Hitting #1 on the App Store by Partnering with Hank Green — Bria Sullivan, Focus Friend

0:00Spoiler alert, Focus Fred hit number one on the app store. I had about like 200,000 downloads to 2 million. I've learned that the smartness and the reason why someone is successful in an indie journey is not whether they're a good engineer or not. I think the reason that someone will be successful is their instinct for product and their instinct for marketing. Trying to get an engineer to figure out marketing, they're like, "No, I don't have to." I'm like, "No, you do." Welcome to Launched. I'm Charlie Chapman and today I'm excited to bring you

0:31the co-creator behind the delightful focus timer app, Focus Friend, Bria Sullivan. Bria, welcome to the show. Hi. So excited to be here. So before we get into sort of your backstory, I always like to give you a chance to do a really quick elevator pitch for the app. We'll we'll focus mostly on Focus Friend just so that people know where we're headed. What is Focus Friend? So Focus Friend is a focus timer that uh you can set a specific time and then you have a little bean character that focuses with you. And if you finish that timer that you set, then you get an award and you can like decorate a house for your little bean character. And it's

1:26an app I created with a YouTuber named Hank Green. But first, I want to give everyone an introduction into who you are. So, the three questions I always ask to kind of kick off this conversation is where are you from? Do you have a formal education related to what you're doing? and then we can talk about, you know, what your career was like leading up to sort of your indie development. I am from about an hour outside of LA and like Los Angeles, California. I have lived in a lot of places and

1:56now I'm back to where I'm from cuz I have a family now and I need lots of family help. Yes. And Yes. makes a big difference. Yeah. Yes, it does. and I do have a formal education in computer science specifically, but I've been making apps since 2010. I taught myself my my freshman year

2:18of college. I like chose computer engineering as a as a degree, but I didn't really know what it was. I was just like, let me just choose something. And I didn't know that it made that programming is how you make apps. And the iPhone, I think there they were on the 3GS at the time. And there was like a ton of different Android apps being or Android phones being launched. And I taught myself phone development specifically. And that was native like you were building with what Objective C or Java like what was kind of the platform of choice at that time? Android first because that was the

2:56phone that I could afford at that time. And then as I really started to get into app development, that's when I got a Mac and then got an iPhone and taught myself iOS development. And did you jump right into, you know, building apps and releasing them on the store and kind of starting a business right away? I was 18 when the first app came out. Wow. So, how did that go? Were you just instantly rolling in in cash and you live in a mansion in LA somewhere in the hills? I wish that was definitely the pipe dream that I had because there were a lot of people at my school that were doing that

3:32or that had known people that were doing that. There were a lot of people making apps and living off them and that was something that I like really wanted to do. But my first app was like literally just a like a calculator type of thing. And then the second one was a little bit more successful and it like again I was an 18-year-old girl and if anyone knows anything about 18-year-old girls, this is probably true now. We were really really into zodiac signs at that time. I made a zodiac compatibility app for like dating and it was just like a a little app and it did well but I had

4:15no idea how to monetize it. So again, I was not making any money, but like downloads were good. Yeah. Yeah. Was it I guess it was free then. It wasn't like paid up front or anything cuz those were kind of the only options. Correct. Yeah, it was free. Did you keep pursuing this as a an indie thing or did you kind of go into the typical career path and get kind of an engineering job or something like that? I was indie and I had that like full intention of being indie like when I graduated. I almost even dropped out of school cuz I went to school in California and I had was like

4:48super into like the like let's see I was it was 2010 to 2014 so just startups were so fun at that time. You wanted to start a company out of your garage. Typical California. Yeah. Yeah. And like I went to school about like a 3-hour drive from San Francisco. I had driven up to San Francisco a few times and I had wanted to do that, but I had like a family event happen where it just kind of like my entire career trajectory changed. I had done the like internships at Microsoft and I was planning on starting a startup once I graduated, but just family stuff happened that I was like,

5:30I can't emotionally handle starting a company anymore. And so I got a job at Microsoft and that was just I had an offer and I was like this is all I can handle. I can't interview anymore. The indie has been the intention ever since I learned how to code. So it's been a long time to coming for it to reach here. Okay. So you went kind of traditional career route. Did you keep building apps on the side? Were you kind of just always tinkering? I kept going with the Zodiac stuff cuz there were there there was another app called like Co-Star that had come out. a lot of different

6:04zodiac compatibility apps. So, I still kept doing that. I made a wedding registry one for a bit, but I was doing it by myself and I I had been burned by someone I had worked with before, so I was like just doing it on my own. And then so from Microsoft, I went to Google as an engineer and then I learned that you can't make apps like you can't make apps at Google specifically without them owning. Same with Apple, right? Yes, they own the store and it's a conflict of interest, I guess. So, I had at least written down when you start you had to write down like anything that you

6:40had already started working on prior inventions. So, I I wrote down all the things I had just a little prototype of and luckily like yeah, I feel like I was covered at least. So, I'm like, okay, at least if I want to work on any of these things, like I should be fine. That's cool. So, then how did you get back into into the game? In 2019, like around 2019, I'd been doing some help. I was doing another entrepreneurship thing, helping people without formal educations get jobs at places like Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn or just jobs in general. It was like a passion of mine. I was

7:14also consulting for people people's startups and helping them like hire engineers and things like that. Just it was really fun. It was really fun working with startups. I'm really curious because that's a thing that I I get a lot of questions about and I don't know as well what is in a quick quick way. What do you recommend for people who are wanting to get into into into tech that don't have, you know, a formal education background? I'm not going to lie, it was really hard. That's kind of part of the answer of like why I stopped. It was so emotionally draining for me to be like

7:50working with people every day and working super hard to try and help them get there and just like it was just a lot of emotional weight for like them to keep getting rejections and I'm like I have a lot of empathy and to the point where like their rejections felt like my own rejections and it was just it was a lot and so that's part of why I went back to India. I'm like I think that India might be a better route for people without formal educations. I had the itch like I was at Google and I was working with startups and I'm like I want to get back into feeling how good it felt to

8:24be indie again and make a product. And then for all of these people, I felt like I was kind of also selling them a pipe dream too, like of being at a place like I was working at. And I'm like, let me I'm going to leave and I'm going to see if I can create a like match my tech salary with an indie app. I am curious what you think, you know, now that it's been a number of years. Do you think that the indie route is like a maybe more viable path for somebody trying to learn? Cuz the reason I asked that question at the beginning, do you have a formal education related to what you do? is

8:59in part because it's maybe 50% of people I talk to on here that have had successful indie apps don't have an education at least related to to tech. So to me I feel like the answer might be yes, but you obviously work with more of those people. So I'm curious what you think. I think it's like a yes with a caveat. I have learned that the the smartness and the the reason why someone

9:21is successful in an indie journey is not whether they're a good engineer or not. That is very true. Yes, that's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. I think the reason that someone will be successful is their instinct for product and their instinct for marketing and their ability to like do that hard thing that they really don't want to do. I have found that marketing is something like trying to get an engineer to figure out marketing like they're like no I don't have to. I'm like no you do. And maybe that's actually why such a high percentage of people I talk to here aren't don't have that formal education because I think there is this sort of you know alchemy of different

