Ideating, Building, and Launching Products with Chris Raroque
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by kirupa | Interviews with Creative People: https://www.kirupa.com/podcast/index.htm

Chris Raroque (https://ellie.so/) gives a grounded look at solo product building through Mogul and Ellie. He covers building from personal pain points, talking about ideas in public, learning from early users, finding discovery through the App Store, pricing carefully, and using analytics and shipping discipline to keep a product focused as it grows.

Watch the interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU
A conversation with Chris Raroque | 54m

ABOUT THIS CONVERSATION

Chris Raroque comes into this conversation with two products that make his approach easy to understand. Mogul helps people remember important details about their relationships, and Ellie tackles daily planning from a very personal angle. That shared starting point matters. He is not searching for abstract startup ideas. He is paying attention to recurring problems in his own life and building tools he genuinely wants to keep using.

One of the most useful parts of the episode is the way he talks about building in public without romanticizing it. Speaking openly about a product before it is finished creates accountability, pressure, and momentum all at once. Early users become more than signups. They become a feedback loop that helps sharpen what the product should be, what can wait, and what needs to feel solid before more people arrive.

The business side is just as valuable as the product side. Chris gets into landing pages, monetization, pricing, and discovery with a very iterative mindset. He shares why he moved quickly to the App Store, why he prefers starting prices low and adjusting upward when needed, and why too much research can easily become a substitute for actually shipping. The through line is simple: move, learn, adjust, and keep the product close to real user behavior.

That same philosophy shows up later in the discussion around analytics, platform differences, testing, and deployment. Chris talks about tracking feature usage, cutting things that do not earn their keep, and staying close to the platform he personally uses most. By the end, the episode feels like a compact manual for independent builders who need to think about code, support, pricing, infrastructure, and marketing all at the same time.

WHAT YOU'LL HEAR ABOUT

- Products often get sharper when they start from problems the builder personally feels.
- Building in public can create useful pressure when paired with fast iteration.
- Early users are most valuable when they actively shape the product.
- App Store discovery can matter even for small, quickly built launches.
- Pricing is easier to raise gradually than to walk back after starting too high.
- Analytics help decide which features deserve to survive.

JUMP TO A TOPIC

- 1:13 - Two products, one builder mindset: Chris introduces Mogul and Ellie and explains the everyday problems each one is meant to solve. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=73s)
- 1:51 - Building Ellie in public: The conversation explores the motivation and pressure that come from sharing an idea before it is finished. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=111s)
- 9:45 - Turning early users into a feedback loop: Chris describes how the first signups helped validate the direction and expose what needed work. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=585s)
- 13:00 - Finding discovery through the App Store: He explains why a fast iOS launch created organic visibility that would have been harder to manufacture elsewhere. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=780s)
- 15:00 - Balancing product, support, and marketing: This section gets into the constant juggling act of being the builder and the growth team at once. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=900s)
- 20:22 - When to start charging: Chris talks through monetization timing and what he learned from waiting, testing, and deciding to ask users to pay. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=1222s)
- 25:00 - Pricing by iteration: They discuss starting low, learning from the market, and adjusting price without pretending the first guess is perfect. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=1500s)
- 28:43 - Why iOS came next: Chris explains how his own usage patterns shaped the move from the web into a dedicated mobile app. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=1723s)
- 36:31 - Using analytics to guide focus: Feature tracking becomes a way to prune unused ideas and keep the product pointed at what matters. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=2191s)
- 45:53 - Shipping pipeline and the next marketing push: The final stretch covers deployment habits, infrastructure choices, and the growing need to invest in promotion. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=2753s)

TO LEARN MORE

- Try out Ellie: https://ellie.so/
- Try out Mogul: https://mogulnetworking.com/
- Follow Chris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/raroque

TRANSCRIPT

The automatically generated captions have been organized by speaker, lightly edited for clarity, and broken into paragraphs for readability. Names and wording may still contain errors.

0:00 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=0s)

hi everybody in this podcast I'm going to be talking to Chris Baroque serial product designer developer learner and all an entrepreneur about how he builds products his most recent product Ellie is a daily planner that he in many ways ideated and started developing in the open with all of us following along for the ride so we're gonna dive into how he decides what to build how he attracts his earliest users how he comes up with a business and a product strategy and a bunch more related topics hope you'll enjoy it hi Chris how are you a group of good good to see you very very good on my end so tell me a little bit about yourself

0:39 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=39s)

yeah so I'm uh currently working on a startup um it's called aloa we do like software development Outsourcing for startups and um I also do a lot of like Indie side projects on the side uh primarily a front-end developer so I do uh Swift and react and yeah that's what takes up most of my time just like both of these things but I have everything in the world of software like that's that's

1:01 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=61s)

what consumes my life nice so one of the things that you do which I think is really cool is it also has site projects that you work on that are very similar to your interest there if you want to talk a little bit about that

1:13 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=73s)

yeah yeah so um I have two projects um so one's called mobile it's a it's a personal CRM which is basically just like like I think the best way to describe this for people who don't know what a CRM is um it's kind of like a networking app so it's like a way for it's honestly for people who have like not so great memory like me to just remember details about people and then the other one is called Ellie and it's like it's kind of like a daily planner so it just helps me um actually a better way to describe it it's it's almost like Trello and uh Google Calendar but combined

