# Turning App Store Connect Frustration Into a Tool Developers Love – Hidde & Pol, Helm

Channel: Launched by RevenueCat
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpdxiQappZI
Duration: 53 min
Language: English
Words: 10498
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/VpdxiQappZI

---

[0:00] What we noticed quicker than anything before is how how much the app has been promoted by our users, not even by ourselves. Like every time someone mentioned App Store Connect in on Twitter, people would just tag Helm and say just use Helm instead. And that's the best feeling you can have, I think. Welcome to Launched. I'm Charlie Chapman and today I'm excited to bring you the developers behind Helm,

[0:23] the outstanding developer tool for accessing App Store Connect. Paul Pia and Ha Vanderplug.

[0:42] guys. Welcome back to the show. Hey, thank you. Yeah, thank you for having us. Uh, Ha has been a previous guest a long long time ago talking about is it Pey your uh Apple Watch app. Uh, and then both of you were on the show. Uh we did a live show at WWDC uh last year which we recorded. It was very exciting. Uh Ha got to launch a t-shirt cannon into the crowd. Both of you ate cake. Is that right? Coffee cake. Uh it was the one year anniversary of of Helm. Ah it was the one year anniversary of Helm. That's right. Yeah. So uh I'm excited to get into this um because I think

[1:20] this is the type of app that's directly aimed at exactly all the people listening. And on that note, I've been trying to kick off this show now by doing a quick elevator pitch of the app we're talking about. That way, we don't get into all the details before we even explain what it is. And so, uh, Paul, I'm going to have you do just a quick elevator pitch for what Helm is. Yeah, Helm is a Mac OS and iOS, uh, app that basically allows you to do a lot of actions in App Store Connect. I don't like saying that it's just a client for App Store Connect because we do quite a lot

[1:53] uh more. The mission with Helm is to basically put all the frustrations and pain points that we had when shipping our apps and and updates in App Store Connect and basically fix them like one at a time, making like the best possible experience for every single features that that we come up with um in the app. The goal essentially is to make it as easy as possible to um launch your app, give you the best chance at success, at getting past uh the review process, giving you the best chance at like ASO, um auto translating your content so that you basically don't don't have to either hire someone and you can do it in just like one click. And yeah, there's quite a lot of

[2:31] of stuff that we've got um in the in the road map, but the long and short of it is basically give you the best experience at shipping your applications. So you don't basically have to go through through App Store Connect. You just go through through Helm. Anybody listening who uh who has an app on the App Store knows the pain of using App Store Connect. It's such a strange piece of software uh that web app. And so yeah, using Helm is like it feels especially for Apple developers, it feels it feels like being at home to start off the conversation like we normally do with the

[3:02] show. Uh I want to introduce everybody to who you are and uh hit obviously people can go back and listen to that whole episode if they want to. Uh so we're just going to spend zero time on you. No, I'm kidding. But uh but I will start with Paul. So, uh, I'll just ask you the the three questions that pitch the elevator pitch go make a couple very long elevators in Spain though. Remember that. Remember that. Uh, but no, the three questions I always ask is where are you from? Uh, do you have a formal education related to what you do? And then what were you doing before you

[3:35] started working on on Helm with Ha? Yeah. So, I am originally from Barcelona in Spain, but I live in the in the UK. I've lived in the UK for about 11 12 years now. I don't have formal education. I have a uni degree in electronic engineering but not in iOS or anything related to programming. I was basically just doing analog uh circuitry and stuff at uni. So nothing to do um with with what I do at the moment. And what was I doing before? I was a software engineer. I think my background and my career. Um, since I left uni has been on software and and iOS. Uh, and then he and

[4:15] I became friends through conferences and stuff. Then he moved eventually moved to Manchester and we started working together on Now Playing and one thing led to another and eventually made Helm together. So you were working on stuff together. Was that in like a sort of contracting role? cuz now playing is an app I think of as in hit's sort of catalog of apps. I started now playing by myself. Um and then like Paul said we met at a conference became friends real quickly and we both had the same nerdy enthusiasm about music and also I know Paul had a lot more technical capability than I have to make things like more performant and stuff because in the end I'm still

[4:59] a designer turn developer. It's fine but like not as trained as Paul. So I was like hey just wanna do you want to just come in and do this together? Not as a contracting necessarily just u share cuts basically share the pie I guess that was with now playing. So that one was also kind of a joint uh joint effort then. Yeah. Yeah. And that's how we started working together. And then I was doing full-time indie development at that point. And as an indie deaf, you ship a lot of updates. And as

[5:31] everyone else, I was no longer wanted I was like, I don't want to deal with this website anymore. And then I looked at what was there. And there were a few App Store Connect clients, but they they weren't really like up to what I had in mind or what I wanted from a client. Uh, and then I started the project, looked at the APO connect API and it was like Paul, please help if you want to do this together. Okay, I want to pull on that thread a little bit more, but first I guess really quick, the same questions for you like you know what's your what's your background education

[6:06] wise and then what were you doing uh oh, where are you from and then what were you doing kind of before you guys you guys met? Yeah, so I'm from the Netherlands. Um, lived most of my adult life in Amsterdam. have been trained as like a designer originally like a visual designer. I worked on a lot of different apps at agencies and then joined a web product for a long time. Became the head of design there. That became too big. Didn't like it. And I also always like doing mobile apps better than web products. And then at some point I always had all these ideas and I was like how

