There Is No Easy Mode: Launching Apps After Your First Success — Sebastian Röhl, HabitKit

0:00So I posted the screenshots, got a lot of engagement. I got new motivation and inspiration and um put all my energy into building this new app and released it after 2 months of building. The launch was much more successful than than Lift Bear. Of course, I think the first day I instantly had $150 of revenue, which was super cool for me at that time. So, great indicators that this app could be a success someday. Welcome to Launched. [music] I'm Charlie Chapman and today I'm excited to bring you the

0:34developer behind the cross-platform habit tracking app, Habit Kit. Sebastian Roll. Sebastian, welcome to the show. Hi, Chidy. Thanks for having me. I guess I should say welcome back to the show. Uh, [laughter] so a little bit of background for everybody listening. Earlier this year, I was I was very excited. I was like, I'm bringing launch back. I started recording episodes. I did one with a couple different people. I had one with Clemen Straer and that came out and then uh we recorded an episode. I did some live episodes. And then the summer hit and my job got crazy. I was traveling a bunch and that was when I realized I was wrong and I don't actually

1:21have time. I have time to record this show, but I don't have time to do all the editing. And uh unfortunately, this one sat as the next episode in my queue for like eight months. I was like, I need to finish editing this episode. And that's what eventually led to uh where the show is at now, which is it was acquired by Revycat. And now I have a team of people who edit the episode for me, which is amazing. But I was sitting on this episode that we recorded in like early spring and it kept felting worse and worse that I was going to put something out that was super old. Um,

1:58but I was going to do it. But then a couple weeks ago, you released a new app and I was like, this is the perfect opportunity to just re-record uh this episode and I got my fancy new lighting and we have much better editors doing it. So, I think this will be I think this will be really

2:15good. But yeah, I appreciate you doing doing this with me twice. Yeah, thanks for having me back. Uh I was already uh second guessing myself. Was I too boring at the first time? Yeah, it was it was just a it was just a dream. But no, no. So we are here and I am I'm super pumped. I'm really excited. Last time our main focus was your I I think marquee app uh habit kit and I think that's probably mostly what we'll actually still be focusing on. But focus kit, your new app that just came out. How many weeks ago was it at this point? Uh, it was actually um

2:49on Saturday, so just Oh, wow. Less than a week. Five days. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Yeah. So, we're like we're we're hitting the iron while it's hot. Something like that. But before we get into that, I actually have a new opening segment I want to try out on the show because I tend to get very excited about the backstories of apps and then we just sort of organically roll into talking about the app, but we never explain what the app is. So before we even start with the backstory, I want you to give us the elevator pitch for your app. In your case, both of your apps. So let's

3:21start with Habit Kit. How would you describe Habit Kit to somebody who you only have a brief period of time to explain what it is to them? Okay. Um, Habit Kit is is a habit tracking app for iOS and Android. And it helps users to build and maintain their daily habits. and um it visualizes the users's consistency with an grid based interface. So so you have um this tilebased grid chart. It's basically a calendar and each tile in this grid is uh represents a day in the year and uh the tile is colored based on the uh whether the user completed the habit for that day or not. And

4:10that's a pretty cool visualization for consistency and progress. And users get really motivated to see their grid slowly becoming filled with colors. Yes, it's it's a very compelling uh uh visual. If you're a developer, um you probably know the uh visualization from GitHub's uh contribution graph. Yes, exactly. Uh and then focus kit, what's the elevator pitch for that? Focus Kit is a super simple Pomodoro timer app. So if you don't know the Pomodoro technique, it's basically a strategy to dissect your workday into designated focus sessions and break sessions. And yeah, so you start with a 25minut timer where you completely focus on the task that's before you, that's on

5:02your to-do list. And after you are done with these 25 minutes of focus, you a new timer starts with five minutes of break for example where you can go and um have a break, make a coffee or grab a tea and yeah and after that it repeats. you you start again with a 25 minute timer of focus. And yeah, this strategy really helps people to um to to focus more deeply on their work and not get distracted by social media or something like that. Definitely something uh I I should be using more of. Uh so let's get into kind of the story behind behind these apps then. And and the way I usually

