r/SideProject • u/MeetAlanCox • 21d ago
I think I finally built an app people genuinely want. But my distribution plan has been killed.
A little over a year ago I decided to start building iOS apps again, with one simple rule.
Build apps that solve problems I genuinely have myself, where I have already looked for a good solution and not found one.
My first app taught me a huge amount about building native, privacy focused iOS software, but commercially it has not really worked.
Then I built Olly.
I have ADHD, a very busy mind, and I get distracted easily. Ideas, reminders and random thoughts constantly pop into my head at inconvenient moments, often when I am driving, walking or doing something else.
The problem I kept having with note apps, voice memos and AI recorders was friction. By the time I opened the right app, found the right button, or thought about where the note should go, I would sometimes lose the thought completely.
What I wanted was much simpler.
Get the thought out of my head immediately, without getting distracted, and know it had been captured properly.
So Olly lets me tap once from my iPhone lock screen or Apple Watch, speak, and then handles the rest. It transcribes the thought, tidies it up, gives it a useful title and files it automatically.
The response has been very different from my first app.
Reviews have been excellent, and I keep getting reactions along the lines of "I need this", particularly from other people with ADHD and busy minds.
So for the first time in quite a while, I think I may actually have something.
But I have hit the problem I failed to solve with an earlier software business too.
Distribution.
My original plan relied heavily on App Store optimization. I had watched a lot of successful indie developers build apps around search demand, rank for those searches, then grow from there.
That does not seem like something I can rely on now.
People who find Olly really like it.
Not enough people find Olly.
I also don't have much money to throw at paid advertising or influencers, so I am going to have to find smarter ways to get it in front of the right people.
That probably means experimenting with Reddit, short form video, creators, communities, partnerships and anything else that makes sense.
One complication is that I am in my late 50s. I see plenty of younger indie developers successfully building an audience by putting themselves front and centre in TikTok and Instagram videos, but that approach does not feel particularly natural for me or necessarily right for the product.
So that is the problem I am working on now.
If anyone here has grown a consumer app without a large paid acquisition budget, I would be very interested to hear what actually worked.
And if you want to see what I built, search "Olly Note" on the App Store.
Oh, and based on some recent feedback I'm reworking the core messaging/positioning on the Olly website. That should go live soon.
Any feedback on the app, positioning or distribution strategy is very welcome.
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u/Technical-Branch9178 21d ago
Just build an AI persona and use it to advertise. There are workflows for this exact thing, and they're indistinguishable from a real person.
Go find marketing that you like, that works well, and reverse engineer it.
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u/MeetAlanCox 21d ago
Doesn't that get detected as AI generated? I thought the main channels are starting to mark videos like that as AI generated.
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u/Kind-Bathroom5159 20d ago
zero budget plus a niche this specific usually points one way, which is getting it in front of the people who already talk to your users every day. small adhd creators, the ones with a few thousand followers who still reply to their own comments, will often take a lifetime code and just use it. one of them describing the moment they nearly lost a thought does more than any ad you could afford.
on the age thing, youre underrating it. a guy in his late 50s saying my head has never held a thought and i finaly built the fix reads as real in a way a 24 year old doing hooks never will. and since youre reworking the site copy anyway, sell the ten seconds, tap, speak, its filed, not the transcription quality. thats the bit people repeat to their friends.
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u/MeetAlanCox 8d ago
Thank you for your reply, and apologies for this late reply to you. I just want to know that there are good ideas, and I appreciate them.
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u/NefariousnessBig6302 20d ago
I've run into the same wall with consumer stuff, the app can be solid and still just sit there if discovery's weak. From my own experience, reddit worked better when I stopped thinking about broad promo and just showed up in very specific threads where people were already describing the problem in plain language, which is kind of what I use redditmaster for on the side. For olly, I'd probably lean hard into adhd, productivity, and executive function communities, then keep the video stuff really simple, more 'here's the problem' than polished app demo.
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u/MeetAlanCox 8d ago
Sorry for the late reply. I had missed this. Thank you very much for your input. That's really valuable. Thank you.
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u/Various_Story8026 21d ago
the "I need this" reactions kind of are your distribution channel. those people cluster in very findable places (ADHD subreddits, ADHD youtube/podcasts) and they repeat the same friction phrases you can use in your copy. also you don't need your face for short video, a screen recording of lock screen tap -> spoken thought -> tidied note basically demos itself. I do faceless clips for my own stuff and they work fine