1:47 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=107s)

nice you know Ellie's an interesting one because you know I've been following you for quite some time and I remember like you know quite a while ago you started talking about Ellie you wanted to start talking about how do I go from talking about it to actually building it and so I'm getting to watch you from the whole process of ideation to iterating on a design and getting female yeah yeah is it really fascinating so I want to die a little bit in with Ellie a little further with you on so what motivated you start Ellie why were you deciding to like you know you already mentioned it's like no no you have Google Calendar you have no idea of all these things so what

why Ellie what brought you yeah yeah you

2:21 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=141s)

know what's funny I I completely forgot that I like you're right I did start just tweeting about it from ideation like I completely forgot that I like because I've been doing it I guess like for for like a few months now but I forgot that I even talked about like when I first started doing it but that's that's pretty interesting um but the reason that I started it um it's so yeah it was totally by accident and um I was actually using this service called sansama and they're by like I will never hide this like they are the inspiration behind this um I was a user for of theirs for two years and um they actually came up with this like concept of um this like Trello and Google Calendar

combined yeah and um the thing that was like super unique which I've never seen anyone do this is they had this like infinite kanban view so usually like for kanbans like Trello it's like you put you know like static columns together for different statuses but um what was unique about them was like um they put a calendar on the kanban so it was like infinite like scrolling like I can scroll like all the way to next year all the way back a year and um being able to visualize that was like super interesting to me so I can you know when I start my day I can put some tasks on this kanban for today and then I can almost like plan out my week and

um I was a user of theirs for two years absolutely loved it um and they have a they they really have a huge focus on Integrations and um I think uh because of the the because of that Focus um the pricing like increased significantly um actually I don't really know what it was a long time ago but it's pretty pricey for a consumer app it's like 20 bucks um I think 20 bucks a month and um they're very team focused so like they're they're end user I don't think is like consumers it's definitely businesses and I found myself like like I was really using that core functionality of the kanban and um they but with all the Integrations like that definitely explains why they have to

charge that much for it those Integrations are really expensive and I just didn't find myself using it so one day I decided uh for fun and it was actually so I can learn Super Bass because I was interested in it so I'm a huge Firebase user like absolutely love Firebase but I was interested in using Super Bass so I was like let me experiment let me see if I can recreate that like simple kanban like in a weekend and um I did it I ended up switching from um from Super Bass back to Firebase and um I think that's actually possibly the reason we met is uh because I think I tweeted about that saying like I'm switching back like there's some some things going on with

like super bass at the time especially like just um it was a little like too there's just too many issues with it and so I built the I built the project over the weekend um just to see what I can do still like ported it back to the Firebase in that same weekend and I started using it myself um again it was just for fun I just wanted to see if I can do it and then um as I started using it um I was like wait I would actually I would actually probably use this over sunsama especially since it's free for me and and I don't really use sunsama to its full potential like I'm not one of their power users um so I actually I hit up the founder of

sansama and I asked him like like hey man like please don't kill me here like do you mind if I like like it's literally so similar to what you guys are doing um and we follow each other on Twitter and I've been like following him for a while and so I asked this like permission like do you mind if I put this out there and he was like it's he's like it's the internet like it's it's like you can totally do it it's all good and I was like okay thank God and this is proof that like you know like um I did you know I did ask for permission here but that's actually how it started it was literally me like as a like for fun I wanted to see if I can

like learn this new technology and do it but it ended up actually um being something that I ended up using and because I had control over it um I was able to tweak a couple of things like very little details like I'm really design oriented that I wasn't like too like uh like I wasn't too happy with sunsama about and I was like but I also couldn't ask them to do it because they're so minor and they have so many things on their roadmap yeah um but I I was able to do it so I started using it I put it online and I started giving out to some friends who saw me using it and they were like let's typically the case with the apps that I built they're like

oh can I use this too and I'm like yeah for sure like I'll just give it to you for free use it um and I learned my lesson from the first uh the first app that I built Mogul I it took me like four years to monetize that I just like it's kind of too scared to do it and I decided to monetize this one like like I think like a month into a month into building it just to see what would happen and shockingly like people started paying for it and um that's kind of where that's kind of where it's at right now it's just me just kind of iterating on it but building on top of that initial like weekend project to see if I can

like learn new technology and pull it

7:02 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=422s)

off yeah yeah that's really nice you know part of it when you started to tweet out ideas and you were like talking about this before actually building it did you feel like by having talked about it not under pressure to maybe you know start to put some details and actual code if you have time for your ideas or was it completely

7:20 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=440s)

independent yeah I think there definitely was a little more of that expectation um I I definitely had to like um I was definitely more motivated to like polish it up and like make sure that when users use it I became a little bit more conscious like okay I need to make sure it's at least stable and like a lot of the basics are there and um I think that was like a big motivator like being able to like like um knowing that you know people were watching me do this it I think it did help like push me over like over the limit to to take it more seriously I think if I Didn't Do It um it might not even be released to be

honest like it might still just be a project I remember that there was like two people who did respond to like the Tweet when I initially was like Hey like I put this online does anyone want to use it um even the domain le.so was supposed to just be a placeholder like because it was a weekend project and I actually named it after my hamster so like that's that's like where the name came from and um I didn't expect it to be like a real thing I didn't I also wasn't sure it wasn't going to monetize it but when I tweeted it out two people actually signed up and then they they messaged me and they were like this is amazing like you need to take this seriously and I

was like okay like uh that's that's the motivation I need I'll I'll take it seriously so um for sure if I didn't tweet that and those two people didn't message me it might not even be out there right now

8:42 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=522s)

when you send those tweets was it just text or did he include like a mock-up or an animation or a video of what you're

8:48 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=528s)

planning on building yeah yeah I I did put a um I think I did put a video for sure if I didn't put a video I put an image or a screenshot but I think I did record a video just to show like the whole like oh you can drag things across the kanban and scroll and um I think that did help like I think that did help like visually let people know like oh this is what this is about and um I think that's why those two people tried it too because they got that like initial like this would fit my workflow like this is interesting and they tried it um without it I don't know if they would have tried it

9:19 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=559s)

yeah no I think that's a great way of getting people to try something especially when they have skepticism on what exactly is it going to be and so a video or image always I've historically found it to be very effective in getting people excited about something even if the finished product is still a ways away a couple of days weeks or months okay so you had you were created some Initial Ideas you spent a weekend building this project just for fun took a video of it shared it with people on Twitter and I got two people to sign up for it I get the order of perfect and so when did you decide from the two people who started using it did they have feedback for you were you using them as

almost like your early testers yeah they are building the right thing are we still using yourself as the first customer and going like will I still use it will I leave it before you were