5:47uh kick off this show is with three questions to kind of kick us off, which is uh 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 habitat. Okay. Yes. Uh I live in Germany in a western part of the country. It's a smaller town north of Cologne. And I do have a formal education. After school, I studied computer science here in Germany. Did my bachelor's degrees in computer science and my master's degree in software engineering. Yeah. And after that, I started a pretty

6:29boring software development job at a middlesized company here in a bigger town next to my hometown. What stack were you generally in? Like was this enterprise software backend, front end that what kind of stuff? Oh yeah, this was uh enterprise software. We were doing custom uh software for businesses like enterprise resource planning stuff pretty boring. Uh we were using C andnet and Azure for hosting on the cloud and stuff like that. And for the front end we were uh working with Angular and Electron. So yeah, that that was okay. The the topics were pretty boring at this job, but it was great for the first entry into the software development career because um there were a

7:23couple of cool people. I made friends there and I learned a lot and yeah, so the topics weren't that interesting, but I really learned a lot. Yeah, it's hard to beat working with people directly to learn from like Yeah. My my first job out of college was at a uh insurance claims processing company. So Oh, also very exciting. Yeah. Super Boeing essay. [laughter] But, you know, it's like having a couple people that you work with that you can can learn from and and in those cases, you spend your time thinking about code and architecture and dealing with problems versus what I personally find more interesting like product design and and even the marketing side and

8:12all this stuff, which is good, but it's like for me at least, it was definitely helpful to have a uh a stronger foundation in like good software practices when you're working on boring stuff so that when you get to the more fun stuff, you're building on top of something a little more stable. Yeah. They they say when you're the smartest person in the room, you're the in the wrong room, right? Yeah. Yeah. I definitely wasn't the smartest person in this room when it comes to programming. Uh so that was a great opportunity to really learn a lot. So from that environment, how did you end up into the mobile development space? So when I was back at university, I already

8:58discovered the indiehackers.com community, I saw all these cool people like Peter Levels building their businesses, building in public, and sharing their revenue. And yeah, that was super inspiring to me. And I always thought to myself already back in university that I wanted to do this someday and build my own business. And I wasn't really um into mobile apps or something like that. I just wanted to have my own business. Yeah. Indie Hackers is a little more like web oriented, right? Yeah. It's more it's more like React and stuff like that maybe. But I didn't really want to um go all in into indie hacking full-time directly after university. So I decided to pick this Boeing

9:49job and first learn a little bit. And yeah, but I still had this this uh thought of going full-time on my own business at the back of my head. And um after 3 years of working at this company, I decided to quit my job completely and uh set myself a deadline of 12 months so I could uh bootstrap this business. Did you already have a project or business going at that point or was

10:20that just a I'm going to quit my job and then start something? Yeah, the it was the letter. So I I quit the job. Yeah, I had no no good idea. I had no business idea or something like that. I just quitted and I knew I wanted to make something for myself, but I didn't know what exactly and it wasn't that important because I only had the first ideas that I had were something like doing a workout tracker or habit tracker. These are the things that I personally find interesting and um these topics are in my case best suited for for mo mobile apps and that's why I decided to

11:01do mobile apps instead of web development or stuff stuff like that. Okay. And if I remember correctly, you went the Flutter route, right? So like you're a web developer at this point and when you decided to do a mobile app, you have a kind of plethora of options in front of you. Why did you choose Flutter over doing something native or doing something with React Native? It wasn't really that intentional. I already did a Flutter course when I was still at university, so I knew a little bit about it and I thought it was interesting that you could have this one codebase and deploy to multiple platforms. That was the main part of the decision actually and I

11:49didn't second guess it. Okay. Uh so so then what did you end up building? Like where did you go from there then? My first app was a lift bear. It was a workout tracker. Um so at this time I was pretty into fitness and weightlifting and I usually only build apps that I want to use myself. This was my uh my interest at that time. And I thought, okay, you you tried a lot of uh other

