmed down a little bit,
00:46:46.020 --> 00:46:48.880
I guess it was summer of 2021.
00:46:48.880 --> 00:46:52.100
Yeah, I think I was pretty much just searching for a project.
00:46:52.100 --> 00:46:53.940
So much that I think at a certain point,
00:46:53.940 --> 00:46:58.100
I actually remember sitting down and just working on not an app,
00:46:58.100 --> 00:47:00.300
like an app that didn't actually do anything.
00:47:00.300 --> 00:47:04.880
I was just playing with UI and just building
00:47:04.880 --> 00:47:09.260
different sort of, yeah, like imagining different ways I could
00:47:09.260 --> 00:47:12.220
like style an app, like sort of different like directions I
00:47:12.220 --> 00:47:15.580
could go in for like how to design, you know, whatever I
00:47:15.580 --> 00:47:18.920
wanted to design next without actually having any idea what it
00:47:18.920 --> 00:47:22.740
was I wanted to build. But meanwhile, I guess the the very
00:47:22.740 --> 00:47:26.020
simple sort of origin story of up ahead is just that I have
00:47:26.020 --> 00:47:29.860
always enjoyed counting down to things. I just find it's like a
00:47:29.860 --> 00:47:34.460
fun way to like give the future a bit of definition, a bit of
00:47:34.460 --> 00:47:37.840
color to be like, Oh yeah, like in three days I've got this random thing that I'm looking
00:47:37.840 --> 00:47:39.060
forward to.
00:47:39.060 --> 00:47:43.380
Whether it's, you know, a birthday or something as simple as just like, you know, a hockey
00:47:43.380 --> 00:47:45.640
game I'm looking forward to watching or whatever.
00:47:45.640 --> 00:47:47.340
And how would you do that?
00:47:47.340 --> 00:47:49.500
I would often just like have notes.
00:47:49.500 --> 00:47:54.240
Like I usually use bear for note taking, but just like some note app where I would just
00:47:54.240 --> 00:47:57.120
like write down things with dates on them.
00:47:57.120 --> 00:47:58.120
And that was it.
00:47:58.120 --> 00:48:02.340
And like, I'm imagining you have a note that's just a number and every day you'd wake up
00:48:02.340 --> 00:48:04.340
an update on your number.
00:48:04.340 --> 00:48:07.000
(both laughing)
00:48:07.000 --> 00:48:09.620
- Yeah, no, it wasn't that.
00:48:09.620 --> 00:48:12.780
It was just a plain list of, yeah,
00:48:12.780 --> 00:48:14.500
like events and dates I was looking forward to.
00:48:14.500 --> 00:48:16.420
Anyways, and I think like throughout the years,
00:48:16.420 --> 00:48:18.860
I'd often gone to the App Store and looked for apps
00:48:18.860 --> 00:48:22.020
that would count down to things and just, I don't know.
00:48:22.020 --> 00:48:23.340
I guess classic story of just,
00:48:23.340 --> 00:48:24.780
I was never really satisfied with anything
00:48:24.780 --> 00:48:26.340
that was out there.
00:48:26.340 --> 00:48:28.860
It's an extremely busy space.
00:48:28.860 --> 00:48:29.700
- Yeah, yeah.
00:48:29.700 --> 00:48:31.460
- Extremely noisy space on the App Store,
00:48:31.460 --> 00:48:33.220
but there's just so much.
00:48:33.220 --> 00:48:36.340
There are so many of them that are full of ads.
00:48:36.340 --> 00:48:39.380
There are a lot of them that are really focused on widgets,
00:48:39.380 --> 00:48:41.340
but sort of the actual in-app experience
00:48:41.340 --> 00:48:42.600
is a little bit cumbersome
00:48:42.600 --> 00:48:44.860
and just like not really interesting.
00:48:44.860 --> 00:48:48.240
Yeah, a lot of them are just really old
00:48:48.240 --> 00:48:50.260
and not really maintained anymore.
00:48:50.260 --> 00:48:52.340
So anyways, I just never really found anything
00:48:52.340 --> 00:48:54.660
that tickled me.
00:48:54.660 --> 00:48:57.300
So yeah, at a certain point, I was just like,
00:48:57.300 --> 00:48:59.460
well, this might be a good...
00:48:59.460 --> 00:49:00.660
I guess the other thing to mention
00:49:00.660 --> 00:49:02.180
is I was certainly looking for another
00:49:02.180 --> 00:49:04.340
fairly narrowly scoped project.
00:49:04.340 --> 00:49:05.660
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:49:05.660 --> 00:49:09.220
- This certainly took me way longer than I thought it would,
00:49:09.220 --> 00:49:13.140
but I'm also certainly glad that it was as
00:49:13.140 --> 00:49:14.900
relatively narrow in scope as it was,
00:49:14.900 --> 00:49:18.060
because it took me a year and a half to get out what is,
00:49:18.060 --> 00:49:19.940
like at the end of the day, in some ways,
00:49:19.940 --> 00:49:21.660
a pretty simple countdown app, right?
00:49:21.660 --> 00:49:26.220
Like I'm not building some huge, complicated product here.
00:49:26.220 --> 00:49:29.260
- But like, given your sort of style,
00:49:29.260 --> 00:49:36.260
keeping the scope narrow allows you to spend the obnoxious amount of time on the polish.
00:49:36.260 --> 00:49:41.580
Because that's like with all of your stuff, it's like that's what really makes it shine.
00:49:41.580 --> 00:49:46.980
It's not the amount of features, it's how well they're done.
00:49:46.980 --> 00:49:51.540
Yeah, and so yeah, I think I just sort of thought like a countdown app was a good vehicle
00:49:51.540 --> 00:49:58.060
for that, right? It's just like a slightly larger in scope than Obather. Also, probably
00:49:58.060 --> 00:49:59.420
quite a bit more useful.
00:49:59.420 --> 00:50:03.500
Like it felt more like the kind of app that actually might have legs.
00:50:03.500 --> 00:50:07.180
I mean, the existence of a market kind of proves that out.
00:50:07.180 --> 00:50:07.500
Yeah.
00:50:07.500 --> 00:50:11.820
So obviously the challenge there is actually getting noticed, which we can get into later.
00:50:11.820 --> 00:50:16.380
Yeah, it felt like a good vehicle for that next step to allow me to really
00:50:16.380 --> 00:50:21.260
polish things up, explore some interesting ideas around like a pretty simple core.
00:50:21.260 --> 00:50:23.580
So did you have an initial hook?
00:50:23.580 --> 00:50:30.300
I mean, I can already see the description of bear being a list of your events.
00:50:30.300 --> 00:50:38.060
And then what sort of the main skeleton of up ahead is it was that kind of the initial idea
00:50:38.060 --> 00:50:45.020
of what differentiated it? Yeah, the first thing that sort of piqued my interest in thinking
00:50:45.020 --> 00:50:48.700
through this and thinking through what it could be and what could make it interesting
00:50:50.060 --> 00:50:55.580
was sort of that main timeline view. At least all countdown apps I've ever seen the sort of in-app
00:50:55.580 --> 00:51:01.340
experiences really just here's a list of all the events you've created that you can then you know,
00:51:01.340 --> 00:51:11.100
spin widgets out of or whatever. And for me, I guess I think part of the reason I used my silly
00:51:11.100 --> 00:51:18.620
note instead of putting widgets on my home screen is because I think what I actually liked
00:51:19.180 --> 00:51:24.540
was not just knowing that there are X days until this event I'm looking forward to,
00:51:24.540 --> 00:51:30.860
but being able to look at the future more holistically, like look at the next -
00:51:30.860 --> 00:51:31.900
Up ahead, you might say.
00:51:31.900 --> 00:51:37.820
- Yeah, look up ahead at the next three weeks and be like, oh man, there's like six things
00:51:37.820 --> 00:51:41.980
that I'm looking forward to in the next three weeks and here's how they all fit in together,
00:51:41.980 --> 00:51:45.660
right? And oh, these are like back to back to back, that's going to be an awesome three days.
00:51:45.660 --> 00:51:49.980
that quickly became, I think, the sort of first differentiator for me. The first thing that I was
00:51:49.980 --> 00:51:56.380
trying to do is that timeline view that you see in up ahead now that actually shows you visually
00:51:56.380 --> 00:52:00.860
sort of how many days are passing between events and gives you this really sort of attractive way
00:52:00.860 --> 00:52:05.500
to actually scroll through your future events and also scroll through your past events too,
00:52:05.500 --> 00:52:10.700
you know, to sort of look back on on some of the fun things you've done over the past month or
00:52:10.700 --> 00:52:11.500
or whatever it might be.
00:52:11.500 --> 00:52:15.900
So you sort of just glossed over it, but the gap between the events
00:52:15.900 --> 00:52:18.940
being different, depending on the realistic gap.
00:52:18.940 --> 00:52:20.840
Where did that idea come from?
00:52:20.840 --> 00:52:24.200
I think the very first screenshot I ever saw when you were working on this
00:52:24.200 --> 00:52:28.500
had that in there, and it was kind of like a, oh, like mind blowing
00:52:28.500 --> 00:52:29.860
kind of feeling.
00:52:29.860 --> 00:52:34.400
It's a simple concept, but yeah, I don't know exactly.
00:52:34.400 --> 00:52:37.940
I think I think I was just playing.
00:52:37.940 --> 00:52:39.600
So here's what I will say.
00:52:39.600 --> 00:52:45.980
I can remember playing with a few different UI ideas that weren't that before settling
00:52:45.980 --> 00:52:48.540
on that, but we're sort of versions of that.
00:52:48.540 --> 00:52:52.180
I can remember trying to mess around with like, what was I trying to do?
00:52:52.180 --> 00:52:54.360
I was trying to like draw lines.
00:52:54.360 --> 00:52:58.540
So the events were stacked vertically, but I was trying to like just draw lines between
00:52:58.540 --> 00:52:59.540
them.
00:52:59.540 --> 00:53:04.540
But if they were further apart, I was drawing like loopy lines, like having them sort of
00:53:04.540 --> 00:53:05.860
loop around to sort of...
00:53:05.860 --> 00:53:08.180
Kind of like how messages does.
00:53:08.180 --> 00:53:09.260
Yeah, exactly.
00:53:09.260 --> 00:53:13.240
I think I was, yeah, I was thinking about that a little bit.
00:53:13.240 --> 00:53:17.900
But no, to be honest, I don't really know exactly where that idea came from.
00:53:17.900 --> 00:53:21.180
At some point, it probably just occurred to me, "Oh, it'd be cool if there was actually,
00:53:21.180 --> 00:53:25.740
if this wasn't just a normal list, if you could actually, if there was some visual interest
00:53:25.740 --> 00:53:26.740
in here."
00:53:26.740 --> 00:53:33.900
And it was tricky to get right at first, because initially, I just sort of naively tried to
00:53:33.900 --> 00:53:36.540
do something where it's like, "Okay, well..."
00:53:36.540 --> 00:53:38.460
So if you look at the gaps between events and up ahead,
00:53:38.460 --> 00:53:40.940
there's like these little segment, these line segments,
00:53:40.940 --> 00:53:42.980
they're kind of like dashed lines, right?
