Two best friends starting a business

Journal
21

It’s been a long time coding, but we have made our first app!

It’s a different app idea than the one we originally had when we started learning Swift with iOS Foundations. We thought about it about 6 months ago and promptly decided to pivot.

The idea was to build a simple app to follow markets and be able to look at financial statements on our phones. We initially thought it would take two months, but when you’re caught in the process it’s hard to keep track of time :sweat_smile:

All this time we kept iterating, using the app and finding new ideas.

But at some point, you need to get what you’re building into people’s hands to get feedback. So about three weeks ago: WE (finally) DID.

We started the TestFlight beta of our MVP.
People have our app. Something we made. On their phones!!!
It’s crazy :exploding_head:

Our lowkey beta is going great! Well, except for Flo’s mom, our first user, who got stuck in the onboarding because of a bug. Although we are proud to say that NO ONE HAS CRASHED THE APP YET :raised_hands: (This is not a challenge, but Flo has found new ways to do it hundreds of time haha)

Anyway, with the earliest bugs out of the way, we’re ready to share the app with you.

Introducing: Koriu

Your companion to keep up with financial markets!

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If you’d like to be part of the beta too (or just determined to find a new crash), we’d be happy to have you onboard :star_struck:
Leave a reply down below or dm me here in the CWC forum and I’ll invite you in.

We plan to be more public about it in the coming days, but before we do, we wanted to tell you all first.
Wanna take a peek right now? Here’s our website: https://koriu.app

We hope telling our journey will inspire some of you to stick with your learning, build something, and take the leap.

Raph & Flo

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22

Koriu is finally on the AppStore since this weekend!!!

It’s been a long time coding, but it so feels worth it.

The adventure begins! :smiley:

23

I dunno if people are still reading this journal but I made my first dollars from iOS dev yesterday!! got excited and wanted to share :slight_smile: from a freelance mission found on Upwork

And next month we should get our first check from Apple for Koriu :eyes:
(we ended February at 146$ so ALMOST enough but not quite yet, you need at least 150$ post-commission revenue to start receiving your App Store dollars)

It’s all definitely hard work especially for the soul-crushingly low pay I’m starting with lol, but it’s also FUN work and I’m learning a lot. So in my mind it’s worth it!
(although I’m hoping things pick up in the future :eyes:)

Quick advice from my end: don’t be like me, TAKE THE LEAP SOONER, I waited way too long before daring to publish on the App Store and applying to freelance jobs, and it’s a shame because doing those things has immensely accelerated my learning.

Are you guys already making money from iOS dev? How did you get started? Would love some advice too

Cheers
Raph

P.S.:If you find this type of post interesting please tell me and I’ll keep sharing progress no matter how small or big :partying_face:

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24

Hey, your posts are great. Keep going and well done

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25

Thanks @Swifty :smiley:

26

Holy hell I just read this whole thread… what a journey! What a story! That’s freaking awesome!

This is really inspiring, to say the least.

Amazing job on that website as well. Did you make that on your own as well? It’s super well done.

How is the app doing? :slight_smile:

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27

Hey @ismi thank you so much I’m really glad you enjoyed reading our story!

Flo made the website using Framer :slight_smile: it’s a powerful tool for webdev especially if you’re familiar with Figma

We had a bunch of downloads at launch but it’s not converting. Our download-to-paid ratio is definitely in the bottom quartile of RevenueCat’s latest report (a must read for all indie devs every year)

I have the strong conviction that the market for finance apps is still underserved, because the best apps are all way too expensive and esoteric, but I haven’t cracked it yet.

Everybody tells us Koriu is super well designed, but if it’s not translating into sales, then it’s likely not helpful enough for people yet. That means we still haven’t built something that people really need.

That reminds me of something @Chris_Ching beautifully said in the CWC newsletter recently:

" It’s easy to focus on what iOS development can do for us. (Make us money, get a new job etc)
If you pause for a moment and think:
You could use these skills to build apps that benefit and improve the lives of others.
I bet if you focus on that, not only will you feel better but the money will probably come as a natural byproduct of creating something useful too."