12:18workout trackers and none of them um could really satisfy your needs or match your requirements. And yeah, that's why I decided to just make my own version of it. So yeah, I learned flatter and just started building. I I had no real plan. I um used the app daily myself and added features uh feature after feature and yeah I I just started. What was sort of the differentiator than other apps you had used? Is the main thing that it was it it maps to the brain of Sebastian and anybody who happens to sort of map to that same brain or was there some core mechanic that was kind of unique? Yeah,

13:02I think it was just this specific combination of features and statistics that I wanted to have in this app. So, it wasn't really about some um distinct feature or core mechanic that nobody else had. I just wanted this this um unique combination of of features and that's why I decided to make my own version of it. Okay. So you built that and then did you do any kind of beta testing period or did you just build it and then kind of ship it out there? I just build it and ship it out. I only had 12 months because I set myself this deadline. So so I had no time for a beta test. Everything had

13:47to be done quickly. Um so yeah after I think one month already I I shipped the first version to the app store. Did you do any kind of marketing or was it just get the thing in the app store so people can hopefully find it in some way? When I started to develop this app, I also started to build it in public on Twitter back at that time and that was my only channel of marketing. Um yeah, so if you want to call that marketing building in public, it was Yeah. So near or besides that, there wasn't really some great uh marketing strategies that I applied. Maybe that's the cause um that the app

14:38wasn't really that successful. Okay, that was what I was going to ask. Uh [laughter] what happened? Uh because I'm assuming at some point in your 12 months this worked out, but it sounds like at least at the beginning it did not. Yeah. So, um, of course, if you're starting out, you build in public, you have, let's say, 100 or 200 followers on Twitter, and you release your first app to the App Store, nobody cares about it. So, you get the initial one week boost from Apple in the in the App Store ranking. But after that, everything uh falls down. But I I persisted. I was consistent. I um I started to make updates for the app. I added new features, tried improvements,

15:25incorporated user feedback I got for roughly 6 months, I guess. So it was a pretty long time. But after this 6 months, I was so burned out because I got two users per day maybe. And um yeah, the app is still live and right now it makes $150 MR. Pays for your developer license. Yeah. Yeah, it pays for that but um not for um cost of living here in Germany. Yeah. So you spent a month building it, six months working to try and grow it without a lot of progress there. By my math, that leaves you like five months left on your 12-month deadline. So, what's the play? And you're burnt out. Yeah,

16:15I was pretty uh demotivated and uh burnt out. And I was talking to my to my uh girlfriend um about this issue. And I was secondg guessing the whole decision to quit my job. And she said to me, "Hey, you should maybe start a new app. Try something different. Maybe this workout tracking lift thing doesn't work out. Try something new." And yeah, I did exactly that and came up with this idea for Habit Kit. I had already had the idea for the app back in uh 2019 when I was still in university. So um it was all the time at the back of my head. What was the idea in in its sort of proto idea

17:01phase? Yeah, I I just wanted a habit tracker with this GitHub contribution graph. Basically, I love this graph. I want to see that for you know whatever habits I'm trying to build. Yeah, exactly. That's what I wanted to have. And yeah, I started developing habit kit at that time and I still did the built-in public thing and uh when I posted the first um screenshot of the app with the overview where you see the grids, the post was pretty huge in terms of views and engagement and likes. uh for my standards back at that time. Yeah. So that was my first indicator that this new app that I'm currently building could be more successful than Lift Bear. Even just you

17:50describing both of these right now. There's a very clear visual but even descriptive distinction for this app versus other habit tracking apps. Whereas Lyft Bear, it was kind of a muddled story. So even ignoring how you acquire users, all that stuff, just the story itself, uh you can kind of see why Havoc Kit and this this one visual would kind of take off a little bit more. Maybe it was also um important that most people in my Twitter audience back at that time were also developers and they knew the GitHub's contribution graph. Instant recognition of that. Yeah, exactly. and they instantly see it, recognize it, and want it as well. Maybe that was a huge factor as well,

18:36but who knows? Yeah. So, I posted the screenshots, got a lot of engagement. I got new motivation and inspiration and um put all my energy into building this new app and released it after 2 months of building. The launch was much more successful than than Lift Bear. Of course. I think the first day I instantly had $150 of revenue, which was super cool for me at that time. Yeah. So, great indicators that this app could be a success someday. And what do you what do you attribute

