10 ms·

How I Quit My Job and Built My First App

172 points by uptown 11y ago

jeffehobbs 11y ago
Step 1: Develop app Step 2: Fail at monetizing app Step 3: Create app development studio Step 4: Empower others to fail at monetizing apps
- anpk 11y ago
  Step 5: Go back to a regular job
  - 3stripe 11y ago
    Step 6: Write a Medium article about it
    - swagaholic 11y ago
      Step 7: Finance becomes the hot sector again
      - bekimdisha 11y ago
        Step8: Repeat
        robjama 11y ago
        Step 9: Write a comment on HN about the Medium post that you wrote.
- will_lam 11y ago
  Why all the cynicism?
  - kevindeasis 11y ago
    Mostly because it is the reality of the situation, even if it quite dim.
- nostrademons 11y ago
  To be fair, most of the money in mobile apps is in helping big companies put out apps to engage their customers and show they're not obsolete dinosaurs. Come to think of it, pretty much all of the money in startups comes either from making lucrative big companies obsolete or selling software to big companies to assuage their fear of becoming obsolete.
- dang 11y ago
  Please don't do this here. I understand the sport in extracting the most uncharitable interpretation of a thing and distilling it into the most concentrated snark that you can, but amusing as that can be, you harm the community by posting it here. Snark always gets many upvotes, perhaps because we enjoy the dopamine rush of briefly feeling superior to others. Such comments rise to the top, become emblematic, and pretty soon we're all in the habit of looking for clever ways to put others down instead of learning and asking questions together. This is an existential risk to HN, since if we lose the open-minded exploratory quality of the threads (never secure to begin with, and always under pressure from stronger forces), successive waves of thoughtful users will exit, putting the community into a fatal feedback loop.
  - timrpeterson 11y ago
    I think sanitizing the community possibly puts it at even greater risk. Look at stackoverflow whose contributors are dwindling due to overmodding. There is learning in this comment. You are the one layering on the interpretation of the need to feel superior. That wasn't how I read it.
    - tomhoward 11y ago
      Encouraging civility and kindness is no risk to a community that is at its best when people are civil and kind. The campaign to promote civility and eradicate meanness has been waged publicly by Dang for over 18 months and more quietly by PG and other mods for long before that. The overall volume of contributions hasn't gone down and the volume of thoughtful and substantive contributions had gone up, and for me it feels like a more safe and welcoming place in which to post thoughtful comments. The point of the comment could have been made in a civil and thoughtful way if the commenter chose to do so, and when people do that, there is far more "learning" to be had and we all benefit.
    - dang 11y ago
      > You are the one layering on the interpretation That may be. I replaced "probably" with "perhaps". I don't think "sanitizing" is an accurate description of what we do or call for, though I get that it's a rhetorical way of saying not to take things too far. Overmodding is definitely not the goal—undermodding is. The dream is to get it asymptotically approaching zero. That requires a self-regulating community, which requires a self-sustaining culture. Most of what we do, when not posting "please stop" and whatnot, involves figuring out how to get there.
- EvanPlaice 11y ago
  Step 1: Doubt oneself Step 2: Do nothing Step 3: Justify personal failure by criticizing others Step 4: Feel better Not to feed into this too much. Being cynical adds nothing value to the conversation. If you're looking to earn 'internet points' by being sarcastic or making jokes at other people's expense, that's what Reddit is for.
nvader 11y ago
> As a side-note, creating external deadlines is also a great way to rally a team My experience with this is that external deadlines work for teams that are unfocused and whose own motivation is low. However, for a team that is already executing well, an imposition of an external deadline (especially for a reason as poorly-thought-out as "to rally the team"), if it's aggressive enough to see increased throughput, will lead to poor processes, cut corners and burnout. Perhaps there is an element of rationalization here, where a poor manager, who failed to anticipate at a distance a goal that was then attainable, becomes aware of it once it is closer and in danger of passing by, and has to make huge efforts at re-prioritization and motivation to meet it. In hindsight, the manager rationalizes that the fire drill was a good thing for the company, because obviously, the deadline was achieved! Oh, and look, next week there's a customer coming on-site, wouldn't it be great if this other feature was added in time for that...? I have not had to build and lead a team yet myself, but the process I would follow, and the advice I would give others, is to choose to work with a focused, motivated team, and reduce the importance given to external deadlines. They should influence the prioritization given to relative projects, but cannot be used to crank the throughput nozzle.
- thewhitetulip 11y ago
  Yes, it irks the good team that there are new "deadlines" being set as if they can't meet the deadlines assigned to them. It is really lowering the team moral when done and should never be done. I was lucky to have an amazing manager for that one doomed project, we were 4-5 months behind timeline yet he said, "I am not going to micromanage you, I trust you that you'll deliver this on time" (he had been assigned halfway into the project), the project had escalated to one level lower than the CEO and the result? The team delivered! Because the team wasn't micro managed!
- jakejake 11y ago
  Once you do lead a team, which I'm sure you will do in the future if you're so inclined, It can be a bit harder than you would think! Even a team of all A players can flounder and never produce anything if you're not careful. For me the thing is that you just have to constantly adapt your plan as things develop. I don't think deadlines are inherently bad. But if you do set deadlines, the team needs to be a part of that process and the goals need to be based on reality rather than just arbitrary. If you have hard external deadlines, then that may dictate the features you can deliver. I find that developers (myself included) appreciate being able to focus on their individual tasks, knowing that the manager is making sure the ship is heading in the right direction.
allsystemsgo 11y ago