00:53:42.980 --> 00:53:44.700
And I was like, okay, well, I guess maybe
00:53:44.700 --> 00:53:48.320
I could have each dash be worth a day.
00:53:48.320 --> 00:53:49.700
But then immediately you're like,
00:53:49.700 --> 00:53:51.900
okay, well, that's gonna be a terrible experience
00:53:51.900 --> 00:53:54.540
'cause like if the first event I input
00:53:54.540 --> 00:53:56.980
is like a birthday that's coming up in 200 days,
00:53:56.980 --> 00:53:58.140
(both laughing)
00:53:58.140 --> 00:54:01.660
that's kind of a silly scrolling experience.
00:54:01.660 --> 00:54:04.780
So yeah, I had to kind of hone that,
00:54:04.780 --> 00:54:08.540
or yeah, figure that out, figure out how to balance that
00:54:08.540 --> 00:54:10.560
where you have that visual separation,
00:54:10.560 --> 00:54:13.080
but it doesn't create just this sort of like
00:54:13.080 --> 00:54:15.060
silly, annoying experience.
00:54:15.060 --> 00:54:16.400
- Nice.
00:54:16.400 --> 00:54:19.900
Okay, so you have the idea of a countdown app.
00:54:19.900 --> 00:54:23.440
You noodle on kind of a general design.
00:54:23.440 --> 00:54:27.760
And then you said you spent a year on this.
00:54:27.760 --> 00:54:30.520
What was, I mean, that initial thing
00:54:30.520 --> 00:54:31.920
seemed like that happened pretty quick.
00:54:31.920 --> 00:54:34.320
This is me bringing some insider information in here.
00:54:34.320 --> 00:54:39.320
But the year was a pretty long process of continual advancement.
00:54:39.320 --> 00:54:44.640
What's like, what's kind of like walk through a little bit how that went?
00:54:44.640 --> 00:54:46.200
What was it that took so long?
00:54:46.200 --> 00:54:47.200
Yeah.
00:54:47.200 --> 00:54:50.160
If only I knew.
00:54:50.160 --> 00:54:54.520
That sounded more tacky than I meant it.
00:54:54.520 --> 00:54:55.520
What indeed?
00:54:55.520 --> 00:54:57.200
Oh my gosh.
00:54:57.200 --> 00:55:02.120
Yeah, it's honestly is painful to look back at.
00:55:02.120 --> 00:55:04.000
I don't think it's my pinch tweet anymore.
00:55:04.000 --> 00:55:05.620
I probably changed it when we launched.
00:55:05.620 --> 00:55:09.660
But for a long time, my initial sort of announcement tweet
00:55:09.660 --> 00:55:11.620
of like, it's the thing you mentioned earlier.
00:55:11.620 --> 00:55:15.700
I'm going to save the world by building a Countdown app.
00:55:15.700 --> 00:55:17.620
If you look at the screenshot attached to that,
00:55:17.620 --> 00:55:22.500
it looks really similar to what Up Ahead ended up being.
00:55:22.500 --> 00:55:24.420
And so on the surface, it's really painful
00:55:24.420 --> 00:55:26.860
to look at that and go, I got to--
00:55:26.860 --> 00:55:32.220
basically, the entire timeline, that whole thing was built--
00:55:32.220 --> 00:55:36.220
At least, at least, yeah, on a surface level in like two weeks.
00:55:36.220 --> 00:55:40.300
I was very excited and I was like, yeah, like, look at all this progress I'm making.
00:55:40.300 --> 00:55:41.700
This is going to be another Oh, bother. Right.
00:55:41.700 --> 00:55:43.860
Like I'm going to have this thing out in two months.
00:55:43.860 --> 00:55:45.860
And why did it take so long?
00:55:45.860 --> 00:55:49.860
Again, just time, full time job, evenings and weekends.
00:55:49.860 --> 00:55:52.620
Kid, there's just not a lot of time to do this stuff.
00:55:52.620 --> 00:55:56.700
There were large stretches of time where I just, you know, wasn't making that much
00:55:56.700 --> 00:56:01.340
progress because it's hard to balance all the things you want to do in life.
00:56:01.380 --> 00:56:02.180
Yeah.
00:56:02.180 --> 00:56:08.880
But yeah, more concretely, certainly wrangling dates
00:56:08.880 --> 00:56:10.740
is difficult. That takes time.
00:56:10.740 --> 00:56:11.900
So I hear.
00:56:11.900 --> 00:56:15.860
Yeah, so it's one thing to stand up a UI to the extent
00:56:15.860 --> 00:56:19.060
that you can take a screenshot of it and post it to Twitter
00:56:19.060 --> 00:56:20.780
and get some likes on it.
00:56:20.780 --> 00:56:22.580
But it's another thing to actually make sure
00:56:22.580 --> 00:56:25.100
all of those weird edge cases are working properly.
00:56:25.100 --> 00:56:26.820
How are you handling recurring events?
00:56:26.820 --> 00:56:30.860
And how are you handling multi-day events?
00:56:30.860 --> 00:56:33.380
And what if an event has a time set and one of it doesn't?
00:56:33.380 --> 00:56:35.100
What if the start date has a time set,
00:56:35.100 --> 00:56:36.700
but for some reason the end date doesn't?
00:56:36.700 --> 00:56:39.500
What if an event doesn't have an end date?
00:56:39.500 --> 00:56:44.740
And how do you actually order your timeline in such a way
00:56:44.740 --> 00:56:48.780
that that always sort of feels organic and makes sense?
00:56:48.780 --> 00:56:51.100
Which if that's something-- if you've used Up Ahead
00:56:51.100 --> 00:56:52.940
and you haven't thought about that too much,
00:56:52.940 --> 00:56:54.660
then hopefully I've done my job right,
00:56:54.660 --> 00:56:56.300
because that's sort of the goal, right?
00:56:56.300 --> 00:56:57.620
Is that I should all just feel--
00:56:57.620 --> 00:56:58.820
You're hiding the complexity.
00:56:58.820 --> 00:56:59.740
Yeah.
00:56:59.740 --> 00:57:04.860
But yeah, that's not a trivial thing to get right.
00:57:04.860 --> 00:57:06.660
But then I think the other thing is to--
00:57:06.660 --> 00:57:08.780
like, honestly, we talked about Obather earlier
00:57:08.780 --> 00:57:11.140
and how it was kind of this cute little app.
00:57:11.140 --> 00:57:14.220
It was very polished.
00:57:14.220 --> 00:57:16.940
On the other hand, I do look at that app now.
00:57:16.940 --> 00:57:20.980
And there are a lot of parts of that app that, to my eyes,
00:57:20.980 --> 00:57:23.060
weren't particularly polished.
00:57:23.060 --> 00:57:29.420
And I do think I took a big extra step with Up Ahead,
00:57:29.420 --> 00:57:32.860
where with Oh, bother, there were parts of it where I was just like, OK, this is good
00:57:32.860 --> 00:57:36.100
enough. Going to move on. I'm trying to you know, I'm trying to timebox this. I'm trying
00:57:36.100 --> 00:57:41.840
to get it at the door. And I think with up ahead, I I really just tried really hard to
00:57:41.840 --> 00:57:46.580
never do that. I really tried hard with up ahead. Every sort of new feature I built,
00:57:46.580 --> 00:57:52.860
every new screen I built, I was really trying to kind of start from I don't know, from first
00:57:52.860 --> 00:57:57.340
principles, I guess, if I can say that and and figure out like, how do I make this particular
00:57:57.340 --> 00:58:04.140
thing interesting? How do I make it actually fun, right? How do I tell people how to use
00:58:04.140 --> 00:58:05.500
widgets and actually make it fun?
00:58:05.500 --> 00:58:10.700
That's where I was going to go. If anybody listening has not looked at the widget settings
00:58:10.700 --> 00:58:15.020
for Up Ahead, it is ridiculous in the best way possible.
00:58:15.020 --> 00:58:22.460
Yeah. So yeah, I think it's just like, the reason it took time is because every individual piece
00:58:22.460 --> 00:58:27.820
took time, right? It's just like, I was spending a long time thinking through every screen.
00:58:27.820 --> 00:58:33.700
How do I want my settings to work? How do I want the filtering to work? How do I, I
00:58:33.700 --> 00:58:38.700
iterated a lot on event creation, right? Like, how do I make sure that creating events feels
00:58:38.700 --> 00:58:45.740
quick and easy and fun without, but also powerful enough to not feel, you know, like there's
00:58:45.740 --> 00:58:49.420
still, there's still, you still want to give people control there, right? Like they're
00:58:49.420 --> 00:58:51.940
they're still controlling what icon they want to use
00:58:51.940 --> 00:58:55.140
and have some pretty meaningful controls
00:58:55.140 --> 00:58:57.060
around dates and the patterns.
00:58:57.060 --> 00:59:00.980
Yeah, I certainly iterated on that a lot.
00:59:00.980 --> 00:59:02.300
So yeah, short answer is I just think
00:59:02.300 --> 00:59:04.380
every piece of that app just took time.
00:59:04.380 --> 00:59:06.420
Every time I thought, oh, this will be an easy screen,
00:59:06.420 --> 00:59:08.860
this will be something I can just bang out quickly,
00:59:08.860 --> 00:59:09.720
that was never true.
00:59:09.720 --> 00:59:12.140
I always ended up pushing myself
00:59:12.140 --> 00:59:13.740
to do something a little bit different.
00:59:13.740 --> 00:59:17.460
- What was your test flight beta strategy for this?
00:59:17.460 --> 00:59:20.860
Were you seeding it out to a lot of people early on
00:59:20.860 --> 00:59:23.540
or small group of people or?
00:59:23.540 --> 00:59:26.300
- Short answer is the test flight stayed pretty small
00:59:26.300 --> 00:59:27.980
until the very, very end.
00:59:27.980 --> 00:59:32.780
I just very slowly brought more people in as I went.
00:59:32.780 --> 00:59:35.380
I think I just worried about a couple things
00:59:35.380 --> 00:59:36.500
with the test flight
00:59:36.500 --> 00:59:41.500
that probably weren't particularly well-founded,
00:59:41.500 --> 00:59:42.820
but I was very cautious
00:59:42.820 --> 00:59:45.380
not to bring too many people in too quickly.
00:59:45.380 --> 00:59:49.500
One, because I just didn't want to accidentally break
00:59:49.500 --> 00:59:50.620
a bunch of people's apps.
00:59:50.620 --> 00:59:53.620
I really wanted to make sure that when a lot of people
00:59:53.620 --> 00:59:56.460
had their hands on a beta, I wanted
00:59:56.460 --> 00:59:58.960
to make sure I was confident that I could transition them
00:59:58.960 --> 01:00:03.140
onto the real app and not break their data.
01:00:03.140 --> 01:00:05.900
Accidentally be like, oh, oops, all your data is gone.
01:00:05.900 --> 01:00:07.740
You're going to have to start again.
01:00:07.740 --> 01:00:09.820
So for a long time, I was just worried about that.
01:00:09.820 --> 01:00:11.700
I don't think that ever happened.