10:03 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=603s)

abroad I think I was definitely the first customer and uh that's definitely how I treated it and um one of those users in particular like became kind of on that level with me where I was like I started taking his feedback seriously because he um he messaged me and he said like I just remember he like I think a week later he messaged me saying he was still using it and he kept sending me feedback and bugs and um in terms of like friends who use my apps like a lot of them just use it like because they're like oh we're being nice like we want to use it but this was like one of the first times where like someone that I knew who's a

friend like was like no I like this is I'm like starting to rely on this like this is like like this is actually um super useful for me and I could tell like they were they weren't like forcing themselves to use it so once I started noticing that um then I started taking his feet back like as seriously as mine like I started knowing like okay he's like genuinely like wants to make these things better and he's willing to like ask because he knows like he could you know he has access to the developer for this and he could he could do that um but yeah you have to answer your question like both of us I think became like the initial test users

11:12 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=672s)

no that's awesome so you probably had a road map based on what you think would be important to do was there anything from the feedback that just completely was like wow I did not realize that'd be interesting use case let me now adjust my roadmap to take this feedback into

11:26 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=686s)

account yeah yeah there were there were a couple things um I remember one of them was and it's like honestly like I think the number one used feature that surprised me Phil it's some recurring tasks so um that one I was like oh I don't really need recurring tasks like I thought about it but um I was like I don't really need it but he was like adamant about it he was like I literally every morning create this like um routine task and like this is what I do in the morning and I was like that's actually really an idea like in fact I should probably start having a routine task and then um I remember I took that feedback and that's still like the most

shocking feature where um I think like probably 75 of the paid users do use that feature um which also sucks because it's the most complex feature technically but um so it causes a lot of issues but yeah that one that one is like by far the one I'm like that's that's pretty um that one shocked me like I'm glad I listened

12:21 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=741s)

to them on that one excellent so once you have you know it's you and two other people are currently using it how did you broaden the number of people using the product was it still good yeah Twitter was it Word of Mouth did you build a website what walked me through your process on going from a few people

12:36 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=756s)

to real people so I decided to create a landing page for it I think like a week or two after I after like uh my friend and I started using it I was like oh I should throw up a landing page um and then uh let people sign up so I decided to put all the authentication together for sign ups and do all these things um but the the one thing that I um and I learned this from Mogul um having done that for a while is that the um the App Store is actually very very generous when it comes to organic search and um I put it on the App Store so I also made an IOS app um like really really quickly super

basic pulled a lot of code for Mogul to like to do it so it made it easier I think it took like a week and um I put it on the App Store as quickly as I could because I knew like I bet people organically will find it even though it's like a crazy competitive keyword like you know to do or daily planner like that's really competitive um and I was I think I I think I'm pretty sure I tweeted this but in within like two or three weeks uh like over a hundred people signed up organically like through the App Store and I basically did not share it I didn't do anything and I think the keywords they were looking for were like you know to

do app or or daily planner and um one of the things that's interesting compared to Google like when someone Googles like it's so rare they'll go to the next page of Google or they'll even go to like the third item on Google's list for the App Store people go all the way down when they're searching for like to do apps or anything so even if you're like number 30 on the list like they'll actually check it out and um that's how I actually got I think the first like um probably I guess like the first like 500 users like I think there's a couple um at this point even though it's been around for a little bit and I haven't really done much marketing um like over 90 percent of the users

come from the organic apps App Store search and I think there's like a couple thousand that have signed up for it

14:30 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=870s)

yep and you know you mentioned it you are more front and you have some design you know interest I'm assuming that even though you were number 30 on that list you probably designed a very nice visual icon you're a pretty good copy so it didn't look like something that was just a generic utility someone created because of a Hello World example that built was actually something that was well thought out and so how much time do you spend on those level of details you know you're pretty busy you mentioned something you're already doing and then you also have like you're building this app you're building your team build the web app first and you built in you know the iOS version next and parallel you're

also doing all this marketing and all of these yeah yeah and so yeah balance of

15:10 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=910s)

time between all these activities um honestly I I feel like um I feel like I'm still trying to figure that out like how do I balance it um I've personally been kind of doing like tackling things mainly based on like my interest so I'm like oh I really want to um you know I like I I genuinely like I really wish I could record things on my phone for this once I knew that I was like I was furiously like I need a mobile app for myself like I'm so interested I need to do this um so it wasn't really like a um like oh these are the steps that I'm gonna take it was more like I need a mobile app I'm gonna do it um and then

this then the next thing was like the landing page I was like I am ashamed I have no landing page I need to do this and then um and then same thing for like the screenshots and everything I kind of tackled it based on like just like personal preference like you know I I feel like this is probably necessary let me let me drop some stuff or let me finish up some stuff and like tackle it um but yeah I I feel like I didn't really follow any like set standards I maybe be subconsciously did for mobile because I kind of knew doing it once like okay I know like I'm now I've seen like the power of having good landing page a good landing page and amazing

screenshots on the App Store I'm gonna invest a little bit more time in this and this is kind of the order but um I feel like I did kind of just kind of wing it a little bit and it ended up working out I think yeah and I think

16:33 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=993s)

like you mentioned you probably have the muscle memory of how to do some of these things so your default reaction would have been I'm going to do a b and c and then D which would have taken someone who didn't have your experience building another app or several apps in the past to have learned all this I think that's actually really cool so for the landing page it looks very nice by the way did you build it from scratch or did you use an existing landing page builder there's