19:12the the difference just on the launch itself? Like why was it more had you built a bigger following? Did the following that you have just were they just more interested in this you think than Lift Bear? like what what do you think was the main differentiator there? Yeah, I think um I I built a bigger audience because the first uh screenshot of the app actually got so much traction and I got so many new followers followers because of that. Um that's why um the launch itself was also much more successful. Uh I think that was a huge part. In terms of other marketing efforts, I didn't do anything different actually. It was mainly still building in public and hope for the

19:55best. Obviously, it's a much better launch than Lyft Bear, but still not going to cover cost of living in Germany. Uh, based on my understanding of cost of living in Germany. No, still not. Exactly. Yeah. So I used the last 3 months of my um free year to uh develop more updates for habit kits, make the app better and it grew definitely uh but not to the extent that it could sustain my lifestyle here in Germany. And yeah, this had part of my story. I had to go back to my old job uh after the 12 months were over. I had some friends back at the company and they were excited

20:38to have me back. So, it felt natural to go back there and uh do my do my app business on the side. I actually decided to only work four days and have Fridays for my for my indie app business. So, I could do some progress there. One thing we haven't talked about either is what was your business model for for either of these apps? Were they paid up front or were they I believe their subscription now but what like what was it at the beginning? All my apps have a free plan so you can you use it without any costs and then they have a monthly subscription, an annual subscription and

21:18a lifetime plan. Okay. And was there a bunch of thought that went into why you chose those or is it kind of like that's the standard and I was just going to kind of follow what I see other apps doing? Yeah. Okay. When I when I started Lift Bear, I actually only had the subscriptions because it was my first app and I was super scared about costs of uh for Firebase because uh that was my back end at that time and I read all the scary stories about people having bugs in their apps producing some loops where they produce a lot of database reads and writes. Yeah. So,

21:58I was scared about that and I decided to only do this subscription model and don't offer a lifetime plan. Yeah. And for Habit Kit, I actually decided to scrap this whole backend thing and um just do a local database on the user's device and keep everything local. No authentication, no cloud sync, no backups, nothing. And that's why I decided to add a lifetime plan there. Was

22:29the lifetime more popular than the subscription or vice versa? Like how did that kind of break down? I'm not really a numbers guy and I rarely uh crunch the numbers and take a look at the statistics and see what's more popular and but but yeah definitely a lot of people really really despise subscriptions and they hate it and they are so gracious about developers offering a lifetime plan. So maybe that's that's a huge part of Habit success as well, but I I can't prove it with numbers. Yeah, that's fair. Okay, so Habocit came out, did okay, but not enough. So now you're back working a almost full-time job, but you're it's not like it's on

23:18the back burner. You're spending at least a day a week and probably nights and weekends keeping pushing on it. What were you pushing on? Like I'm guessing your goal at this point was to grow the app to the point where you could go full-time indie on it. Is that is that accurate? Yeah, that's accurate. Yeah, that was the the end goal. Yeah. Yeah. So then what were you like what were you doing to try and make that a reality? What were the sort of things that you tried? Um yeah, so basically I just kept improving the app and told people on Twitter about it and shared about

23:54my development progress and build it in public. So that that was all I did actually. Um I think I experimented a little bit with ads on Instagram or tried to produce some blog content where I wrote articles about habit tracking and stuff like that, but nothing was really successful. The most important uh part to habit kit success was when I was um two months back at my job again. Habit kits suddenly started ranking for the keyword habit tracker. Ah not suddenly not like you were doing a

24:34bunch of stuff with ASO keyword stuffing. It just all of a sudden started ranking well. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Out of the blue. I still remember being at a friend's wedding. Uh, and I had the revenue cat app on my phone and it suddenly started buzzing and I was making so much money on this one day. I didn't know where all this uh sales came from and yeah knew after two days or something like that that I started to rank in Germany, UK and Poland for for this keyword. Whoa. So it was