[6:40] hard can it be to build it myself cuz otherwise I have to make my ideas enthusiastic to others. And I didn't want that cuz that's quite difficult. I mean it's called pitching for a reason I guess. And then I was like well it took me quite a long time. Then this was around when Swift came out. I was like oh finally this is legible cuz I tried a few times with Objective C and that was impossible to me. And then with Swift I actually ride the wave of Swift development a little bit. Were you in on like those first really uh shaky versions? Yeah. Oh man. And that you think that's tough when

[7:13] you when you know development. I started doing multiple new apps because the project didn't compile anymore. So, okay. And now we're all back to doing the same thing with vibe coding, right? As soon as it breaks, you're just like, "All right, let's just start over." But now you asked AI to fix it for you, I guess. That's true. Yeah, that's true. I don't know. I've gotten it where it's like far enough along that I'm just like, "Ah, whatever. Just start Greenfield." So, that's how you got into doing your own indie apps. And then you like I don't remember what your first one was, but you you kind of got into a pattern of like you were putting out a bunch of different

[7:48] apps and eventually that kind of took over and that became your full-time gig for a while, right? My first one was a simple weight tracking app because health kit was just launched and I think uh it was quite cumbersome to put in a new weight measurement and I was like oh this is maybe a good good project to learn work with different Apple APIs and then I did a whole bunch of different apps like none of them is like even remotely the same I think cuz like there's a goal tracking app there's a music app there's a kite surfering app I don't even kite surf but hey it taught me a lot about core motion and stuff. Even machine learning as well. So,

[8:26] and I think PT also happened which was like a chat GPT rapper for Apple Watch which took off like crazy. But I think for me it was always just try to do as many different projects and not to stick too much to one topic just to learn new things and I learned a lot from all of those like different things from all of the projects I guess. And that what that became a like sustainable sort of job for a while. Yeah. Sometimes I filled it up with some client work like did like UI engineering I guess cuz I was still designer that knew how to code so it was quite easy to help other apps as

[9:01] well to build nice nice little things but I tried to minimize the amount of client work that I took on as much as possible. I only took on clients that I really really liked. So the origin of Helm then was you like many of us listening found app store connect painful to use. you were like, there should be a better way to do this. A Mac app feels like obvious because developers are obviously working on the Mac and it's kind of a big lots of different input fields and stuff type

[9:32] function that you need to do. Yeah. And then like it's a professional tool in a way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then like you said like once you started digging into the APIs necessary to to create those uh you realized this is going to be a little heavy and that's when you reached out to to Paul. Yeah. Yeah. I think quite quickly because the API itself, this is my experience. I think Paul has a different look on it obviously, but I think the API itself is really really tough to get like to get the standards, but one I think once you get it, it's okay. Still a lot of things are weird,

[10:06] but it's a really opinionated API in how it's structured, I would say. And I always thought this is the reason why it's so slow on web as well, but it turns out it's actually not that slow. It's just different, I think. Yeah, I think they have to accommodate like a a massive number of old apps as well and they have to power like a lot of things that maybe they're not like as relevant if you use like the API for like very very small things and like just to to do quick things. But it is incredibly complex to get into and to to make sense of it. But once you do and you start

[10:42] like understanding how it works and all that stuff like it's very very powerful like you can pretty much do anything on the except like there's some exceptions but you can basically do anything the app store connect does just programmatically with with the API and it's not really designed for your purposes right like the idea isn't oh this is an API where you can build a client that replicates what app store connect does right the the main purpose is all these people doing heavy automations or something like that, right? I think once you start using it for how we use it, you hit like certain things where you go like, "Oh, why is this not available?" And a lot of

[11:21] the times the answer is like it's not how it was like initially intended to to like be used. Um, and we've had like some conversations as well with like the App Store Connect API team in labs and all that stuff and they're always like super open to like adding more features and there's been like quite a lot of work. But you do you do eventually like get to those points where you think like, "Oh yeah, maybe this is not what it was we was built for." And you get like some hiccups in the API, but the team are like incredibly open to to this feedback and and just building on more

[11:52] more endpoints and stuff. And I think that's an interesting point, too. If if you aren't already familiar with Helm, you might assume that this is kind of uh adversarial to App Store Connect and that this would be the type of thing you have to download from some GitHub repo and build yourself or something like that. But you've done all of this completely compliant within Apple's rules and it's available on the Mac App Store where you even being featured. Yeah. And and been featured. Right. Exactly. So it's I feel like that relationship is actually good and like you just described like they're open to that. Was that one of your driving things from the beginning was like

[12:32] we want to do this in a like fully compliant way? Yeah, I think we we always said that we always really deeply care about setting a good relationship with Apple still like we don't want to make them look bad necessarily. We just want to show them that there's actually a need for this. And also same practices like we try to keep privacy in mind and stuff and things like that. But everything we do make it as accessible as possible and all those same norms in what app all values and good software should have. We try to apply that to to this to this app. Having said