01:00:11.700 --> 01:00:13.180
I wanted to make sure--
01:00:13.180 --> 01:00:14.540
I kept it in a small enough circle
01:00:14.540 --> 01:00:19.100
if I had to completely break something, you know, because I realized the data model was
01:00:19.100 --> 01:00:23.220
sort of fundamentally flawed or something like that, that I felt like I could.
01:00:23.220 --> 01:00:27.740
Anyway, so yeah, I slowly just kind of opened it up round by round to people who were showing
01:00:27.740 --> 01:00:34.420
particular interest and mostly to people who I did have some like familiarity with.
01:00:34.420 --> 01:00:39.980
People who I had sort of established connections with in the past, mostly through Twitter.
01:00:39.980 --> 01:00:43.100
But yeah, then right at the end, I just kind of--
01:00:43.100 --> 01:00:45.540
I don't think I was really planning to do this
01:00:45.540 --> 01:00:46.780
until close to the end.
01:00:46.780 --> 01:00:48.500
In fact, I think at one point, I announced
01:00:48.500 --> 01:00:50.280
on the up ahead Twitter, I was like,
01:00:50.280 --> 01:00:51.940
I'm not going to do a public beta.
01:00:51.940 --> 01:00:53.860
I'm just going to push to release this thing,
01:00:53.860 --> 01:00:54.780
so stay tuned.
01:00:54.780 --> 01:00:56.620
But then at a certain point, I would--
01:00:56.620 --> 01:00:58.540
yeah, I guess I just changed my tune.
01:00:58.540 --> 01:01:02.240
I was like, all right, I should probably actually just
01:01:02.240 --> 01:01:04.460
get some people to exercise this a little bit
01:01:04.460 --> 01:01:06.460
before I press the Launch button.
01:01:06.460 --> 01:01:08.780
So yeah, opened it up pretty widely in a few waves.
01:01:08.780 --> 01:01:10.780
and very glad I did.
01:01:10.780 --> 01:01:11.820
It was super helpful.
01:01:11.820 --> 01:01:12.940
I got a lot of good feedback,
01:01:12.940 --> 01:01:14.700
managed to fix a lot of little bugs
01:01:14.700 --> 01:01:16.660
that I probably wouldn't have caught otherwise.
01:01:16.660 --> 01:01:19.100
And I do think it created some excitement,
01:01:19.100 --> 01:01:20.100
like some buzz, right?
01:01:20.100 --> 01:01:22.500
To sort of have those waves of seats opening up.
01:01:22.500 --> 01:01:24.300
- Yeah, it definitely seemed like,
01:01:24.300 --> 01:01:27.260
even during the phase before you opened it up,
01:01:27.260 --> 01:01:28.740
'cause I mean, I've talked about it on this
01:01:28.740 --> 01:01:29.860
and I've talked about it with you.
01:01:29.860 --> 01:01:32.900
I'm a big fan of the big beta test flights
01:01:32.900 --> 01:01:36.100
just in terms of trying to garner some attention
01:01:36.100 --> 01:01:37.180
leading up to a launch.
01:01:37.180 --> 01:01:39.800
there was a lot of like buzz in the like,
01:01:39.800 --> 01:01:41.980
what is this thing or how do I get access?
01:01:41.980 --> 01:01:43.640
And every time you tweet something,
01:01:43.640 --> 01:01:44.940
people would be very excited
01:01:44.940 --> 01:01:47.000
and you know, wanna know what the app was.
01:01:47.000 --> 01:01:49.080
And so it is interesting.
01:01:49.080 --> 01:01:53.080
I do think part of that works because your app is so unique.
01:01:53.080 --> 01:01:56.400
I mean, just looking at even a visual picture of it,
01:01:56.400 --> 01:01:57.400
it definitely stands out.
01:01:57.400 --> 01:01:58.960
But yeah, it was an interesting,
01:01:58.960 --> 01:02:00.580
it was interesting to see how that all played out,
01:02:00.580 --> 01:02:03.620
but I'm glad to hear that opening it up beforehand
01:02:03.620 --> 01:02:05.280
at least bared some fruit.
01:02:05.280 --> 01:02:07.200
Yeah, and I mean, I think if I'm being honest, too,
01:02:07.200 --> 01:02:13.480
I think the other fear I had, again, probably not well-founded,
01:02:13.480 --> 01:02:16.880
but I think I was just, you know, I saw some of that momentum.
01:02:16.880 --> 01:02:18.240
I saw some of that energy.
01:02:18.240 --> 01:02:20.920
And I think part of me just worried that, like,
01:02:20.920 --> 01:02:23.720
if I just opened up a public beta with 10,000 seats,
01:02:23.720 --> 01:02:26.120
everybody would get it and look at it and go, like, oh, cool,
01:02:26.120 --> 01:02:28.360
a countdown app, and then all that energy would kind of dry out.
01:02:28.360 --> 01:02:29.360
Yeah.
01:02:29.360 --> 01:02:29.880
But that's it.
01:02:29.880 --> 01:02:30.840
But I don't know.
01:02:30.840 --> 01:02:34.040
I don't-- I'm certainly not convinced that I'm right about that.
01:02:34.040 --> 01:02:36.600
you know, it could have the total opposite effect, right?
01:02:36.600 --> 01:02:38.280
Maybe that creates a network effect
01:02:38.280 --> 01:02:40.360
and all these people are talking with other people
01:02:40.360 --> 01:02:42.160
about this cool app that they're on the beta of
01:02:42.160 --> 01:02:44.200
and I know a lot of people have had success
01:02:44.200 --> 01:02:45.720
doing betas like that in the past.
01:02:45.720 --> 01:02:49.320
So I think for me, ultimately, I just kind of,
01:02:49.320 --> 01:02:50.880
I was just following my nose a little bit.
01:02:50.880 --> 01:02:54.500
It was just like, what do I feel most comfortable with?
01:02:54.500 --> 01:02:57.160
And for most of development, I just, yeah,
01:02:57.160 --> 01:02:59.920
I felt more comfortable keeping it small
01:03:00.800 --> 01:03:04.800
just to kind of guard myself a little bit from,
01:03:04.800 --> 01:03:06.840
yeah, either breaking things for everybody
01:03:06.840 --> 01:03:08.800
or losing the momentum I had.
01:03:08.800 --> 01:03:09.920
- So there's a bunch of features
01:03:09.920 --> 01:03:11.680
that I would love to talk about
01:03:11.680 --> 01:03:13.440
that we definitely don't have time for,
01:03:13.440 --> 01:03:16.360
but one thing I do wanna touch on though
01:03:16.360 --> 01:03:18.200
is the whole pattern thing
01:03:18.200 --> 01:03:21.600
and the unlock system that you built around that.
01:03:21.600 --> 01:03:23.400
Where did that idea come from?
01:03:23.400 --> 01:03:25.240
Or I guess explain what it is first.
01:03:25.240 --> 01:03:27.840
- Yeah, the patterns in Up Ahead,
01:03:27.840 --> 01:03:31.200
I think are probably the most interesting hook
01:03:31.200 --> 01:03:33.560
and ended up being sort of the most interesting
01:03:33.560 --> 01:03:35.400
differentiator, I guess, in this app.
01:03:35.400 --> 01:03:37.240
Basically the way it works is,
01:03:37.240 --> 01:03:40.060
so when you create an event,
01:03:40.060 --> 01:03:41.240
when you first open the app,
01:03:41.240 --> 01:03:42.960
you can set a name, you set a date,
01:03:42.960 --> 01:03:45.180
you set a color, you choose an icon,
01:03:45.180 --> 01:03:48.120
you get these nice little sort of bubbly events
01:03:48.120 --> 01:03:49.320
on your timeline.
01:03:49.320 --> 01:03:50.600
But then what can happen,
01:03:50.600 --> 01:03:54.280
usually driven by the content of your event's name.
01:03:54.280 --> 01:03:58.520
So for example, if you type in Charlie's birthday,
01:03:58.520 --> 01:04:01.180
then you'll get this pop-up that says,
01:04:01.180 --> 01:04:02.960
hey, congrats, you unlocked a new pattern
01:04:02.960 --> 01:04:04.800
and you'll unlock a birthday pattern.
01:04:04.800 --> 01:04:06.580
And basically what that'll be,
01:04:06.580 --> 01:04:08.640
I don't exactly remember what's on the birthday pattern,
01:04:08.640 --> 01:04:09.880
but it's sort of like a,
01:04:09.880 --> 01:04:12.440
it's like a wallpaper that you can apply to your events.
01:04:12.440 --> 01:04:14.160
So it's a few different icons
01:04:14.160 --> 01:04:18.160
sort of randomly arranged and sized.
01:04:18.160 --> 01:04:20.360
And it just, it adds a bunch of visual interest
01:04:20.360 --> 01:04:21.760
to your events.
01:04:21.760 --> 01:04:24.320
- Yeah, so that's what patterns are.
01:04:24.320 --> 01:04:26.560
And yeah, you can unlock them in a few different ways.
01:04:26.560 --> 01:04:28.840
Like I said, often they're triggered
01:04:28.840 --> 01:04:31.140
by the content of your events
01:04:31.140 --> 01:04:33.600
or even sometimes the date of your events.
01:04:33.600 --> 01:04:34.600
Like there's actually a whole bunch
01:04:34.600 --> 01:04:36.600
of different potential triggers.
01:04:36.600 --> 01:04:38.400
A lot of which I'm not even really using right now,
01:04:38.400 --> 01:04:40.040
but I have lots of ideas
01:04:40.040 --> 01:04:43.460
for how I can use different triggers in the future.
01:04:43.460 --> 01:04:45.920
But then there's also a whole other set of patterns
01:04:45.920 --> 01:04:47.400
that'll just unlock more
01:04:47.400 --> 01:04:50.080
based on sort of an achievement system, right?
01:04:50.080 --> 01:04:52.320
So when you create your first three events,
01:04:52.320 --> 01:04:53.280
you unlock a pattern.
01:04:53.280 --> 01:04:55.320
And then I think after that, once you hit 10,
01:04:55.320 --> 01:04:56.360
you unlock another pattern.
01:04:56.360 --> 01:04:58.040
Once you hit 20, you unlock another pattern.
01:04:58.040 --> 01:05:01.000
And there's a few other types of achievements as well.
01:05:01.000 --> 01:05:02.600
So it basically just continues.
01:05:02.600 --> 01:05:05.040
The idea is as you use the app
01:05:05.040 --> 01:05:06.780
without even really thinking too much about it,
01:05:06.780 --> 01:05:09.360
you should fairly frequently, at least at first,
01:05:09.360 --> 01:05:10.600
get these little hits of like,
01:05:10.600 --> 01:05:12.880
oh, I just unlocked a new pattern, that's awesome.
01:05:12.880 --> 01:05:14.200
And you can apply it to that event
01:05:14.200 --> 01:05:16.520
and then you can use it as much as you want after that.
01:05:16.520 --> 01:05:18.880
- And like you say, without trying too hard,
01:05:18.880 --> 01:05:21.440
But one thing just from talking to you,
01:05:21.440 --> 01:05:24.320
I already know is there are a lot of people
01:05:24.320 --> 01:05:27.140
who do try very hard and have already treated it
01:05:27.140 --> 01:05:28.640
like a game to be beaten.