25:12a sudden moment. Was this Apple or was this this was just on one of the the platforms I'm guessing? Uh yes. Uh I think it was first Apple and shortly after that Google started to put me in the top 10 for this keyword as well. I have no idea why. And it wasn't tied to like an app update or changing of your name or anything? No, I I had no viral posts. I didn't do an update to the metadata. Um, I still have no idea why. Yeah, of course I over the first four or five months of the app, I tried many different things in terms of ASO, changed the keywords and the app title and stuff like that,

25:58but it was not really tied to this exact moment. So, it was a couple of months later. Man, that is very interesting. Obviously, what also plays into this is you are continuing to push on the product itself. So, I'm guessing you're getting good reviews through all of this. Yeah. Um, so more downloads, each download having a not each download, but your reviews being high and that kind of correlating along with your downloads, all that feeds into these algorithms. But it's kind of crazy that both of them around the same time like it almost makes me think somebody wrote a viral post. But I guess you would have seen that before the ranking changed. Like it

26:40really does sound like it's just straight up both app stores rankings around the same time. Their algorithms must have changed or something about Yeah, it would have to be their algorithms changing. something changed that caused your app to move up in the rankings and now you're you're taking part in that massive stream of people who are searching for the word habit tracker. Yeah, it definitely felt like I crossed some threshold uh after months of building and suddenly I'm in the top 10 for this keyword. And I guess I don't know if you're using one of the trackers, but it it's also possible that you had been slowly rising in that rank and the threshold you crossed

27:20was actually just going from like 11 to 10 or 5 to three or whatever it is that gets you above the fold, so to speak, where there's a very noticeable sudden change in the amount of traffic you get. I don't know actually. I should check it. I should go back to this to app figures and check it. That's a good idea. But but I I think I was, don't let me lie. I think I was in top 20 in Germany and then it suddenly jumped to place three or something like that. Wow. Okay. So, yeah. I mean, we've we've talked about on this show quite a bit how a small ASO change can be

28:00a radical difference on it's a huge difference on your top of funnel, like the inbound amount of people who end up seeing your app and if you've done the work to make this app store page enticing enough and then the app itself enticing enough that they continue to use it and then the payw wall or whatever enticing enough that people are like, "Yes, this is worth paying for." And then you know you obviously subscribe it works all the way down. But if you've done all that work before

28:27a sudden change in the top of funnel can just be a night and day difference for for your business. And it I'm going to guess going to number three on the word habit tracker was absolutely that kind of story. Yeah, that was super crazy. uh that got so many downloads and it actually started producing revenue and the MR increased and yeah after a while it started growing and growing and I kept improving the app and I think after six or seven months back at my old job again I was really considering quitting again. That that was really weird. Yeah. and I actually decided to do it. And

29:12since 2024, I'm back at full-time indie hacking. Okay. So, you've had like a year, year and a half of full-time and your focus is primarily or was until more recently primarily on Habit Kit. Yeah, totally. We'll get into Focus Kit here in a second, but up until that point, uh what were you doing to Habit Kit to try and grow it from there? and and were there things that you did that kind of moved the needle? Yeah. So, um it's maybe it's a little bit boring, but still I was building in public and improving the app, accumulating ratings and reviews and answering user feedback, improving the app and um gained some more a better ranking on the app store after a while and um in

30:03more countries. Uh, for example, um, December of last year, uh, Habit Kit was featured in an, um, YouTube video of a of a big influencer. And after that, I only started ranking for the term habit tracker in the US app store. Before that, it was only in UK and Germany and Poland and stuff like that, but not on the US app store. And um suddenly ranking there was also a huge impact. You said building in public a lot. Do you think that the building in public contributed meaningfully once you had already gotten all this top off funnel traffic or was it more the continuing to push on product that moved the needle? So for the beginning building in public was super good. So

30:54without it, I wouldn't have generated this first amount of downloads and ratings and stuff like that. So it just started the ball rolling. So that was super important. But um after a while after I had this this organic funnel through the app store with all the downloads coming from these keywords, building a public wasn't really about it wasn't really about uh distribution from my app. It was just building a an audience, a brand for myself and just for fun. Many people um write to me and say they think my story is motivating and inspiring and they started building their own apps because of my story because um when I can do it, everybody can do it. That's