10:03backgrounds that are required for this to work as well as a very very heavy dose of luck that is definitely a major factor. I think luck matters for some things. I think someone could get to a 50 to 120K in yearly like income. I could think that they can do that without that much luck personally. Yeah, I guess that's true. I think in a lot of the stories luck is a big factor, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a sort of framework that you can follow. Yeah, there's a there's a little bit of a formula. Yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point. Okay. So, I I

10:41appreciate the diversion cuz that that is a topic that I find very interesting. But getting back to it, so you you decided you wanted to get back in the game, the indie game, and so you did. So, you left you left the the corporate job or did you do a kind of feathering out where you worked on side stuff? I guess you couldn't if you were at Google. I left um but it was all of the things in the universe kind of happened at the right time for me to leave. I was already planning on leaving and then a pandemic happened. that helped. I was already planning on like really downscaling my

11:13life. Like I had built up this savings. I moved in with my grandparents. Like a lot changed. But the universe and like the whole year matched up with what I needed anyway cuz I'm like, well, there's nothing to spend money on anyway because I'm just staying at my grandma's house. Yeah. So, I left in 2020 and I had not done game development before. So, I wanted to get into iOS again and apps again, but I just didn't have an idea. And the only idea I had was in games. So, I'm like, let's just let's learn how to make games, I guess. So, that was your your first step into this was let's

11:52build a game. You use Unity, is that correct? Yes. Well, actually, at first I built the app, you had built an app in Flutter. Oh, in Flutter. Okay. Yeah. So, I built it in Flutter and there wasn't a game engine for Flutter at that time. I wrote my own game engine. Oh goodness. Okay. Yeah. Don't do that. And what was the game that game is? It was an idle clicker. It was like a little idle clicker game. If you're familiar with like cookie sort of paper clip like you keep like hitting buttons and then you kind of gain the ability to make more faster and Yeah. Yeah. That was really popular for

12:26a while. Yeah. So I did that but I did a spin. I wanted to make a game about boba like bubble tea. And um this is a throughine through your career. I feel like we'll get more into boba. Yeah. So, I knew I wanted the that boba specifically to be the thing that makes people that would be the subject of what I'm making. And then in the pandemic, the only lines I saw outside even in like April of 2020 were at boba shops. Like not at Yeah. Not anywhere else except for like boba shops. So, I'm like, "Okay, maybe this is a good decision." So, the game was what? You're running a a bobati

13:05like shop basically. Yeah. And during that time I was also learning marketing cuz that had been like my weak spot at that time. I did a Udemy course and I I think Udemy is where you know there's like Udacity. There's so many. But I remember it at least taught me the basics of marketing and then that's when I started like doing my own marketing on TikTok. And that's where I think as a marketing person and a product person, I feel like that's where things really really started to um to change for me. So you took a it was just one of those Udemy courses or something like that on

13:41it was on like UGC marketing or like what what specifically was it about? No, it was a general marketing course just learning like the basics of marketing like what how to craft a marketing message. So at that time it was still talking about like different platforms that didn't exist anymore but the concepts were still things that I could take away from. So I only finished I want to say the first like 20% of it but I felt like I got what I needed from it. But you felt like it was a valuable sort of platform to build on. So that's what helped me get to I'm like okay where

14:14do my customers like I I know I want to reach people who are around this age group like this type of archetype. I had a couple cousins in that age range. I called them and asked them, "Hey, what what platforms do you use the most?" And they all said Tik Tok at that time. And so I started that's when I learned how to become a Tik Tok creator. So you had a game by that point you had gotten to the point where either was it released already by then or Okay. So you were working on a

14:38game and you started kind of crafting a message or at least in your head crafting a message. Did you start pre-arketing before you released it or kind of what's the order of operations there? Yes, I started pre-arketing it, but I already kind of had an idea of what I was building for that app. I started marketing it in around November and then I launched it in February. So, I was marketing it and getting pre-orders and all of that up until February. The app did okay, like you know, it made an income, like it made an income and it was okay, but I realized it wasn't the app that these people were looking for. And so instead I started building a product. When you

15:20say marketing prearketing was that these were like Tik Tok videos showing off the app. Is that what it was? And then when the app actually came out it wasn't exactly what people were looking for. And so like it did all right but that's when I was like I'm going to re kind of reverse what I'm going to do for the next app cuz it was just the the app wasn't working to where I'm like this is probably not worth working on. So, but I still had this audience that I was building. I was still posting on Tik Tok. And so, I'm like, let me reverse it and like now I know exactly what people

15:54are looking for. Let me make something based on what they're looking for and um what they like. That audience was follow like this is your like a personal account. The audience was following you as a person. So when you talked about the journey, it was the journey of building the app was part of

16:10this, not just like you're marketing the game as a as if you're a company or something like that. Yeah. I was doing it like, hey, this is something that I'm making follow along type of thing. Okay. You're building an audience, which actually this is interesting because we're going to get to, you know, building an app with an influencer and how that all plays in. But this is kind of what you were doing, but building yourself up as an influencer kind of from the beginning. Man, it's interesting cuz I find that some people that do this end up starting to become an influencer instead of more focused on like their product and that's just something that happens. But it is a

16:45good strategy and I wasn't the first one doing it. There were a lot of other game developers doing it too at that time. And Tik Tok 2020 and 2021 Tik Tok was a very fun and very easy time to get followers and get clicks and downloads. So, you said that this first game wasn't working necessarily, but you had an audience. Where did you go from there? I started interviewing. Like, I think that's one of the secret sauces of what even with Focus Friend Success now is just really getting to know someone and the person that you're making this for. Like, at first I was just I it was my friends and my family members and even myself, but it's really

17:28getting to know the person. And so I made another Boba app, but it was based on kind of what it was a lot of iterating on what people liked and what they the look of what they liked. The look matters so much. And how are you interviewing people? Was this like calls out on like Tik Tok followers or is this you had something in the app for people to reach out or like how did you find people to interview? Yeah, Tik Tok followers and I would live stream on Tik Tok a lot and this is before I had a kid so this is when I had time to do stuff like this. Yeah. before I had Yeah. So,

18:01I would just be live streaming for hours and just like ask people stuff and then I would just ask a question and people would just be sitting there and I would like draw something out and be like, "Is this what you're talking about?" Okay, what about this? I would share my screen and I would

18:16ask them, "Is this more of the vibe that y'all like or is this more of the vibe that y'all like?" It wasn't like you were interviewing them about features or what problems are obviously not what problems you're trying to solve because it's a game, but it it was almost like like a brand marketing sessions that a big company would do, but you have the audience right there and you could like in real time tweak and feel out and and I imagine from the influencer side, you're also like that audience feels like part of them is in the app now, right? Yeah. Okay. So, this is as

18:48you're building your second app that you're doing a lot of this. Mhm. And then what was the second app? Was it also like a click click style game or was it a different thing altogether? This one was way more interactive. So it was still a boba like run a boba shop type game. So it's called Boba story. If you want to make a game ever, play games that you like and take things that you like from those things. So I kind of based the functionality on that and I had done kind of like a spin on it and some other games that I had loved from like the '9s and early 2000s. And so I kind of took

19:20elements from all those things, put it into this app, and it's way more of a create your own bubble tea drink. And that was something that was like the thing that people cared about the most when I would be posting about Tik Toks. They would be caring about what ingredient is. They're like, "Let me have the craziest looking boba drink." That's all people cared about. So all they cared about was like, "How do I make the craziest looking drink?" Okay. So, you honed the game in more towards that then I imagine. Yes. You said you're running a shop, but like what's the kind of gameplay mechanic? Just decorating and expanding the shop, basically unlocking more stuff. There