01:05:28.640 --> 01:05:30.340
- Yeah, I won't reveal how many patterns
01:05:30.340 --> 01:05:31.440
there are in total right now,
01:05:31.440 --> 01:05:34.400
but I know, I think the highest I've seen
01:05:34.400 --> 01:05:37.200
is somebody told me that they had unlocked 55,
01:05:37.200 --> 01:05:39.520
which is like completely out of control.
01:05:39.520 --> 01:05:41.140
And this was within a few days.
01:05:41.140 --> 01:05:44.040
Like I have no idea how they managed to find all these.
01:05:44.040 --> 01:05:46.040
They must've just spent hours.
01:05:46.040 --> 01:05:48.000
- And that's not all of them, is that correct?
01:05:48.000 --> 01:05:49.960
- That's not all of them. - Oh, okay, there you go.
01:05:49.960 --> 01:05:54.120
So whoever that person is, there's still more out there.
01:05:54.120 --> 01:05:56.500
- Anyways, yeah, so that's a lot of fun.
01:05:56.500 --> 01:05:57.440
- That's awesome.
01:05:57.440 --> 01:05:59.580
Okay, so you're spending all this time
01:05:59.580 --> 01:06:04.240
making the ludicrously polished and delightful-to-use app.
01:06:04.240 --> 01:06:07.460
You have a test flight, you've got a little bit of buzz,
01:06:07.460 --> 01:06:09.080
you already have somewhat of a following
01:06:09.080 --> 01:06:12.600
just from your time writing and all that.
01:06:12.600 --> 01:06:14.520
Now we're getting to launch day.
01:06:14.520 --> 01:06:17.260
What was kind of your plan going into that?
01:06:17.260 --> 01:06:18.740
There's a couple things else.
01:06:18.740 --> 01:06:22.940
So I think one thing I'll say up front is,
01:06:22.940 --> 01:06:25.180
I think I started to really burn myself out
01:06:25.180 --> 01:06:28.660
on this app at a certain point, pretty late.
01:06:28.660 --> 01:06:30.560
Like I think I did a fairly good job
01:06:30.560 --> 01:06:33.500
of keeping it together for the most part
01:06:33.500 --> 01:06:35.900
over a pretty long development process.
01:06:35.900 --> 01:06:40.100
But it was slow and it can be really hard.
01:06:40.100 --> 01:06:42.620
I find it can be really hard like psychologically
01:06:42.620 --> 01:06:44.540
when you really wanna finish something
01:06:44.540 --> 01:06:47.060
and you just like every day that goes by
01:06:47.060 --> 01:06:51.540
and you don't make progress you're really aware of the fact that you didn't make progress that day.
01:06:51.540 --> 01:06:54.940
And that's like a really exhausting feeling to have day after day after day.
01:06:54.940 --> 01:07:03.820
I say that just to say that I think by the time I got I finally got to like OK I can actually launch this thing.
01:07:03.820 --> 01:07:16.820
I just don't think I had a lot left in the tank to really put serious effort in a way that I hadn't in the past into like launching this thing and marketing it.
01:07:16.820 --> 01:07:20.260
I did a few things like we talked about.
01:07:20.260 --> 01:07:22.300
I opened the beta up pretty widely,
01:07:22.300 --> 01:07:24.300
so I started to get some interest there.
01:07:24.300 --> 01:07:27.220
I opened it up for pre-order as well,
01:07:27.220 --> 01:07:30.660
which was an interesting thing.
01:07:30.660 --> 01:07:33.220
It's an App Store feature where basically you can,
01:07:33.220 --> 01:07:35.060
even though the app is free to download,
01:07:35.060 --> 01:07:38.840
you can allow people to get in there ahead of time and pre-order it so
01:07:38.840 --> 01:07:41.740
that on the day that the app is released,
01:07:41.740 --> 01:07:44.140
it'll automatically download to people's phones.
01:07:44.140 --> 01:07:47.980
So again, that was just a nice way to kind of point people in the direction of the app.
01:07:47.980 --> 01:07:57.940
And kind of the, the like little secret there is you can push updates while after you've already like released the app, right?
01:07:57.940 --> 01:07:58.700
Yeah.
01:07:58.700 --> 01:08:02.580
Which feels like a weird loophole in, in app store connect.
01:08:02.580 --> 01:08:13.700
Cause as far as I know, typically, like if you're just, if you've got a build that's been reviewed and is ready to be released, you can't, you can't like push, you can't sort of fix
01:08:13.700 --> 01:08:18.980
something without actively and push a new build without actively rejecting that build that's been
01:08:18.980 --> 01:08:23.460
reviewed. And when you have something up for pre-order, that's not the case. I was able to just
01:08:23.460 --> 01:08:29.300
like start working on new builds, fix little issues, get those reviewed while my 1.0 was still
01:08:29.300 --> 01:08:34.660
waiting in the like ready to be released state. So that was really handy. But yeah, I mean,
01:08:34.660 --> 01:08:40.660
I think the other thing that kind of hurt me on launch is, again, I was just I didn't want to
01:08:41.300 --> 01:08:43.820
delay launch because I was just so exhausted by the whole thing.
01:08:43.820 --> 01:08:48.220
But I had launched like right after iOS 16 came out.
01:08:48.220 --> 01:08:48.500
Yeah.
01:08:48.500 --> 01:08:52.580
So from a press point of view, that that was not a good move.
01:08:52.580 --> 01:08:55.500
It wasn't the same week as iOS 16, right?
01:08:55.500 --> 01:08:57.380
No, I think it was the following week.
01:08:57.380 --> 01:09:01.220
But it meant that like when I would or yeah, it was close to it a week or two after.
01:09:01.220 --> 01:09:04.540
And it meant that when I was reaching out to press and trying to get some interest
01:09:04.540 --> 01:09:08.260
on that angle, I think I think those folks were just like, yeah, they were
01:09:08.260 --> 01:09:10.860
they were busy dealing with much more important things.
01:09:10.860 --> 01:09:13.820
All right, so I ended up getting some press coverage,
01:09:13.820 --> 01:09:17.480
but it was like, it was sort of last minute press coverage
01:09:17.480 --> 01:09:19.540
where they were reacting to the fact that,
01:09:19.540 --> 01:09:21.660
oh, there's this app out that people are talking about,
01:09:21.660 --> 01:09:23.780
so let's quickly write something about it.
01:09:23.780 --> 01:09:27.140
And yeah, I wasn't really able to kind of set that up
01:09:27.140 --> 01:09:28.580
in the way that I would have liked.
01:09:28.580 --> 01:09:32.220
So anyway, yeah, I relied mostly on Twitter.
01:09:32.220 --> 01:09:36.100
Thankfully, the app Twitter account itself
01:09:36.100 --> 01:09:40.660
did really well over time, just like gaining followers.
01:09:40.660 --> 01:09:47.060
it's like, yeah, there's a good number of people who were specifically invested in when
01:09:47.060 --> 01:09:48.420
this app was going to come out.
01:09:48.420 --> 01:09:51.380
And so, yeah, there was just like a lot of energy around that.
01:09:51.380 --> 01:09:53.980
I posted on product on that didn't do too much.
01:09:53.980 --> 01:09:58.500
But again, it's just like all these little avenues that I yeah, people tend to go.
01:09:58.500 --> 01:10:01.580
But yeah, I didn't I didn't put too much more effort into it beyond that.
01:10:01.580 --> 01:10:03.420
So then how how did the launch go?
01:10:03.420 --> 01:10:06.460
Yeah, I mean, it hit expectations.
01:10:06.460 --> 01:10:10.380
Yeah, basically what I was looking for here,
01:10:10.380 --> 01:10:16.360
and I think this was true when I built Obather as well.
01:10:16.360 --> 01:10:19.140
What I was ultimately looking for was
01:10:19.140 --> 01:10:24.300
a really solid reason to continue building this thing.
01:10:24.300 --> 01:10:29.100
A way that I could justify to myself that this is going to be,
01:10:29.100 --> 01:10:32.340
having spent all this time putting into it,
01:10:32.340 --> 01:10:35.460
having put all of this time into it up to this point,
01:10:35.460 --> 01:10:37.580
Can I justify continuing to put time into it?
01:10:37.580 --> 01:10:39.960
And I think, oh, bother.
01:10:39.960 --> 01:10:41.880
Ultimately, the answer was no.
01:10:41.880 --> 01:10:45.100
And I think with up ahead, the answer so far has been yes.
01:10:45.100 --> 01:10:46.760
Launch went really well.
01:10:46.760 --> 01:10:51.140
I've been really excited by how many people.
01:10:51.140 --> 01:10:54.480
Basically, how many people have converted,
01:10:54.480 --> 01:10:57.560
like how many people have downloaded the app and are excited enough about it
01:10:57.560 --> 01:11:01.520
to actually purchase a subscription or even purchase
01:11:01.520 --> 01:11:04.940
make a lifetime purchase, which, by the way, that was like a
01:11:04.940 --> 01:11:09.240
a late, late, late, like 1.02.
01:11:09.240 --> 01:11:11.600
Like I had already put up my 1.0 for review
01:11:11.600 --> 01:11:14.480
and somehow finally I convinced myself
01:11:14.480 --> 01:11:16.400
that I should probably add a lifetime purchase
01:11:16.400 --> 01:11:19.560
because enough people, just through the pre-order,
01:11:19.560 --> 01:11:22.080
just from people going to the app store to pre-order
01:11:22.080 --> 01:11:24.360
and like scrolling down to read the fine print.
01:11:24.360 --> 01:11:26.880
- Super hidden thing that Apple does not want anybody
01:11:26.880 --> 01:11:27.720
to actually look at.
01:11:27.720 --> 01:11:29.400
- Yeah, and people were noticing,
01:11:29.400 --> 01:11:31.320
oh, this is subscription only and reaching out to me
01:11:31.320 --> 01:11:34.680
and being like, hey, like, can you add a lifetime option?
01:11:34.680 --> 01:11:37.600
And initially I felt uncomfortable about doing that
01:11:37.600 --> 01:11:40.240
because basically because of what I was just saying,
01:11:40.240 --> 01:11:43.440
which is that my approach to releasing this app
01:11:43.440 --> 01:11:46.920
was I want to see if I can justify continuing to work on it.
01:11:46.920 --> 01:11:50.480
Which means that for me, there's a chance that I won't.
01:11:50.480 --> 01:11:52.040
For me, there's a chance that this thing,
01:11:52.040 --> 01:11:53.040
maybe this fizzles out.
01:11:53.040 --> 01:11:54.040
I'm going to try.
01:11:54.040 --> 01:11:55.600
I'm going to keep working on it for a little while,
01:11:55.600 --> 01:11:57.880
but maybe, I mean, put it this way,
01:11:57.880 --> 01:12:00.720
maybe I won't still be working on this app
01:12:00.720 --> 01:12:02.040
three years down the road, right?
01:12:02.040 --> 01:12:06.840
which tends to be the lower limit on like the lifetime purchase multiplier, right?
01:12:06.840 --> 01:12:11.720
Like people usually say like, "At least 3x your annual price."
