Launching Shadow Note: My Journey from Idea to App as a Solo Founder
Hi IndieHackers Community,
🌟 Exciting News! After a long journey filled with learning and growth, I'm thrilled to announce the launch of my project, the Shadow Note Mindfulness Journal, debuting on 12/11!
🚀 Shadow Note: Your Ally in Mindful Living
Developed as a personal passion project, Shadow Note is designed to be your companion in habit tracking, goal setting, and intentional living. It’s more than an app; it’s a tool for transformation.
✨ Special Launch Offer
To celebrate the launch, I'm offering a 2-month FREE trial of Shadow Note, exclusively on our website. This is your invitation to explore mindful journaling and personal growth.
📲 Beta Version Available
Don’t miss the chance to try the beta version of Shadow Note for iOS, available for free via Apple's TestFlight program.
👁️🗨️ Free Demo: No Account Needed
Check out what Shadow Note offers with a demo on our landing page, featuring Athena, our AI assistant.
🙏 A Shoutout to Beta Testers
A heartfelt thank you to all the beta testers who’ve been instrumental in shaping Shadow Note. Your feedback has been crucial in refining the app.
🛠️ The Journey Behind Shadow Note: I embarked on this project out of a personal need for a better journaling tool and a desire to learn app development and marketing as a solo entrepreneur. This journey has been a whirlwind of learning and growth. I'm lucky to build something that's a part of my everyday life through my daily journaling practice, and I'm committed to continually improving Shadow Note, driven by passion more than just market fit.
Join me in this venture of mindfulness and self-improvement with Shadow Note. Let’s start a journey to a more intentional and fulfilled life together!
I think it's a super idea! I love journalling. I'd like to see more on the page about why shadow note would improve my current journalling experience? I'm not sure what exactly reflection journalling is compared to regular journalling, but I'd like to know more.
Patte,
Thank you for the feedback! There is definitely much room for improvement in how I'm communicating the value proposition of Shadow Note. I think I'm going to need to iterate a couple more times to get it right.
Journaling techniques are diverse, so I'd love to learn more about your perspective on journaling and what strategies work best for you. I will do my best to explain focused reflection journaling and my personal journaling strategy below.
Focused reflection journaling is a technique where you reflect on the same topics on a recurring schedule. Usually, these topics are areas in your life where you're trying to improve or simply live with more intention. It's great for setting goals, keeping track of your habits, and it enables you to be more aware of when adjustments are needed. This can help you live more proactively. Shadow Note's design is optimized for focused reflection journaling, so when you make an entry for a given topic, you can easily access all your other entries for that topic within the same page, allowing you to see your progression with all your entries for that topic while journaling in real time. It's very different from the experience you'd get journaling in a typical notebook where you're bound by the page.
I myself do a weekly focused reflection on various topics that I'm trying to improve on, and this really helps me go into the upcoming week prepared and less stressed. I combine this with a daily journaling technique where I do a quick check-in with myself in the morning and night to set the intention for the day, remind myself of what I'm grateful for, and remind myself of something I learned that day.
I do realize that with journaling, there is no one-size-fits-all approach, so I know that these techniques might not be ideal for everyone. They've been very helpful for me, though, so that's why I built the app. I'm curious to know what journaling strategies you find most helpful for yourself?
I love the idea for the app :D
I'm deeply appreciate of all mental health tools.
I currently just do a 'brain dump' kind of journalling without any structure. I find it the best for me. Primarily because my mind is all over the place. I only have one rule, and that is I can't stop typing when I'm journalling. (within reason)
I don't usually go back and read the previous journals as well. Which I think makes me different in that regard. I do this because I find it impossible for me to write openly in a journal if I know I'm going to be reading it again later. I find myself self editing to say that things that I think are true as opposed to really allowing my subconscious to say whatever it wants without censorship.
I don't know if I'm your target person. But for me, I would probably find value if I see the benefit of adding this type of journalling to my routine. For example. The Huberman Labs podcast recently had an episode about a specific type of journalling and method. They explained the method and why it's good and exactly how to do it. And that was convincing to me.