Why would you quit your job to make an app? I have bootstrapped 3 apps and pushed them to the app store in my own time. To be fair, every time I do it, it's hard. I have to prepare my family that I'm undertaking something that will take up a lot of my time. It's tough but, they know I love it.
- justusw 11y ago
  Did you ever have trouble with keeping apart intellectual property created for your employer vs. for yourself on your own time? For example, did you use different computers and made sure to never do this at your work place? I'm always worried that this might become a problem if you create apps while still being employed somewhere.
  - allsystemsgo 11y ago
    I use my own machine. That and you have to keep in mind a few things. Does the company actually have the money to spend to go after a developer who made some simple app? Would doing so piss off their entire engineering department? Is it really worth it to them? Usually the answer is no. Not that any of the above matters since I do this on my own time, with my own resources.
    - SyneRyder 11y ago
      If you work for Apple (and I think the same for Google, Facebook or Microsoft), don't they own your output even if it's on your own machine in your own time? I seem to remember part of their contract is that they own all your intellectual output. Some other discussion of this here: http://iphonedevsdk.com/forum/business-legal-app-store/47704-apple-retail-employees-shut-from-developing.html http://iphonedevsdk.com/forum/business-legal-app-store/47704... https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1phmkr/current_employer_owns_all_software_i_develop/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1phmkr/current_emp... On the other hand, in Queensland at least, it depends on the definition of your work role. If it's specific enough, you could even create a game using your employers equipment & keep ownership & copyright yourself (the Queensland government provides that as a specific software example here): https://www.business.qld.gov.au/business/support-tools-grants/tools/intellectual-property-info-kit/browse/employees-contractors/ownership https://www.business.qld.gov.au/business/support-tools-grant...
samuraicode 11y ago
I worked with Robleh on a memory game using images from Instagram back in the day called InstaMatch. I had made the simple game and published it, and he helped do all the marketing and design to make it quite successful. He was always great to work with and we made decent money until Instagram decided to stop having apps use any part of their name in the title.
- robjama 11y ago
  Thanks for the shout out Jeremy! InstaMatch deserves it's own post. Learned a lot from those early days.
joshmn 11y ago
And then there are 100s of other stories like this one where people catastrophically fail.
- kaitai 11y ago
  A lot of those aren't quite like this one, though. The author did some smart things: * app received press before quitting job * app started making revenue before quitting job * author had time to watch the app's trajectory before quitting job * author diversifies and helps other people make successful apps, across a variety of categories, rather than betting it all on games. The point of reading success and failure stories is to contrast them as well as feel inspiration or schaudenfreude as indicated.
  - oaktowner 11y ago
    The diversification was really important. Too many people think of "app" as "business;" he saw early on that he would need lots of apps (both his and others') to build a business.
dboreham 11y ago
This is interesting because until reading this I had the impression that nobody makes money from mobile apps (except games).
pythonlion 11y ago
sweet comp name
sadkingbilly 11y ago
In reality though, I'd like to know what the author did for health insurance when he quit his job weeks/months after having a baby. Medical risk is very high during this period.. looks like he is based in Canada (not US), so I guess that answers it.
- craigvn 11y ago
  Yes, in some countries the idea that if you don't have a job or are low income that your children's health should suffer is considered pretty inhuman.
  - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
    I'm eternally bemused that the US considers itself entrepreneurial and pro-business when it doesn't get this. Then again, if your cost of entry is much lower and more people can bootstrap from personal savings, they're all that much less likely to need investors just to stay alive, or to put up with demands for unicorn growth.
- apazzolini 11y ago
  Even if you quit your job in the US, you're entitled to COBRA coverage for 18 months if your employer had more than 20 employees. It allows you to continue the health plan you had at your employer, provided you cover the entirety of the cost. With Obamacare, COBRA is not necessarily cheaper now, but it was in the past. When I left my previous job, I elected COBRA coverage because HSAs weren't available on healthcare.gov. I pay $280 for an HSA plan with a maximum deductible of $6k, dental, and vision in Texas. It's not cheap, but it's not completely unaffordable either.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
artifaxx 11y ago
In contrast to all the cynicism I see in other comments, this is awesome! Even if it doesn't happen to everyone, I find anyone who can manage to survive building and pursuing their passion to be inspirational. It reminds me that even if the odds aren't good, the journey can most certainly be worth quitting your job. As I start bootstrapping my own idea off the ground it helps to see stories like this. Being able to stay motivated and optimistic looks to be a helpful component of success.
cdnsteve 11y ago
From T.O. <3
fierycatnet 11y ago
Pocket Zoo? This is actually a really awesome idea!
kenzokai 11y ago
Articles like this always skip the most crucial point. Author talks about "outreach" and press coverage and such. But how is that done exactly? I realize this might be dependent on the app but there has to be some general principles one can follow. If I were to launch an app in the app store today, almost NO ONE would know. How do you get from that - to real influencers writing about your app?
- asteadman 11y ago
  It's not app specific - but Alex Turnbull of the oft-linked groovehq did a detailed blog post about his outreach strategy: https://www.groovehq.com/blog/1000-subscribers https://www.groovehq.com/blog/1000-subscribers . Some of this advice transfers over to an app, some of not so much.
sriram_iyengar 11y ago
really nice and inspiring. - how did you reach out to so many customers ? - i see the UX of your apps are good. did you do them or you got a design agency doing it for you ?

