Slopes

Slopes on iOS had been growing at a wonderful rate since adding subscriptions and had matured a lot. Not just features, but now Slopes was supporting things like family plans (lots of families ski together) and consumable billing (day passes, since only 20% of my market uses season passes, many go only a few days a year).

But there had been one question I always punted on: when is Android going to happen?

I have nothing against Android, but I'm always very aware on how any choice is going to add drag in the future, and maintaining two platforms by myself was going to slow me down way too much.

The winter of 2018/19 was giving me enough breathing room to bring on a part-time contractor in August, with the intention of ramping them up to full-time after January when I started getting payments for the 2019/20 season and saw what its growth looked like.

Even with some breathing room, expanding to a second platform was a daunting choice that weight on me for years (not having enough money was a convenient excuse to avoid the decision up until then). It had caused a lot of self reflection on what kind of product / company I want to run. Lifestyle business of just me, or something more?

Ultimately I felt that I'd be able to better serve my customers (iOS users befriend Android users, so iOS users will be happier if their friends can use Slopes too) and I'd have better chances of surviving long-term (market penetration of the nice) if I went onto Android.

I had gotten into an ebb-and-flow with working on Slopes: I'd spend a % of the year working on it based on the % of my revenue it would bring in. That work would start in Sept/Oct as I got ready for the next winter. So starting Oct 1 I stopped taking on client work for the rest of the calendar year.

My projections going into the winter were looking pretty good, I might not have to "go back to work" after winter 2017/18, but I wasn't sure at the time how the season would go.

Turns out I didn't need to take another consulting contract after the winter was over. Slopes was making enough to making a living on now.

Slopes started as a paid up front app, because that's how you "did" apps. $3.99 -> eventually $7.99. The price tag was really hindering growth and I was having to spend a lot of time convincing people to download the app and try it (and once they did, they loved it). I was getting tired of the struggle, and figured I needed to change something if I was going to really have a go at making this app my job (I was split between Slopes maybe 30% of my time and consulting for the rest). To date Slopes had only made a total of $11k in the two seasons it had been around.

Paid up front just wasn't working.

So I spent the summer of 2015 moving Slopes to the freemium model and a $19.99 subscription. Back then, a lot of apps were still pay-once. Some early fitness apps having yearly subs, but not many others. My big a-ha that made me feel OK with the move, beyond wanting to make a serious go at this, was in the name of the sub - "Season Pass".

That was a lesson that has stuck with me: my niche, the ski market, already has established ways of doing things. The more I aligned with them, the better.

But it was still tough. Figuring out the right paywalls to put up was a struggle (one I still question). I had seen at least one competitor give away way too much for free, and I saw their revenue struggles. But I also had to balance that against my user-self that didn't want to be unreasonable.

Slopes was on Apple Watch day-1 since I knew that using an app on your wrist was going to be much better than pulling out your phone while you're bundled up with gloves in the cold.

I also knew there would be a natural wave of press surrounding the Watch and apps for it at launch. Slopes still struggled to get press (only haven beeb written about once or twice to date) and I saw this as a big opportunity.

I didn't realize how much the Watch would help my business.

I got a lot of press for being one of the day-one apps (especially since Slopes actually made sense as a wrist-based app, unlike all the other apps that have since stopped shipping for Watch). That really helped me going into the winter when I'd be going freemium.

But it also got me some attention from Apple. I worked really hard on making sure Slopes was an amazing Watch app, and they noticed. Being a great app on a new platform Apple was focusing on, in a category they were realizing was a big deal (fitness), helped me finally get noticed and start to see some features by the App Store editorial team.

After a summer of working nights and weekends on the app, I took off in August / September to get v1 out the door. The biggest challenge here was working on a ski app with no snow! Turns out though, mountain bikers love to head to ski resorts during the summer to ride downhill.

Unsurprisingly the app launched with a bit of a fizzle. Despite outreach, I had no real press coverage (I had yet to learn anything about how to work with the press).

The idea for Slopes was born much earlier in the year, but this was the weekend I went from "maybe that'd be cool" to actually doing it. Almost didn't work out, though.

I went to PSW with a really sheep-ish pitch about what I wanted Slopes to be, nervous as all hell. Got up, gave the pitch, and practically nobody voted for it to be one of the projects worked on for the weekend. I wasn't too surprised, this only reinforced my self-doubt on the idea.

The group I ended up working with, though, turned things around. We had all had our ideas rejected, and weren't particularly drawn to any of the others (or the groups had filled up). We were left without a project so we decided to pick one of our own to work on, eventually landing at Slopes ("Slopes" at the time being my project name in Xcode, I never thought it'd stick as the brand).

Turns out I had a much better time conveying the idea behind Slopes and why it might work when I had more than 30s or so ;).

Over the 48hrs we worked on it and helped bring to life some of the ideas I had a hard time articulating - like a mockup of the 3d rendering of a ski run and how that might work for the users. I had to work hard during the weekend on refining my pitch, market research (I had done none), and why it was a worthwhile project.

Slopes went on to come in 1st place for the weekend. Helping to put images to words, and refining my pitch like crazy, turned everything around.