Designing Software People Want to Share — Romain Lefebvre, Sequel

0:00As much as I've designed it to have that artwork first principle in mind, it was also because I wanted people recommending a media to someone else. If that person pulls out their phone and the app they use to get some information about the movie looks sleek and polished, I wanted the other person to go like, "Wow, what is this?" Welcome to Launched. I'm Charlie Chapman and today

0:28I'm excited to bring you the developer behind the excellent media tracking app SQL Roma Lee. [music] Rama, welcome to the show. You're you're laughing. Let's let's just No, no, no, no, no, no. This is this is the show we're going to do this. So, I just [snorts] want the audience to know what you just had to endure for what a good 5 minutes straight. And I've said it on the show before, but I I really like that to try to get as close as I can to the correct pronunciation of somebody's name. Uh whenever when we start, you got close. [laughter] I got close. Yeah, that's very kind of

1:15you. Do you want to uh for the record tell people the actual correct way to pronounce your name so that they don't have my horrible butchering as the version in their ears? Sure. Roma Leof. Lev. Okay. So, if you ever see it written, just ignore the B and your it'll be easier. Perfect. So, yeah, I think this is maybe the second episode in a row where I've had to start it with somebody [laughter] uh correcting their name, but I think I think it's a it's a service that I provide here is that I give people a medium to have the correct pronunciation of their name etched in audio form

1:53whenever you usually see them only in written form on the internet. It is something living in London, it's something I struggle with. So, I'm very grateful. Yes. And we'll get into that here in a second. But before we get too far, I I want to give you an opportunity to give a quick elevator pitch for what SQL is just because I have a tendency to go down a lot of rabbit holes before we get to the actual app and I feel like it's helpful for people to know where we're going. So just in a short form, what is the app SQL? Sure. Uh it's a uh iOS, iPad OS,

2:28Mac OS, and even vision OS app. So very focused on Apple platforms for tracking your movies, your TV shows, but also your games, your books, and even your audio books. So instead of having to juggle between different apps, you'll just use one that has a uniform set of features. So you don't have to remember that this book tracking app that you're using has these features, but this other one doesn't, or these features on that other one are paid, and these ones are free. So it sort of centralizes everything that essentially you consume during your downtime. Perfect. And before we get into SQL and the story of how you built that, I want to give everyone an introduction

3:11into who you are. So the three questions I always ask to start the show is where are you from? Do you have a formal education related to what you do? And then let's talk about what your career was leading up to you building SQL. Sure. So in case you didn't catch it, I'm French.

3:26born in Marseilles. So that's the southeast of France. I' ne I'd never really grew up there. We sort of moved a couple hours away from there to a much more rural kind of area. I moved back to Marseilles for university and then to Oxford where I studied computer science and software engineering. Cool. So seems relatively relevant to what you do today. Yeah. Although interestingly, I was more leaning towards design when it came to choosing a career path because I've essentially been using Photoshop since I was, I think, 12 years old, not doing anything of particularly great ambition. You know, I would hang out on community forums and I think people would want,

4:11you know, little themed icons for their profiles and like banners for their signatures. So I would basically just be making these for people. So initially I wanted to go down the the sort of design related route, you know, maybe CGI or graphic design or that kind of stuff. And then my parents sort of pushed me towards a more engineer related role and I thought, you know what, I like computers. I don't know that much about them, but I I think I can do it. So yeah. And so you got a computer science degree. Did you graduate and kind of go into the engineering world and get a job at

4:50like a normal company or like what what was that like? So before graduating in my uni, we had to do internships. So I had been doing I I did a couple internships. The first one didn't go too well. The second one was much more successful, but I did a couple internships as an iOS developer. Oh, okay. Had you done iOS or were you an iPhone user before that? I was an iPhone user. We had a brief Objective C course at uni. Wow. Very progressive. Very progressive. And also the fact that it didn't scare me off was probably [laughter] uh all the square brackets didn't immediately to me they just

5:33made they just made a lot of sense. So yeah. So so I I kind of was an iPhone user. I, you know, I feel like it's probably a bit typical, but I I sort of resonated a lot with Apple's design philosophy. And I think at the time as well, it's kind of when I realized that my design skills could be used for develop, you know, designing the things I was developing. So in a group project, I would always end up being the guy who was doing the design. So it's kind of a miracle that I managed to be an engineer by the end of it. But, you know, that that's when I I actually

6:07learned about UI design, UX design, and what it actually takes to create an interface that sort of makes sense and is usable and achieves its goals, right? That wasn't part of the curriculum at all, but you just figure it out. I do feel like if you're in that sort of Apple Mac and then iOS, you know, community, it is a much more blended world than the other engineering like communities that I've been part of at least. There's there's often a lot of people I've had a lot of people on this podcast that are like, you know, they're like, I'm a designer that kind of masquerades as an engineer or I'm an engineer who kind of masquerades as a designer. But like

6:51people even if they don't see it as they don't identify themselves that way or they don't see it as their specialty they enjoy that sort of multid-disiplinary way of thinking and you're rewarded with that on the Apple platforms I feel like more especially in the indie space for being able to kind of bring both together. Absolutely. I think like, you know, even now I still don't really know what I identify with. Even though I graduated as a as a developer, I just feel so strongly about design. And you know, we we'll get into it, but my career was actually as a designer, not as a developer. Oh, okay. So, it like I had very little experience aside from this

7:32internship as as a professional engineer. So, that was an interesting turn, I'd say. Interesting. So you you ended up when you kind of got into your career going the design route. Was that at software companies though I'm guessing? Yes. And it was completely not by mistake but it wasn't intentional. The first company I applied to which was in London hired me technically as an engineer but sort of a design-minded engineer. So they knew that I enjoy design. They had seen a few prototypes of things that I had worked on and they thought that was a nice complement to their current engineering skills. So they got me through the door and I think within a week of me joining