16:55 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=1015s)

so many of you out there so what's funny is uh while we're recording this um I literally just migrated over to this thing called framer like an hour ago so I was kind of worried like oh God like is it is it gonna like is the DNS gonna propagate is it gonna work and um so uh right now the site is currently built using framer um literally just wanted to try it out I was using webflow and I did do it I did do it from scratch for webflow I think I um for Mogul I did use a template and I modified it so heavily that I don't think it looks like the template anymore and for Ellie's landing page um I did that one from scratch but I

took so much inspiration and like so many components from Mogul and then for the framer site that the redesign I just did was completely from scratch um also just an excuse for me to learn framer which I ended up like loving and I think I'll be probably building a bunch of websites like using them now yeah I know a lot of people like know who are they have real things they want to deal with they want to deal with like creating a Blog from scratch using ask your cat many like you know I need to basically get content out in a high quality and starting with something that people really like and in looking through you know your landing page again you know there it hits all the right

marks because you know over a period of time you learn about like what's your good landing page happens to have customer testimonials used to have little buttons to do instead of pricing in the right order and so on and you have all of these things provided to you they do learn more about this formally or is it just something you learn to call an error how what was your process for bringing all this out I think it was definitely trial and error um oh there definitely were like a lot of inspiration so like I would I love looking at other people's landing pages and seeing like um like you know like while I go through it I'm like oh my God I love the way

that they did their testimonials like it really um it really like just you know it just hit me harder than other sites or um I remember I don't know where I took the video um I remember on the old landing page for Ellie I just had a YouTube embed but then for the framer site um I think I saw on one of their like one of their galleries they had a frame it has a gallery where they show a bunch of they showcase a bunch of websites I saw someone that had like an auto playing video and then you can click it for the pop-up for the YouTube video and I was like wow that's like that looks so much cleaner than mine so I think I just took

a bunch of inspiration from a lot of things that worked and then um and then just kind of mash them together and so I kind of saw like what like what felt right like trying to um I think I got a little bit better at this over time but like putting myself in the in the user shoes like okay if they saw this like what would they like to see so like one one thing that I figured out with Mogul was I had massive amounts of sections dedicated to like the features and then I kind of realized like actually it kind of overwhelmed like like when I went back a couple months and I read it I was like as a user scrolling through this I'm kind of

overwhelmed by how many features and like I'm just probably gonna skip through it so for like Ellie I'm like I'm just gonna highlight like the core ones that I think like someone could resonate with and I'm gonna try to condense it like as quickly as possible um so like little things like that it's just a lot of iteration like I checked back on my landing page every few weeks which is why I love no code Builders like framer and webflow because it makes it so if I if I just have an idea where I'm like oh that I should change that I don't have to spin up an environment or do anything like that I could just easily like literally update it and then just hit publish and do that even though

I'm a developer like I love using no code tools like that yeah no I think

20:21 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=1221s)

it's actually really cool you did that so now you you launch the every landing page you have a few hundred people using the product I what point you decide I'm going to chart charging for the service

20:33 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=1233s)

I think it would this is by far like the probably the biggest lesson and my biggest regret with Mogul was I didn't charge soon enough um and in all honesty it was definitely out of fear like and I think a lot of people who build products have this like people like that I talked to in the Indie hacker space um they never want to charge because they feel like it's not worth it or they feel like no one would buy it and um that was my fear for like years like when I did Mogul it was just an app that I like loved using and I used it myself I didn't really care too much about it um and then the minute I I think I just

saw someone like start charging for their thing and I saw how much they were making and I was like wait there's things so simple there's there's no way like if they're charging maybe I could charge so I remember I I really like kind of let go of that that fear and I was like you know what I don't even care like what's the worst that happens like I lose some users so I turned on monetization for Mogul years ago and the for a year nothing happened like no one actually purchased anything for a year but the minute someone did purchase like a pro plan for mogul I was like I I was just like I should have done this earlier like I totally should have done

this earlier so for Ellie I decided not to make the same mistake and um I think it was like probably a month into that like hackathon like where I built it from scratch into turning on monetization and um a big reason why I waited a little bit longer was um partly for the App Store so I can get a couple more downloads and like rank a little higher and because people are way more willing to download free apps and then um and then and I was also too lazy to code the the actual like strike logic and do all that stuff but once I once I did that um yeah within a month I like turned it on and I think the first paid user

um was I think like a week after that which which was like the best feeling where I'm like oh thank God someone was willing to pay for it I now I know at least like people are going to pay for I think I was I think I put the price at 299 a month and the other thing I learned from Mogul was um to increase the prices if if I feel like the value is there and um the thing that really pushed me over the edge was when I had two users a one person I knew and then one person I didn't know who talked to me and said you're not charging enough for this and it's always a good sign when someone says that but I

didn't think like when my friends said that I was like okay you're my friend so like I don't know but but when the other user who I did not know was like actually I think you're really under charging for this and he was like honest enough to tell me that even though he was paying for it um once I heard that I was like yeah I think you're right if you're saying this and um I can tell you're not just saying this because we're talking um I maybe there is more value than I'm thinking here and so I even raised the prices I think like um probably a month after that first month like um and yeah that's so two two months I think is where the current pricing is so

it was pretty quick I think for than a typical app that people make

23:26 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=1406s)

so how do existing users take it you know because you probably had a few hundred people using your product was the pricing something that new only new users would be paying existing was to be grandfathered into the free version of it or was it a case where at some point they also have started paying for the

23:41 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=1421s)

capabilities yeah yeah so I like um whenever I do something like that I always think okay well what would I want to have as a user so every time I do something with pricing I always grandfather people in so I sent an email out to everyone who was on it I think there were like maybe 200 300 people signed up and I said it's your lucky day you get your grandfathered in for life um I also decided to do something interesting here and add a lifetime plan which is very uncommon for a lot of like everyone's going SAS and everyone's going like SAS pricing where it's like monthly subscription um I decided for Ellie uh to also add like a lifetime plan so people who just

wanted to do a one-time purchase like could do that um shockingly only two people have done that out of the like like however many paid users but I have had messages from people like thanking me for doing that and then going this like paying the subscription but they just love that they have the option to do it and um yeah they uh oh my God I already forgot the original question but uh it was around I think I forgot it and I was so interested in your answer here I