172 points by uptown 11y ago

Step 1: Develop app Step 2: Fail at monetizing app Step 3: Create app development studio Step 4: Empower others to fail at monetizing apps

anpk 11y ago
Step 5: Go back to a regular job
- 3stripe 11y ago
  Step 6: Write a Medium article about it
  - swagaholic 11y ago
    Step 7: Finance becomes the hot sector again
    - bekimdisha 11y ago
      Step8: Repeat
      - robjama 11y ago
        Step 9: Write a comment on HN about the Medium post that you wrote.
will_lam 11y ago
Why all the cynicism?
- kevindeasis 11y ago
  Mostly because it is the reality of the situation, even if it quite dim.
nostrademons 11y ago
To be fair, most of the money in mobile apps is in helping big companies put out apps to engage their customers and show they're not obsolete dinosaurs. Come to think of it, pretty much all of the money in startups comes either from making lucrative big companies obsolete or selling software to big companies to assuage their fear of becoming obsolete.
dang 11y ago
Please don't do this here. I understand the sport in extracting the most uncharitable interpretation of a thing and distilling it into the most concentrated snark that you can, but amusing as that can be, you harm the community by posting it here. Snark always gets many upvotes, perhaps because we enjoy the dopamine rush of briefly feeling superior to others. Such comments rise to the top, become emblematic, and pretty soon we're all in the habit of looking for clever ways to put others down instead of learning and asking questions together. This is an existential risk to HN, since if we lose the open-minded exploratory quality of the threads (never secure to begin with, and always under pressure from stronger forces), successive waves of thoughtful users will exit, putting the community into a fatal feedback loop.
- timrpeterson 11y ago
  I think sanitizing the community possibly puts it at even greater risk. Look at stackoverflow whose contributors are dwindling due to overmodding. There is learning in this comment. You are the one layering on the interpretation of the need to feel superior. That wasn't how I read it.
  - tomhoward 11y ago
    Encouraging civility and kindness is no risk to a community that is at its best when people are civil and kind. The campaign to promote civility and eradicate meanness has been waged publicly by Dang for over 18 months and more quietly by PG and other mods for long before that. The overall volume of contributions hasn't gone down and the volume of thoughtful and substantive contributions had gone up, and for me it feels like a more safe and welcoming place in which to post thoughtful comments. The point of the comment could have been made in a civil and thoughtful way if the commenter chose to do so, and when people do that, there is far more "learning" to be had and we all benefit.
  - dang 11y ago
    > You are the one layering on the interpretation That may be. I replaced "probably" with "perhaps". I don't think "sanitizing" is an accurate description of what we do or call for, though I get that it's a rhetorical way of saying not to take things too far. Overmodding is definitely not the goal—undermodding is. The dream is to get it asymptotically approaching zero. That requires a self-regulating community, which requires a self-sustaining culture. Most of what we do, when not posting "please stop" and whatnot, involves figuring out how to get there.
EvanPlaice 11y ago
Step 1: Doubt oneself Step 2: Do nothing Step 3: Justify personal failure by criticizing others Step 4: Feel better Not to feed into this too much. Being cynical adds nothing value to the conversation. If you're looking to earn 'internet points' by being sarcastic or making jokes at other people's expense, that's what Reddit is for.