20:01was an inflection point. So, Tik Tok only got me to a specific time. Once I added like the really crazy ingredients like dog boba like and cat boba like it's literally like each boba pearl is a cat or a heart or a star or something. That's when things really exploded cuz I put that behind a like you have to unlock it was like a combination. I didn't do this intentionally but now I know and I tell people any other builder I guess the way I had designed that screen was very easy to share and that like super s first it was a secret there was no hey you can figure out you can buy hints

20:43or whatever you can't you can't figure this out unless you work with other people and it exploded on Tik Tok on YouTube on Instagram and this is other people shar sharing their screen recordings of the or or screenshots I guess of their crazy creations. So Tik Tok itself so that app launched in October and then from October to February I'd been posting Tik Toks and it was doing good. Like I think I had around like 200,000 downloads by that point is still amazing. And this just the the monetization for this is it inapp purchases or is it like a onetime payment thing? What was the How was it? Just rewarded rewarded ads. So, no like banners or anything like that. It's like,

21:28hey, if you watch an ad, then you get to exchange it for currency. So, they'd watch like a 30. So, that was it from then. I had about like 200,000 downloads, but once I added that feature, like it exploded. I went from, I think, 200,000 to 2 million in the next. And because it's ads, that scales pretty linearly or at least user or active users scales linear linearly to your monetization actually. Wow. Okay. I think this is it's a very strong part of my journey and I don't know if it's a good thing or not is getting too ethical about monetization. That's kind of it's something that

22:10I think might hold me back in some ways, but I specifically chose a a way that you only have to watch an ad if you choose to. Like, you can play the entire game without having to watch an ad. So, I had people that were completely unmonetized. And I did that from a moral perspective. Is that a good thing? I don't know. And that kind of goes into a focus friend as well because we chose that route. And we can talk about that later. Yeah. I feel like there's for one, the nice thing about being independent, whether it's just you or like you're not beholden to shareholders or whatever,

22:50is that you can make these decisions. Like it's okay to just have a business that makes less money than it optimally could, but you feel better about it, right? I also think there's a bit where certain growth strategies work better by having that kind of attitude, right? like uh Fortnite, you know, famously is like there's no pay to play. Like that was like that's the best way to really super monetize something, but it it allowed the things to grow faster because it was more appealing to people. I think in your case, if one of the major growth levers was this sort of social loop of like the more people use it, the more your organic marketing grows and it's like

23:32a flywheel almost, then having it be something that more people can use. Even if they're not giving you any money, they're actually potentially still contributing to the business because they're sharing it out. Um, obviously who knows if that's actually true or not, but there I think there's a bit where that's actually potentially even the better business move. But even if it's not, I don't think it matters. It's like if you're able to sustain yourself and you're comfortable with that, you don't have to make the most money possible by extracting everything you possibly can out of everybody. It's true. However, it's hard to stay there when there are other apps that

24:10make more than us, for example, or are able to do those things. And it's hard to not kind of change move the goalpost for yourself. Like, I had a goalpost of what I wanted to be at a year ago and two years ago, and I hit that, and I'm past those things, and I'm still not satisfied. This is kind of a philosophical thing, but no, I think this is a this is really funny actually. This is this is kind of a running theme with this show. When I started this show in 2020, so like right in your kind of time frame here, I felt like a big part of what we talked about a lot was it's

24:49okay to make money. Because in the indie sphere it was very like you know doing a subscription or or utilizing a hard payw wall or having doing AB testing even was often really frowned upon as like a everything should just be about making it the best experience possible. But then we watched all these big well-known indie apps fall down because they couldn't sustain their companies anymore. And so I felt like there was this narrative of like it's okay to make money like there's a balance that you can have. And then it feels like in the last few years in particular, that needle has just swung way hard to the other side where I feel like now I'm constantly preaching it's okay to not make

25:30all of the money. You're allowed to, you know, do this. But it is hard. I imagine you run in similar circles as me where you see these people making enormous amounts of money doing small differences to what I'm comfortable doing and I'm like, well, you know, maybe I should just do this or just do that. and the tooling makes it easier and easier to do, right? And so, yeah, it's it's definitely a weird balancing act. It's hard when being on social media is something that is really helpful for being able to stay in the know on things and to make sure that your product is also like up

26:08to-date in in like what people are expecting, but it you can't drown out the other voices. It's hard not to see other people reaching things that I'm like, I think I could do that. I think I could do that, too. But it makes it 10 times harder harder when I've made these very strict moral lines and they're very strict with focus friend. And so there's a potential where we have reached kind of like the peak of where we're at. Hopefully not, but it's something that I think about every day right now. Let's get into focus friend then. So sure I think that's the next one on your list

26:47after Boba story. So you have the successful app that's running is it's Boba Story is still out today, right? It's still it's still running. I built that one in Unity. So I did not have to I did not where you built your own engine. Yeah, exactly. So then what led to to focus friend? Like what's what's the story there? Like I mentioned with Tik Tok and building my audience and seeing that it was a way for me to monetize. I was like, this is also a way to monetize an audience. Um, so my partner is also a YouTuber and I love the creator space. If you've ever met any

27:22other YouTubers or full-time creators, es like he's in the science space, so they're the best people. Like they're so awesome. Those specific creators are like the best people. I learned a lot about how they have to monetize and monetizing is very difficult. like YouTube after Tik Tok, like it just it's hard for them to kind of support themselves monetarily now. It's not the 2016 people are getting $100,000 deals like they were before. And monetizing an audience, I learned with making Boba Story that this is a way that someone can monetize an audience. I was like an app. There were times that I didn't work for 4 months on end and I still had an income. My

28:11income did not change. It's very much the passive income, you know, obviously there's a ton of work leading to that, but it is flexible and a sort of unique way. Yeah. And so I got really interested in it being a way for for a YouTuber to monetize their audience. So, I had been it was something I I was very passionate about and I had talked to like my partner about it and I was thinking maybe one of his friends would be interested and I had known my partner also taught on Hank Green has a channel called Crash Course. He had taught um machine learning on one of those channels many

28:49years ago and I was like, "Oh my gosh, someone like Hank Green would be the most ideal partner to work with." But maybe one day I'll be able to work with him. I was like, "Maybe one of your other friends." For the moon, right? Shooting for the moon. Anybody who doesn't know, Hank Green is he's arguably in the the top five at least of like well-known, you know, science YouTubers probably, right? Is that is that accurate? In my world, at least that seems to be the case. Yeah, I would say so. And a lot of college students and anyone who had like has like gone to college in

29:21the past 5 to 10 years has probably heard of him or at least if they went to school for something science related. Exactly. It's hard to avoid ending up on one of his explainers just because they're so good and they have a lot of free education channels. So he was someone I was like I really would one day that's like a dream person to work with. But I thought maybe one of his other uh one of my partner's other creator friends would be interested. Someone with like maybe a million subscribers. Like I would love to see if this experiment of monetizing an audience like if this is something that can sustain a YouTuber. Yeah. So that's why I was like

30:02interested in it. And it just so happened that I just landed from a family vacation in like Japan and I saw that Hank was about to be in town and I was like Chappelle, can you please I was like, I want it. Like, can you please see if he I was like, Hank is performing his um his standup special like 15 minutes from our house. Like, can you please just see if he'd be interested in hanging out? I just want to meet him. Like, I wasn't going to pitch him. And I didn't pitch him. I just wanted to meet him cuz I was such a huge fan of his. Like, him and his brother were