8:18their designer left the company and they were like well you can do design right and so I don't think I touched a single line of code in that in that job. Was that nice? Like was it kind of like oh my gosh I can't believe this opportunity opened up the door or were you like I miss writing code? Eventually that's what happened. I think initially I was just like hell you know like you you're keen to prove yourself they throw a challenge at you and you just want to rise to the challenge and so you're just like yeah I I I'll design this feature for you. And I stayed at this company

8:54for I think it was five or six years. I did design and then as you tend to do I don't know if you you have any startup experience but they sort of throw more and more challenge at you and try to get more and more out of you. So eventually I became product manager. Yeah. So eventually I became product manager again with no qualification whatsoever you know learning everything on the job and there was a point at which they hired a CTO who sat me down and he said you're going to need to choose between product management and product design because I think you can be great at either

9:33but right now you're not doing a good you know you can be great at both but you you're not doing a good job at either because you're trying to do both. And I think for me that's when I decided that design what was what I wanted to do because I just have something about just creating something and being able to look look back at the end of the day and say like yeah made this cool. Yeah, I feel like product management or management of any kind, you know, I think a lot of engineers listening probably have, you know, that are later in their careers have gone through the experience

10:04of being an IC individual contributor engineer and then growing into a leadership type role. And it's it's hard when you were in a role where like you tangibly had things you made sitting in front of you to transition to a role where when you look back at the year you're like these are the things my team made but nothing is like yours the same way. And I feel like a lot of people on this podcast that's when the indie app development thing started because you needed a little thing to like sit and mold yourself and be like this is mine. Yeah. I mean that is basically

10:40it and I think you know I I did ponder this very dilemma I guess for myself. was like, do I want to take more of a managerial role, which I did for a while, but I always felt like I I need to be able to create something and it's just a different type of creation, right? Like there's a creation by proxy that happens when you're managing people. Uh I can tell you like at RevenueCat, there are teams where even though the the person leading it probably isn't doing 95% of the like manual work themselves, the output is 100% them, you know what I mean? So like there is

11:22a real craft to it but I I think it's also just a different skill set and a lot of people are less interested or haven't built up that skill set or whatever and it takes a long time to build just like it took a long time to build your skills in the craft of design or or software development or whatever. Yeah. And and I think you know different people will have different affinities for different types of tasks right like you might not enjoy managing or you might right like you might be a developer and you start putting your toes into management and you realize that actually

11:55you're getting a lot of satisfaction out of it and I think that's great if it's you right I think in my case it wasn't I enjoyed the mentorship element I didn't necessarily enjoy the management element of it So along this so I guess in this case you kind of then went back into more design oriented work at the sort of individual contributor level. Were you doing your own side indie apps throughout all of this or at this stage were you pretty much focused only on you know your day job when it came to software development and and design? Uh halfway through that job, I think two or three years in,

12:37I started getting getting an itch for coding my own stuff again. And that was like the code itself was the thing you missed like the actual Yeah. It's like for me it's almost like the the brain teaser part of it, you know, it's like how how can I make this happen, you know? And I even from like optimization of the code is like how can I make this the you know best [clears throat] code it can in a way right and so that I I missed that but I was also worried that I was going down a path that wasn't my original degree and I would slowly lose credibility as a developer as well. like if you

13:22wanted to go back, you wouldn't have that sort of fall back in in terms of just like strategic employment opportunities. Exactly. And and and so I funny enough as well, so when I graduated, I think it was the year Apple announced Swift and so I was very, you know, basically I had no Swift experience. Yeah. Nobody did. Yeah. But, you know, two or three years in I still didn't have any Swift experience. And so I was very much an Objective C developer and I thought to myself, well, I probably should have a little side project that I can at least be the goal was for me to

14:01familiarize myself with UI kit again, which after 3 years I kind of had forgotten. So the app was still coded in Objective C as a proxy for me to just familiarize myself or refamiliarize myself with UI kit. And that was that's an app I released in 2019, not with much ambition. Again, basically I made it for myself and I thought what was it's it's called Remindly. It's an app to create Apple reminders more conveniently than Apple reminders would uh let you do. And through to the store, which was your first app, you know, you'd released to the store then? It was. And it actually started as a as a set of shortcuts. And so I would basically I had my own shortcuts. I was just

14:50like being design- minded. It wasn't particularly pleasant to just like tap options in shortcuts to be like, "Oh, I want to be reminded of this when I arrive at home." And like, you know, there's like three or four different selections you need to make. And so I thought to myself, like, well, it could be a nice design challenge. I can make my own app, familiarize myself with coding again, and get this out the door. I literally didn't message anyone. I didn't have a social media presence. So like it launched to no fanfare whatsoever. Nor did I try. Were you wanting it to be or were was it like the goal mostly was to have an app in the store for the sake of going

15:31through that process slash like a portfolio piece or something? It was mostly a portfolio piece. I I added a tip jar to the app just on the off chance that anyone would find it use useful and wanted to to reward me for it. I think to this day the only person who tipped me is still my mom. I didn't have the heart to tell her that Apple would take would take a cut out of that. So So I don't think she she knows. But yeah. So okay. So you had that. And I guess before moving on, you know, how do you feel about the worth of doing that project? Cuz I think at least to lead the witness a little bit,

16:12I feel like having a sort of muse side project as a engineer or designer who wants to keep up your engineering chops or whatever, that alone is super valuable. But getting it into the store, going through that whole process, and then having a thing that you can kind of update as iOS versions come out, what have you, just that alone, even if nobody's using it, feels to me like a valuable thing to have just as a way, it's almost like doing code kadas or something. It's just a nice exercise to kind of keep you sharp and keep your skills ready for the next thing. Yeah, I agree. I think the the the surprising challenge I think in releasing this app was you know I made