24:47 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=1487s)

think I asked about how were existing users going to take the price increases yesterday you know you grandfather people ask but no one feels like a pricing Change is Gonna retroactively now apply it throughout your long-term views which I think is really great so how do you decide on the price credit charging you said you started off at 299 was there a reason why you picked that price or what did you just say I'm going to start here on it as time goes on

25:11 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=1511s)

definitely a start and iterate um I didn't want to go too high um because I knew it's way easier to go up than it is to go down at least like personally like it's it just for me it just feels nicer to go up than to have to go down um so I I knew like okay let me start it alone and of price point but I also didn't want to go like too too low where um you know like I wanted I wanted to prove that there was enough value being created here for users so I thought 299 I think is like the lowest I'm willing to go where like anything lower and then I'm not sure maybe they're just doing it just like as an accident or like on a

whim or and they'll cancel later but 299 I think people had to think about it and then once I saw enough people doing it I was like okay I think 4.99 um so I decided to email everyone on the 299 your grandfather didn't you're good to go prices are increasing but don't worry about it and then upgraded the price like a month later

26:06 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=1566s)

nice so I'm curious to know you mentioned you emailed the people with the you know who are on these various plans what kind of a system do you use for sending the emails like do you have good tracking where you can say like these are all the people on the free plan these are all the people that you're in the nine plan and these are the new people who are new plans like like you know I would say personally I find it to be very complicated there's no good email system that I personally found allows segmentation of that type that is friction free as much as

26:32 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=1592s)

possible yeah you're right there really isn't there's an amazing startup idea or like a product to build um I actually did it had to do with the manual way where I um I remember I think I wrote like a python script no I think I wrote a JavaScript like something in JavaScript it wasn't pylon but it was JavaScript and I um since I'm using Firebase um I was I literally just ran queries to download and figure out okay who are these users export the emails put it in a CSV for me and then I just like sent the email out that way but I think it did take like maybe two or three hours the first time then the second time like I just modified it so it was not too bad

so I have the script now maybe I could monetize the script maybe I can put it out there and and do something there's a new site project for you right there yeah yeah then I'll call it I'll call it Kirupa and then I'll always exactly yeah yeah but yeah so it was very manual um I didn't I didn't have anything automatic to do it and then um I think I used MailChimp for the first one and then um I use postmark as my email provider to send out emails and and then I like automated it out the second time and like um had it run from uh had it run from I think I use a cloud function actually to like run the second time

27:41 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=1661s)

um for Firebase what I really like about your story is that too often I care about people saying that okay send an email I'm going to spend a weekend researching the best email oh yeah and then they spend a weekend researching that and then they ultimately get the email out whereas in your case you took you know what I like think is the more pragmatic approach where you have a billion things going on the most important thing right now for your product is not the email system they're going to be using so you start off with like here's a scrappy way of getting the job done and then over a period of time you can iterate and add more details which I think is actually a pretty interesting

lesson for those who are watching who also yeah yeah definitely be very focused on what activities are actually meaningful and what are the kind of things that might make you feel good that you built the you know you pick the best email system by the time you might have spent on that may not have been the most valuable use of your limited

28:35 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=1715s)

resources already yeah I agree I think I think that's that's um that is such a good way to approach it

28:42 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=1722s)

so you mentioned you switched to building an IOS app was that because you felt that the market for an IOS app would be larger than the web or no I mean or at least in iOS used to be more willing to pay for a service like this or was it purely just a I like or I want to learn more about how to build for iOS

29:00 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=1740s)

and built for iOS itself yeah when um for sure the um uh it was definitely for sure it was definitely out of a need for me because I as like an iOS user I was like I really need a mobile app to do this I also have a lot of plans to do a lot of um I really want to do um quick capture really well in the future so I can quickly capture tasks um todoist is like the best like the best example of people who do it really well and um I kind of knew in the for the future roadmap like I probably do need a native IOS app to be able to like you know leverage Siri or level Widgets or leverage widgets do all these things

um so it was definitely out of need but um there was definitely a secondary component which I learned from Mogul which was even for Mogul like 90 plus percent of the users come from organic iOS search and um that's great for someone like me who has such limited time to do like real marketing like basically don't do any marketing so being able to leverage this platform for that that Apple has like just to instantly like I think I do zero work and um I think I get like five or ten sign ups a day on both apps just pure organic App Store search and um so I knew like I should 100 invest on this like from the get-go I got really lucky with Mogul where

um I was not a react developer at the time and so there was only an IOS app for I think like four years it was just iOS and then once I built the web version because I wanted to learn JavaScript and I really wanted to do that um and I saw the numbers I was like wow okay for my creature app I I know 100 like because of my limited marketing ability I should totally do I need to always have an IOS app like out the gates if I do it

30:40 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=1840s)

did you build using any framework are you building on Swift and objective

30:44 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=1844s)

right for Mogul it was a straight Swift um I tried learning objective c when it first like when I was early on and the learning curve was too Steep and then the minute Swift came out I was like okay I need it's Level Playing Field like I should learn it now um so for mogalua Swift Ellie was also Swift but then I um I I really wanted to use Swift UI for Ellie but when I tried doing it um there were just too many issues with it and I had too many like it was it was just too difficult um and now though like recently I saw like some of the new developments with swift UI and I was like hey it looks a little bit more mature so

um I spent like I semi regret it but not really um I ported over the code base um completely ported everything to Swift UI um like I think like a month ago um for Ellie and part of it was like I just really want to learn Swift UI it feels like it looks so much more natural like if someone only does front end to like to to use it and it just looks really fun and um and then the other half was like I really liked how they do some animation stuff and some complex things and I felt like as a front-end developer Swift UI like I'd be able to do some really really nice things in the future if I just like took the time and

invested and just kind of rebuilt it from scratch it took way longer than I thought but um I think it was I think it was worth it in the end but yeah Swift UI um for Le iOS Swift normal Swift for mobile and then react to the yeah for the web