31:45why I'm I've kept building in public. Yeah, that's awesome. and I we'll link to it in the show notes, but you have a obviously you're on Twitter and you talk about things there, but you're als you you also have a Substack where you write uh longer form articles about what you're up to and you do a is it a monthly like devlog? Is that what you call it? I actually uh do it weekly. Every Sunday I try to to write about what I did this day to move the needle on my app store business. It's just a great resource for ideas and like I don't know it's like we were talking about at the very beginning. It's

32:20if if you start out doing this indie thing, you don't have co-workers. It's hard to sort of get the world knowledge from other people and and resources like your Substack are really great for stuff like that. I feel like Yeah. But I also got some feedback recently. Some people started thinking that my content was maybe a little bit boring. And I thought so myself because yeah, I mean if it's natural, right, when when you build the same app for three years and you just make some micro optimizations to it and release an update or a bigger feature every couple of months isn't really that interesting for people to to follow along. And that's why I decided to

33:08to start a new app as well. Oh, so that was the motivation. The motivation for you doing your new app was just to do something a little more interesting. Yeah. Yeah. It it was mainly to motivate myself. It's nice to to see a new project and try out new technologies because I actually um didn't develop uh focus kit with flatter. I used native technologies swift UI. Yeah. So learning new stuff was really important for me for this project. I wanted to motivate myself and find new inspiration for my app business. Uh yeah, and keep my content more interesting for people on X and my substack. So you had a goal then. It sounds like the impetus for doing a

33:59new app was you want to try out new technologies and build something different and interesting. So, how did that lead you to where you ended up with Focus Kit? Like, what was the start of that app? I guess while I was still developing um update for habit kits, I really developed some bad work habits and I often got distracted and switch tabs to X every two seconds especially with the rise of AI where you have to wait for the agent to actually code the feature. you keep switching tabs to social media or YouTube. And yeah, that that's really a productivity killer for for indie hackers and bootstrappers and solo founders because if I'm not doing the work nobody does. So yeah,

34:51I discovered the Pumodoro technique and it really helped me to to improve my work habits and focus on the tasks that were on my to-do list and it improved my productivity so much. I tried a couple of um focus timer apps on the app store and I had again this feeling of none of them really suits my requirements for an app like this. So I again I decided to to build it my own make my own version of it and have fun along the ride and learn something new. Is there like a specific thing that you couldn't find one that was doing that you liked and that's that was sort of the

35:38the foundation for how you built Focus Kit? N you you can't put the thing on it. Exactly. Um but I have a very specific design taste. I I like my app toned down and have everything clean, if you want to call it like that. Dark and clean and minimalistic. and I couldn't really find that on the app store and I wanted to fully lean into the iOS 26 liquid glass style and yeah, I didn't find it on the app store and that's why I decided to Yeah. And like Focus Kit even more than Habit Kit is it's black and white. It's very like minimalistic. I wouldn't call it simple. I mean,

36:23it is simple, but like you've got a lot of, you know, glows and gradients and there's a lot of stuff going on. It's not like uh yeah, totally basic, but it's it's extremely minimalistic in terms of its kind of style. I guess this was after iOS 26 was announced. Was that why you decided to go with learning Swift UI and and native code? Was it because you wanted to use liquid glass? Yeah, that that was a huge part of it. um liquid glass was a huge reason. Uh flatter um doesn't really um support it. I think there are some weird hacks or third party packages that you could use, but none

37:06of them are production ready. So yeah, I decided to go all in on the native side. And one thing that always was interesting to me was that you can use Swift data and have it uh synchronized to all the other um users devices with iCloud. And that's something that you can't easily do with Flutter as well. Okay. But I guess that also means that this is not a crossplatform app like not just not a crossplatform framework but you're not going to release this on Android unless you go and rebuild the whole thing in jetack compose and cotlin. Yeah, it hurts a little bit to to tell people

