Chunk

A year ago I launched Chunk, a macOS menu bar app for time-blocking your day. The idea was simple: one shortcut and your schedule appears over whatever you're doing, even fullscreen apps. No app switching, no window juggling.

V1 was pure minimalism, with single day planning. You could create blocks, set timers, get notifications. It worked, but it was missing the features that would make people actually stick with it daily.

So I spent the last few months rebuilding the whole thing from scratch for V2.

What changed in V2:

The entire UI got a ground-up redesign. The old interface felt clunky. V2 is clean, fast, and feels native to macOS with proper frosted-glass vibrancy.

Beyond the visual overhaul, I added the features people kept asking for:

• Timeline view - a proper visual day timeline where you drag to create, move, and resize blocks. This replaced the old card-based approach as the default and it makes planning feel completely different.

• Week view - see all 7 days side by side. Finally you can plan ahead instead of just managing today.

• Read/write calendar integrations - Google, Outlook, and Apple Calendar. Not just viewing events but actually working with them alongside your blocks.

• Task mode - built-in to-do lists / tasks with a dedicated sidebar. Drag tasks straight onto the timeline to schedule them. Apple Reminders integration too, so you don't need another app.

• Analytics dashboard - tracks your scheduling patterns over the last 7 days. Hours scheduled, active days, block length distribution. Useful for spotting where your time actually goes.

• Claude AI integration - this one's been fun. Chunk runs a local MCP server on your Mac so you can ask Claude to plan your day, rearrange blocks, or build templates from natural language. All local, no data leaves your machine.

The numbers:

V2 launched about a month ago and hit $300 profit in month one. Not life-changing money, but as a solo dev side project with zero ad spend, it validates the direction. The retention feels different this time. People are actually coming back daily.

The ADHD community has been the biggest boost. I built Chunk as a general productivity tool, but it turns out visual time-blocking with fullscreen notifications is exactly what a lot of people with ADHD need. That audience found me organically through blog posts and it's become a real growth channel.

What's next:

Honestly, just keep iterating. The MCP integration opens up a lot of possibilities, and there's a long list of quality-of-life improvements people have requested. Still macOS only, still a one-time purchase, still no subscription.

If you're curious: chunkapp.net

Happy to answer any questions about the build, the marketing.

I went from eight months and a single interview that failed to five late-stage interviews and two offers—all in just three weeks. Here’s exactly how I turned zero professional experience into real-world cred, and how you can do it too.

The Long Haul: Eight Months of Silence

I’ve got a master’s in computer science, a well made portfolio site, a handful of pretty decent CV projects, and exactly one month of freelance work on my resume. Back in October 2024, I started applying for full-time roles. Over the next six months, I sent out more than 1,000 applications. Every single morning, I opened my inbox to find wave after wave of polite automated rejections. I'm certain 95 percent of my CVs never even reached a human.

Here’s what it felt like:

• Automated rejections at 8 AM: “We appreciate your interest but decided to go with other candidates.”

• Radio silence on LinkedIn and email for high-profile startups.

• Lost confidence, wondering if my master’s degree even meant anything.

In short, the junior hiring process is broken. Companies crave experience they don’t offer you. Everyone’s using AI tools to blast out resumes and cover letters by the hundreds. If you don’t, you just can’t compete on volume.

Why Your Portfolio Project Isn’t Enough

You might think polishing your personal website or building a “To-Do App” in React will get you noticed. In reality, dozens of candidates have built the same tutorial clone. It ends up looking like noise in a sea of nearly identical GitHub repos.

Cold-emailing CTOs sounds bold, but without something standout to lead with, it’s just another message they ignore.

So how do you break through that noise, especially when you’re starting with zero work history?

One Game-Changer: Build a Product, Not a Project

In January 2025, I stumbled on a simple but powerful idea:

Build something end to end. Launch it publicly. Talk to real users. Iterate like crazy.

Here’s what I did step by step to build Chunk:

1. Find a your product idea
   This sounds hard but actually you just need to think of something you would find personally useful. This can be just someone else's vague app idea but with all the changes you wish theirs had. If you wish it then theres probably a niche market for it. In my case I wanted a dedicated time-blocking app that was affordable and removed all the bloated calendar aspects. I already have a calendar and just want a time-blocker.

2. Build an MVP
   I coded a minimal version of Chunk in a few weeks and in my spare time watched youtube videos about indie startup stories to keep my inspiration and confidence up. Post about it on reddit whenever you can and reply to every comment and suggestion.

3. Launch on Product Hunt (Fail)
   I wrote a quick post, crafted a screenshot, and hit Publish. I got only 10 upvotes. This was mistake number 1. Once you have an MVP spend 50% of your time on marketing and getting an SEO strategy started early so it can build.

4. Gather feedback relentlessly
   I thanked every commenter, asked follow-up questions, and logged every feature request. I created a roadmap and prioritised what people wanted not what I wanted. People loved that they would email me something and a week later I would send them an update to say I just release 'their' feature.