30:35like the reason I even started being interested in watching YouTube in general. like for fun I would watch their education channels and he's like okay I'll ask and so Hank asks us to dinner and we're just chatting Hank's super nice my partner starts bragging about Boba's story and Hanks and I guess I had said something in that dinner about creators having apps or games or something and that was it and like I had met a hero and afterward I don't know if you're an anxious person like me. But I just afterward I was like, "Oh my god, this is the worst thing ever. I just met a hero." I was like,

31:15"I just met a hero and I'm just analyzing every small thing that I had said to him. Oh my god, was that stupid?" Yeah. Yeah. Does he think I would forget everything about me? I've definitely been there. I was like, I feel very Yeah, I feel very observed right now. But anyway, a week later, he sends me a message on Tik Tok and he said that he had not been able to stop thinking about like something I had said at dinner and he messaged me on Tik Tok and reached out and asked for a meeting and out of that meeting basically came Focus friend. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but

31:48what I've gathered just from listening to lots of his content over the years, he's also pretty both savvy and kind of enjoys the the sort of business side of being a influencer and creator. Like he doesn't shy away from trying different ideas and things like that. So that also feels like something that kind of would fit in. I thought he would be way more just kind of like wacky science guy, but he is way more businesssavvy than I had expected. Yeah, that that tracks. Uh so, okay. So, you're interested. So, I guess it literally starts with the premise is, hey, I can build apps and have all this experience with monetizing on the app store. You have a big brand. And also, you

32:36know, did you already have ideas to pitch or was it like let's just brainstorm and see what what's something that his audience would be interested in? Well, it was a no from his perspective actually from the beginning. Like yeah, it was a no, but we were supposed to actually make something for one of his other channels, but like the meeting was ending and I just said as the meeting was ending, I just said, "What about a focus timer?" like a crash course focus timer and that's when he was like, "Oh, interesting. H let me think about that. That sounds very interesting." And then the call ended and then Oh my gosh, that's so cinematic. Like, yeah, you

33:18threw your Hail Mary and then the call ends and you don't know how it's going to Oh my goodness. Okay. Then he texts me like an hour later like, "I love this idea. Oh my gosh, I love it." And then we just kept talking about what the idea could be. And so I just like got to work on like coming up with like a concept. I drew stuff and yeah and he like pitched it to his team and they were not interested. He was still very excited about the idea though and so that's why it became a Hank Green app and not um that's what I was that was my next question is like it's not branded

33:50as a crash course or any of his other sort of ventures. It is just here's this app you know an a Hank Green production or by Hank Green. trying to figure out how it's in the green. Okay. Yeah. So that's why that's the case is it literally is him like it's his own thing with you as opposed to part of one of his other ventures. It was going to be part of like one of his companies, but no, it just became a no one they didn't really understand why it would be a good idea. So then

34:18we ended up it was like okay well we're friends we're friends now so let's just keep doing it. We're excited about it. and I just kept working on it and that's when I started interviewing his audience instead of crash a crash course audience. You said you did interviews like what was the sort of central thesis that was exciting to both of you and then how was that shaped to what it became through all these interviews and and sort of the development cycle. It was gonna be way more gamey at first. Like there was gonna be a lot more like rarity and um there was a lot

34:52more it was way more game than it was app. And as I started interviewing people, it became way more app than game cuz we're in that like middle space kind of where it's like a gamified Yeah. Where it's like a gamified app. And what pushed you in that direction? I know you said interviews,

35:09but was it people specifically saying they don't want it to be a game or why did it push that way? It was the way that people were interacting with the app. It just wasn't making a lot of sense. I think when it comes to someone with ADHD in particular, I think just making things very very very simple to understand. Like we had all these like rarity matrixes and all of these things. And so we switched it to being like you just earn a number a number of currency based on the number

35:39of minutes that you did and that's it. which makes sense for something designed to help people focus. You don't necessarily want to be drawing them into this massive spreadsheet. You mentioned ADHD. Was that part of the initial premise as well is that it was kind of targeted at that audience. No, it was just for Hank's audience. Spoiler alert, Focus Fred hit number one on the app store. Yes. Yeah. So, I just did before I So, because it makes sense for for the story to make the story make a little bit more sense, but we had no idea. We were just trying to do a Hank's core core core

36:13fans will like this app. That was just that was the only thing we were really going for. It just so happens that Hank's core core core fans also have ADHD. And that you discovered that through the interviews or Hank just knowing his audience and that kind of organically came up. It came up way way later. So, it was just interviewing his audience and he didn't even announce like, "Hey, fill out this survey." He just put it in a description in one of his Vlog Brothers videos and it was just a Google form that says, "Do you use focus timers?" It just interviewed all of those people and then just really got to know those people. I worked very hard on the what the

36:54interview would look like and what questions I would ask, what I really needed to know about these people. And then so there was like one half of the interview and then the other half was more about like look feel what the bean should look like. So pairing those two things together I got to know the person and then I was like okay almost all of these people are gravitate gravitating towards this color palette. When it comes to like female audiences too and anything gified like the look and feel matters so much for organic reach. I think it matters for productivity apps too. It's just people don't naturally pay as much attention. Certainly, I'm just as guilty of that. And I think

37:33you're right in terms of it's not just for you using it, but also the how attractive is it in a ad format, right? Whenever people are seeing screenshots or screen captures or whatever. Yeah. It's like what's going to make someone convert and the way something looks is a huge reason why people convert. You said people are gravitating towards this. Are you showing like multiple options and saying is it like going to the dentist or going to the eye doctor and they're like A or B and you're kind of just honing in? I showed six different art styles, six different beans and six different color palettes, something like that. And then I just said like choose one and then they

38:10all kind you just grew over time working on your other apps or had you done that professionally or had education that led you towards doing this kind of market research? cuz that feels like, you know, very like professional market research that most indies I've talked to have definitely I've never heard of anybody doing it to like kind of this level. I think it's something that happened over Tik Tok like as I was doing it on live streams. Um like as I was asking people, it just seemed easier to like I would just show, okay, which one do you like? Which one do you like? I'm just going

38:46to show them all six at once. And it organically systemized This is This is one of those I just love these kinds of stories. I don't know. There's a Steve Jobs quote. I can't remember how I think it's him. Maybe it's him quoting somebody else, but it's like the whole when you look at the past, it's easy to draw a line through everything, but in the future it's squiggly or whatever, but it's I love these like you can follow somebody's story and be like this weird thing you did here, even if it didn't seem like it mattered, which it did, but like you're just slowly accumulating

39:16these skills that become really important for things you do later in your life. I just love that kind of stuff. The compound interest of skills. The compound interest of skills. Yes. Okay. So, you're building this app over a pretty long period of time before you released it, right? I feel like I remember hearing whispers of it, you know, like a year before I even heard about it coming out. Yeah. So February 2024 was when we had started like development of it and it was supposed to launch in July of 2024. I got pregnant in July of 2024 and I was having a lot of issues with my team