01:12:11.720 --> 01:12:13.560
Often people say four or five or six.
01:12:13.560 --> 01:12:16.760
So I felt uncomfortable about that for a while.
01:12:16.760 --> 01:12:21.480
But I think ultimately, where I've landed is just sort of a shift of perspective there,
01:12:21.480 --> 01:12:23.480
which is that like, often people...
01:12:23.480 --> 01:12:26.600
How do I put it?
01:12:26.600 --> 01:12:29.320
I don't think...
01:12:29.320 --> 01:12:31.960
Lifetime probably isn't the best word for that.
01:12:31.960 --> 01:12:35.000
Unfortunately, that's just the word that people look for.
01:12:35.000 --> 01:12:39.040
But I think really what people are paying for there is just like the freedom to not
01:12:39.040 --> 01:12:40.960
have to worry about a subscription.
01:12:40.960 --> 01:12:44.320
And also it gives people the ability to support me more up front, right?
01:12:44.320 --> 01:12:46.780
Like financially, that actually helps quite a bit.
01:12:46.780 --> 01:12:50.200
If people want to say, you know what, I'm going to I'm going to basically pay for three
01:12:50.200 --> 01:12:55.920
years of this app right now, instead of paying for it month by month or year by year.
01:12:55.920 --> 01:12:58.520
That's actually sort of a show of support, right?
01:12:58.520 --> 01:13:00.320
that I sort of started to realize a lot of people
01:13:00.320 --> 01:13:02.260
actually want to be able to do.
01:13:02.260 --> 01:13:03.900
So where was I with that?
01:13:03.900 --> 01:13:05.860
I kind of went on a tangent there.
01:13:05.860 --> 01:13:07.080
- I really like that framing,
01:13:07.080 --> 01:13:09.760
'cause I feel like you're having
01:13:09.760 --> 01:13:12.300
the exact same feelings I have,
01:13:12.300 --> 01:13:14.340
but coming to a different conclusion.
01:13:14.340 --> 01:13:16.560
'Cause I've always been afraid of subscription
01:13:16.560 --> 01:13:20.860
because dark noise is not my full-time job.
01:13:20.860 --> 01:13:22.140
It's not what I spend all my time on,
01:13:22.140 --> 01:13:26.260
and I'm afraid of the idea of having a sort of,
01:13:26.260 --> 01:13:27.760
is it Damocles, is that what that's called?
01:13:27.760 --> 01:13:32.840
the thing you know the thing around your neck that like people are paying me monthly for
01:13:32.840 --> 01:13:39.800
this or yearly for this I need to be continuing to add value but I don't have that feeling
01:13:39.800 --> 01:13:45.680
now Dark Noise is just paid up front but like like you said there's an assumption with some
01:13:45.680 --> 01:13:50.040
people at least that when you pay up front that this will be supported for at least a
01:13:50.040 --> 01:13:55.600
while and I've never really thought about that and especially if you have the subscription
01:13:55.600 --> 01:13:59.920
sitting right there next to it, Lifetime certainly gives an impression that like,
01:13:59.920 --> 01:14:02.600
this will be supported for some time.
01:14:02.600 --> 01:14:05.920
Whereas maybe paid up front, there's a little bit more of that safety net of
01:14:05.920 --> 01:14:09.800
like, you're paying for what it is now and not necessarily what it'll be in the
01:14:09.800 --> 01:14:10.240
future.
01:14:10.240 --> 01:14:10.960
Exactly.
01:14:10.960 --> 01:14:12.680
But yeah, I've never really thought of that.
01:14:12.680 --> 01:14:17.320
And I guess the idea was in your head that if you realize that this wasn't going to
01:14:17.320 --> 01:14:20.720
be worth your time or whatever, that you could, you can always turn the
01:14:20.720 --> 01:14:24.360
subscription piece off and then make it just a paid up front or not paid up front,
01:14:24.360 --> 01:14:27.240
but a single price or whatever.
01:14:27.240 --> 01:14:30.480
Well, but also people can cancel their subscriptions.
01:14:30.480 --> 01:14:31.960
So that's the thing, right?
01:14:31.960 --> 01:14:32.920
Like, right.
01:14:32.920 --> 01:14:37.960
So just like hypothetically, if I decide a year and a half in that, like, OK, I'm
01:14:37.960 --> 01:14:42.080
going to I'm going to wind down support for this app, which again, at this point, I
01:14:42.080 --> 01:14:43.560
absolutely don't think that's the case.
01:14:43.560 --> 01:14:47.520
Like just to reiterate, like launch has gone well and I'm really excited to keep
01:14:47.520 --> 01:14:51.600
building this thing. But, you know, in that situation, while it means that monthly
01:14:51.600 --> 01:14:54.640
subscribers if they want can just stop right away and annual subscribers,
01:14:54.640 --> 01:14:55.840
they've only paid for two years.
01:14:55.840 --> 01:14:56.120
Right.
01:14:56.120 --> 01:14:59.560
And if they're still getting value out of it, then they can just keep using it.
01:14:59.560 --> 01:14:59.840
Sort of.
01:14:59.840 --> 01:15:02.040
No, that's keeps the ball in the user's court.
01:15:02.040 --> 01:15:03.720
I that's, I like that.
01:15:03.720 --> 01:15:04.120
I don't know.
01:15:04.120 --> 01:15:07.200
I it's, it's funny hearing you describe it that way.
01:15:07.200 --> 01:15:09.640
Cause it's the same insecurities.
01:15:09.640 --> 01:15:13.160
Uh, but yeah, manifested sort of a different way.
01:15:13.160 --> 01:15:14.440
Um,
01:15:14.440 --> 01:15:21.320
anyway, so yeah, all that to say a lot.
01:15:21.360 --> 01:15:26.120
I guess the other thing I wanted to mention on that, which I just found sort of shocking,
01:15:26.120 --> 01:15:31.600
frankly, is just the percentage of people that are actually willing to pay lifetime
01:15:31.600 --> 01:15:33.300
for an app like this.
01:15:33.300 --> 01:15:40.120
I think it's just been a good lesson for me in the very self-evident but not always intuitive
01:15:40.120 --> 01:15:50.980
idea that my purchasing behavior is not always representative of people's purchasing behavior.
01:15:50.980 --> 01:15:57.020
For me, just the reality for me is like if somebody on Twitter was hyping up this new
01:15:57.020 --> 01:16:01.100
app for a year and a half that they only worked on in evenings and weekends and they finally
01:16:01.100 --> 01:16:05.340
shipped it and it's a countdown app, like personally I don't know.
01:16:05.340 --> 01:16:07.900
Well, let me be careful about this.
01:16:07.900 --> 01:16:11.540
If it's an independent developer I want to support, for sure I'll go and support them.
01:16:11.540 --> 01:16:15.980
But like just generally speaking, that type of situation is not the type of situation
01:16:15.980 --> 01:16:20.220
where, yeah, I'll spend like $40 and hope that, you know,
01:16:20.220 --> 01:16:22.100
I continue to get value out of this app,
01:16:22.100 --> 01:16:24.660
just like at the drop of a hat, right?
01:16:24.660 --> 01:16:25.660
- I think you hit it though.
01:16:25.660 --> 01:16:28.040
You just hit it right there, which is like,
01:16:28.040 --> 01:16:30.740
you're thinking these random people on Twitter,
01:16:30.740 --> 01:16:32.140
why are they supporting me?
01:16:32.140 --> 01:16:35.140
But then when you reverse it, and you're like,
01:16:35.140 --> 01:16:38.380
oh, you know, I won't give any specific examples,
01:16:38.380 --> 01:16:40.740
but yeah, like people that you know and respect,
01:16:40.740 --> 01:16:43.260
it's like even, 'cause I've definitely done that,
01:16:43.260 --> 01:16:45.280
where I've bought lifetime versions of people's apps
01:16:45.280 --> 01:16:48.180
that I don't really intend to necessarily use.
01:16:48.180 --> 01:16:52.980
I just really like the work that they do, and I'll probably use it sometimes.
01:16:52.980 --> 01:16:56.240
And I want them to be successful in this thing and keep going.
01:16:56.240 --> 01:17:00.280
Yeah. And Lifetime is honestly a lot of times better for that,
01:17:00.280 --> 01:17:03.020
because then it's not a subscription sitting there.
01:17:03.020 --> 01:17:05.840
And I'm like, I should probably cancel that because I don't really use this.
01:17:05.840 --> 01:17:07.820
But it's a person I like and I want, you know.
01:17:07.820 --> 01:17:10.180
Yeah, that's interesting.
01:17:10.180 --> 01:17:12.640
And I mean, and I think the other thing, too, that is just.
01:17:13.720 --> 01:17:19.560
that I think is still just true is that I think software like this is severely undervalued,
01:17:19.560 --> 01:17:28.600
generally speaking, right? Like, in a certain way, I don't like, I guess my fear was like,
01:17:28.600 --> 01:17:37.080
I thought that most people would absolutely balk at like spending $30, 30 US dollars,
01:17:37.080 --> 01:17:43.560
which here is like 40 bucks on a countdown app, right? Like that just that my fear was that that
01:17:43.560 --> 01:17:50.120
that would sound ridiculous to, you know, 99% of people. But then, yeah, I guess all I'm trying to
01:17:50.120 --> 01:17:54.040
say is, on the other hand, like, I don't think it's ridiculous. Like, I know it's not ridiculous,
01:17:54.040 --> 01:17:58.760
because I've spent the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours building this thing, right? Like
01:17:58.760 --> 01:18:04.760
it's, this stuff takes time. And I think apps, I mean, we all know this, but apps, I think,
01:18:04.760 --> 01:18:09.400
for a long time have been severely sort of devalued because of trends and sort of like
01:18:09.400 --> 01:18:15.240
freemium models and trends in you know just like free apps that sell your data to make money and
01:18:15.240 --> 01:18:21.560
all that stuff that we don't need to get into but. And just the concept of value for digital goods is
01:18:21.560 --> 01:18:31.480
really complicated to like comprehend yeah because at a certain scale it's not devalued like I don't
01:18:31.480 --> 01:18:33.960
I don't know how to describe that, but yeah.
01:18:33.960 --> 01:18:38.240
Software is weird, or digital goods of any kind are weird.
01:18:38.240 --> 01:18:40.240
And you can make a lot of money or a little money
01:18:40.240 --> 01:18:43.360
and it doesn't equate to the cost to making it
01:18:43.360 --> 01:18:48.360
in a way that manufacturing pencil erasers has a cost.
01:18:48.360 --> 01:18:50.700
You know what I mean?
01:18:50.700 --> 01:18:52.680
Yeah, it's a weird thing.
01:18:52.680 --> 01:18:54.600
- Yeah, which is why it's then so frustrating
01:18:54.600 --> 01:18:57.240
when you get those inevitable one-star reviews
01:18:57.240 --> 01:18:59.560
that are just like, this is a scam.
01:18:59.560 --> 01:19:04.120
how could you charge this much money for a countdown app?
01:19:04.120 --> 01:19:09.840
It's like, I'm probably making like 70 cents an hour
01:19:09.840 --> 01:19:11.440
on the work I've done right now.