32:13 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=1933s)

versions nice so if you use react for the web versions I'm curious did they give they think what you think react native so that you know not always will be portable but enough concepts of carryover

32:23 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=1943s)

I did I actually did try building Ellie um the like oh no sorry not Ellie I tried building um rebuilding mobile because it's such a simple concept like for Mogul um as a react native app um the primary reason though was because I wanted to see can I do it with Android like can I because so many people would ask for Android apps and I was like oh I I in good conscience I can't maintain all of these code bases by myself so like I was like maybe react native is a good solution so I did try it but um at least I think it was like a year and a half ago when I tried it um there were a couple for basic stuff

it was so good but then for certain gestures and things that I needed um honestly I think it's because I'm not that good of I just was not good enough so like I didn't understand it but um I think I was spending too much time trying to fight edge cases and get complex animations so and since I'm really design oriented I was like those things are kind of Make It or Break It For Me and I was like I should just switch to Swift I'm totally open though like um well one of the things I want to try for Android is um oh my God what is the What is the what is oh flutter like I want flutter is something I really want to try um

I've heard really good things about it and so I think I'm gonna wait like a year or two and then when I have some free time um I'll probably attempt the Android version of Ellie with flutter and and see uh yeah see what I can do there but yeah right now just native just because it was easier oh that's pretty great to

33:50 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=2030s)

hear and so I have to ask also this question is how's your testing for this because I'm assuming as you keep adding more capabilities keep adding more features right now your web and iOS is your goal to keep parity between both platforms and how do you make sure that something new you're adding doesn't end up breaking because it still does seem like you're the only person doing all

34:09 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=2049s)

the development correct yeah I'm way more cautious now about adding features um so for Mogul it's been so stable for a long time and if I add something it's usually like um really minor and like um or if it's major I break it up into like ways to make it minor um so luckily um I haven't had many issues with this I do track everything using the service called Sentry for at least for crashes and for all these things so yeah I'm on that heavily and luckily since I don't have like millions of users it's actually manageable for me to kind of look at all these things and um but in terms of like yeah and it's that is definitely a shortcoming being a like a solo developer

um I actually for the first time um decided to you usually I just push stuff out just monitor it and see what happens and try to get an update out quickly if I did break something but for Ellie um when I switched to Swift UI I think it was like two weeks ago like when I switched to Swift UI I was like this is such a major change like so like I literally rebuilt it this could be so bad and so buggy that I actually did I did tell myself like I should probably put this on test flight have people beta test it um and which was funny I like I I decided to post on Twitter and I said um if anyone's willing to help me out

here um for every bug you find I'll give you a month of premium for free and um and then I I upped it up because someone was like can you make it a year and I was like fine if you every buggy fine I'll give you a year of premium for free and um what was interesting was no one really interacted with that tweet like literally no I think it got like two likes and like one like maybe one comment but um around 200 people downloaded the test flight app and started trying it and um but what was also interesting was no one like basically no one reported bugs like it was like one user who reported bugs and um either I got lucky and it

wasn't that buggy or people just like like maybe there was some critical bug that stopped people from doing it but um I think that's what I'm gonna do forward is like if there's big stuff I'll probably have a couple people tested on test flight or um put it on some sort of environment uh before I I do it but yeah that that is definitely a limit though like I've just kind of been putting it out there in the public testing it as well as I can and then just fixing it like monitoring it and fixing it very like retroactively uh

36:29 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=2189s)

or David's a good Telemetry in terms of like what features people are using and things like that to give you a better idea of like what yeah why when I

36:37 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=2197s)

optimize the future and so on yeah I do I so I actually use um mix panel um to at least track like specific feature usage and the main reason that I wanted to do this was also um I do this thing where I kind of like um it's very recent but I I decided to start putting features like on the cutting board if like I realized oh no one's actually using this mainly for my sanity so I can like to reduce the amount of technical like debt that's amassing there so if no one's using this feature like there's one feature that I had um this Focus mode which is a huge feature for me where like basically um uh you can uh you can open up a task

in this Focus mode it puts a beautiful like um like video overlay so you're you can just focus on that task and um I stopped using the feature after like a few weeks and then I was like okay is anyone actually using this feature and so I looked at the data on mixpanel and I realized like one user a week was using it and it was very clear like based on the flow that it was someone signed up and just used it to see what it was and never used it again and so when I kind of realized that compared to the other features I was like okay I don't think this is that big of a selling point and it was also causing me some frustration

because when I ported to Swift UI I was like oh my God I have to rebuild this like should I do this and that's when I decided okay I'm gonna put that on The Cutting Board and honestly after I did that that's something I'm going to start doing is every few months I'm going to look at the usage and see is there something I can cut here um or is there something that I can like like you know or I should evaluate or or like redo if I feel like maybe it's just not clear enough or something but yeah yeah that's that's kind of how I do it I like I'm now becoming a little bit more

38:18 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=2298s)

more like data driven there and do you foresee a world where the people using the web version of the app have very different usage patterns than people using the iOS version of the app which would then mean that now you're maintaining maybe disjointed set of features for each platform that you know