16:56the functionality I needed for myself you know it's because it started as a project mostly for myself and so I made the functionality I needed and then I was like well it would be nice if I released it on the app store and you quickly realized that yeah you can't just release this to yeah it's not like a web thing where you just drop it into a S3 bucket and now it's available to the world. No. And and even beyond that, it's just like, well, you kind of need you. Obviously, there's all the the hoops Apple makes you jump through from the T's and C's that you need to

17:27set up somewhere and, you know, the app store screenshots you need to take, but like even this, right, is like creating app store screenshots. It's like, well, what what do I talk about, you know, for this project that is ma mostly made for me, right? It's like, how do I market this thing? even though I didn't necessarily have big ambitions for it, you still think about, well, if I'm going to do it, I might as well at least give it a shot, like an honest try. And, you know, a preferences screen and trying to think about what people might want out of this, you know, to configure and and the things they, you know, because I can't just hardcode my home address into

18:05the app, whatever. Exactly. Right. uh eventually I kind of need to let people be able so like there was a bunch of of features like this that I had to suddenly consider which wasn't completely alien to me because obviously I was doing UI and UX design as a job. So these were consideration I had in my in my day-to-day job. But when it comes to your side project, I think it it it feels strange to

18:33to almost relinquish it and say, "Well, actually someone else is going to need to use this now." Ah, like you feel like it took away from the like it almost was worse for you because you know how to make it work for other people too. You know, I don't mean to say this in necessarily a negative way, right? Like it wasn't necessarily worse. It was just, you know, when you're creating this, you h you have a certain mindset and when you realize that other people need to use this, your mindset, your mindset shifts. And I think that's the that was the the interesting and useful skill that I

19:11gained by doing this part. even though I wasn't trying to to make a big deal out of it or I didn't have, you know, have any ambitions to make big money out of this thankfully otherwise I'd be very disappointed. But even though I didn't have big ambitions for it, it was still a a useful shift of mindset that allowed me to think about how do I ship something? How do I market it? Beyond beyond the technical process of like archiving your Xcode project and sending it to App Store Connect and doing all of that. It's just that this is going to be used by people. What do I need to

19:48to change about my approach, you know, in this product to make this usable? Okay. So you released that and you know I don't even know if that's it sounds like maybe that is still in the store but it's it's not like a it is a major part of your app portfolio. No I think to I checked earlier actually to this day it has less than a thousand downloads. So, hey, like I, you know, even more than 100 feels like it's kind of cool uh that there's there's probably people out there using it or at least playing with it. But that's not the app we're here to talk about. So, what's the

20:28what's the sort of journey from where we left off to, you know, building SQL? Yeah. So after that initial startup job I joined a separate startup in finance still mobile app but I think very quickly I sort of started getting another itch and it was a bit different this time because I think there is so much design you can do with a financial product like in terms of UX like there's so many ways you can show a list of transactions to people [laughter] and you know sure there's a bunch of like transactional screens, but like they're very sort of, you know, make sure you're conveying the

21:11purpose and the result of what they're about to do from a financial perspective. And so it's not particularly exciting to me at at any rate. And so I started thinking about getting another project out this time that would be more visual. And that's when I remembered one of the prototypes I made when I was looking for a full-time job, which was for a movie tracking app. And at the time, I was a bit less so now, but I was very into movie trailers and and I I felt like they were like this unique art form in themselves. I think trailers nowadays are not nearly [clears throat] as

21:54exciting. Yeah. feel like cuz this I'm trying to think I mean this would have been later but still this is more in the air of like the social network trailer or a lot of Christopher Nolan trailer you know the Dark Knight I remember was one of the the big I I must have watched the Dark Knight trailer at least 100 times at the time. Yeah it's funny when you think back on the cuz there was like the separate trailers like app right uh at least on the Apple TV. Yeah actually Apple Apple had the trailers app. Yeah and it was awesome. It was great. It was great. I think the trailers

22:27that could only show you trailers in 720p if I remember correctly. And I think that's high definition. That was high definition at the time. But I did find I did find out that they actually had 1080p versions of these trailers and I was able to just download these trailers and Oh, interesting. Glorious at the time. Anyway, side tangent, you know, tension aside, I was very into traders. wanted to make an app to track these movies I was excited about. Yeah. And I never coded anything. It was it was purely a a design challenge for me. And so when it came to find a project that was more visually appealing than a list of financial transactions, I sort of

23:12started thinking about that project again. And you know I was at a different stage of my life and I started thinking like well tracking movies is fine but actually I also need to track my games because I buy too many games on sales and don't have time to play them all and lose track of which ones I've

23:28got. And the same would happen for movies because the company had a generous book allowance. Sorry. The same would happen for books because the company had a generous book allowance. So you had to use that and you're like I'll get and you forget what you have. Every month I would buy new books and I would like have these bookshelves of books and not [clears throat] really know which ones I had read and which ones I hadn't. And so that convergence sort of made me think like I wonder if I could make something that allows me to track all of these things in a single place. And I

24:02think that was an interesting challenge because these media types are consumed differently. If you look at, you know, a game tracking app, it usually behaves quite a bit differently than a TV show tracking app or movie tracking app or book tracking app. And I thought to myself like, well, if I can create an experience that is, I don't know, that goes to the core of what all of these are, but still, you know, offer unique [snorts] capabilities. And you know I I did it

24:37basically the interesting challenge for me was to not design for a lowest common denominator. Yeah. Because that's that's the risk, right? cuz you could just make a you could just make a database essentially that is essentially a glorified Excel. Well, at the end of the day, I mean, most of our apps are glorified Excel sheets, but like you could take that to its extreme in either direction where it's a really plain Excel sheet that they all look exactly the same and they they maybe have a square image or something that's exactly the same. Or you could go the other way where it's completely open database, but like it's not a refined experience. And the challenge,