nvader 11y ago

> As a side-note, creating external deadlines is also a great way to rally a team My experience with this is that external deadlines work for teams that are unfocused and whose own motivation is low. However, for a team that is already executing well, an imposition of an external deadline (especially for a reason as poorly-thought-out as "to rally the team"), if it's aggressive enough to see increased throughput, will lead to poor processes, cut corners and burnout. Perhaps there is an element of rationalization here, where a poor manager, who failed to anticipate at a distance a goal that was then attainable, becomes aware of it once it is closer and in danger of passing by, and has to make huge efforts at re-prioritization and motivation to meet it. In hindsight, the manager rationalizes that the fire drill was a good thing for the company, because obviously, the deadline was achieved! Oh, and look, next week there's a customer coming on-site, wouldn't it be great if this other feature was added in time for that...? I have not had to build and lead a team yet myself, but the process I would follow, and the advice I would give others, is to choose to work with a focused, motivated team, and reduce the importance given to external deadlines. They should influence the prioritization given to relative projects, but cannot be used to crank the throughput nozzle.

thewhitetulip 11y ago
Yes, it irks the good team that there are new "deadlines" being set as if they can't meet the deadlines assigned to them. It is really lowering the team moral when done and should never be done. I was lucky to have an amazing manager for that one doomed project, we were 4-5 months behind timeline yet he said, "I am not going to micromanage you, I trust you that you'll deliver this on time" (he had been assigned halfway into the project), the project had escalated to one level lower than the CEO and the result? The team delivered! Because the team wasn't micro managed!
jakejake 11y ago
Once you do lead a team, which I'm sure you will do in the future if you're so inclined, It can be a bit harder than you would think! Even a team of all A players can flounder and never produce anything if you're not careful. For me the thing is that you just have to constantly adapt your plan as things develop. I don't think deadlines are inherently bad. But if you do set deadlines, the team needs to be a part of that process and the goals need to be based on reality rather than just arbitrary. If you have hard external deadlines, then that may dictate the features you can deliver. I find that developers (myself included) appreciate being able to focus on their individual tasks, knowing that the manager is making sure the ship is heading in the right direction.

allsystemsgo 11y ago

Why would you quit your job to make an app? I have bootstrapped 3 apps and pushed them to the app store in my own time. To be fair, every time I do it, it's hard. I have to prepare my family that I'm undertaking something that will take up a lot of my time. It's tough but, they know I love it.

justusw 11y ago
Did you ever have trouble with keeping apart intellectual property created for your employer vs. for yourself on your own time? For example, did you use different computers and made sure to never do this at your work place? I'm always worried that this might become a problem if you create apps while still being employed somewhere.
- allsystemsgo 11y ago
  I use my own machine. That and you have to keep in mind a few things. Does the company actually have the money to spend to go after a developer who made some simple app? Would doing so piss off their entire engineering department? Is it really worth it to them? Usually the answer is no. Not that any of the above matters since I do this on my own time, with my own resources.
  - SyneRyder 11y ago
    If you work for Apple (and I think the same for Google, Facebook or Microsoft), don't they own your output even if it's on your own machine in your own time? I seem to remember part of their contract is that they own all your intellectual output. Some other discussion of this here: http://iphonedevsdk.com/forum/business-legal-app-store/47704-apple-retail-employees-shut-from-developing.html http://iphonedevsdk.com/forum/business-legal-app-store/47704... https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1phmkr/current_employer_owns_all_software_i_develop/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1phmkr/current_emp... On the other hand, in Queensland at least, it depends on the definition of your work role. If it's specific enough, you could even create a game using your employers equipment & keep ownership & copyright yourself (the Queensland government provides that as a specific software example here): https://www.business.qld.gov.au/business/support-tools-grants/tools/intellectual-property-info-kit/browse/employees-contractors/ownership https://www.business.qld.gov.au/business/support-tools-grant...