38:35 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=2315s)

appeals to that type of audience yeah I think um for that's absolutely what I'm gonna what what I'm like what I'm noticing right now is um some people are doing that so I've noticed like for example like time boxing so dragging a task uh from the kanban to Google Calendar um it's so satisfying on the web but on the iOS it's still nice but um it's not that big of a like people would rather just see a list on iOS rather than the time box on the calendar and um so I noticed that a lot of people like they read the they read the time box on their phone but they actually do a lot of the interactions on actually that's actually very common for like the

general usage of the app most actions take place on the web version and then the iOS is like a reading companion basically for people to like consume what they planned that day and then just check things off like pretty easily um and like I think they some people do use it to Quick capture like um on the app when I get I'm assuming when they're on the go and then triaging it like on the web so yeah the usage is extremely different I think um it's another reason why I don't have exact parody with the app because I realize some features just don't make sense um and I might start trimming it down even more and like really honing it in um just for also so I have an easier

code base to maintain in the future

39:52 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=2392s)

yeah which typically matches the the general Trend that people always say in that desktop and large screen devices or for Content creation and smaller mobile devices for Content consumption and so which makes an interesting point as well you mentioned that you're currently focusing on your IOS app you're going to be quite Fierce away from having an Android app one of the things that you know when I used WhatsApp for the first time many many years ago I realized that okay there's no web version of this one desktop version of it it's a mobile only experience and it's only used for mobile scenarios yeah and then I was looking at charts about usage of the where in the world one thing is being used and the

kind of devices it's in is that iOS was not the biggest Market maybe it still isn't for WhatsApp right now it's Android devices yeah worldwide and so it part of me also feels like what you're creating here seems generally applicable to a large audience even beyond the iOS ecosystem have you thought about maybe even front loading or getting ahead of the two-year time frame of getting a version for Android users out to grow your potentially addressable Market yeah

40:58 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=2458s)

definitely I think if uh like I think I've had like a few people and I'm trying I try to like track how many people ask for it um so I think if the demand like I just keep having people ask about the Android version enough I think that'll motivate me personally to be like okay you know what I should try it I should I should really bite the bullet put it out there um and if I can learn like flutter or something where it's like to my standard um yeah I'll 100 expedite it like if

41:25 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=2485s)

it's there it's a part of it also that you've personally use an iOS device and because a lot of this is because you're building this because you just enjoy the art of building and learning things that could is that also playing a role in your video I think that plays a bit

41:38 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=2498s)

that's definitely the biggest role like um for sure like I the apps that I build um from both Mogul and Le um like I think I I definitely see myself as like the customer number one and um like if there's something that I don't like and and I also see oh okay it seems that other people don't like it then I probably won't do it and um that's something I've also had to learn from Mogul 2 is like learning like when I get user feedback I kind of look and I'm like okay would I use this if the answer is no there's a very high chance I won't do it unless there's like that much demand where I'm like okay this is interesting enough like because

I want to see what happens um I'll I'll build out that feature and like maybe maybe I'm wrong here maybe there's something there but yeah that's um yeah I think that plays a big role like it like my personal like like I'm definitely maximizing for myself there

42:28 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=2548s)

and I do think that you probably use your own app quite a bit on a day-to-day basis and if you build it through a platform that you don't use day-to-day there might be things that you probably may not notice someone may not file a bug or anything like that that might get missed as well which is a common thing you often see in many products where people start broadening their focus to other platforms even though the ones that the initial creators or the founders or developers are passionate about is particularly one that they spend most of their time in yeah yeah

42:56 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=2576s)

that's true I I've definitely noticed that with um uh like from I'm sorry um I was like is there hamsters yeah yeah I I think for my next I do plan on building like um more products in the future probably in the productivity space and I'll probably name the next one after after my dog Luna there you go you've probably seen another one but um yeah to answer your question I'm trying to remember what it was actually I I remember no it was more of just like a just an observation around how products and what platforms you Target and your own personal use of a pretty good platform influencing the quality of it to a certain extent as well yeah definitely oh yes okay so I

remember the the uh um for mobile it was interesting because um I definitely use that like maybe once or twice a week because it's just whenever I have meetings and I there's something I want to remember um and then for Ellie um this is something I use like multiple times a day so this is the first product that I built where um it's like a daily usage kind of thing I have definitely noticed that like things slip by on mobile a lot more because I don't use some of the features like I don't use a reminder feature as much anymore and so I haven't really paid attention to that so definitely the most bugs like get reported about like those features that I don't use and but

for Ellie like I think I'm in there pretty deeply with um I think like every single feature so it's uh um yeah you I you're right like I definitely like the quality and everything is influenced by like when I'm personally like how often I use the app

44:26 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=2666s)

nice and so for Ellie do you have is your code all on GitHub so anyone else can contribute to it defining issues or is it something that you're keeping it just close to yourself and then

44:36 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=2676s)

deploying builds right now it is private um so it's private partly because I'm very ashamed of the code and I'm like I don't want this to see the light of day um what is interesting is um a couple of uh people on Twitter um uh have asked like hey can you open source this can you like because I would love to like learn how you did this um anytime anyone does that um I actually do invite them to check it out and so I invite them to the repo and they can play around with it for a month or two um and so I've done that like three times with with like mobile and Ellie um where I'm like okay you should like you should check it out but I always

warn them like I like I'm very new to like like I feel like I'm not that great of a coder and I'm trying to get a lot better so don't take these as like best practices like I'm I'm also building really quickly and um but I feel like the people who have checked it out they were like oh this is so interesting to see like the the you know the uh the technical debt you amassed on purpose to move quickly or like the the shortcuts you did um so maybe I think if I polish it up or I do a couple of Sprints where I like refactor code then maybe it'll see the light of a day but yeah for now it's um if anyone wants to see it you can just

reach out and I'll I'm very open to like letting them check it out to see see how it works

45:52 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=2752s)

yeah speaking effect works also I'm curiously what's your deployment pipeline like you know you have a web app you have a an IOS app does it all go through GitHub and then GitHub is a source of Truth for going from there to production build or how do you how do you get all those things orchestrated