[13:08] that I think the first launch was not as easy as it could have been and I guess that makes for a perfect story for podcast called Lounge. We had been stuck in review for what was it like two months, three months? Yeah, I think so. Something like that. Yeah, there was a test fight for a while. Like we always wanted to have this out on the app store and of course there are some doubts because yeah, it is an app store connect client. Obviously we do a bit more but there's been other attempts at this before. Yeah. Yeah. People who've been in this racket for a while have seen them

[13:38] come and go and I know me whenever you said this I was kind of like well it'll be fun to watch Hit, you know, sit here and bang his head against the wall. But like I will be honest, I did not expect this to actually succeed. Not cuz I didn't think you could build something useful. I'm here for you, man. Uh not cuz I didn't think you'd be successful at building it, but because like I've seen this play out before and it's like Mhm. Yeah, that's fair. There's a lot of things designed to not make this necessarily successful. And so I mean, and that's why we were stuck in review

[14:12] for a long time, right? like we're at some point like is this ever going to happen? A worst case we would talk we just distribute it outside of the app store. We initially wanted to launch it at a conference. I think it was the one in Folkston. Yeah. Swiftcraft I think it was Swiftcraft. Yeah. And then we were stuck in review still actually. Then we were even stuck in like a cancelling or in review cuz it was all weird situation and then not until like dubdub DC I think. So for context that was Folkston was early May I believe. Oh yeah. Um, so just for context, we had submitted by then

[14:46] and then it got to dubdubdubc and we were still stuck. So that's at least like 1 month and over a month. Yeah. Yeah. So DC uh bul makeup I was there luckily I went to the to the app store lab that they have there on in in Apple Park. I had contact with one of the people from the App Store Connect API uh luckily and she said, "Oh, you need to talk to this person to get it sorted." And then we talked to her. She wrote down my number and then she listened and looked at the screen, typed the number, wrote something down and like, "Oh gosh, she didn't say a word." And I was like, "Give me

[15:24] something." And then um so yeah, it's uh it takes a long because it's currently stuck in legal uh because they wanted to make sure we didn't sell their product. We didn't sell App Store Connect as a product necessary. We actually did extra things and not just literally be App Store Connect. The name was okay cuz we have four App Store Connect and as long as you say it's for something instead of trying to be that something, it should be okay. And then I think the next morning, yeah, the day after see we got approved. Do you think it was actually gonna go through anyway? And then it's

[16:01] like, wow, it may have just been in a giant pile. Well, they will never say so, but it definitely helped, of course. Like, and that's why that's why DC is such an important week in general, I think, to go to the labs and talk to engineers and talk to people, talk to Apple. This is the one moment of the year where you can actually talk to these people, which is very powerful. What is it? developer support ticket. Is that what it's called? Where like Apple developers get two of them a year where you can talk. The idea is that you can talk to an engineer. Is there a is there

[16:29] a mechanism for that for like app review or app store questions? I don't know. I have never tried actually. I've never used the idea. The stereotype with those is that you only get two a year. So developers never use any because they're afraid to waste it. Uh, and that's definitely use one next week just to ask how they are, how they doing cuz so much of the time it's like just getting a human being inside of the spaceship to like acknowledge it and then flag it somewhere like cuz they can like slack or email somebody. But I wonder if like if you ever get stuck in one of

[17:02] those if you could use one of those to get to get a hold of a person cuz it just kind of worked for you all that WWDC happened to be coming up. But if it had been August like what would you have done? I've never used one of them, but it was my first time at dub.dc this year and I managed to go to the app store connect API lab and I had about 10 12 questions and they were incredibly kind to just let me stay after my session as well and I basically went through all of the feedback. It was literally like 30 40 minutes with one person was like a lot better than just me

[17:36] filing feedback for about and the feedback was important as well cuz then I could go and say like look I filed this radar this is all of like all of the context and I basically got answers for absolutely everything. So yeah it was honestly invaluable just just for that. Yeah, it's crazy how useful. I mean, I guess this sounds really obvious on the surface, but talking to the actual people instead of just filing into a a giant, you know, anonymous bucket, uh, it can make a really big difference. So, you got it. It was approved. I assume in May you had all these plans for exciting launches and especially knowing you all which we should

[18:11] get into at some point. You do crazy things and so I assume you were very excited about it in May and then by the time it got to June it was like it just it's out there now and like how did that launch itself go at that point? I think it's very much like every other launch is like

[18:25] it feels so anticlimactic like antilimax. It's like okay I guess this is a thing now. Um yeah and then then slowly but steady first users start to dripping in. It went quite fast quite quickly. Obviously helped that we both do a lot of public speaking and a lot of conferences. Um so we always have like a room full of potential users uh in front of us. But I think what we noticed quicker than anything before is how how much the app has been promoted by our users, not even by ourselves. Like every time someone mentioned App Store Connect in on Twitter, people would just tag Helm and say just just use Helm instead. And that's the best feeling you can

[19:11] have. I think from the beginning as well, like that that was it was pretty impressive. like it was just like yeah we didn't really have to do obviously we've we've done a lot but we didn't have to do a lot to kind of like just promote it and I think it probably has to do with it's probably the first time that we have an app where the target audience is the same as the audience we've got online anyway like every time we go to conferences that's the exact audience we want to be hitting so yeah I think that's that's probably part of it but yeah it's been surprising that like

