We reached a cool new milestone this week: My first app Liftbear finally reached $100 MRR. I release it two years ago, so I guess it's safe to say that growth has been pretty slow. But it's really interesting that it still kept going and existing customers didn't really churn.
After I worked really hard on it for half a year, I decided to move on and try a new project (HabitKit). Although this decision turned out to be a pretty good one, I was still a little bit sad that Liftbear didn't get the same recognition. My very first app will always have a special place in my hear and I curious to see whether it will continue to grow or not.
I thought about doing a new update for the app later this year. After using it almost daily for two years, I have a huge list of potential new features and app improvements that I could develop. Although I'm trying not to spread myself too thin, the idea of picking up Liftbear again is really exciting to me. Let's see what the rest of the year brings!
Trying Something New
Because the current HabitKit update is still in the testing phase and I'm waiting for some fixes in a very important package that I'm using, I decided to use the time and start a new side project. I'm currently not willing to share what the topic of the app will be, but I can say that it will be a desktop app. Maybe I'll add support for other platforms later but in the beginning Mac (and maybe Windows) will be the place to be.
I never developed a desktop app as an indie app developer. In my previous job I worked on a desktop app built with Electron and Angular, but this actually felt more like a web site. This time I'll be using Flutter of course. This will make it super easy to add support for more platforms down the line and it allows me to move quickly and use the tool I already know.
Relaxing as an Indie Hacker
This is a tough one that I still need to learn: We currently have some Easter holidays here in Germany and I actually wanted to relax for some days and do no work at all. That's incredibly hard for me, because my app business is such a big part of my life that I always think about it and when I do something else I suddenly start to feel guilty.
When I'm on the road and do my vacation abroad I have absolutely no problem with this issue. But when I'm at home and try not to work, it feels really weird. I guess this is a new aspect of the full-time indie hacker part that I still have to figure out. Can someone share any tips how to beat feeling guilty and FOMO?
My First iPad
I decided to make myself a gift this week: I bought my first iPad! I thought about this purchase for a long time and now I finally decided to buy it. I used a reMarkable in the past, but wasn't really happy with the overall experience (It's just for writing). My main use cases: Reading magazines, writing this blog outside in the summer (I also ordered the Magic Keyboard) and app development.
I already thought about adding big-screen-support to HabitKit and this device will (hopefully) make the development process easier. When I worked on this feature on Liftbear I just had the Simulator and I didn't like the iPad Simulator development experience much. Let's see what I'll come up with!
That's it for this week, see you in the next one 👋