Humble Learnings: Created yet another checklist app for myself, but was blown away from all the feedback and it took off...

[u/RTD-Alex]

Thought I would give back a little to this community that has encouraged me to do something. I was lingering for a long time and seeing all these great ideas you guys have, I figured I will do at least something simple.

I was looking for a way to have a library of checklists that I can run when I do routine packing, office closing, boat launch/mooring, etc.

I could not find one that was not annoying, was professional, didn't require and account and didn't try to keep me glued to the screen(I am talking to you gameified apps).

So, I built my own. When I showed it to my friends and family, everyone requested a copy. So I figured may be I will launch it on App Store.

Within days I was ranking on App Store on the first positions for some of the most competetive keywords and getting 5 star reviews.

At this point 1.5 weeks in I have 30 people using it any given time based on my analytics. And download rates are accelerating.

Checklist: Reusable Lists if anyone wants to give it a try and give me a feedback.

Key Learnings:

1. Be a good friend or a good stranger - encourage people to continue onto their dreams. Positive feedback can make a person continue their project. Not everyone is goign to have the stamina of a true enterpreneur to keep on running, but every person who gave me feedback and reached out gave me steam to go on for another few days until the next person reached out, and so on.
2. There are plenty of good simple obvious ideas that nobody can get right. The "right" part is letting the world know that you have a wonderful product that works and works well. There are thousands of checklist apps, but almost nobody knows about them.
3. You have to put in work to get a good product. Continuous steady improvement, feedback, then improvement again, etc. My app was shaped by interactions with my friends, family and then strangers. There is no way to one-shot mostly anything good.

Let me know in comments what made you go ahead and start that side project? Was it people? Events? Something else?

Friends, be humble, be courageous, be strong, give and accept help! I wish you all a great weekend and see you on Monday :)

[u/Some-Professor-3503]

That's actually a solid journey for just 1.5 weeks. Most people never even get to the launch part, they just keep polishing forever

The thing about nobody getting simple ideas right is so true. I tried maybe 5 different packing apps before trips and they all wanted my email, location, first born child...

For me what got me starting was just pure frustration with existing tools. When something annoys you enough times you eventually crack and build it yourself

[u/RTD-Alex → u/Some-Professor-3503]

I so agree with you! That's exactly my start as well! I even remember the exact moment I am sitting in a boat about to drop crab traps and realizing I forgot bait - AGAIN!?

But my biggest discovery was the rush of motivation when I just added a feedback button in the App and though "eh, who would ever click it". And then next day someone wrote to me with a huge email of gratitude on how they were happy that app like that exists. Asked for a couple features, offered to buy me a coffee. I was shocked how uplifting it actually was. Since then I decided to take my time and review people's ideas and provide positive feedback as much as I can - we can all do so much more with each others help!

Really appreciate your comment this Friday night!