39:56cuz I had hired some people and like Yeah, hiring people with an indie budget was really hard. Yeah, hiring people with a VC budget is really hard. Uh yeah, I imagine it's much harder with a lower uh you know Yeah, cuz I was paying for everything out of my pocket like for up and up until that point and even like up until the launch of Focus Friend. So I got pregnant and I had a condition called HG where it's like morning sickness all day. And so I couldn't I couldn't leave my bed or even look at a screen for almost like 6 months. So, I would work as much as I could during those six months. And

40:37then we had a plan to launch in January of 2025. And I had actually interviewed with Revenue Cat in December of 2025 cuz I was like, "Okay, I'm running out of money and I don't know if this app is going to work out." So, I gave birth to my daughter 15 weeks early. My daughter was in the hospital for almost 4 months. So, my entire journey got delayed a whole year. and I did not work when she was in the hospital and Boba's story is what just sustained me until that time. She got out of the hospital. We actually just had her homecoming anniversary a few weeks ago. And then

41:12I'm like, "All right, I'm spending 2 weeks and um figuring out how to be a mom and then I'm going to start breaking my computer out during nap time. I have to make Focus Run work or watch this." Like, it's gotten delayed so many times. I don't want to disappoint Hank. I don't want to like like he's someone I looked up to and I was just like let's make this work and I'm just going to keep working and making and trying to make good decisions for focus. I mean knowing where this leads this is like 2025 has to be one of the most insane years of Yeah. ever for anybody. It was like the lowest

41:49Yeah. It was like the lowest time of my life cuz like if anyone's ever had a child in the hospital, it's the worst thing ever. It is the worst thing ever. and then hitting number one on the app store like a few months later like the best thing ever. Let's get to the launch then. And but really quickly, we can't we can't not address the bean of the situation. So, right, the main character of the app is this little little bean. What's the sort of backstory? Where did that come from? And like I guess you already kind of talked about the how it developed over all these interviews,

42:20but yeah, what's the story there? Pink just said magic bean and then we just ran with it. Yeah. Uh, and I guess he has like a in his Hank Green lore like of his super hardcore fans called Nerd Fighters. I guess they there's some bean stuff. There's some bean jokes there. Um, he has like a c he has a little Furby made of beans on his desk. Like that's the extent of it. Yeah, there's no reason other than his audience. It's an inside joke between him and his audience. The design of it is very reminiscent of I wish I could recall the name off the top of my head,

42:56but the what is the name of that Japanese style like the egg yolk character or the Yeah, very cutesy. Very very cutesy and like the little bubble butt kind of on the back. That's what makes me think of the egg. Was that something that right from the beginning you s sort of gravitated towards based on your style or was that coming out of this sort of long interview and and growth of the design that you went through? It was the interviews. So I showed like 20 different options of beans and art styles and everything. Like I had tons of different art styles to choose from. Some

43:32that I was gravitating towards but there was a very different direction we were going in. like very different, very lowfi. That was what we were originally going for. There's a show called like Bee and Puppy Cat. Like we were kind of going for that and that is not what people were gravitate gravitating towards. They were way more towards some other stuff. So we changed the the art style based on what people gravitated towards. It feels like the bean combined with Hank's kind of star power. The bean is the thing that really seemed to like catch people's attention and it it was its own story. That's so cool that it wasn't just you have no like you literally worked and

44:12sort of grinded towards that which is really interesting and different than a lot of the indie stories where like I was saying a lot of it feels like luck. I think it's clear that in this case there was way more strategy going into a lot of this than I I realized for sure. So you got went through all of that insanity of 2025. What was the release strategy? the point is to monetize Hank's audience. So, I'm guessing that's part of it. But, yeah, what were you thinking going into that? I guess we had one strategy and we changed it. So, I want to say it because this

44:43is important for other indies. Something I learned with all of the other like indie game developers. There was this hack that we would all do and um just gather pre-orders for as long as we could, like 90 days I think is the is the max. We would try to get as many pre-orders as possible and do a big launch because you could hit number one or you could re really high high on the Nikita beer method. I think I don't think that's actually his but I actually don't know but I feel like that's what cuz he would he could just come out with esoteric apps that could hit number one based on

45:15seemingly all these little hacks. And that that's one that I know a lot of people try to do. Yeah, that was something that all of us on Tik Tok creators would do. like it was because you would spend you would just post Tik Toks, gather wish lists or whatever or gather all of the pre-orders and it helped with visibility and you didn't really have to have a real app like it didn't

45:34have to work. You're already getting downloads and then it's like that's all you really need. And then the story of it being number one is its own sort of sort of like propeller for the very beginning. Yeah. But I had a friend who has hit number one a few times with their apps and he has said that he has had a bunch that have like gone from up to number one and all the way down within a few months all the way down like to nearly zero. He said that the one that went up and then had a long tail and he just sold for many millions of dollars or many tens of millions of

46:08dollars. Those ones that were from grinding like nailing what the experience is like from beginning to end. And so I took that advice and I changed our strategy and I was like we can't hit number one. We were going to just announce it and collect pre-orders and all that. And I told Hank like I don't think that we should do that. and he's just like, "Okay, cool." So, in July, we I was like, "Okay, the app's ready." He posted about it on a community post on YouTube. I think we got like 20,000 downloads from in that week from him, like just posting on a community post on YouTube. So,

46:47so much bad feedback during that time. People were so mad at us for um one, we didn't have a lifetime option. Thought it was gross that we was just a subscription. What was the reason for going subscription? I we didn't talk about that. We went with subscription for I think it's just something that worked well for that. Like they have a Patreon and subscription boxes and that's just something that just monetization wise worked. That was something I also worked really hard on was the monetization and figuring out what worked and what felt not gross cuz the only thing that you really got with the subscription was being able to earn socks or earn the currency at 3x the time. So you

47:26could use it all for free and there was just kind of a benefit for supporting the app basically. Yeah. And then there was another and then um skins like to make the bean look like other stuff. But also last minute this is where I'm like is there some divine intervention happening with AI prior to where AI was at that time. I could not figure out. So I wrote this app in Unity and Unity does not have access to a lot of stuff that like native apps do. But there's just a lot more users who actually use those things in React Native and stuff. So there's libraries for things

48:02like live activities, dynamic island, like all of those things. I couldn't use any of that and and a screen time API all or it's called family controls. Like I couldn't do any of that. Um but with AI, I was able I was like, "Oh my gosh, I can figure it out now." like it can get me to that point of getting to I can write the native stuff with AI or at least like help write these bridges from Unity. So that's what really also helped is being able I'm like okay all of these native functions I can put behind the pro subscriber payw wall for example and uh you know just out

48:41of curiosity uh for the inapp purchase part of it how did you handle that? I chose revenue cap from the beginning. I hope that payw walls is something that I can use soon because I'm not sure. I think they added Unity support recently. I had used the like purchases API on Unity before, but it was just going to be really hard to do subscriptions and there wasn't a lot of like support for subscriptions on Unity and I just I didn't really know what to do and I was like,

49:06well, I know Revenue Cat and it works. So, it was built in from the beginning and it was super easy. So you you announced it kind of sort of quietly on a community forum and people were very mad. One because of subscriptions, no lifetime options, and then you were going to say some others before I rudely interrupted. Android was missing some things. This help emails and reviews were really bad. Like and the comments under his post, I mean, there were people who loved it, don't get me wrong. There were people who really, really loved it, but there were also like people who were really mad and I had to respond to feedback. I don't know if you've talked to other people