He’s right. The point of building apps is to help people.

That’s why I’ve been interviewing retail investors or people curious to get into investing, in order to better understand how I could be helpful to them.

The goal is to make understanding finance and markets accessible, so that people can make smarter decisions with their money, so that they’re free to do more things with their lives. That’s Koriu’s North Star. (disclaimer: NOT financial advice)

We’ve also been working on a marketing plan to try to target active retail investors.

Pro tip: figure out your marketing plan BEFORE launching your app, really I can’t emphasize how much I recommend everyone reading our story to NOT do certain things the way we did them. Please learn from our mistakes!!! lol

Everything is taking a while because I’m also freelancing iOS gigs to make a living on the sides. I’ve been getting paid to learn how to work with SwiftData, the Speech Recognizer, WidgetKit… the pay is low but it’s fun and I’m happy to keep learning.

Anyway. Two takeaways:

  1. User research is SUPER IMPORTANT: interview people, gather specific knowledge about whatever field your app is in… Figure out what problem you’re solving and who has this problem. This is the number 1 most important thing and honestly we haven’t figured it out yet.

  2. Marketing: how are you going to reach the people with this problem? Plenty of ways to go about that.

For me, I plan to publish a lot of content on LinkedIn very soon, hoping that by reaching many people, I’ll be able to meet enough retail investors to get to know their problems better than anyone.

Nothing is easy, but everything worthwhile is uphill.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk lol, to be continued!

28

We’re building a new app! :partying_face:

It’s a time / app blocking app called Flowmino, and this time we’re doing this right. We have:

  • done lots of research on productivity theory, and the apps people like to use

  • defined and designed a suuuuuper simple MVP stripped down to strictly must-haves features with a just a few oomphy twists

  • started talking about it on SoMe (follow me here) and already outlined a marketing content strategy even though we’ve barely started coding the project (versus spending months in stealth for no good reason)

Now we’re sprinting towards being MVP ready so we can get feedback ASAAAP

We are no longer nervous first-time developers, this time we’re nervous entrepreneurs eager to build a business that’s useful to people.

So if you have problems with focus, or if you’re struggling to manage the million things on your plate, or if you’re into productivity apps for any reason, you can sign up to our upcoming beta here: https://flowmino.com

I’ll be happy to invite you to test the app, give your feedback, so that we build something that really helps us become our most productive selves :raised_hands:

I’ll come back soon to share a few screenshots :smiley:

Cheeeeeeeeeeers

29

Hi there hello!

We’re making a ton of progress and I wanted to share some simulator screenshots of our prototype.

From left to right:

  • The Home Page: preview your upcoming schedule, and tap “Enter Flow” when you’re ready to focus.
  • The Planner: where you’ll edit / time block your day
  • AddSessionView Quickly add sessions to the selected day (I don’t really have a cool name for it but we’re all iOS devs you know what I mean hahah)

The purpose of the colorful “EnterFlow” button is to block distracting apps and track your working time.

We are aiming for beta launch this weekend! You can sign up on flowmino.com

If you can test it I would absolutely love to hear your feedback :pray:t2:

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I’m really happy to work as a team with @florentp, we brainstorm concept and UX together but he created the design :smiley: I hope 2021 Raph and Flo from this journal’s first post would be proud!

Cheers everyone

(P.S.: we’re also working on an update for our app Koriu but more on that later)

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30

P.S.: you can imagine there’s gonna be some cool animated transitions between all these Views hehe

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31

This is absolutely insane. We won the Design Award for the RevenueCat Ship-a-ton

Flowmino is made entirely using SwiftUI, SwiftData, and a little bit of math

It’s been a very long journey, we’re grateful for CWC enabling us to become iOS developers :heart:

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32

Congrats, well deserved :smiley::+1:t2:

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33

Thanks Hendrik :smiley: and congrats to you too for shipping on the App Store!

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34

Congratulations guys. Great achievement and recognition.

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