5. Iterate and relaunch
   A few weeks later, after adding a lot of user requested changes, I triggered a “Product Hunt relaunch.” This time I climbed to #3 Product of the Day, competing with full dev teams and paid hunters.

What Treating It Like a "Product" Means

• You wear all the hats. Product manager, designer, marketer, and support.

• You track metrics. Daily sign-ups, retention, feedback scores.

• You make a roadmap. You plan milestones, manage scope, and hit deadlines.

When you talk about this in an interview, it shows you can ship, learn, and adapt—exactly what startups want.

How to Add This to Your Resume

Right at the top of your “Experience” section, add something like:

Founder & Developer, Chunk

Apr 2025 – Present

• Independently developed and launched a full-stack productivity app

• Achieved #3 Product of the Day on product hunt competing with full dev teams (no paid marketing), 100+ active users in week one.

• Collected and iterated on 30+ user feedback items, released several iterations in 4 weeks.

That bullet list tells hiring managers three big things:

1. Ownership. You drove the whole thing from idea to launch.

2. Impact. You hit a top rank and attracted users without ads.

3. Process. You gathered feedback, prioritized, and shipped updates.

The Interview Confidence Booster

Once you’ve launched a product, interview prep becomes almost fun:

• “Tell me about a project you’re proud of.”
  You talk through real numbers, real users, and real lessons learned.

• “Walk us through how you handled user feedback.”
  You describe your feedback processed, how you prioritised issues and features, and how you shipped updates fast.

• “How do you prioritise new features?”
  You show them your roadmap and explain your criteria: impact vs. effort.

Compare that to fumbling through a stale GitHub repo that you only updated once. Night and day.

Bonus Tips for Success

1. Pick a niche you care about. It shows in your passion and in the final product.

2. Document visibly. Post regular updates on Twitter or Dev.to to build a small following.

3. Get early testers. Share in relevant Slack channels or subreddits before launch.

4. Celebrate small wins. Each new user (free or paid) or upvote is validation. Use it to fuel your momentum.

Will This Work at Big Consultancies?

Probably not. If you’re aiming for Capgemini or Accenture, they expect years of experience, bullet-pointed internships and large project teams. But if you want a role where you can own features, move fast, and see your work in production, startups will be lining up to talk to you.

Your Move

If you’re working on a side product right now, drop a link in the comments. I’d love to check it out, give feedback, and cheer you on.

Build a product. Not a project.

So I made a macOS menubar app called Chunk. It's a timeblocking tool for people like me who want to plan their day in a visual, ADHD-friendly way. I’d never marketed anything before, so naturally I just... googled it. Product Hunt came up a lot, so I figured I’d give it a shot.

The first time I launched, it was super half-arsed. I just threw it up there, no video, no proper graphics, nothing polished. It got 10 upvotes. Honestly, I was pretty happy with that. I thought, “Hey, ten strangers clicked a button for me, not bad!”

But a week later I realised I’d totally rushed it. No video. No good screenshots. It didn’t represent the work I’d put into the app at all.

So I waited a bit, made a few updates to the app, and decided to try relaunching — this time actually putting some effort into it. My only cost for the entire launch was my Canva subscription (seriously, irreplaceable).

For 3 days I watched Product Hunt closely and took screenshots of all the slides and assets from the top 3 products each day. I knew those teams probably had designers and marketers behind them, but I figured: why not just copy the format?

So I made clean slides using a classy gradient, stuck my logo on everything, and kept the text informative and minimal. Just stuff I’d want to know if I were skimming.

The video was the hard part. I planned out the exact features I wanted to show, then filmed myself using the app... over and over until I managed a clean take without messing up. Once I had the footage, I wrote a little script to explain it all, then got ChatGPT to turn it into something more like a calm, helpful advert.

I fed that into ElevenLabs and picked Brian (he's free and sounds super human) to narrate it.

I did all the remaining launch stuff Product Hunt recommends too like teaser image, first comment, scheduling the post, all that. Then I hit launch.

And boom 🤩 it shot up to 70 upvotes.
I don’t know if it was just luck or timing or better graphics or what, but compared to my first launch it felt surreal. Within minutes I was getting LinkedIn messages from 10 different Indian tech "influencers" offering paid promo. I was still high on the adrenaline of organic growth so I just replied to each of them with an affiliate link and said “feel free to use this if you think it'll perform.” Of course none of them did they want cash upfront and it seems pretty shady so I took a hard pass on the them.

As the day went on, a bunch of makers reached out for comment trades. I didn’t message anyone myself, but I did say yes to every request that came in, and gave them some love in return.

It’s funny, on the day it really feels like being at the top matters. You forget that there’s a launch every single day. But the impact for me was massive. My total downloads almost doubled and I’ve been live for maybe 6 or 8 weeks.

If you’re indie and you’re thinking about launching, honestly:

• Watch the top products

• Reverse engineer their slides

• Make a clean, real demo video

• Use free tools like ElevenLabs and cheap ones like Canva

• Actually schedule and prepare your launch steps
  It doesn’t have to be perfect, but just putting some polish on it made a huge difference.

Ask me anything, happy to share what I learned the hard way.