01:19:11.440 --> 01:19:15.600
Anyways, yeah.
01:19:15.600 --> 01:19:17.340
But that's just the way it is.
01:19:17.340 --> 01:19:20.000
- So then how, let's see.
01:19:20.000 --> 01:19:22.880
So from a press angle,
01:19:22.880 --> 01:19:25.800
you mentioned that you did get some press.
01:19:25.800 --> 01:19:27.200
How did that end up going?
01:19:27.200 --> 01:19:29.420
I know there was a nine to five article.
01:19:29.420 --> 01:19:31.840
Yeah, I got a quick nine to five article.
01:19:31.840 --> 01:19:33.640
I think I think there are a couple other.
01:19:33.640 --> 01:19:38.160
The funny thing is, like, personally, I'm just not even that plugged into a lot of
01:19:38.160 --> 01:19:45.340
these. Sort of press outlets, I probably should be more so in order to keep track
01:19:45.340 --> 01:19:49.660
of these things. But yeah, I think there was a write up on I'm more the thing that
01:19:49.660 --> 01:19:55.340
moved the needle the most in terms of I mean, this isn't press, but in terms of
01:19:55.340 --> 01:20:03.260
sort of like external, yeah, external people writing about or hyping up the app is there's
01:20:03.260 --> 01:20:07.060
a there's this Twitter account.
01:20:07.060 --> 01:20:08.780
The account's name is basic Apple guy.
01:20:08.780 --> 01:20:10.060
He's just got a bunch of followers.
01:20:10.060 --> 01:20:16.300
Anyway, he's he's actually I don't really know who this person is, but they're Canadian.
01:20:16.300 --> 01:20:23.380
And somehow, you know, this person stumbled across up ahead and was just totally enamored
01:20:23.380 --> 01:20:30.520
with it and ended up tweeting about it a couple times, ended up writing this really nice,
01:20:30.520 --> 01:20:33.880
like really well-written review about it.
01:20:33.880 --> 01:20:37.500
You know, to take nothing away from sort of the typical press reviews that you sometimes
01:20:37.500 --> 01:20:40.080
get with this stuff, like often they're fairly quick, right?
01:20:40.080 --> 01:20:43.740
Like, you know, a site like 9to5 writes about a lot of stuff and so often it's just a quick
01:20:43.740 --> 01:20:45.260
like, "Hey, there's a new app here.
01:20:45.260 --> 01:20:46.880
Here's what it does."
01:20:46.880 --> 01:20:52.600
But this was like a very sort of loving blog post about actually how Up Ahead works and
01:20:52.600 --> 01:20:54.620
and what this person likes about it.
01:20:54.620 --> 01:20:56.660
Anyways, and this person has a huge Twitter following.
01:20:56.660 --> 01:20:58.360
So that really helped move the needle
01:20:58.360 --> 01:21:00.720
and give me sort of a second spike
01:21:00.720 --> 01:21:04.700
in terms of downloads beyond the initial launch day.
01:21:04.700 --> 01:21:05.540
So that was cool.
01:21:05.540 --> 01:21:07.640
And it's also just nice to,
01:21:07.640 --> 01:21:09.360
yeah, it's really nice and validating
01:21:09.360 --> 01:21:11.600
to read something like that,
01:21:11.600 --> 01:21:13.960
to read somebody who's really putting the time into--
01:21:13.960 --> 01:21:17.120
- And gets it, recognizes the details you put in.
01:21:17.120 --> 01:21:18.840
- Yeah, and I guess that that's the key too, right?
01:21:18.840 --> 01:21:20.720
It's like, it's somebody who's,
01:21:20.720 --> 01:21:23.600
to go way back to the start of our conversation
01:21:23.600 --> 01:21:25.680
about the app, where I was saying that
01:21:25.680 --> 01:21:27.500
I was coming at this app from a specific angle,
01:21:27.500 --> 01:21:29.400
which is like, I don't just want countdowns
01:21:29.400 --> 01:21:32.680
on my home screen, I want a more holistic view
01:21:32.680 --> 01:21:35.240
of my timeline of good things.
01:21:35.240 --> 01:21:38.240
And so yeah, it's really cool when somebody seems to
01:21:38.240 --> 01:21:40.520
get that and that really resonates with them.
01:21:40.520 --> 01:21:41.660
- That's awesome.
01:21:41.660 --> 01:21:44.120
So you mentioned that was a sort of a secondary bounce.
01:21:44.120 --> 01:21:49.080
So presumably, you had the typical launch spike.
01:21:49.080 --> 01:21:52.860
This is a subscription app, so you do have recurring revenue,
01:21:52.860 --> 01:21:54.200
but obviously downloads and stuff
01:21:54.200 --> 01:21:55.880
is still gonna have that giant spike.
01:21:55.880 --> 01:21:58.120
How have things gone since then?
01:21:58.120 --> 01:22:00.480
We're what, a couple weeks out?
01:22:00.480 --> 01:22:02.160
Actually, I could look at my upper head
01:22:02.160 --> 01:22:04.560
to see exactly when. (laughs)
01:22:04.560 --> 01:22:06.280
- Yeah, we're almost three weeks out now.
01:22:06.280 --> 01:22:07.520
- Three weeks out, okay.
01:22:07.520 --> 01:22:10.040
Yeah, so how's it been going since then?
01:22:10.040 --> 01:22:13.920
- Yeah, I mean, I don't know how into the details
01:22:13.920 --> 01:22:15.400
we wanna get here, but--
01:22:15.400 --> 01:22:18.560
- I guess how it impacts you moving forward.
01:22:18.560 --> 01:22:20.920
You mentioned it's worth working on,
01:22:20.920 --> 01:22:22.320
and then you kind of doubled down on that.
01:22:22.320 --> 01:22:26.240
- So basically I have been pleasantly surprised
01:22:26.240 --> 01:22:29.760
by the tail, I guess, right?
01:22:29.760 --> 01:22:34.760
Like by how frequently people still seem to be discovering
01:22:34.760 --> 01:22:38.960
and ultimately paying for the app.
01:22:38.960 --> 01:22:40.320
- It's an indication that you've tapped
01:22:40.320 --> 01:22:43.840
into that existing market and not just, you know,
01:22:43.840 --> 01:22:47.200
your following slash tech Twitter.
01:22:47.200 --> 01:22:48.360
- Yeah, that's the interesting thing.
01:22:48.360 --> 01:22:50.540
That's something that I still don't know.
01:22:50.540 --> 01:22:53.200
And that's certainly the, that's the next step for me.
01:22:53.200 --> 01:22:56.460
Like beyond the development work that I have left to do,
01:22:56.460 --> 01:22:58.400
there's a lot of stuff I want to do.
01:22:58.400 --> 01:22:59.880
A lot of features I want to add to the app,
01:22:59.880 --> 01:23:03.920
but I don't, I'm not convinced yet that I've really,
01:23:03.920 --> 01:23:05.640
I don't know what the right like analogy is here,
01:23:05.640 --> 01:23:08.520
but although the tail has been long,
01:23:08.520 --> 01:23:12.680
I'm not convinced that it is flat yet.
01:23:12.680 --> 01:23:14.280
I think it's still like,
01:23:14.280 --> 01:23:17.000
I'm not sure that I have actually sort of hit that point
01:23:17.000 --> 01:23:21.080
where things are actually going to flatten and maybe start to like go up again.
01:23:21.080 --> 01:23:26.520
Right. Like I don't think I've certainly in terms of like apps or optimization and stuff like I'm not there yet.
01:23:26.520 --> 01:23:34.520
Right. Like there are so many apps you know so many countdown apps that are ranking above me and you know anything you would search for.
01:23:34.520 --> 01:23:36.000
So yeah. So I don't know.
01:23:36.000 --> 01:23:37.920
I guess like I have been heartened.
01:23:37.920 --> 01:23:40.560
Yeah. By just how many people still seem to be discovering it.
01:23:40.600 --> 01:23:47.480
but it seems to me like that's still largely either word of
01:23:47.480 --> 01:23:54.000
mouth or just still Twitter bubble fringes.
01:23:54.000 --> 01:23:59.720
Yeah, and the really exciting thing for me now is just that,
01:23:59.720 --> 01:24:04.600
relatively speaking, I don't have a ton of downloads yet.
01:24:04.600 --> 01:24:06.720
In other words, I know there's a ton of
01:24:06.720 --> 01:24:09.000
untapped potential here, right?
01:24:09.000 --> 01:24:11.120
Like, and the challenge is just...
01:24:11.120 --> 01:24:11.960
- The TAM is large.
01:24:11.960 --> 01:24:13.440
- Yeah, the TAM is large,
01:24:13.440 --> 01:24:17.040
and my slice of that right now is minuscule.
01:24:17.040 --> 01:24:17.880
- Yeah.
01:24:17.880 --> 01:24:19.640
- It's negligible.
01:24:19.640 --> 01:24:23.040
And so I'm really excited to, like, yeah,
01:24:23.040 --> 01:24:24.080
I know there's something there.
01:24:24.080 --> 01:24:25.520
I know there's like a piece of that pie
01:24:25.520 --> 01:24:26.440
that I can go and grab.
01:24:26.440 --> 01:24:28.040
And I'm especially heartened by the fact that,
01:24:28.040 --> 01:24:30.040
you know, the people who are finding this,
01:24:30.040 --> 01:24:31.460
many of them are actually converting
01:24:31.460 --> 01:24:33.060
and are leaving really good reviews
01:24:33.060 --> 01:24:34.220
and are giving me good feedback.
01:24:34.220 --> 01:24:35.960
Like there's something here.
01:24:35.960 --> 01:24:36.920
there's excitement here.
01:24:36.920 --> 01:24:40.400
And so I just, I need to go and find more eyeballs now.
01:24:40.400 --> 01:24:41.720
- Yeah, interesting.
01:24:41.720 --> 01:24:45.720
Yeah, I guess like getting those download numbers,
01:24:45.720 --> 01:24:48.020
conversions and good reviews,
01:24:48.020 --> 01:24:50.560
all of that stuff's presumably gonna help
01:24:50.560 --> 01:24:52.720
your App Store optimization.
01:24:52.720 --> 01:24:55.600
Have you gotten any like Apple features yet
01:24:55.600 --> 01:24:57.760
or gotten on any lists or anything like that?
01:24:57.760 --> 01:25:01.520
- What's funny is I didn't even realize I had,
01:25:01.520 --> 01:25:02.860
in fact, I think at some point,
01:25:02.860 --> 01:25:06.700
Like, you know, we were talking and, and you asked me like,
01:25:06.700 --> 01:25:07.540
oh, do you have any features?
01:25:07.540 --> 01:25:09.720
And I was like, no, like weirdly I don't,
01:25:09.720 --> 01:25:12.040
but I just like, wasn't looking properly.
01:25:12.040 --> 01:25:13.900
Like, I don't know, I don't even know what I did.
01:25:13.900 --> 01:25:16.460
Like I was using one of these tools and I didn't, anyways.
01:25:16.460 --> 01:25:20.460
It so happens that yes, the app was on a few of these lists.