[19:41] every week you wake up one day and it's like someone talking about like Helm and or someone complains about App Store Connect. And then in the comments, it's like, oh, just go use use Helm and and it's like, oh, we we didn't even have to jump on that thread. Someone else did like just set it for us, which is which is worth 10 times more than somebody promoting it for it's a great sign. So, what other like marketing things have you done? So, obviously, uh you know, you go to conferences, maybe you make some stickers or pens or something, but is there anything unique? I'm laughing and Hit

[20:14] is already he's pulling something out here. Uh so for the audience that's just listening, Hit is holding Yeah. Uh what we in America would call a jersey what I believe everywhere else in the world would call a kit. Is it is a kit the uh is a kit the whole thing or is that also just the top part? What's the top part called? In the UK they have like a thousand words for it here as well. I think

[20:37] some people call it top, some people call it kit as well. Like just the the top bit. I don't know. uh just call it whatever. It's a uh football or again as Americans would call it soccer shirt thing that you'd wear uh while playing the sport and it has a big helm logo on the front. As we launched L it took off quite a bit and Paul was visiting Amsterdam I think for conference or maybe distressing I don't know and then we were like ah we need to do something fun marketing wise like do something really crazy and then Paul was collecting football shirts and it's like

[21:12] oh we could sponsor maybe we could sponsor like a really low tier and as soon as he sent that I said you don't have to tell me more because I knew in Amsterdam there's an amateur football club called AFA Swift who means Amsterdam Football Association Swift. So the name the football and it was also in white and blue so it's like on brand. It's your colors. It has the word swift in it. And is there any place where you can find an audience of iOS developers uh that is more obvious than a low tier football club in I'm pretty sure we have no downloads from that. Zero. I think probably web

[21:49] visits but no downloads. Actually, I had someone on the conference say to me like, "Oh, yeah. I I didn't know Hel when I heard the story about the jerseys. I went to download it." Nice. Um, but I think I like I said before, I think I I'm pretty sure the team itself thinks we're a boating company. You heard him say this. You're like, "Oh, we got to sponsor this this team." Yeah. What then though? Do you Did you call them up? Yeah. No, just send an email. Hey, I want to sponsor one of your teams. And it's like, okay, great. Which teams? We have we have this, we have that,

[22:22] we have this. It's like, well, the lowest one have swift. We'll have Swift 6, I think, cuz it was also a point with with Swift language that was coming out, I think was six. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, it's like, yeah, let's do that one. And then the cost was actually quite okay. Was not as high as. So, if you're listening, great marketing tip. Sponsor a local football club or any club any I will say like obviously this is not a uh user acquisition strategy but it does add to the sort of joy and fun around the brand and like I from the outside Helm is an app that has I wouldn't

[23:07] necessarily call it a cult following but it has a like dedicated set of users who just love it. it makes their lives easier, but also it's like it's fun to be part of the club. And I think that's why you get so much of the other people responding to other people saying, "Hey, you should use Helm." Because it's like, yes, they're saying it because it's a tool they like and enjoy. But also, it's like, "Hey, you should join our club. This is a fun thing that I'm also, you know, kind of part of." And so, I don't know, this is like really maybe stretching it. But I do think this is a

[23:35] thing that you can do that if you're just vibe coding and playing the MR maximization game, you're never going to do something like this. But as an indie who's just making something sort of joyful and high craft and trying to build a loyal user base, I think doing fun stuff like this, uh, one, it just makes your your life more joyful, but also I think it does have some benefits to kind of the brand. You said the app kind of was taking off. Is the app able to like sustain you? Well, not fully because it's also we're with the two of us, so we're splitting it. Although most of

[24:10] it we just reinvest in into marketing things or into other small things like that. What does that mean? Reinvest in the marketing things. Is this this is just more teams like swag. Yes. uh also uh open by a lot of open AI credits just in advance just to make sure that that those feed because the AI features are the strong the most important features in our app. So we just want to make sure that there's enough credits on there so to last a long time. Uh also we have now we have another person helping us out cuz as we joined Revenue New a year ago we realized we would get less time but

[24:47] that's we'll catch on to that story later. Um but but then we're like, "Oh, but let's ask another person that we trust and know well to come join the the the ship." Okay. So, it's it's very much in the like this is a product in your lineup category. Even if it's kind of the the bigger one. Yeah. Yeah. For now, it is. Yeah. We love to make this our full-time thing. We think we can get there within the next few years at least because it's still growing every months quite a lot because that's the thing with these type of tools, right? Like the more people use it, the the faster

[25:24] you grow as long as it's a very stable line. It's not a spike, but it's just a very stable linear line almost. Well, and I would imagine given the user base that once somebody decides they're going to use it, it because it's a tool and it becomes part of your how you work. Uh I imagine your churn is actually relatively low compared to like a normal consumer app. Is that has that borne out? I believe so. Yeah. I mean I I have to say I don't I don't keep an eye on this like too too much to be honest. we can say like the growth has been steady and I know like over this this year we've had like

[26:01] less time as well and there there are some like very complex features that we've been working on as well that we believe like are going to make make a difference and we get a lot of feedback for features that we don't have as well. Um and so we kind of like get a sense of what people want and what we can do to to kind of like grow in this sense. So at least from my side I'm not super obsessed with like the the analytics of things. I'm more obsessed with kind of just getting value to to our users and sometimes that's quite complicated because of the the nature of of how