25:15the fun. I think the reason why these types of apps are a joy for designers in particular, kind of like the old Twitter world, is it's like you have this set of challenges that you can solve in different ways and you can put your own like stamp on that. Right. Exactly. And so, you know, then it's it comes down to, well, if I design a screen for, you know, looking at the details of a movie, that's great. But then how do I design a screen for looking at the details of a games that still feels like it belongs to the same app and that a user you know if you've been tracking movies

25:55and suddenly you decide to track a game that you don't feel lost because it's completely different in its interactions. And so yeah that was that was what attracted me to that particular project. was, you know, the visual aspect of it because media is so rich and I thought, you know, I can do something really interesting with this and the the sort of I guess challenge of finding an experience that can encompass all of these media types together. So, at this time, cuz this is probably 2020, 2021, like it wasn't 2021. Yes, I think I started working on it in 2021. So by this point there definitely were like this was almost a genre of app to some degree some different

26:42kinds of like tracking apps right were you like looking at those and being like none of these solve a specific problem I have or were you almost trying to be like I want to just build my thing in a in a silo to some degree based on your way of solving that problem. I think it was a a little little bit of both where I I started looking at, you know, I guess you can call it competition, right? See what's out there. You know, I used because I use the movie tracking app and I use

27:15the game tracking app and the book tracking app and so I had experience using these apps, right? And so that sort of merging of the genres I guess came from that me wanting something that felt a bit more unified. And was that your like central thesis so to speak for the app the differentiator in your head of like the main problem you're trying to solve is the unification bringing them all into a cohesive singular app experience or were there other like driving forces at the beginning that were like you know input needs to be as smooth way smoother than these or or the experience of viewing them needs to be better or something like was there specific thesis that

28:03was driving it or it almost sounds like the way you're talking about it. It was the unification was kind of the big the unification was the main thesis when it came to actually building the app. You know, that input was extremely important to me. I spent countless days, I think, at the time creating a single text field where you could search for something and the app would hopefully surface the actual item you want across all of the data sources it uses. So you wouldn't have to go I'm adding a movie or I'm adding a game. It just goes you start typing and immediately you get the

28:40results you expect at the top. Hopefully I don't think the first version was particularly good at doing that. I I think it got significantly better as time went on and my skills and you know sort of observations of what was going wrong improved but but yeah so the the main thesis was definitely the unification and I think I would be remissed if I didn't call out the excellent sofa app as well

29:03by Hickman which I think you had on on your show before. Yes. Yeah, he's been on the show. Yeah. And I I think I can't remember if his app came out around the time I started working on SQL much long before, but I think it was out when I started my work on SQL. And I think it was one of the apps I evaluated. And for me, I wanted something that would be more visual, right? That would sort of another main thesis and I think there was sort of the main actually sort of requirements when I started working on app that I wrote down. It was e sort of the ease of input. And the second one was

29:39artwork first. And it was always putting forward the uniqueness of the media you're tracking so that you're creating a space that is kind of reflective of each individual piece of media that you're tracking. So I like that you said you think you wrote that down. So you were coming at it. I I asked this question a lot and a lot of people sometimes sit and think about it, but I I'm I'm curious like that was a thing at the beginning before you started building. You thought through what the real thesis or principles of the app were and importantly what the where the priorities lie when you have to make a trade-off. You made those decisions beforehand. Yes. And I

30:24think that I feel like that must be sort of my short stint as a PM, you know, to almost lay down the requirements for the product you're about to build or the feature you're about to build. Or I thought like I need to be able to articulate why I'm doing it and what I'm about to try to achieve, right? I think that's I think that's to me anyway, not that I would say I'm like this great product person, so you know, maybe everything I'm saying is dumb, but I feel like the people I've worked with who I think are the best at at product stuff are the ones who whether it's very explicit and

31:03written down and intentional at the beginning or something that they build internally in their brain as they're going is the ones who are able to understand that set of priorities and have it nice and like solidified in their brain so that when you know you start building and you run into all these compromises and choices you may have to make you have this thing to fall back to and it's consistent and you make that same choice throughout. I think that's where you end up with a product at the end of the day that has a what makes these the great indie apps that we talk about. It has this feeling of like intentionality and personality because it's like this is what

31:45is a priority to priority to this person and you can feel it throughout. And I think making those choices early on I think it's a really good exercise for anybody even if it's just a little side project that you're doing for for a portfolio piece. Like when I built Dark Noise I didn't think anybody was going to actually use it but I did the same thing. I wrote these are the three principles and everything comes back to that and I will make choices that feel almost silly but I'm going to prioritize this over everything else always. And I think that's a useful thing to do and it helps you

32:18not fall into the trap of solving things the same way as all the other people that you're looking at as examples. It is very useful and I think it makes you it makes you say no to a bunch of stuff especially for V1 because you know you think about a movie tracking app there is countless things I could have added to the app right the [snorts] first version didn't even have cast and crew details because V1 it didn't even have synopsis or anything like this like not because that wasn't it wasn't in those that list of priorities you had. You know, it doesn't input it faster

32:56and it doesn't make it visually more appealing necessarily. Exactly. And the way I like to design products is with an end goal in mind. So even though the first version didn't have these things, I knew maybe not exactly, but I knew of a few directions I could take once it came time for me to incorporate these features that are maybe more media specific. So that you know because it comes down to that unification requirement right it's like I've unified it and the first version was very basic you know you would open up a piece of media and you would see the screen was a big artwork you know harking back to that artwork first principle the poster in the middle and