37:53on X when they ask about the Android version to tell them that it will probably never come. Yeah. So I only do a do an Android version if the app becomes really popular. To dial it back a little bit then you you mentioned that you chose Flutter more or less out of inertia like you had used it before and all right let's give this a shot. When I first remember following you it felt like you were a big fan of Flutter and how you know that helped your app. And if I remember correctly, at one point Android was a bigger platform for you than than iOS or at least they were kind of on the

38:35same level. Is that is that true? For some time uh in my journey both were at the same level but uh right now iOS overtook Android by a lot as things grew. Okay. Mhm. The idea of going pure Swift UI, I mean it makes a little more sense now that you said that part of the goal here was you just wanted to learn something new. But how do you feel like here in 2025 after building and releasing an app in in Swift UI? How do you feel about the landscape of of Flutter versus native I guess? Yeah. So if you want to develop a new app and you have all the requirements for it and you

39:17already know that you need to support many native frameworks like you want home screen widgets, lock screen widgets, live activities, shortcut support and stuff like that then I wouldn't go with flatter to be honest because um sure you can add this to the app but you will always have to find weird hacks or fixes for certain problems, use third party packages that that have certain solutions to implement that. So yeah, yeah, if you have these requirements, I would always go for native. But if you don't have these requirements, I would still go for Flutter because if you don't want these native capabilities, you basically get two apps for the same codebase. And um yeah, that

40:09saves a lot of time and potentially uh generates a lot of money. Yeah. Okay, that's interesting. So like I I guess maybe even to make this a little more explicit, if you went back and you were building focus kit right now with a business mindset like you don't care about uh learning a new tech stack or something. In fact, you know both tech stacks now. What would you choose? Yeah, I I would still uh choose uh Swift UI because I have all these ideas for native capabilities that I want to support and yeah, and that's worth giving up on the Android revenue and the pain in your heart every time somebody tweets you asking when the Android version is coming. Yeah,

40:53that's very worth it. Absolutely. If you want to build a good app and not just a mediocre app, it's definitely the better solution. Interesting. So, do you think going forward that's more where you're going to focus your energy? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I really like the direction Apple is going with their with their ecosystem. I like absolutely love the liquid glass style. I see so many posts on X hating on it and I can't wrap my head around it how you can hate it. I love it so much. It looks absolutely fantastic. I'm a sucker for like shiny interesting flourishes. Like there was nothing that made me more sad in my in my early Android days than when

41:43uh whenever you locked it, it did the TV off animation. That was like the coolest thing in the world and then they got rid of it. And maybe now I would be like, "This is so annoying that I have to see this every single time." But I I just love that kind of stuff. And like Liquid Glass feels like a whole operating system filled with uh obnoxiously fun uh little flourishes like that. And yeah, I've been using it for I don't know how long has it been, six, eight months at this point. I'm certainly not tired of it personally. Yeah. Yeah. And personally, I only use Apple devices. I have an iPhone. I have an Apple Watch and a MacBook. I'm home at

42:24the Apple ecosystem. And it always felt weird to me when I had to find weird hacks for my um for my home screen widget implementation in Habit Kit. I just wanted it to work out of the box. So, what does that mean for Habit Kit going forward? I imagine that's you're not going to take away the Android app. I I assume. So, are you just going to kind of have a Flutter codebase that you'll

42:48have with you for a long time now? Yeah, I think I'm in for the long ride with Flutter in this app. I'm not sure. I don't think it makes sense to rewrite it. I thought about it actually to do the iOS part with Swift UI, make a completely new version with the liquid glass look and have the Android version still be on the flatter side and keep the old look there. But I think that's not worth it. Yeah, but I have no idea. Okay, so with Flutterkit that I mean it just released. So, this is your first app in I think is it 3 years since Habit Kit came out? Is that

43:31right? A couple of months after I released Habit Kit, I also did a smaller app called Wind Diary, which I usually don't mention anymore. And um yeah, it was such a big disappointment in terms of engagement and revenue and downloads that I rarely talk about it. Focus Kit is the first big thing you've done in a long time. Yeah, it's the first big thing that I'm really interested in. So, I guess the the two questions are like what did you do in preparation for this? I can already make a guess based on everything else we've said and then how did that launch actually go? Of course,