[26:34] it is and all the edge cases that that we have. Um but I try I try to focus more more on that than just like trying to look at at numbers and stuff. So but yeah, we we have a very clear vision of what we want, what we where we want to get and what we have to do to get there. That's where our focus is. Okay, let's pull on that thread then because like I think I think we've established the main marketing channel here is product and goofy swag more than you know you're not running influencer ads or anything like that which for developer tool probably is the right call. We're

[27:08] now at like a year and a half that it's been in the store right uh give or take. So from that starting point, the initial version of the app, uh what are kind of the big features that you've done that have kind of moved the needle a little bit? Obviously the biggest one is uh translations, but we basically had that from day one. So our goal is that anywhere in the app or anywhere that

[27:33] you actually have localized content, you are able to translate it very very easily with one click. Um, so basically this is if you're writing release notes and you're shipping to multiple stores or you're writing uh keywords and you want to translate them to all of your localizations and all of your product pages in all of the countries that you support. Um, you can basically do it with one one click and you don't have to actually hire a service or or anything like that to do that. We use AI to do it. uh you can use your your own API key, but we kind of like just provide support out

[28:06] of the box without having to do anything. It's just as easy as you can get just one tap and then you translate the content. So you've got a better chance of people actually downloading your app in those in those markets. You said this is obviously the biggest thing. So like based on what you're hearing from people, this is the biggest like if I lost this app today, this is what would make me my work harder or take longer or whatever. This is also the main reason why we still don't have all apps connect features in there today is because we really really try to look at each part

[28:39] of AppSto Connect and think what is currently the the bottleneck in this workflow like how can we make you do the same with as little as effort as possible because in the end we're all just lazy people like everyone's lazy everyone likes to do as little as possible and as fast as possible like hence the whole AI uh uh boom. Now that's normal, right? And I feel like well with everyone launching their app like actually putting it on the app store should not feel as painful as it was. And I think that's how we tackle every feature like just look at it from the out with

[29:14] with our developers eyes and see like okay how can we make this part better and one of them is like every every single update from of helm is shipped with helm as well uh which is very meta but it's it's also make sure that we stay on top of things. One of the reason like why uh we got app clip support quite early on while so little people use app clips is because the iOS app of helm has app clips and otherwise we couldn't ship helm with helm. So so that's why we added app clip support so early on already. So speaking of the iOS app that was the big story when we did our live

[29:54] episode uh because you were basically launching it that week like on your one-y year anniversary you were kind of launching the iOS version. My memory is that the iOS version was a highly requested feature. Yeah. But you didn't just take home and make it to where it works on iOS. You added like some stuff that was sort of mobile uh specific. Can you talk about like you know that process of like why you decided to make an iOS app and then what you actually did? Yeah, I think as you said it was it was highly requested and I think like a lot of people were saying we even had like someone

[30:27] come up at the conference and wanting like a watch OS app so that they could just um ship their app with one button on the watch. Uh which is still probably somewhere in in the road map but um but yeah I think people want to do stuff stuff on the go. So, for example, if you um upload a build and you don't want to you're about to leave like the house and you just want to push something, go to the gym or go for a walk um and you just want to submit uh for review while you're waiting for that to process. You don't have to stay at home. You can do it on the go. So, that was the whole the

[30:58] whole plan. So, we just wanted to do features that made sense on mobile. We don't we didn't want to bring everything one for one um to the iOS app and just do things that make sense while you're on the go. Um, so you can view your screenshots, you can, um, actually submit for review, edit your release notes, translate, all that, all that kind of stuff. Um, so that was, yeah, we also brought a bit of fun to to to the app as well. As always, we we added like an iOS only feature as well called Helm Passport because we were planning to launch it upc and and for everyone who has been toc knows

[31:34] you get you talk to a lot of um, developers, but I don't know. I always find it hard to remember names, but I always remember which apps they worked on. Yes. Uh so it's like ah it would be cool to have like a passport where you can easily share just a QR code with each other and then you you get represented in someone else's passport by the app icon of your main app. Just that by itself would feel useless. And so like oh what if you then can use those stamps to invite them to a test flight build? uh because it's also the one opportunity where you meet people that will be

[32:10] running the next iOS beta on one of their devices especially if you want to build features that are specific to the new iOS version those are 90% of them are like your developer friends right so um yeah that's why we decided to to to add that as a fun little cubistic feature to the app and that was using app clips right yeah yeah That was that was using app clips. I think one one of the things we we thought is if everyone because these interactions are quite quick with people. If you are talking and you say like, "Oh, I want to save your number or whatever." They're usually quite

[32:46] quick. So if they have to download the app, set up the App Store Connect keys and all that kind of stuff while you're just talking to them, they're likely just not to do it. So that's why we decided to do the app clip so that if you don't have the app installed, you can still save the stamp, share the stamp, all that, all that kind of stuff. And another cool thing that you can do with with the passport as well that's that's quite good and we wanted to fix is that when you go to these conferences or places and you share your um your beta group to add the tester you usually end

[33:15] up with a lot of anonymous um users um and with the stamps you always know who is in your betas um because you save them by email and name and all that kind of stuff. So you kind of keep track of who you invited where and it's it's quite nice as well cuz you guys go to a lot of conferences. Have you been using it regularly at at conferences and has it come in handy in that way? Yeah, it's also we love to challenge people. So we give like a a free a free lifetime subscription or something if they show us a full passport like the one with the biggest number gets lifetime at the end of