33:36some very key detail and basically you were able to add it to your library mark it as watched or completed or in your backlog and that was it right because the point of the app was to be able to track these things effortlessly and to never lose track of the things you're actually excited about, you know. So, another another sort of requirement was again that tracking of the things you're excited about. That was that feeling I wanted to capture, you know, when we're talking about media [clears throat] trailers. And so the app was designed around this upcoming section at the top and when something came out, you had this big carousel saying out now that sort of highlights

34:18the thing again you're excited about. But beyond that, it didn't have all that many features, but they all sort of fed into that set of requirements I had set for myself um up front. And so as you're building this first one, were you thinking this is very similar to your last app? this is not, you know, if I put a tip jar in and my mom's the only one who buys it, that's totally fine. Or were you like, let's make a run at this as like a as like a little little side business and, you know, did you try to do some more marketing and think through things in that in that way? Yes. I never

34:55really thought I would become an indie out of it. That was sort of a a different happen stance, I guess. But I did want to give this an actual shot. And you know, when I started working on it, I was like, well, I think there's a couple ways I can potentially monetize this. And so I tried to keep this in mind, you know, even thinking as I was creating features, thinking like what should be a paid feature, what should be a a free feature. I knew I wanted a free tier because I think media consumption there's a lot of word of mouth, you know, around the media you're consuming. And so

35:36I feel well, the more people can use the app, the better. The challenge I had with V1 is that there wasn't very many features I could put behind a payw wall. And so I started a bit more narrow. I think there was two or three features. One of them was the notifications for new releases, which is still a paid feature today. But the other one was you could only track up to I think it was 25 media items. You could probably use it for a while, I guess, cuz it's only 25 upcoming then, right? No, it was 25 total. Okay. So, you'd have to like roll. I mean, I I wish I had I had that

36:13idea of only doing 25 upcoming if I'm honest. That is actually quite quite an interesting idea. But you do want people to run into the payw wall. Otherwise, it's just free software, which is fine. But like if the goal is to kind of make this into a little business, then nobody's going to upgrade if they never run into it. Exactly. And I I think the problem with that particular payroll or set of of paid features is I think it went against that variety of media where I think people would start would open the app and realize like I'm going to have to pay for this at some point and I think it

36:52might as well have been paid up front because of it because you could say 25 unless it was 2,000 I feel like people would you know, 25 or 50 or 100 people would think this is a paid app. I think it depends on your audience, but I do think that a lot of people on the app store, especially indies who are marketing probably through their channels and so it's reaching a more sort of nerdy Apple enthusiast crowd. That group is extremely tuned to think from the very beginning like how am I paying for this? It's one of the reasons why I think showing the payw wall as part of your onboarding

37:34is better. There's a lot of reasons for that. One of them is it converts better blah blah blah. But even just from a pure like if your goal is not make the most money, people just like it gets aggravating when you open an app and you're just like it's just like hey this is free and you can use it and you know if you're one of these people who uses software a lot you're kind of like I know there's something coming like where is it? I need to find it so I can decide am I going to invest in this or not. Yeah. And so having a free tier that you could use even if it's super limited, you

38:06could use that indefinitely and it's good versus a free tier where you run into a limit eventually. That's not so much a free tier as it is a trial. Yeah. And people will make that conversion in their head. At least certain cohorts of users I think make that conversion in their head. And so, yeah, sometimes I think it's better to be more limited but unlimited within that set versus give everybody access to everything and then they hit a payw wall eventually. But I I don't know, it

38:32can go either way, but you should think of it more like a trial than a free tier then. Ex. Exactly. And I think part of my thinking as well was well, I will keep working on this app. I will add more features. you know, I already had some ideas for paid features and I thought, well, to me anyway, I don't know if you'd agree, but I think it's easier to turn a paid feature into a free one than it is to take away a free feature and make it paid. Certainly, especially if you want to like grandfather old users in and then there's just a lot of hairiness technically to do that. Yeah. And

39:07and I think if in my head the number of items as a limit was never really meant as a you know sort of final feature to pay wall if you will like I knew it was probably going to go away because again I wanted to leverage that sort of you know I want as many users to use SQL as possible right because I've built it in a way that more users doesn't really incur more cost to me, you know, beyond my living cost, right? And so, so supporting a free user doesn't cost me all that much. You mentioned it earlier and I wrote it down. I want to bring up is is the data sources. So, like, you know,

39:53this is not just a database app where every user doesn't have any sort of server hit. Like when you do a search and you try to find a movie and those posters, they're all coming from somewhere. Where is that coming from? Is that somewhere that cost you money or is it one of the like free movie database kind of things? So the movie and series is partly coming from well is almost wholly coming from the movie DB. So TM TMDB which when I started was a free database. They introduced a paid plan which luckily doesn't sync my whole business which is always the risk right when when you're

40:34relying on third party APIs like this. Speaking of what we say like where you use a thing and you're kind of like there there's going to be a payment somewhere. I feel like API access is one of those where like even if something's free now, unless it's like built into the charter of that thing, you should probably set yourself up to be prepared for the fact that maybe it won't be at some point in the future. Yeah. And and I think for people who want to use that API, I think the free they

41:03still have a free tier if you're not making any money out of it. Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah. And then the games come from IGTB, which I believe is an subsidiary of Amazon or Twitch or I guess both via a weird acquisition. Subsidiaries. Yeah. Which is completely free if I'm not mistaken. And then the books API for better or worse is coming from Apple Books, which is obviously Oh, I didn't know they had a API. They have an iTunes API which works for music and also books which I'm I would be amazed if anyone at Apple looked at it. Is it still powered by uh web objects or whatever that's

41:46called? I I don't know but I I don't think I want to know. There was there was one there was a week where essentially the API stopped working and it took them a couple of weeks to actually get it to learn where it's hosted to find somebody who has access to change anything there. [laughter] Yeah. Yeah. So I guess I guess someone touched something at some point and did not realize they broke the API which was funny. That's really funny. Yeah. So that's the main the main three databases I use. Thankfully, none of them are priced outside of of what I could afford, but there is always the

