Launching my first Indie app
Despite 10+ years of iOS experience, I'd never released a personal app. Here's how AI and drastic lifestyle changes helped me finally ship Reccount.
The road so far
Two years ago I posted for the first time, saying I'd give my best to my indie journey. I made an MVP pretty quickly but fell into the perfectionism trap, made several refactors, experimented with a few technologies like TCA or different IAP implementations. Once the app got finished I even tried to make it from scratch using Expo. Lots of nonsense, at the end of the day I wasn't shipping anything, I had no app in the store, no users, no revenue.
Then a few months ago my 2nd child was born. I went from a few hours a day of free time to almost no free time at all. Drastic measures needed to be made. I quit all gaming (even sold my hardware) and cut TV time completely to only a few sports matches and competitions. I was determined to make the switch. Priority would be to release whatever I had, focus on getting users and continue making small improvements along the way.
I wouldn't have done it without the help of AI. With a few hours of effort I have been accomplishing tasks that in other times would require an entire week. It is absolutely game changing for Indie devs, specially the ones with full-time jobs and kids. It feels like the dream is doable, that the end goal is closer than ever.
Despite having 10+ years of experience with iOS dev I have never released a personal app to the App Store. I underestimated the effort that requires going the last mile once the app is ready. Copies, screenshots, configuring IAP. For me coding is the easy part, which is very exciting since there are a lot of things I'm learning and this is just the start. The big bosses like Marketing, ASO, etc. are waiting for me.
Reccount is live
The day of the initial 1.0 release did come. Reccount is live since Nov 2nd.
The app came from the need with my wife to track our net worth across the years. We used different systems, most notably, annotating each individual expense. At the end of the day it was way too cumbersome and with heavy mental load for missing items, inaccurate balances and the need to remember to annotate the expense.
Then I understood that the only metric we cared about is how much our net worth has grown or decreased along the years to help us identify potential patterns and plan our future, that's it. For doing so, once a month we create snapshots of the balances of each account we have together, sum those values, and project them into a nice chart.
That's Reccount, that's what it does.
The road ahead
Launching the app is just the beginning. While I have read lots of things I have zero experience doing marketing, promoting my app, handling user feedback, and so on.
The road ahead is exciting. The app could fail but I'll do my best to succeed by being consistent and fight during the downs to not lose motivation.
Come and join the journey with me.