[33:48] the conference something like that. Actually, also when when someone has your stamp in their like Charlie stamp in the password, you unlock a launch FM app. That's right. Yeah, there's a launched custom icon in Helm. I forgot about that. Yeah. So, if you see Hitta or poll anywhere in the world next week as we record, although I guess it will be in the past by the time this comes out, hit will be in in Singapore with me. Yeah. Yeah. So, if you travel back in time, uh, no, that's that's really fun. So that was that was like a big release based with a lot of requests. The iOS app store is a different beast as far as search traffic and the amount of users

[34:28] and everything. Did you see that make a bump in terms of downloads or installs or anything? Like Paul said, we're both not really on top of our numbers really. We we Yeah, I do remember the iOS app when it launched. That that's one of the only things I remember about numbers. Uh it was a

[34:45] massive spike for the iOS app, but that's just as we launched it. There was a massive massive spike. But that's literally news event. As much as you'll you'll get from me for for numbers. Don't really remember anything else. Maybe maybe we should I think we should we should build analytics in Helm to give us an insight where our users come. Well, I was more just meaning in terms of the business like you know did that accelerate to the point you had already uh brought on help so it was already like you had more people but like did it increase the numbers where like you could do more or spend more money or not work on client work as much or anything like

[35:24] that? It did give a bit of a boost and I think yeah well we really don't care about our numbers honestly. We we should this is not a business podcast. This is not sub club. Yeah. Yeah. We're on here launched for a reason. We're not in the sub club yet. I think that's also says something about how we do our apps. Like we really just care about quality. We we want to do things

[35:49] right. And you can always change business logic later on. And as you grow, you have more to sell. And obviously there will be some things later this year that we will sell for more money probably. um more focused towards teams because we noticed more and more teams are using it. So like people from sport started using Helm to respond on Tesla feedback and and customer reviews. There's got to be some shift to try to make this more of a full-time thing. But I think the last year or so we didn't really feel that need. We just wanted to have fun and build fun things. Um obviously yeah

[36:24] we were also working at VCAT so we didn't need that that push to try to grow the business and that was perfect for us to do in the past year and uh I think this year 2026 we tried to do it like full throttle and bring Helm to the to the next level basically. So I mean speaking of the sort of the app and quality of the app side of things there's kind of two two things I want to talk about. So one is the the actual technology stack. This is a Mac app and it's you built it pretty much all in Swift UI. Is that correct? Yep. This is not exactly welltrodden ground,

[37:01] especially apps that are not like I have, you know, some apps that are pretty lightweight that are Swift UI and that's fine, but this is an app with lots of forms and typing in and there's a lot of windows that can pop up. I guess one, why? Cuz both of you had experience with UI kit. Well,

[37:20] I guess maybe this is the answer. you had experience with UI kit but probably not appkit. Uh so I guess the first question is why and then the second question is do you regret that or has it been pretty good? I think Swift UI cuz we're both like quite like H is very familiar with with Swift UI anyway and he's like quite quite good at it. I was more used to work in a job and in UI kit but for my other apps and for any other apps it's always been like Swift UI anyway. So, I think like that was a pretty obvious um choice from the beginning. And we've hit like some snags, but it's

[37:54] not never been anything that you go like, "Oh, I need to rewrite my whole app in UI kit." It's never been something like outrageous that we've been it's impossible to do. No major roadblocks. I guess to me, the thing that I would have expected is is all the like text entry or I don't know. I feel like I run into weird little bugs with those types of controls versus just like buttons and styles and stuff. You know, Swift UI is great. I think I think Swift UI is great if you get good at it and it's easier to get good at it. But I think what a lot of people forget is that yes,

[38:30] it because it looks so easy. They forget that it's like all magical uh straight out of the box. But there's a difference between writing good Swift UI code and bad Swift UI code, right? Like the way how you use properties and variables and stuff really change the impact. And then I think this is also where it shows again that we make a good team cuz sometimes we do it next and then Paul jumps in with all the instruments and he's really good at instruments and then he finds that weird little bug. Um, we had one like a few weeks ago where if you would scroll like really quickly in

[39:02] the test flight feedback list, it would just crash the app and it turned out changing a lazy fee into a normal fee fixed it. Swift UI feels like it's easier to get yourself in trouble in ways that you can't understand. Whereas like AppKit or well UI kit anyway in my experience like it's harder to get to the end but like you're less likely to end up in a situation where you totally hosed yourself in a way that's impossible to to figure out. So it sounds like Paul you you kind of have uh quite a bit of experience of diagnosing these types of problems. Mhm. Yeah. I think like I used

[39:37] to work in a company where I spent uh about 6 months just doing performance work and I think that kind of changed things a lot and it was like a pretty massive like app in general. So it was like a lot of old devices and stuff from users and like you develop a lot of like skill sets and I think that's why we always say like we work very well together like we've got very different skill sets and we don't try like to get very good at what the other does very well. it's like more like complimentary. So we go like, "Oh yeah, I'll do this. You do the other part." That allows us