01:25:20.460 --> 01:25:21.860
I don't know, what do you, do you,
01:25:21.860 --> 01:25:24.220
do you think those lists do anything at this point?
01:25:24.220 --> 01:25:26.560
- I think certain lists make a huge difference.
01:25:26.560 --> 01:25:28.740
- I think certain lists can.
01:25:28.740 --> 01:25:30.380
- And that's the trick.
01:25:30.380 --> 01:25:34.740
I think so, and this is me, a very much not expert
01:25:34.740 --> 01:25:36.960
that should not be broadcasting my opinions
01:25:36.960 --> 01:25:39.220
to lots of people as if I know what I'm talking about,
01:25:39.220 --> 01:25:40.700
but here we go.
01:25:40.700 --> 01:25:45.700
I think, like for example, for Dark Noise,
01:25:45.700 --> 01:25:48.520
I knew it's a similar thing, right?
01:25:48.520 --> 01:25:49.360
It's a white noise app.
01:25:49.360 --> 01:25:50.620
There's a trillion of them,
01:25:50.620 --> 01:25:51.900
all with their own different things.
01:25:51.900 --> 01:25:53.540
Some of them do stuff way better than me.
01:25:53.540 --> 01:25:55.540
Some of them are old, whatever.
01:25:55.540 --> 01:25:59.580
I knew it was gonna be hard to compete on pure keywords
01:25:59.580 --> 01:26:01.480
and doing all that, right?
01:26:01.480 --> 01:26:02.980
'Cause there's so many of them.
01:26:02.980 --> 01:26:07.300
But if you search the word white noise,
01:26:07.300 --> 01:26:09.340
there's a list or a couple,
01:26:09.340 --> 01:26:12.040
depending on how you do your query and where you're at,
01:26:12.040 --> 01:26:14.500
that are like relaxing sleep sounds.
01:26:14.500 --> 01:26:16.080
And it's a curated list by Apple.
01:26:16.080 --> 01:26:18.340
I had that as like an explicit goal,
01:26:18.340 --> 01:26:19.860
'cause I was like, that feels like a cheat code
01:26:19.860 --> 01:26:21.600
to like rank higher.
01:26:21.600 --> 01:26:23.100
Because if I search that,
01:26:23.100 --> 01:26:25.040
sure, dark noise might not show up at the top,
01:26:25.040 --> 01:26:29.560
but that list shows, and a lot of people will click on that.
01:26:29.560 --> 01:26:31.800
And so I presume countdown apps
01:26:31.800 --> 01:26:33.580
might have similar things like that,
01:26:33.580 --> 01:26:36.960
but that almost feels like that type of thing's important,
01:26:36.960 --> 01:26:38.480
potentially. - Yeah.
01:26:38.480 --> 01:26:43.000
- And then the other one is like new versions of iOS.
01:26:43.000 --> 01:26:47.320
If you get in on the like great apps for dark mode
01:26:47.320 --> 01:26:49.160
or whatever this is, great apps,
01:26:49.160 --> 01:26:53.560
or whenever the dynamic island support comes in,
01:26:53.560 --> 01:26:55.720
presumably they'll have a list for that.
01:26:55.720 --> 01:26:58.400
And if you can get in on that, which of course is,
01:26:59.260 --> 01:27:01.700
maybe it's a fool's folly,
01:27:01.700 --> 01:27:02.580
I don't know what the right word is,
01:27:02.580 --> 01:27:04.220
to spend all your time trying to go for those
01:27:04.220 --> 01:27:06.500
'cause it's like there's 10 apps
01:27:06.500 --> 01:27:08.580
and through no fault of your own,
01:27:08.580 --> 01:27:09.940
you might not get chosen.
01:27:09.940 --> 01:27:13.040
But I've definitely felt the effects
01:27:13.040 --> 01:27:14.740
for long periods of time,
01:27:14.740 --> 01:27:17.420
not just during that week of being in those lists.
01:27:17.420 --> 01:27:19.120
So I do think there's a lot of value
01:27:19.120 --> 01:27:20.840
and I think a lot of that,
01:27:20.840 --> 01:27:23.460
if you build a good app,
01:27:23.460 --> 01:27:26.380
maintain a strong reputation and good reviews,
01:27:26.380 --> 01:27:28.860
I think those just kind of come and you can't--
01:27:28.860 --> 01:27:29.700
- Yeah.
01:27:29.700 --> 01:27:31.460
- Play the game going for them,
01:27:31.460 --> 01:27:33.300
or at least I don't know how to.
01:27:33.300 --> 01:27:36.100
- Yeah, so the way I'm thinking about it right now
01:27:36.100 --> 01:27:37.820
along those lines is just, yeah,
01:27:37.820 --> 01:27:39.380
my understanding of it is the same as you.
01:27:39.380 --> 01:27:41.260
So yeah, just to complete that last point,
01:27:41.260 --> 01:27:42.220
like, yeah, I agree with you.
01:27:42.220 --> 01:27:43.820
I think a lot of those lists can be valuable.
01:27:43.820 --> 01:27:46.180
I think the ones that are like,
01:27:46.180 --> 01:27:49.500
when you're, you know, like three swipes in
01:27:49.500 --> 01:27:53.740
on like the new and noteworthy utilities page,
01:27:53.740 --> 01:27:54.580
you know, like it's just like,
01:27:54.580 --> 01:27:57.780
there are certainly a lot of those sort of automated lists
01:27:57.780 --> 01:27:59.700
that I don't think move the needle at all anymore.
01:27:59.700 --> 01:28:00.700
- Right.
01:28:00.700 --> 01:28:04.220
- But yeah, there are definitely some that do.
01:28:04.220 --> 01:28:07.460
- I think the hidden thing is the fact that some of those
01:28:07.460 --> 01:28:09.260
will show up in search results.
01:28:09.260 --> 01:28:11.260
I think it can make them have a bigger impact
01:28:11.260 --> 01:28:13.880
than it seems like at first blush.
01:28:13.880 --> 01:28:18.020
- So yeah, I mean, so I think my goal now
01:28:18.020 --> 01:28:21.660
is I'm not gonna worry about that too much.
01:28:21.660 --> 01:28:23.880
I think the best thing I can do at this point
01:28:23.880 --> 01:28:27.660
is keep building, is keep updating the app, right?
01:28:27.660 --> 01:28:33.140
keep it active, keep talking about it, keep trying to organically, you know, have people
01:28:33.140 --> 01:28:34.140
find it.
01:28:34.140 --> 01:28:40.740
But I think my sense with those sort of App Store features is, well, like you said, I
01:28:40.740 --> 01:28:42.340
think they can sort of come with time, right?
01:28:42.340 --> 01:28:47.540
Like if you can sort of show, whether you're showing somebody curating something or just
01:28:47.540 --> 01:28:52.660
showing an algorithm that like, the app is active, that you're actively updating it,
01:28:52.660 --> 01:28:55.300
that you're continuing to get good reviews, right?
01:28:55.300 --> 01:29:01.620
like, you know, I think there's just sort of a certain like profile of these types of apps that
01:29:01.620 --> 01:29:05.700
yeah, that Apple wants to sort of surface in those lists.
01:29:05.700 --> 01:29:11.220
Well, we use the word Apple often as a entity as if it's a singular thing. But I exactly,
01:29:11.220 --> 01:29:16.420
I think a lot of those, I don't know this at all for like a fact. But my understanding
01:29:16.420 --> 01:29:22.980
through grapevines is that like, there's there's kind of a, like nomination thing that can happen
01:29:22.980 --> 01:29:28.660
internally. And I think that's part of why building up that reputation using like Apple's
01:29:28.660 --> 01:29:35.940
API as well, those types of things will increase the chance that somebody internally will notice
01:29:35.940 --> 01:29:40.660
and like your app and nominate it. And if multiple people are nominating it from multiple angles,
01:29:40.660 --> 01:29:46.980
maybe it's more likely. It comes back to sort of the cliche of like, if you build a good thing,
01:29:47.620 --> 01:29:53.540
you don't automatically get anything, but over time, your odds definitely are higher than if
01:29:53.540 --> 01:29:59.940
you're building a sort of crummy thing. So yeah, I mean, so look out for live activity going up
01:29:59.940 --> 01:30:05.060
ahead. Dynamic Island, just gonna sit there the entire time counting down to your birthday,
01:30:05.060 --> 01:30:10.020
whether you like it or not. In seconds. It's always going to be active in the Dynamic Island.
01:30:10.020 --> 01:30:14.340
Okay, that it's like forming into a feature request in my mind now. That would be interesting,
01:30:14.340 --> 01:30:17.940
right? Is like, because once you get close, it would be kind of fun, right?
01:30:17.940 --> 01:30:20.180
Right. I don't know what it
01:30:20.180 --> 01:30:26.580
maybe it would give you a decent one of the retweets, maybe more important than, you know,
01:30:26.580 --> 01:30:31.940
being actually functional. Yeah. Maybe I'll just design it and tweet a screenshot of it
01:30:31.940 --> 01:30:36.900
and that'll be enough. Okay. So last thing I actually just noticed this the other day,
01:30:36.900 --> 01:30:42.100
you you tweeted out a I don't want to call it a road map because that's the wrong word, because
01:30:42.660 --> 01:30:49.140
Similar to I think some themes we've talked about here. I'm guessing that as a result of you not
01:30:49.140 --> 01:30:55.300
wanting to over commit yourself, you didn't put a timeline or even a specific order on it, but you
01:30:55.300 --> 01:31:00.660
sort of tweeted out a list of the different ideas that you're sort of mulling over. What was the
01:31:00.660 --> 01:31:08.820
what was kind of the thought process behind that? I think so. Part of it is just that I have gotten
01:31:08.820 --> 01:31:14.520
a lot of feedback through a whole bunch of different channels, right? Like email and
01:31:14.520 --> 01:31:20.340
Twitter mostly. And a lot of the feedback was very similar, right? Like a lot of feedback
01:31:20.340 --> 01:31:24.840
was touching on a lot of these features that I already kind of knew, like I had in the
01:31:24.840 --> 01:31:29.000
back of my mind as like things I wish I could have gotten into V1. And I definitely like
01:31:29.000 --> 01:31:37.360
to get too soon. And so to some extent, this was just a nice way to sort of broadcast to,
01:31:37.360 --> 01:31:40.720
I guess not everybody who's giving me feedback, but certainly a good chunk of the people who
01:31:40.720 --> 01:31:41.720
have given me feedback.
01:31:41.720 --> 01:31:46.160
So I think the people who have given me feedback are often the folks who, you know, are on
01:31:46.160 --> 01:31:49.480
Twitter, like following the up ahead account, like I really invested in the app and have
01:31:49.480 --> 01:31:50.920
been for a while.
01:31:50.920 --> 01:31:55.200
So this is a way to sort of let everybody know in one fell swoop that, you know, I hear
01:31:55.200 --> 01:32:00.120
you and here's, you know, I agree with you and here are a bunch of the things I want
01:32:00.120 --> 01:32:01.120
to do.
01:32:01.120 --> 01:32:06.120
Yeah, I think the other thing is just I guess I wanted to,
01:32:06.120 --> 01:32:09.040
how do I put it?