44:11I built it in public and I shared [laughter] there it is. I shared everything about it on X. I started sharing revenue numbers and download numbers again after the launch. So everything is public. That's pretty exciting. And yeah, so with an audience as big as mine, you would think that I would have unlocked some form of easy mode when launching new apps, but it actually isn't that easy. Um, I made $300 in revenue now. Um, I get a couple of sales every day, but it's not like the app explodes and uh I get so many downloads and it instantly ranks for the main keyword on the app store. Yeah. I mean, it's one of those things where it's like the amount of

45:02searches happening on the app store, the amount of zeros in that measurement compared to the amount of zeros you could possibly have even as a large influencer is dramatically different. So yeah, it doesn't surprise me that you can't just run the same playbook if your main source of top offunnel users was ASO from having a sort of tech developer audience. Yeah. So but basically I I'm trying the same strategy. I'm building in public. I keep improving the app. I incorporate user feedback and I try to gather as much ratings and reviews on the app store as possible. And yeah, it's a it's a

45:42slow and long grind and I hope it reaches at least half of habit kit success in the future. Awesome. Well, that is cool. I'm excited to sort of keep following along in this sort of new app journey. I don't think I was following you when Havoc first came out, so I kind of came in a little later in that story. So, this one's fun to see honestly just as a, you know, iOS developer. Uh, it was fun from the very beginning watching a Flutter developer start playing around and I'm used to, you know, React Native or or Flutter developers when they come into iOS. Usually people are just

46:22horrified when they first open Xcode or look at some of the interesting decisions Apple makes that are different than uh than what you're used to. But you seem to be pretty into it from right out of the gate. Yeah, I actually don't use Xcode. I code everything in cursor. Oh, well, okay. That's fair. Yeah, but you still have to open Xcode to hit hit the little triangle. [laughter] But that's enough. That's fair. That's fair. Uh, all right. So, before we uh before we wrap up though, I need to ask you the question that I ask everyone in the show, which is,

46:55what's a person or people who've inspired you in your work that you'd recommend others check out? First, I wanted to say Clement Strasa, but you recently had him on the podcast. So, I will No, that's the perfect one. Uh, go back, listen to this that episode of This Here podcast. Give it a rating and review, like and subscribe. I don't know all the things I'm supposed to say. Yeah. Yeah. I love everything that he does and I love the episode. And yeah, Clemens is also just a great person. Like just a very, very fun person to hang out with. Yeah, absolutely. I have to meet him someday. Um and because he isn't an option now, um I would go for

47:37um Adam Little. He is an interesting iOS developer and he has a portfolio of of many smaller apps, I think. And he has a YouTube channel as well and shares everything he knows about distribution and ASO. And it's really interesting. Would love to see him here. Yeah, I need to get him on. I I met him at WWDC earlier this year. Very cool guy. And yeah, but you're sure you didn't met uh Sean Ellen? [laughter] I am sure I made that same joke. Uh for for anybody who doesn't know uh yeah, him and Sean Allen, they both have very similar uh facial hair. We'll say that. And uh and on

48:21Twitter, it's like it's crazy how often you'll mix them up when you see their little profile picture. And I'm sure I made that joke and I'm sure he rolled his eyes in a like never heard that before. Uh, look, [laughter] very good. But yeah, I do need to get him on. He's great. And yeah, Adam is like he's kind of like that that indie app developer, YouTuber person, but he really really dives into the sort of business side of so I think he crunches numbers much more than me. [laughter] I definitely think that that's true. Well, where can people uh find you and your work? Yeah, sure. You can you can find me on X. Um I'm sure you can link it in the show notes and my

49:05um substack. I think it's called building a indie air business on X and LinkedIn. Uh all right, thanks for listening. You can find show notes over at launched fm.com and all the other episodes, including the one with Clemen Straer that we just talked about. Thank you so much for listening. You can find more launched at launchedfm.com [music] and you can find me on pretty much all the social medias. I'm @_chucky on Twitter [music] or charliemchapman pretty much everywhere else. And of course, huge thanks to Revenue for making this episode

49:38and all future episodes of Launch possible. I'll see you all again [music] in 2 weeks.