[40:10] to move like very fast while still delivering like very like good quality stuff. But yeah, I think I think in general like if you're able to diagnose those those issues and if you're able to like have the right tool set to to look into those performance issues and just try and and fix them and get past it, you will also understand a lot of like Swift UI and what you like shouldn't do in general a lot more. And we've had like, as I said, we've had like a few cases where it's been like, "Oh, this is pretty bad." But then you just diagnose it, you eventually find the root

[40:41] cause and you've learned and you go on the next one, you won't do it the same way. And you kind of like just go um go and keep keep learning um the framework. It's never been like, oh, we we just need to stop using it. Um because it's it doesn't work for us. It's Yeah, it's been pretty good. And then how you work together actually was kind of the other the other part of this question because it seems like everybody I know that has a duo like this. It was like this magical thing that kind of came out of nowhere and they're like very sympatico. Was that the

[41:11] case with you? Have you ever worked both of you? Have you ever worked with another person like this before? Not like part of a big team but just kind of two people who kind of work together well. We were lucky but that it matched so well and we just tried it and of course we had to find our ways of doing things but I think quite quickly we came to a structure that works well which is chaos. Um yeah that so that actually I I remember this from our live show. I asked the question expecting to know the answer of like how do you guys break up work and I thought it was going to be like Paul

[41:47] does most of the backend stuff with the API work and then hit does most of the front-end stuff and it sounded more like either one of you is just as likely to pull a ticket and you'll go really far kind of in the area of your expertise and then the other person might just jump in to help but like you both just sort of do everything. It's not like there's this clear separation of concerns like you might expect. No, it's really is depending on what feature you're working on or you want to work on and then sometimes I start a feature and then I make it all flashy and nice and somewhat

[42:20] work or give it actual data and sometimes Paul makes something and then it looks horrendous and then I jump in to make it and now even we're to a point like Paul is not allowed to work on anything else but inapp purchases and subscriptions and every time he does he has to pay a fine

[42:41] We have good dinner once we launch this. But it seems it does seem really healthy that it's not like there's areas that neither that either of you just never look at. Like you can imagine a lot of times it's like, "Oh, that's his area. I never even touched that." But it sounds like both of you are pretty familiar. You might do a like mediocre job at the other person's area and then let the other person come in and kind of clean it up. But it kind of creates a scenario where both of you are familiar with everything, I'm guessing. Yeah, I think it's also important because you need

[43:10] to stay familiar with your own app, right? Like you need to know your app inside out for to able to help with support and stuff. Um, and to know how to scale things. Um, so I think we'll never be like fully isolated, I think, because I think it's part of ownership like we share the ownership. So

[43:28] we actually share the ownership of everything as well. So also the less spam birds. So yeah. How do you handle support? I think for a long time we were dealing like normal. We had like diagnostics great package from Anton from in there to get some logging if if needed. What we noticed really quickly is that quite a lot of times we had to ask key okay can please send the diagnostics um

[43:53] and then hope for the best. Diagnostics for those listening that's an SDK for Oh yeah that's an SDK. Yeah, it's a Swift package and it basically builds up an HTML page and shows all the error logs and stuff that well depends what you log in there really anything you want and then users can send that to you through your Yeah, just an HTML file usually email or whatever you have set up. Yeah, exactly. And that's Antoine uh Vanderly that makes that. Yeah. And then I think at some point I was like ah you know what this is quite annoying and I think the whole support experience is also not

[44:28] really nice uh because it's just an email and hope for the sake of emailing that it turns out nicely. Uh so I think I at least five coded this I think in like a day or two. I hate the word fico, but this is it was so much pipe going on. It was definitely f coloring where I built like a a back end in superbase uh quickly with all the fields in there that of teams that we would want to have in there. Obviously made like a flashy nice uh UI that just asks you about your name and optional email address even I think and then a message and then you can add photos to

[45:03] it and that's it. That's all there is. And then with that submission, we automatically send the diagnostics file. So we can just see what errors that have been thrown and it gives us a bunch of information like straight out of the box without having to email back and forth to the person like, oh, can you please provide an example? Okay, please do this. So we can actually see what errors app store connect API has been throwing and what their setup is and stuff. So this is really just a lowware and we can then create like a linear ticket straight from that submission as well. So we can try try triage it later, I guess. Have you thought about uh

[45:38] you know wrapping that into a little SAS product and selling it? Cuz that would be interesting. Helm support. No, never. Oh, okay. Did I touch on something here? Yeah, not this year probably. But uh yeah. Yeah, the internal tool is called Harbor and it has a a similar app icon as well, but with an anchor instead of a helm and it has been working well for us. Um, we're now adding it to our new app that we're making as well to see how it would scale to other apps. Uh, but the idea is probably to at some point make this our next developer tool. I think one thing

[46:16] that we learned is that we probably will stick to two teams that we love and that's developer tools and music. I'm no more guide ser overlapping uh one for the parents and one for the nerdy friends. Yeah. So yeah. So maybe who knows but that has been really helpful I would say. Do you get much uh support that's like app store connect issues or do most people understand that line of like you know oh this isn't actually the app's fault. This is, you know, App Store Connects. We do get like a fair amount of App Store Connect issues, but I think we've like we used to get a lot of