49:40who've done this sort of influencerbased marketing channels or or monetizing an influencer brand, but it's like feels like it's more prone to this type of thing because people feel such a strong connection that it's not like they see a thing and then they're just like whatever, that's not for me and they bounce off. But it's like there's this personal like attack maybe even feeling where this person's doing something that I don't like but I like this person and like those clash and can cause those feelings. Do you think that that rings true? Yes. And that was a huge reason we had we made like various particular decisions. There are things that that every app does. They have

50:18an advertising tracking ID for example to do paid acquisition. If someone wants to have ads within the app so that there are people who can't afford things that they can just pay with like watching ads, you have to collect some information for those ad networks. supposed to launch before panels, but with all of like the drama of my pregnancy and child, it delayed us. And I really paid attention to why people were mad. And I was like, every app on your phone uses those things, but for some reason, he's not allowed to. So, that taught me because it's because it's him and then you're in I think there's also an element where it's like, well, he's a famous rich person. That's

50:59the mental model. And so like why are they doing that? Whereas if it's a nameless also unfamous rich person who runs a giant company or whatever, it doesn't have that same emotional connection maybe. But yeah, that is interesting cuz that was a pretty high-profile example of somebody sort of experimenting with monetizing their audience and yeah, there was quite a bit of backlash from from I feel like. Yeah. So, I learned because we were admonetized also in the beginning and I I had to like call Hank and be like, I think for your reputation, we should take this out. Even though we're now going to have way less people monetized, I think we should take this out. The advertising

51:42tracking thing, we also didn't do any tracking. And that's something that people really cared about. That also came up in the interviews for when I was talking to people and when I was just trying to get to know them, they often said how much they cared about their privacy and I didn't ask, they just said it and it was something so obviously it's an important thing to them that they're thinking about when they think of the apps just generally. Yeah. So, we also made the decision to not have an advertising tracking ID, which as you probably know and everyone knows, that basically kills paid acquisition for us. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Or at least being able to

52:21do it well. You can do sort of brand marketing style stuff, but it's it's very different when you can't basically run the machine and let it be like this is exactly how much value you're getting out of these users and so you can pay this much and now you have, you know, the mini money printing machine. Yeah, it makes my life a little bit harder and um I have to get a lot more creative, but I'm like I'm just trying to look at it as this is the next skill, I guess, for me to uh for me to learn. But yeah, so we got so much feedback and we're getting emails and emails and emails and

52:53this is and I still didn't think it was going to do that well. I was like, okay, well, what it did, it's probably going to do do 10x what we did and that I'm like, all right, what's going to happen? public on the store by this point or was this like a a test flight beta? So, this is public on the store. Yeah, we we just didn't like tell a lot of people about it other than that community post. And so, we got tons of feedback and I I was just responding to the emails. And meanwhile, by the way, this whole time I'm still taking care of a newborn child. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was a it

53:27was a very um a very sleepless time of my life. I imagine so. Um Yeah. So, it was getting lots lots and lots of emails. And once the emails started to dwindle a bit where people weren't complaining, where I wasn't getting like 10 emails or no, it was way more than that. I was getting so many a day. And once those started to feel like they were waning and I was addressing all of those things that people had issues with, I was like, "All right, Hank. Like, I think I think we're ready. I think we're ready to actually do the full launch." And that's when the real genius of Hank

54:00Green really kicked in. Oh my god. So, how'd that go? Cuz it was it felt like it just took over the internet for a while. I don't know cuz he's done promo posts before and he's said this before when we've talked we've talked to other people about it and he's like promo posts never do well for him. Like people just kind of they're like, "Okay, cool. I'll thanks. I'll I'll help you. I'll I'll

54:22send you some dollars for your socks, Hank, for your good cause and and move on with their life." But those videos did super well. They're very high performing videos for him. And that's where I think the artwork kicks in. That's where all of the work of I want this thing to catch someone's eye immediately kicks in. And not just anybody's eye, but specifically his audience, right? Like that feels like the big difference between I wrote a book, I made some socks, I it's like these are interesting products that there's a ven diagram of his audience and the product, but it's it's minor. And so a lot of people probably do it more to support the creator

55:03than they do for the product. But you made something that was like trying to make that ven diagram just a circle. Yeah. And that I have to imagine combined with all the work on the the artwork making again making it specifically for that audience that had to be a big part of of why it worked. Yeah. The the combo I think a lot of people uh cuz there are many other creator apps but I don't think any of them have done what Focus Friend did at least in its first week in terms of like how big it was in the press. But I could be wrong. I could be totally wrong and I'm fine being

55:35wrong. I can't Yeah. I mean I can't think of any. I'm sure there are and surely there are like if you go higher up in the celebrity I'm sure there's like major celebrities that have released things that I don't necessarily know about that have done super well. Yeah, I think Arnold Schwarzenegger's app does really well. Yeah, that that is one. Yeah, my one of the I don't remember his title now. He was the director of marketing. I think he's anyway person at our company love like that's his favorite app ever is I think it's called the pump and the onboarding is like you're getting a anybody should just go download the app just to watch the onboarding cuz it's like it's like

56:11you're getting a motivational Arnold Schwarzene so good so good and actually it's funny you mentioned that one cuz like we've actually worked together a little bit recently because we did a hackathon that was aimed at this exact concept of like apps are an interesting way to monetize an audience. Apps especially directed that make sense for that audience and that was one of the apps that sort of spurred a lot of this thinking internally at revenueat but then focus friend is obviously an extreme example of that. Yeah. So you released it clearly it resonated. So but what was that like? So he did a promotional post and then what I had my revenue cat notifications on like a lot

56:52of indies probably did and um and then suddenly I was like on a walk with my partner and my daughter and then like suddenly my phone just starts like buzzing a lot and then I'm like what's going I was like oh I'm getting a there's a lot of people buying stuff. What's going on? And then and then I see that Hank had just posted about it and he just had his arsenal of like messaging. So I I have learned a good amount about marketing with Tik Toks and stuff, but this is the benefit of having someone on my side that is just a genius at what he does. He told me kind of the angle he was going

57:33to take and I was like, "All right, whatever." Oh, also his brother John really loved the app. So like I guess they just kind of colluded on doing this like kind of doubled up campaign. Yeah, they doubled up on it and they made two YouTube videos about it and well it was the plan was just one of them and then because after it hit number one they did more. They kind of colluded on like posting about it and the messaging. I thought people would care more about it being like a focus timer, but people care way more about they use it almost like an Opal equivalent and they don't use

58:07it as a just a timer. They use it as a screen time control app. So that's where things are getting a little bit or more interesting for me now today on the product side. But that was the angle that they went for on the messaging too. And that is that really resonated with people and I was like, well, it's more of a focus timer, but that's where my engineering brain was kicking in. I was like, well, technically, but they were like, no, no, no, listen. And I just had to trust them and they they're geniuses at what they did. That was the launch. It was just them doing content on their

58:41channels. Basically, they have a combined channel together and John did a one on his on their YouTube channel that they jointly share and then Hank did a series of Instagram reels, Tik Tok, and then YouTube shorts. Okay. It felt like the whole internet was writing about it. I genuinely thought when you said you switched strategies that you were going to be like, "All right, so we lined up these press people. We got them on an early version." Because it was like every like every The Verge Ingadget, I don't know. I'm I'm all saying them all the top of my head because I feel like literally everybody wrote about it, but everybody who's writing about it was like as a user and that