42:23risk of, you know, what if any of these shut down at some point as well. Have you built things in a way where there's like an abstraction layer where you could like try to swap out swap out what the provider is? Yeah. So actually you know when was speaking about unification that was also almost part of it which was how do I build an interface that can accommodate any data source and any media type at least with V1 it was very straightforward to add a media type I think it would still be straightforward to do so and if I wanted to change the source for a media

43:00type today I could if I needed to and that's also you know sort of including keeping your old media items on the old data source in a way that isn't going to completely nuke everything but slowly sort of migrating to a new data source. So like I've sort of you know that that's more with experience that wasn't there day one but it's the kind of stuff that when you're starting to build a business you're starting to think about what are sort of existence threatening risks for your business which I don't know if I'm fully equipped for any of these really you know I've put stuff in

43:37place here and there but I think there's a bit where you can especially as an indie way over think about those like there's a degree of being prepared for things and then there's a degree of like you're spending all of your time preparing for a disaster that might not happen instead of just moving forward and growing, which is probably the thing that makes you more defensible than anything. Um, but especially when you're doing pricing decisions, it's that's a smart thing to think about is like, okay, if this thing that's free becomes paid, like how can I weather that storm? And having a way to make money is a big part of that. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So, you

44:16know, but we're still talking about the V1 here, which is, you know, on on brand for this show. So, let's get to the, you know, the title of this show, the launch itself. So, you're treating it more seriously. It sounds like you have at least some desire to make this into, you know, a product that people other than your mom will will download and maybe even pay for. What did you do to to try to like sort of market that launch and then how did the launch itself go? Honestly, again, fairly little. I would call myself naive, I guess. you know sort of I thought well you know

44:54I was proud of it and I felt for the most part if you build something great people will come which maybe but I did one one thing which is I I reached out to a few Mac and app oriented websites about the app and thankfully it was Mac stories who picked it up and it was only a me well I don't want to sound ungrateful it was a mention on uh members newsletter, but it still made a significant difference when it comes to numbers, right? I think yeah, when you're starting at just, you know, it's on the app store and you hope you get some search keywords that work out,

45:35that is an actual source of distribution that actually exists. Exactly. And you know it wasn't a massive influx of users but I had at least enough users that for the first time I was getting feedback from people you know saying it would be nice if your app did this or if it did that. That was actually very nice. It's worth mentioning as well you know at that point I had quit my previous job and well quit is not exactly the word. I volunteered for redundancy. That's such a British way of phrase. [laughter] Uh well I think I think it's a it's an important distinction in that I

46:12would not have gone fulltime on SQL otherwise because it gave me a runway where I feel well this app is like the one is almost done. I have an opportunity to break free from that job and focus on this side project I've been working on for nearly a year. And I thought, well, I'll give it a try. If it works out, great. If it doesn't work out, at least I have a little bit of a

46:43runway financially to to course correct if I And a portfolio piece that makes it easier to get a job. Exactly. And so I launched it, I think, in the first eight months. So I say eight months because it took me eight months to release V2 which was to me the real launch of SQL in a way because that's that's when it actually sort of took off. And so in the first eight months I made I made a $1,000 I

47:14think. So plenty to sustain you living in London, right? Plenty to sustain my my London lifestyle. Absolutely. It was clearly not enough. And I think I thought, well, I'm going to release V2 and I'm if I can make a,000 in the first month month of launch for V2, I'll keep going. What was it as you were building V2? And also, I guess what was what was in V2? But what were you thinking would make that make a difference? Was it just features or was there some marketing stuff also in that? A mix of both. From a feature perspective, there was, you know, the obvious emissions from V1,

47:57things like checking the synopsis, checking being able to look at trailers, being able to track individual episodes, which I don't think V1 did. You know, that sort of stuff that actually makes it not just a brain dump of like, oh, I want to watch movie X, let me put it in this app, but actually lets you keep up with the stuff you're actually tracking, right? Especially when it comes to series, like tracking a series and not being able to remember which episode you stopped on or or or even know when a new episode comes out was a little bit limiting, right? And so that was kind of the the main one and all of that came from also feedback from the initial wave of users,

48:42right? Is what are the priorities for my first users? And that was vital in guiding where the app needed to go. Another one was, you know, your app is great, but I'm opening it and there is nothing for me to add. I have to remember myself. So, I added sort of a a fledgling browsing feature. You could see what was trending and what was popular just like a better empty state. Yeah. So, that at least if you're coming fresh, you have stuff to add if you want to. So, you know, essentially it's it was focus on the initial experience, focus on the continued experience to make sure that you could actually track these things. And that's when I also switched the pay

49:26wall to allow for unlimited items as well because now I had more features to put behind the payw wall the main focus. But for the launch, that's you know where I said earlier I was a bit naive because obviously you know you reach out to a few media some of them will pick it up but that's when I realized like maybe I should be on social media. I still am not really a social media person. I don't particularly enjoy posting, I guess. It's like, you know, I'm I don't really know what it is, but I I don't necessarily want to show my work too early or I never think people have

50:07anything to not learn from me, but I I always feel like [snorts] I don't have anything worth saying, which is kind of funny now that I'm on a podcast [laughter] uh spending the last hour talking. Um but that you know that was at least the the the headsp space I was in at that time right and so I wasn't on social media and I realized like actually I kind of need to be on social media and so I you know slowly started you know briefly mentioned the app here and there sharing a few a few screenshots from what I was building as you're building it kind of kind of a build in