[46:58] like weird uh issues with like entities in App Store Connect not being okay or 500s and stuff from the API and we've like we used to get so much of it um that we just like improved our networking and stuff to retry and that kind of solved a lot of the of the feedback that we have. Um, but it's always been quite like developers are a great audience and user base to have because all the feedback is so detailed. Like I remember someone who couldn't they had an issue with the token or something and they just literally we didn't reply overnight and we had like an email

[47:32] chain full of like, oh, I've tried this. It didn't work. And then eventually they kind of fixed it themselves in a way. They were like, oh yeah, it was my uh VPN or something. I don't I I don't even know what what it was to be honest. I don't know how I would even reproduce it. But yeah, we do we do get a bunch of of feedback like that. But it's usually like quite they're quite understanding

[47:52] um that sometimes it's an API issue and we respond to it quite like quickly as well. So you're not getting a lot of support tickets that are like why did my app get rejected? None of that. None of that. And also I think the fact that our user base knows what an API is already says. Yeah. Exactly. That goes a long way. It's a win already. Yeah. Yeah. Even in in my, you know, uh, much smaller developer tool, it is funny the difference in support I get there versus my consumer app. Like I'll get people that'll like dig up their Mac activity logs and send those along and I'm like, man, I wouldn't even know how to like ask you to send that to me. Uh,

[48:31] and that is amazing sometimes. All right. So, I mean, we're getting close to time, so uh I'll end this the same way I always end this show, which is by asking you, uh, what's a person or people out there that have inspired you that you'd recommend others check out? And I'll start with Paul. I would say anyone in the I think I mentioned this last time uh in the podcast we did live. Um, but I would mention anyone in the uh indie house that we stay in uh during dubdub every time. It's an incredible group of talented people, but if I have to mention one, I would say

[49:07] Clemens Straser. Um, got to know him a lot this year and is honestly such a source of inspiration. Like literally constant constant inspiration. So yeah, I would say that outside of development, I would one person that um has inspired me a lot in my life is my my dad. Uh that's someone I always say. Um, and yeah, I've always admired how much he turned I'm quite bad at like dealing with problems and stuff. I get quite like overwhelmed and how much he actually just turned problems into nothing within just a conversation. He just went like, "Oh, yeah, that's not an issue." And you felt immediately safe. That's something that I always try to take with me and think, but yeah,

[49:47] I think that's the people I I would say. I think yeah, obviously also the in your house because they're great bunch of people. But another person that I really admire is Michael Flarup, like a app icon designer. Um, but also generally fun guy. Every time I see him, like we know each other for a long time. We met at a designer conference like over 12 years ago, I think. And every time I see him, we're like absolute fun chaos together. So, I can't wait to see him again in Finland. I

[50:14] think the last time I said David Edinburgh. Uh, but Oh, you did. Yeah, you did. You did. Okay. Another one. Another one. You know what? You know what? I'm going to say Daniel Steinberg cuz I feel like Daniel Steinberg is a bit the the David Edinburgh of of of development like full of knowledge. Everybody loves him and he's just the nicest guy to everyone. Like I want to I want to grow up like Daniel Steinberg I think. Oh man. Yeah. D I haven't had Daniel on the show. Uh I've had Michael on. He's one of those people that I don't know how to say this. Like because he's

[50:49] like a cool designer person who I followed online for so long, I kind of expected him to be a little bit not as nice. Does that make sense? You know, like he just seems like elevated. Like he's not all designers are an [ __ ] I've learned this. Uh Sebastian Dwith was is also in this category. Uh, I thought he was going to be like this super cool biker designer dude and then you meet him and he's like the friendliest person you've ever met and you're like, "Oh my gosh." But yeah, Michael is very much in that category. He's uh extremely cool and yeah, I guess he's going to

[51:21] be at Arctic Conf in uh in Finland. Awesome. Well, uh, thank you both for doing this with me again. So, I guess uh where can people find both of you and your work? We'll start with you, Ha. at Helm_App. uh is our Twitter handle. Um I think that's the main main one. Uh but for myself, it's hit which is in the show notes cuz it's in the show notes. Uh oh wait, hit.design is my website. That's an easy one. Has all the links. There you go. So yeah. Yeah. Perfect. And how about you Paul? For me, say madhelm_app. Uh and then website is paulpierre.dev. Uh, and then you'll find all the all the links there as well. Awesome. Well, again, thank you very

[52:10] much. Thank you all uh for listening. If you want to find more Launched, including episodes with most of the people uh you you mentioned at the end there, you can find that at launchfm.com. And launched FM is our handle basically everywhere. Uh so you can find that there. And I'll see you all in 2 weeks. Thank you so much for listening. You can find more launched at launched fmm.com and you can find me on pretty much all the social medias. I'm @_chucky on Twitter or charliemchapman pretty much everywhere else. And of course, huge thanks to Revenue for making

[52:45] this episode and all future episodes of Launch possible. I'll see you all again in 2 weeks.

---

About this transcript
Read from YouTube's own caption track and laid out by ViewRank AI (https://viewrankai.com).
ViewRank AI finds the videos already beating a creator's own average on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube Shorts, transcribes them from the audio itself in more than 60 languages, and turns what worked into new ideas and scripts.
Free transcript tools, no account needed: https://viewrankai.com/tools
How to read any video this way: https://viewrankai.com/llms.txt