59:18all that all just came from because it skyrocketed up and his video made traction. It kind of worked its way through all these circles. Yeah. I guess people were talking about it like it was the first time I'd ever had people in my life, they were like, "Oh my gosh, everyone's talking about this

59:36Bean app right now." Oh wow. Oh, and they you they didn't in my own life. Yeah, that's pretty crazy. Have you seen anybody in real life using it like on a on a subway or something? People have said it in to me in person like they they when I've said this is what I made and then they're like oh yeah my god yeah that's so cool. That was super duper cool. And like there were people emailing me being like oh my gosh I didn't know you made this app or like I everyone's talking about your app right now. Like I got a lot of me those messages and and emails and stuff. So very very very cool. But like

1:00:11this is actually pretty funny. We hit the top 10. And if anyone was on like Twitter for a while, it was like the the cool kids get to show off their top 10 that they hit the top 10. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, I did it. I hit the top 10 on the app store of overall in the app store." And then Hank's like he he texts me and he was like, "I want to be number one." And chat GPT was number one at this time. And then we did and I was just like I didn't even know that that was a possibility for us and it was the coolest thing ever. It was awesome. Did you have you framed that

1:00:47screenshot on your wall? I will I have I it is something I want to Yeah. But I actually I have um I've got I've got this my app store. Yeah. So that was actually my followup is you you have some hardware. So, for those listening on the podcast, do you want to describe what you just grabbed off

1:01:06your shelf? We won an App Store award. That was also one of the coolest experiences ever. And then we were I I just can't reach it. I have two more trophies right there. Oh, I know one other. I don't know what the third one is. Um it So, we won the best app of 2025, um Google Play. Then we also won the best personal growth app. They sent me two trophies, which I am very happy to I know. So, uh yeah, I can grab it or I can grab one of them. Here we go. Ooh. Like, yeah. All glass. I am still waiting for my revenue cat one, but I just haven't yet. Yes. Yes. Uh have

1:01:48you got are we are we sending one? I I don't remember. It should be. It is. Oh, yes. Right. Yeah. I can go into long details about the the manufacturing of those, but that's that's been a thing. I'm really curious about well any of those but in particular the app store one because I know Apple makes a pretty big song and dance of it and like you get I I think you had a like photographer cuz your picture's on the app store and there's a whole feature and profile about you. What was that experience like? How did you find out and then what happened? They reached out to me. So I

1:02:18did their entrepreneur camp and every indie should apply to it if it still exists. It's one of those things if you're in the developer advocate space, I think you you probably know that programs get cut and o and reopen all the time. So, but I did that camp and I had been wanting to get Boba Story featured for a super long time and I think it just wasn't working out and I learned a lot also about like how to get an like a lot of mistakes that I had made with Boba Story that I had fixed with focus friend like what really attracts an app store editor and we can talk about that another

1:02:54time but there's something that really that that they're looking for and I think I'm tried to re I've tried to do that with um with focus friend as Well, that's like my like dream talk to give is cuz I feel like with my app, that's pretty much the only marketing channel I have is like trying to get featured on the app store and it's worked pretty well. But it's at least for me it seems like it's mostly sounds like similar to what you said you were trying to do once the AI

1:03:19tools kicked in which is like find those system integration features that they want to promote. Mhm. Give it live activities, give it screen time access and all the things and like make part of the narrative be, you know, Apple technology has has really made this possible. That's the kind of stuff that seems like gets their attention for sure. I think like the the onboarding being really

1:03:40easy to understand and a little bit of design like those three things is kind of where those meet. But they had asked me to come out for a developer showcase and I had just done a couple things like before and I was like I was running on fumes at this point like with the Google like best app of 2025 like there was so much that they were asking of me and I just worked so hard and then they reached out into about this developer showcase and I was like I'm so appreciative but oh my god I'm so tired like I don't know if I want to go cuz they weren't saying like they weren't saying I

1:04:14was nominated for an app store award or anything. They weren't saying that. So, I was just like, I don't know, y'all. Like, I just want to spend some time with my with my family. I feel very tired. And they were like, trust me, you don't want to miss it. And they were just trying to support me. And then they like told me that I was nominated. I was like, okay, that's so amazing. And then they were really trying to convince me to go cuz it was based in LA. I'm an hour outside of LA. And they were just really pushing for me to go. And then I got my stuff together, got had mother-in-law

1:04:46stay with with us for a bit, and then I show up. They gave me a hotel room and everything. And they're like, "Okay, you're going to go take your photo or you're going to do this thing." When they brought us out to the photographer, I was like just standing there. And then they're like, "You won the award." And they like took a picture of me like accepting the award. Yeah. Reacting. I was like, "Oh my god." And I I like kept it together there, but like then I had to go to

1:05:13another room and like prepare and cuz I had to prepare presentation. I had to get an interview. And when I got to the room, I c I cried. I was like, "What is going on?" Like this whole year like this whole year started off like awful and now like cuz this was in December and it's ending on like this high. It's such a complete circle. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah. I had to go to therapy over it cuz I was like it started to feel like oh my god did my daughter have to go through such a hard time just for this to happen. Like my brain my like postpartum brain kind of like made

1:05:49this connection that like if my daughter didn't suffer like I wouldn't have success and I was like oh my god I want to throw this success away so my kids don't have to. Yeah. It was a very very very strange thing. I've undone it but like yeah all of that happening in one year both good and also like kind of a like whoa what's going on. It's a lot. Mhm. A lot of emotions in one year. Obviously released super successful, lots of press, lots of downloads, lots of hardware, you know, you have trophies. Now in 2026, it's kind of it's a going concern, right? It is the an app that seems like

1:06:24it's doing well. Do you feel like you succeeded in what you described earlier as, you know, the big pop and then you're trying not to just fall all the way down? Have you has it leveled off in a state where you're like this is a sustainable business? I think so. I think so. I would like it to get higher because like I'd mentioned before, the goalpost has moved. I've officially replaced the tech salary. So, I I've officially replaced the tech salary. So, that's good. I approved my

1:06:54initial thesis, but I'm like, is this something another person could replicate? I'm not sure. Yeah. Um, yeah. I'm not sure about this exact trajectory, but um, I feel like I learned enough along the way to help someone get to I was like, someone could get to to 200K, I think, like someone without a tech background pretty systematically, I think. So, Opal and all the

1:07:15other screen time apps like Be Present, those have higher revenues per month than other focus timers. So, I would love to get to those levels. That's something that would be really interesting for me. So Hank Green is known as someone who's given away the majority of his wealth. Like if I think you know that, but I don't think the audience knows that. He's known as someone who has like raised tens and ten like maybe over hundreds of millions of dollars and he's him and his brother have given it all away. And because of that and because of having that reputation, we made a lot of decision

1:07:55like product decisions that I'm like we probably could have made three to even 10 times what we have made if we were a lot more like we had a hard payw wall for example or if we were more pestering or had were very strategic on like when you show the when you show the subscription when you what

1:08:13deciding what you put behind it using sales and things like that to try and get people to convert. And because of that, now my work, I'm trying to do less engineering. So, I hired another engineer who's a way better Unity engineer than I am. I have someone like a contractor that can help with like native stuff on iOS and hopefully AI can take the wheel for Android native. But that's kind of where I'm at right now. We're in that weird space between game and app where there's like a content treadmill within with a game and it's not like an app where it's a habit but there has to be content