01:32:09.040 --> 01:32:11.640
I'm hoping to keep the excitement
01:32:11.640 --> 01:32:13.720
and the engagement up to some extent.
01:32:13.720 --> 01:32:15.760
I guess that's sort of where it comes from
01:32:15.760 --> 01:32:18.860
is that I wanna, my goal here,
01:32:18.860 --> 01:32:22.680
while pacing myself and not completely burning myself out,
01:32:22.680 --> 01:32:26.600
my goal is to keep sharing what I'm working on
01:32:26.600 --> 01:32:28.040
like I've been doing this whole time, right?
01:32:28.040 --> 01:32:30.120
Like that's very much been,
01:32:30.120 --> 01:32:35.160
The whole reason Abba had built the momentum, whatever momentum it did, is because I was
01:32:35.160 --> 01:32:39.480
very forthcoming about sharing things often on Twitter and stuff. So I just wanted to establish
01:32:39.480 --> 01:32:45.160
that I want to keep doing that. And yeah, and here are some things you can look for. And yeah,
01:32:45.160 --> 01:32:48.600
I just thought it'd be a good way to kind of pull people in, make them feel like they're,
01:32:48.600 --> 01:32:53.720
even though we're past launch now, you can still sort of be a part of this. You're sort of like,
01:32:53.720 --> 01:32:59.320
welcome into the club. I still want to hear your feedback, right? Yeah. So I guess that was the
01:32:59.320 --> 01:33:00.360
the general thinking, honestly,
01:33:00.360 --> 01:33:01.840
I didn't think too hard about it.
01:33:01.840 --> 01:33:04.560
It just sort of felt like a fun little thing to do.
01:33:04.560 --> 01:33:08.800
- We have definitely gone a decent amount of time here.
01:33:08.800 --> 01:33:10.520
I'm glad we had time to do that.
01:33:10.520 --> 01:33:12.000
But I'm not gonna let you go
01:33:12.000 --> 01:33:14.880
without asking the question I ask everybody, which is,
01:33:14.880 --> 01:33:16.940
so what is a person or people out there
01:33:16.940 --> 01:33:20.320
that have inspired you that you'd recommend others check out?
01:33:20.320 --> 01:33:22.200
- There's a ton, obviously.
01:33:22.200 --> 01:33:23.800
This is always a tough question,
01:33:23.800 --> 01:33:26.920
'cause there's so many folks, again,
01:33:26.920 --> 01:33:28.760
like largely through Twitter for me,
01:33:28.760 --> 01:33:31.200
who have really inspired me.
01:33:31.200 --> 01:33:33.560
It's been really interesting to watch a lot of people's
01:33:33.560 --> 01:33:35.120
journeys doing very similar things
01:33:35.120 --> 01:33:37.000
to the type of stuff I'm trying to do.
01:33:37.000 --> 01:33:39.800
I will, I think one person I'll call out
01:33:39.800 --> 01:33:43.520
just because I think it's sort of the independent app
01:33:43.520 --> 01:33:48.520
that is closest in spirit, at least design wise,
01:33:48.520 --> 01:33:51.320
to a lot of the work that I like to do,
01:33:51.320 --> 01:33:54.240
and that's Brian Mueller's Carrot.
01:33:54.240 --> 01:33:57.480
I know that's a very popular app.
01:33:57.480 --> 01:34:02.680
certainly not a deep cut by any stretch. But the thing that really inspires me about his work and
01:34:02.680 --> 01:34:10.280
the thing that I strive to do in my work is the way that balances being a good platform citizen,
01:34:10.280 --> 01:34:18.760
building apps that feel like iOS apps, while also just like being chock full of personality
01:34:18.760 --> 01:34:25.160
and interesting UI decisions and color and fun and that's, you know, up ahead,
01:34:25.160 --> 01:34:27.160
definitely strives to do exactly that.
01:34:27.160 --> 01:34:28.960
It's a really delicate balance, right?
01:34:28.960 --> 01:34:33.160
Of like, traditionally, I mean, every developer at some point has said,
01:34:33.160 --> 01:34:37.440
what if I'm trying to do what Apple would do if they built X, Y, Z?
01:34:37.440 --> 01:34:42.320
And that can take the form of, you know, it looks like the settings app, right?
01:34:42.320 --> 01:34:44.160
Which is what Apple would really do.
01:34:44.160 --> 01:34:47.920
But you can also like people would describe carrot that way
01:34:47.920 --> 01:34:51.120
to certain degrees, if you're looking at the actual features
01:34:51.120 --> 01:34:53.520
and the support and the system integrations it has, right?
01:34:54.040 --> 01:35:00.920
it does what you expect it to do as a as a platform citizen while also being completely
01:35:00.920 --> 01:35:07.720
insane in the best way possible. And yeah, that those are the apps that really, at least for me,
01:35:07.720 --> 01:35:12.840
probably in part as a, you know, iOS developer, those really like hit home.
01:35:12.840 --> 01:35:21.400
Yeah, one more one more personal call it quickly is most of his task app. I've just been really
01:35:21.400 --> 01:35:28.240
So he I think that app was launched like not long after Oh, bother.
01:35:28.240 --> 01:35:31.740
I want to say it was like June 2020 or something when he launched that.
01:35:31.740 --> 01:35:35.320
Again, it was just like, as far as I understand, it's just a solo effort.
01:35:35.320 --> 01:35:38.240
It was the beginning out of nothing.
01:35:38.240 --> 01:35:39.040
Yeah, exactly.
01:35:39.040 --> 01:35:42.000
And so and so, yeah, that's that's the part that is inspiring to me.
01:35:42.000 --> 01:35:45.660
It's just like how how far it seems like he's been able to take that.
01:35:45.660 --> 01:35:48.920
And again, my understanding is he's actually got multiple folks
01:35:48.920 --> 01:35:50.500
working with him now on that thing.
01:35:50.500 --> 01:35:56.340
And yeah, that's just like, he's really managed to turn that into a snowball that that has
01:35:56.340 --> 01:35:57.880
continued to roll.
01:35:57.880 --> 01:35:58.880
And it's a great app.
01:35:58.880 --> 01:36:02.260
And it's just I think, again, that's actually another good example of just like great platform
01:36:02.260 --> 01:36:05.060
citizen but with some, you know, really nice design touches.
01:36:05.060 --> 01:36:10.060
So yeah, just been really inspired over this whole time where I've kind of like I've gone
01:36:10.060 --> 01:36:15.300
up and down on no bother and had a kid and you know, had these times where I was totally
01:36:15.300 --> 01:36:19.060
not doing anything and then ramped up on up ahead and got it launched.
01:36:19.060 --> 01:36:22.580
He's just been like making this thing happen.
01:36:22.580 --> 01:36:23.660
And it's pretty cool to see.
01:36:23.660 --> 01:36:24.860
- Those are excellent.
01:36:24.860 --> 01:36:27.780
And I very much share those feelings.
01:36:27.780 --> 01:36:30.860
I will try to wrap this up so you can go to sleep
01:36:30.860 --> 01:36:32.960
'cause I know it's late over there.
01:36:32.960 --> 01:36:34.620
I mean, it's almost late over here.
01:36:34.620 --> 01:36:37.180
So where can people find you and your work
01:36:37.180 --> 01:36:40.980
and your blog that you're about to kick off right away?
01:36:40.980 --> 01:36:42.460
People should look forward to that.
01:36:42.460 --> 01:36:47.180
- Yeah, so I'm on Twitter @danielmgauthier.
01:36:47.180 --> 01:36:48.140
If you don't know how to spell that,
01:36:48.140 --> 01:36:49.700
I assume it'll be in the show notes.
01:36:49.700 --> 01:36:53.500
The blog is danielgoetzee.me, I believe.
01:36:53.500 --> 01:36:55.300
Anyway, yeah, those are the two places you can find me.
01:36:55.300 --> 01:36:56.460
- Yes, it is.
01:36:56.460 --> 01:36:59.940
- And the Up Ahead app specifically on Twitter is,
01:36:59.940 --> 01:37:02.060
I believe, @theupaheadapp.
01:37:02.060 --> 01:37:04.460
- Awesome, well, thank you for coming on.
01:37:04.460 --> 01:37:08.020
This was really fun.
01:37:08.020 --> 01:37:12.220
I mean, as shown by me maybe taking it too long,
01:37:12.220 --> 01:37:15.180
but I've been looking forward to this for a really long time.
01:37:15.180 --> 01:37:19.380
I like, I've tried, I have a problem with gushing over apps
01:37:19.380 --> 01:37:22.420
a lot in this, but this app in particular,
01:37:22.420 --> 01:37:26.760
from the first time you sent me one of those screenshots,
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people like who followed me for a long time know
01:37:29.100 --> 01:37:33.980
that I like tweeting out widgets of whatever countdown app
01:37:33.980 --> 01:37:35.040
of the week I was using.
01:37:35.040 --> 01:37:38.160
And so it hit a very specific thing for me.
01:37:38.160 --> 01:37:42.740
And then the timeline view just totally clicked with me
01:37:42.740 --> 01:37:46.180
in a way that I open the app every day.
01:37:46.180 --> 01:37:47.740
Like it's not just a widget app,
01:37:47.740 --> 01:37:50.500
it really is like things I'm looking forward to.
01:37:50.500 --> 01:37:53.380
Sometimes I let things that I shouldn't put in there
01:37:53.380 --> 01:37:55.300
that are not positive things sneak in
01:37:55.300 --> 01:37:57.420
because it's actually convenient.
01:37:57.420 --> 01:38:00.420
But for the most part, it's just this like
01:38:00.420 --> 01:38:03.500
joyous little bundle of happiness
01:38:03.500 --> 01:38:04.780
that I get to open in the morning
01:38:04.780 --> 01:38:07.460
to remind myself of when the next movie
01:38:07.460 --> 01:38:09.060
I'm looking forward to or video game
01:38:09.060 --> 01:38:11.900
or event with my kids or whatever is happening.
01:38:11.900 --> 01:38:15.860
And so I cannot recommend the app enough to people.
01:38:15.860 --> 01:38:19.660
And I'm so glad that you got it out there and that it's good enough that you're going
01:38:19.660 --> 01:38:23.020
to keep it alive because selfishly, I just want this thing to survive.
01:38:23.020 --> 01:38:24.020
Well, thank you.
01:38:24.020 --> 01:38:25.020
That's awesome.
01:38:25.020 --> 01:38:26.020
That means a lot.
01:38:26.020 --> 01:38:31.780
And yeah, I'm excited to see what's next.
01:38:31.780 --> 01:38:32.940
Thanks for listening.
01:38:32.940 --> 01:38:35.740
This episode was edited by Jonathan Ruiz.
01:38:35.740 --> 01:38:40.100
If you'd like to discuss the show, you can find me on Twitter at underscore Chuckie C,
01:38:40.100 --> 01:38:42.580
or tweet the show directly @LaunchedFM.
01:38:42.580 --> 01:38:44.780
I'd really appreciate a rating or review
01:38:44.780 --> 01:38:46.620
in your podcast app of choice.
01:38:46.620 --> 01:38:51.620
And you can find show notes and more at LaunchedFM.com.
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