50:44public style thing. Yeah, I you know I I wasn't doing quite as much as some of the more prolific building public community members, I I guess, but you know, it was sort of me dipping my toes in joining a few communities and and just eventually getting the upcoming update actually noticed, which was a big change from just releasing something and praying that it would get an audience, but actually releasing something knowing that people had seen it that people had enjoyed it made a massive difference, right? And that's when again the good people at Max Stories actually wrote a full-on review about the 2.0 update which you know having been a reader of Mac stories for

51:33years, I was just blown away, right? And that is essentially where SQL actually took off. Yeah, Max stories is I feel like I the patron saint of indie developers. Maybe that's Yeah, that's the phrase. I've been looking for a good phrase. I always say like they're like it's like they're like the taste makers. Like they're not the biggest, you know, like in some ways like a 9to-5 Mac blog post will drive more numbers because it's just bigger readership and everything. And I love everybody at 9 to5 Mac. This is not a but there's something maybe it's just because of you know I listen to a lot of relay podcasts and so I've listened to Feder Rico and then I kind of listen to App

52:12Stories and John and that crew for a long time. I think the other thing is that their articles are kind of a work of art a lot of times in a way that they put a lot of efforts into these. Yeah. Like I I'm sure you had the same experience, but I've read them for a very long time. And it wasn't until I read them writing about my app that I realized how deep they go cuz they brought they brought up things that I've never tweeted about. I never thought anybody would notice and like little details that I was kind of proud of and I'm like, "Wow." Like they get it in a way that's pretty

52:47special. And because they aren't as prolific in terms of the amount that they're writing, I think they can spend more time writing longer form things and doing that. Yeah. And I think to an extent, you know, they wrote about my product better than I could have ever done. I 100% felt the same way in a way that I'm just like, yeah, this this is probably what I would have said if I could actually, you know, write properly, you know? I mean, it's just like if I could write a review of my own app in an unbiased way, it's probably the things I would want to be called out,

53:21right? And so, the fact that they would automatically pick up on this because obviously, you know, you reach out to them, you don't give them talking points, you don't, you know, at most you say this is what's new, you know, this is what I focused on and they'll they'll do the the work, right? And the fact that they would call out the things you're proud of is just like quite um I don't know not refreshing but gratifying. Yes. Now I'll say like at least the advice I generally give people is most people aren't max stories and I don't mean that in a skill level. I mean that in a

53:57like like I said before most people need to write things really fast. So if you're reaching out to press, it's it is generally better to provide them as much resources, pros, you know, explanations of features, the things that you think are important or cool to call out. It's better to highlight those to people and that that will increase the likelihood of people writing about you. But with all of these things, you know, I'm I'm sure like because that's a community you care about, you built this app with a lot of their ideals in mind just because you share those cuz you've kind of grown up reading their stuff. But there there's nothing you can do to guarantee any of

54:37any of these types of features, right? It's it's all like build something great. You do not have to reach out, but you definitely increase your odds by reaching out. But it kind of to some degree ends there other than building something that you know fits that audience. Yeah, absolutely. And you know I think and the reason I credit you know Max stories for SQL taking off is actually because you know now with a [snorts] review it got in front of many more people. Yeah. And that's when people started recommending the app to other people. The first sort of event of this happening was Quinn Nelson of Snazzy Labs who I think he was just asking on social media for cool apps

55:28that are not very well known that people really enjoy. And you know, I wasn't even aware. He he asked on social media and I watched his video and he highlighted SQL and he said SQL was by far the most recommended app. And I was just what do you mean? Like like surely not, right? Like someone like Snazzy Labs who has like I don't know how many viewers he has but probably millions. And I just thought like what do you mean it was the most recommended app? Like it's not possible, right? And then the second one which I thought was funny is David Pierce of the Verge. You know,

56:05every week he writes they install a newsletter and I think it's I think it's on Thursdays where where he asked people either in general what they've been enjoying that week and there was a week where he asked specifically for how people kept track of their media. And I thought to myself, it would be really cool if David highlighted SQL. And you know, I thought I thought, well, I'm working on this beta. It's almost ready. Maybe I'll email him to say like, "Hey, I've got this app and it might be of interest." So, I did. And he replied, I think within a couple hours, saying like, "Oh my god, I absolutely wanted to email you because your app is the most recommended

56:47media tracking app in my replies." And again, I was just like, "Why would David Pierce want to email me about my app?" you know, he actually invited me to just chat with him and we had a call and I it just felt very surreal when you're coming from, you know, making this app and for the first eight months there is not no one but a very very small audience and you know very grateful for that audience because they helped me shape the future of SQL. But going from this to people actively recommending the app to essentially taste makers right was yeah surreal and like if I put on my

57:31you know growth marketing revenue cat hat. It feels like the primary distribution mechanism then for for SQL is through like organic press and then organic you know sharing within that. But even even that maybe it's happening between people the same way, but at least the ones you've highlighted, it's more like you've built something that resonates with with the press and with the community. And because of that, they write about it, more people find out about it, and when they want to reach out to their audience for things, people are suggesting it because it it resonates

58:09with that specific audience, and that kind of come becomes a a distribution mechanism in a way. Yeah. Exactly. And you know, I think I vaguely tried Apple like app store search ads and I was just like this isn't for me. So, you know, I did not put a lot of money in it. I think I used the $100 free credits and that's basically it. And the way I see it and I I also appreciate how fortunate I am to be in this position. But if I have to hustle over social media posts and ad campaigns, this isn't the job I want to do. And I know that's, you know, very fortunate position that

58:51I'm in. I know there's plenty of indie developers that I have to crack that social media, you know, outreach. [clears throat] And I haven't had to do any, you know, I post on social media, but it's very much just n, you know, I'm going to release. casual and in some ways more aimed at again the kind of community side. Yeah, exactly. Okay. And so and so I haven't had to do any of that. And the bulk of SQL's growth has come from media coverage and also word of mouth. You know, as you pointed out, you know, I get a lot of emails of people saying, "I love SQL. I recommend