1:08:50for them to keep going. You have to keep feeding the machine. Yeah. So that's something that's where a lot of my where my work lies now is trying to really it's almost like game design too where it's like I have to figure out where how this loop fits together and what features. There's tons of features still that people are that people want and that so we have a lot of growth in terms of the product and making their product even better. I'm doing the side on marketing. So Hank did he did like that initial push but like part of his job is just to stay famous and so he has he has

1:09:26to do like his his own stuff and he has like other other ventures that he's working on. So now it's on me to figure out like how to grow the app and that's kind of where I'm in like a CEO CTO role right now. It's tough, but it's excit It's just a new set of skills for sure. Ah, that's so cool. I guess before we kind of get to the end here, based on kind of what we talked about earlier, if there's people listening that hear this and they're like, "Yes, this working with an influencer to help them monetize their audience sounds like a cool thing." Obviously, your story

1:10:03specifically is unique in the connections that you had, but everybody has different connections, but like what advice would you have to somebody? I guess a would you recommend people do this? And then B, what would you re is there any advice you'd have for people that are trying to go that route for things that they should specifically think about or look out for or ways to structure themselves uh to set up for success if they're going to if they're going to try and build an app in this kind of way. You kind of have two options if you don't have a lot of money to do paid

1:10:34acquisition and stuff cuz like it it's so it's getting very expensive to do paid acquisition. So doing organic and you have two options if you want to do organic. I think in this day and age if you're an indie and you can either become an influencer for your app and there's an inflection point. It is hard to both be an influ a good influencer and be a good developer.

1:10:59It's a lot of work. I did it. It's possible but it's a lot of work. So you can either do that. you can add someone on your team that becomes the influencer like that it does not have an audience yet and build an audience at the same time as building your app or three you can partner with an influencer that you trust. So I like to do this exercise. This is just something that's really fun for me. I will just take a random influencer and then come up with an idea for them for for like what I think would do well with their audience. So, this is just a personal opinion on my end

1:11:33because I've had to be a product manager and I've done a lot of work on on this. I don't think that influencers really know what a good idea is for them to do for their audience. They always, for some reason, they always want a social media or they want like a feed of information. And I'm just like, no. I I just don't think that those are good ideas for apps personally. Their

1:11:54expertise is somewhere else by sort of definition, right? Unless they're like a tech influencer. Yeah. And even so, I'm just like, no one's going to download an app to get very niche information. I just don't think so. Well, and what's popular and what's monetizable are also often different things. I love utility apps. So, sometimes, like, and they're not too hard to build. Sometimes I like to take a niche of apps that seem easy to build and then try to pair them with influencers I think they would do well with or I just choose a random influencer and I'm like let

1:12:25me just design what this app could be in my head and what I think would do well for their audience. So those are kind of like two ways in terms of creating a product for an influencer and then to actually work with one. You'd be surprised. So influencers or YouTubers, creators, they don't have a lot of options for monetizing and they are way worse at monetizing than you think that they are. Even ones that do like really big like merch things, like that's not sustainable for them long term. They get paid from brand deals, they don't have a lot of passive income. The only passive income they have is from affiliate links. So like if it's oh buy this Amazon stuff in my bio or if

1:13:06they have like a digital course or digital products and stuff like that. So I just like to think of apps as being a potential digital product. And then is the best approach for how to like would you do you think doing a split like ownership split is kind of the thing that makes the most sense? Yes. Well I have Hank and I have a lot of trust. So currently we have a split on the revenues but not on the ownership. But that's something because if we ever want to do like a sale or something like that because it's done well. He said that he's fine with changing

1:13:41equity split to just being between us. But I think it makes the influencer feel a lot more um in a position of ownership if they own the IP for example. So, it's like they own the IP and this is where it's hard and I just have to say what I did and hopefully this works out and everyone has to just figure out what works well for them because Hank upfronted the money like a lot of the money from the be or at least like we had an agreement but I chose to not get paid for the work. That's something I chose. I chose that my money is going to come from the other end after

1:14:21launch and from the revenue cuz if you don't do that then it's going to be like they get 80% you get 20% for example in terms of revenue on the other side if they upfront a lot of money to pay you in the beginning right it's a kind of risk anal risk analysis I guess there yeah so I chose to not get paid and to just support myself through Boba story while making focus friend and all of the money went to like contractors and just, you know, all of the artwork and stuff like that. So, that's up to up to another person of what's comfortable to them. A lot of people told me

1:14:54that I was dumb for doing that. They said that I should be getting paid like 200k, for example, for the work of actually making the app. And I'm like, well, they were if he was going to a dev studio to make his idea for an app, that makes sense. But this is just a collaboration. And a lot of influencers or creators, whatever, they don't have 200k to just give you. There are some that do and there's like another AI coaching app made by some New York Times person. I forgot I forgot his name, but yeah, I'm not sure. But he I know they're at like 2 million ARR whatever,

1:15:28but he funneled a million dollars of his own money into making the app. And most most people aren't going to be able to do that. I would guess that there's a big benefit to there being equity and upside for both parties, right? like once once it gets going, it's like it's easier to work on it when you get to like after it's launched, it's a lot easier to keep working on it and care about it when you have equity in there. And it's a lot easier to continue promoting it if if you on the creator side have equity in it. And so that kind of shared upside feels like it just

1:16:01it's it makes a lot of sense in in this kind of setup. And they are also very distracted, very distractable and distracted. So don't expect to have someone who's like really like a co- like it's like that's really really in it and they might be for a few months but then they're going to be like okay I've got other stuff to do because the development cycle just takes a long time. So choosing the right one matters a lot. That is amazing. I think we've kind of reached this the current point in time. I'm excited to see everything you do from here. But uh before we end,

1:16:34I got to ask you the the question that I ask everybody to end the show, which is what's a people or person out there that have influenced you in your work that you'd recommend others check out? There's a woman named Laura Rotor. She's the founder of a company called Paperbell right now. She has sold two SAS companies and she talks a lot on her platforms about like balancing having like a very balanced motherhood and like she was able to I think get to like 15 million in net worth just from her SAS companies that she's sold. She has like two kids and she just like spends a lot

1:17:08of time with her family. She's found that delicate balance of someone who spends a lot of time being present and also like very very very good businesswoman. So, that's someone that inspires me right now. Oh, man. Okay, that's awesome. Yeah, I'll have to I'll have to check her out. Um, cool. All right. Well, thank you so much for doing this. This was super fun. And I don't know, it's one of those stories that I feel like I knew the story and then as we're talking it's like I didn't know almost any of the real story. And so, this was this was uh super good. Um, where can people

1:17:42uh listening find you and your work? I'm not really on a lot of social media right now other than maybe LinkedIn. So, just Bria Sullivan on LinkedIn. Well, thank you all for uh listening. So, Launched is part of the RevenueCat podcast family. If you'd like to learn more about the growth side of mobile app businesses, you should check out SubC by my friend uh David Barnard and check out, of course, revenuecat.com to learn about the easiest way to grow and monetize your mobile app business. Uh, for launched, you can find Launched at launchedfm.com. And we're pretty much all over the internet. Uh, usually the handle is launched, including our YouTube channel, which,

1:18:22uh, is where you could go. And if you're watching, you saw the amazing trophy collection that Bria has been collecting. So, definitely check that out if you are into the the visual side of video podcasts. Uh, and yeah, that's all I got. So, I will see you all in two weeks. Bye. There you go.