samuraicode 11y ago

I worked with Robleh on a memory game using images from Instagram back in the day called InstaMatch. I had made the simple game and published it, and he helped do all the marketing and design to make it quite successful. He was always great to work with and we made decent money until Instagram decided to stop having apps use any part of their name in the title.

robjama 11y ago
Thanks for the shout out Jeremy! InstaMatch deserves it's own post. Learned a lot from those early days.

joshmn 11y ago

And then there are 100s of other stories like this one where people catastrophically fail.

kaitai 11y ago
A lot of those aren't quite like this one, though. The author did some smart things: * app received press before quitting job * app started making revenue before quitting job * author had time to watch the app's trajectory before quitting job * author diversifies and helps other people make successful apps, across a variety of categories, rather than betting it all on games. The point of reading success and failure stories is to contrast them as well as feel inspiration or schaudenfreude as indicated.
- oaktowner 11y ago
  The diversification was really important. Too many people think of "app" as "business;" he saw early on that he would need lots of apps (both his and others') to build a business.

dboreham 11y ago

This is interesting because until reading this I had the impression that nobody makes money from mobile apps (except games).

pythonlion 11y ago

sweet comp name

sadkingbilly 11y ago

In reality though, I'd like to know what the author did for health insurance when he quit his job weeks/months after having a baby. Medical risk is very high during this period.. looks like he is based in Canada (not US), so I guess that answers it.

craigvn 11y ago
Yes, in some countries the idea that if you don't have a job or are low income that your children's health should suffer is considered pretty inhuman.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  I'm eternally bemused that the US considers itself entrepreneurial and pro-business when it doesn't get this. Then again, if your cost of entry is much lower and more people can bootstrap from personal savings, they're all that much less likely to need investors just to stay alive, or to put up with demands for unicorn growth.
apazzolini 11y ago
Even if you quit your job in the US, you're entitled to COBRA coverage for 18 months if your employer had more than 20 employees. It allows you to continue the health plan you had at your employer, provided you cover the entirety of the cost. With Obamacare, COBRA is not necessarily cheaper now, but it was in the past. When I left my previous job, I elected COBRA coverage because HSAs weren't available on healthcare.gov. I pay $280 for an HSA plan with a maximum deductible of $6k, dental, and vision in Texas. It's not cheap, but it's not completely unaffordable either.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

artifaxx 11y ago

In contrast to all the cynicism I see in other comments, this is awesome! Even if it doesn't happen to everyone, I find anyone who can manage to survive building and pursuing their passion to be inspirational. It reminds me that even if the odds aren't good, the journey can most certainly be worth quitting your job. As I start bootstrapping my own idea off the ground it helps to see stories like this. Being able to stay motivated and optimistic looks to be a helpful component of success.

cdnsteve 11y ago

From T.O. <3

fierycatnet 11y ago

Pocket Zoo? This is actually a really awesome idea!

kenzokai 11y ago

Articles like this always skip the most crucial point. Author talks about "outreach" and press coverage and such. But how is that done exactly? I realize this might be dependent on the app but there has to be some general principles one can follow. If I were to launch an app in the app store today, almost NO ONE would know. How do you get from that - to real influencers writing about your app?

asteadman 11y ago
It's not app specific - but Alex Turnbull of the oft-linked groovehq did a detailed blog post about his outreach strategy: https://www.groovehq.com/blog/1000-subscribers https://www.groovehq.com/blog/1000-subscribers . Some of this advice transfers over to an app, some of not so much.

sriram_iyengar 11y ago

really nice and inspiring. - how did you reach out to so many customers ? - i see the UX of your apps are good. did you do them or you got a design agency doing it for you ?