59:31it to all my friends and family." And that was also intentional. you know, the the the media detail screen, as much as I've designed it to have that artwork first principle in mind, it was also because I wanted people recommending a media to someone else. If that person pulls out their phone and the app they use to get some information about the movie or or add it to their library from their recommendation, if it looks sleek and polished, I wanted the other person to go like, "Wow, what is this?" Right? Have you done anything with that on the digital front? like have you thought about screens or built-in features aimed around, you know, screenshotting or something so

1:00:16that trying to get people to like if they're sharing a movie that they're excited about, they're sharing a screenshot of the app because it's it's like kind of the most fun way to share that and then you kind of get that like what's the app, you know, question. I I haven't I have I think there's about 500 tickets in my backlog of [laughter] things I want to do. uh this is one and and if you look at the things I've done with SQL in the last few years that actually heading towards this kind of feature the thing for me and maybe it's a fault but I before I want to

1:00:53allow sharing I want to be able to localize the app but before I want to localize the app I kind of want to make sure it hits a certain standard of quality that I've set for itself. The idea being that if you're going to share it and people are going to hear about it, if it's not localized,

1:01:14the outreach is going to be limited anyway. So, I might as well do localization first, right? But if I'm going to increase the outreach, then there are a few features that regularly come back from feedbacks like you should have this feature, you should have that feature that I'm like, I should include these because if people hear about SQL and dismiss it for not having these features, then I don't really want to hear about SQL until it's ready, if that makes sense. which is a bit of a I don't know it might be a bit of a chicken and egg problem which is or or maybe trying to reach

1:01:47perfection. Um I think it's a little bit of that. Yeah, a little bit of that. But I think that's you know that's who I am. That's how I create something where I I always want to put my best foot forward. I think and so before I localize the app, I'm absolutely just like I need these two or three features before I do this. Unfortunately, there were very big features that took me a very long time to build, but I'm getting there. When I don't get sidetracked by redesigning my media detail screen for the fifth time. Uh, [laughter] but yeah, eventually, you know, eventually I'm sure you'll be able to take a screenshots and and share that that what I want to do actually

1:02:27is use app clips. Yeah. Yeah, but I think if the idea is social, if it's social sharing, it's like images and screenshots I think are the are the mechanism that really works. So, so I I think that to me they would go hand in hand, right? There would be a screenshot that you share and there would be a link, you know, a SQL link that you can tap and essentially get started immediately using the app and experiencing what the app is like. I don't see app cliffs in the

1:02:55wild. Maybe there's maybe there's a reason for it, but I don't know. It's my master plan at Eclipse. Perfect. All right. Well, I'm very excited to see, you know, all of these 5,000 tickets, you know, come out in the next in the next couple weeks because, you know, now we have Fable or Soul or whatever. Fable five. Just sick the AIS on it. And uh you should knock that out, you know, before this episode comes out. Yeah, I'll check that progress just after this. I'm sure they've knocked it out of the park without any intervention. But for real, this was like this is super fun talking

1:03:28through all of this. You know, it's funny you said that the other app came out in 2019. I thought SQL came out in 2019 cuz that's when Dark Noise came out. And I feel like I've always thought of SQL as part of this. I feel like there was this like surge of indie Yeah. wave is a better word of of indie apps that came out in that 2019 2020 era that you know I I've now seen like it kind of comes in these different waves but that was this kind of specific crest was actually a little bit younger than I thought it was 20 2022 yeah well from the beginning it may have been whenever Max

1:04:02stories wrote about it if I'm being honest maybe not V1 maybe V2 yeah yeah exactly but no it's it's been really fun to watch and obviously use the app as well and so before before I end the show I got to asked the question I asked uh in the show every time, which is what's a person or people out there that have inspired you and your work? Yeah, I I've got a couple. I think one of it isn't necessarily very original, but I would have to say David Smith to me like he is the quintessential indie dev, right? and like the craftsmanship he puts into his apps and the level of consideration and respect

1:04:39for his users is just like everything I aspire to do and I do say aspire because I I think there's a long way for me to get there but uh yeah if I if I have a north star I think it's David and the second one would be Nick Le from me faster who also released mood faster recently which is respectively is R key app I guess remind me faster is an easy way of entering reminders into the Apple reminders app which is very similar to my very first app. Yeah they came out at the same time and he's done an incredible job and he you know way better than anything I could have ever

1:05:17done and you know he has like such a skill at creating interactions that are so focused they could be boring but it makes them all delightful. And so for anyone who wants like a master class in design interaction, just go and check his apps. They're just beautifully made and really, really, really thought out. Fantastic. All right. Well, thank you again for your time. This was like super fun. Where can people find you and uh your work? Yeah, I'm on most meaningful social

1:05:54media platforms these days. Mostly threads and Masttodon. I think I'm on blue sky, too. But if you search for at RLFB, you know, as a as a way to uh to avoid people mistyping my last name, I've I've taken to I've just taken to shorten it to LFB. Uh so either Roman LFB on uh threads or RLFB on Masteron. [clears throat] All right, perfect. And uh thank you all for listening. Uh Launched is part of the Revycat podcast family. If you want to learn more about the growth side of the mobile app business, you should check out subclub uh which is hosted by my good friend and

1:06:34colleague David Barnard, um you can check out revenuecat.com to learn more about the easiest way to grow and monetize your mobile app business. And of course, uh you can go to launchedfm.com to learn more and find more episodes of this here podcast. And a reminder, this is a video podcast as well. So, we're on YouTube and you can see, you know, our beautiful

1:06:56offices here and smiling faces. That's it for now. So, I will see you all again in 2 weeks. Bye.