46:06 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=2766s)

yeah it's mainly um so I I love testing new like Technologies and new everything and um recently I moved like everything including Mogul um I was using GitHub actions for a while and just deploying to um since they're just like for the react apps they're just react apps I was able to get away just deploying them on like like an S3 bucket and just doing that and obviously both using um firestore as like the like the back end for storage and authentication and Cloud functions I'm using a lot of these things um and but but I recently switched to versel for deployment for the for the um for the uh react apps and it's been amazing because it it also allows me to link up branches to create

staging sites and try things out and do all these things so I can send like anytime a user has like a like a really critical bug where I'm like oh this is actually this could impact a bunch of things I I can use Purcell to spin up a staging link for them to use like so every deployment gets a staging link which is amazing and then they can just use it and confirm like oh this looks good then I can just like roll it out to everyone and then for iOS it's a lot more straightforward it's it's like test that goes you know build it test flight then the App Store and um yeah so it's it's a lot more straightforward there but Brazil has been like really

um it's been so quick and the I love the the auto staging links that they have but it's really simple very very basic stuff I did not have like any pipeline for the longest time um because I I was still going so quickly and I was like I don't need that I can just I can just roll this out and so I used to just just go straight from when it gets committed let's just push it out but I'm a little bit more cautious now that I have like a lot more users that are using it back when it was like maybe like 100 I didn't care that much but now I I take it like a little more seriously because I get complaints now like if it goes down or something

47:59 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=2879s)

breaks no that that's great to hear no no this is not me like you know pushing you know you to consider fire patients like that but today's fireconf and as it turns out we actually announced a pretty big upgrade to our hosting project now you can actually deploy static and server-side rendered content and we're also working on making sure that when you have backhand and front ends in the preview channel it's pinned to that version so they can actually do a lot of that thing and the GitHub action that you always had quickly do some of these things when you know among the many things you have to do at some point yeah I'd love for you to give it a shot and yeah yeah

yeah yeah especially on this one on how you feel it works it's one of the things that you know the team and I have been working pretty close down for the past

48:43 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=2923s)

year or so yeah yeah we should chat about it I I would love to like hear more about how that works by the way I also religiously for like three years I would check the Firebase Vlog every single day because I was always like so fascinated like okay when is like what when what new features are they going to come out with like um and I remember like the biggest one was I think I think when it started supporting like um it might have been like ore queries I think um like I remember for the longest time Firebase did not have like um or queries or like they couldn't do like some some sort of searching that was really basic and I just remember like when I saw that I was like I need

to follow this blog like I need to read it religiously like because I need to know when these new things happen but that's like awesome that you guys are coming out with with uh like so much so many nice stuff so many nice things so I'll I'll ask you about it later yeah

49:35 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=2975s)

absolutely now getting back to Ellie and the record right now so you meet you you recently tweeted saying that okay you're gonna you know focus more on the marketing side yeah the product and so how do you do the marketing now do you pay somebody do you do ads how what's

49:50 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=2990s)

your thought process for going big yeah this this is um this is so it's something I'm really new to so I'm trying to like also figure it out I'm really lucky that um for like the the main company that I work at like every day um it's way more established so there's like actually budget for marketing and we're trying to actually do marketing it's super different though because it's like B2B like business to business and the apps that I build are like b2c business to Consumer so it's like very consumer focused and what I've learned is that the marketing is um it's extremely different but there are some like commonalities so like when it comes to things like SEO when it comes to things like

um like content and traffic um some of these things are actually pretty common and then there's like other things that are a bit different but the way that I'm thinking of about it is um given my limited like bandwidth I want to do things that like really maximize my like kind of lack of time or the fact that I only have like pockets of time to do so for example like I considered oh maybe I'll do like a lot of Social Media stuff and then I realize like I don't have the bandwidth to like do it consistently like I don't think I can so one of the first things that I I 100 will do um which I learned from doing um like aloe marketing is like I really should

start investing in like SEO and like and like um content because it's something that I can do in my own time I can start building up and I'm sure you know like literally creating content um like this is something that like you know you you could kind of do asynchronously or at your own pace but it'll like reap benefits over time and like as like as as time goes on so um that's the first thing I'm gonna do and then um for mobile I experimented a lot with different things so I actually experimented with paid ads um which I actually learned a lot about um the biggest thing that paid ads got me was um testing out different audiences and figuring out oh who should Mogul be for

that was super fascinating and then um I also experimented a little bit with Partnerships so like partnering with like mbas MBA students or like um MBA schools or different things for like Mogul um I'm not sure what I can do with Ellie but I might like re like revisit those like the paid ads and the Partnerships but 100 the first one given the time constraints is going to be like more content inbound organic stuff and I'm going to be creating all the content yourself we're going to be Outsourcing it to some other company I think I'm going to be creating it myself um I'm going to start first with more um like programmatic stuff which I honestly just because it's out of Interest like I'm very interested in

like how to do this but um and what I mean by that is like um spinning up different landing pages that are like more or less like Auto generated but just swapping out like large pieces of content um and then and so experimenting with some of these targeting certain keywords and then um I think I'm going to be writing a lot of the content so I'm gonna have to probably take a break which is why I tweeted like I'm gonna have to take a step back and yeah I'm just kind of in pure like maintenance like bug fixing mode or like very critical features that I think I can crank out and I think for the next like month or two it's just gonna be like

let's just focus on content so all my Dev time will basically be going to like creating content right now

53:05 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=3185s)

no that's exciting you know I'd be curious to see how all of that pans out and which variation of the home page I land on at some point in the future when I visited so yeah definitely cool but Chris this is actually great chatting with you about all this and learning a lot about how you're building in the public how you went from tweeting about some ideas to actually building something and all of your thought process into thoughtfully going from every stage of building an application to getting it into ever increasing

53:32 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=3212s)

numbers yes yeah definitely I am really excited to you know especially since I'm documenting everything um you know if we ever do a follow-up or we do something we can always you know we can uh we can kind of share and compare like okay how how did that stuff pan out how did the marketing pan out like how did these things you know did it actually work so um that's the beauty of documenting this publicly and like doing something like this podcast so thank you so much for having me this was um oh absolutely

53:58 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=3238s)

thank you for your time and yes I think we definitely have a round two of this where we get to follow up on a lot of things that you learned and then things you might do differently next time around it sweet awesome yeah yeah thank

54:08 - Chris Raroque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxkP0qrtSU&t=3248s)

you so much thank you so much for having me


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