The second thing I would be looking for in your product is how awesome it is to do Shadow Note as opposed to just doing it on my own. For example, I see that a.i. is used in the product. And I love that! But I'm curious how it's used and what it does for me? I think that it is used to prompt me and give me feedback on what I'm journalling about.
Some feedback on the UI. My opinion is that it could use some more words and not just icons on the example page. I kind of figured out what everything is for, but I did have to click around. I might make the tour a bit shorter. Popups are not users favorite thing when they get to a page.
And I would love to see the bottom part where there are suggestions somehow 'above the fold' on the page. As a user I was unsure when I clicked the drop down what was happening because the stuff happening was off screen for me. I would like to have it visible to interact with, and then when I start writing that it goes away for that writing session.
All of that is just personal opinion, but I hope some of it is useful! And please take it with I love the start of the project! I look forward to seeing where it goes.
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Awesome! Keep it up and dont let any setback hurdle you!
Thank you Benjamin!
Great job Nolan! It's amazing to see your journey of bringing Shadow Note from concept to completion.
This inspiring article is a reminder that anything is possible when you put in the hard work and dedication.
Here's to many more successes!
Beth, I appreciate your support! Thank you! It has been a wonderful journey, for sure.
Good luck Nolan! Just tried it and it looks amazing
Thank you Leandro! I really appreciate your kind words.
Good one, keep up the good work.
Thank you Kazi!
I hope your launch day is a huge success! Shadow Note demonstrates your love for mindful living, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it will improve people's lives.
Thank you, Prem! This is just the beginning. I'm excited to see Shadow Note's evolution as I iterate and improve it.
Congrats Nolan! Getting something built and out there is awesome! I'm curious - how did you find people to beta test your app?
Thanks, Sarah! So, I found beta testers from a variety of sources. The majority were found on Reddit by posting in journaling subreddits, asking for feedback without actually advertising. I also found some on Twitter, and I asked several people from my personal network to test the app. Without the beta testers, Shadow Note would not be what it is today, so I have to say that spending time looking for and communicating with beta testers is well worth the effort. Before I had feedback from other people it felt like I was building in my own echo chamber and once I sought out feedback it opened my eyes to many different areas that needed improvement or just didn't make sense from a design perspective.
This is really cool! Sorry if this question sounds rude, but what made you decide to make a mindfulness app when there are so many already out there?
Good Luck on the launch, will be keeping an eye out!
Salair,
Thank you! This is my first project as an Indie Hacker, and part of the goal of this project was to teach myself web development. My previous programming experience was limited to C++ and Matlab, so I essentially started Shadow Note without any web development knowledge.
I decided to choose a problem I'm passionate about because I knew it would be a long road, and I'd need that passion to carry me through. So, I chose to focus on journaling because I wanted a better tool for myself.
There are probably similar apps out there, but I tried to differentiate Shadow Note. My desire for a better journaling tool stemmed from struggling to find a journal app that was privacy-focused, available cross-platform, and optimized for reflection journaling. Therefore, I designed Shadow Note with these needs in mind.
For future projects, I will definitely spend more time validating my idea before building. However, I think a project like Shadow Note was necessary to really get me started and teach me the basics.
I understand. I'm in the same position myself actually as I'm a Computer Engineer and want to delve into Web Application building as well. You seem to have picked it up though, how long have you been at it?
Salair, I started on this journey in June of 2022, and the most important thing for me was consistency. I would approach it in the same way you would if you were trying to learn a new spoken language. Often, when learning a new spoken language, the only way to truly grasp it is to immerse yourself in the culture of the language because then you have no other option but to learn. With web development, it's very similar. Most concepts will seem foreign at first, and you'll likely be overwhelmed with all the different technologies when you're first getting started. However, by being consistent, you can just focus on building one feature at a time. Simply learn task by task. I highly recommend that you just learn by building and start as soon as possible. When I first started, generative AI was not as accessible as it is today, so I would get stuck for weeks at a time on silly bugs that today I could figure out in an hour or two. StackOverflow and Google were my only resources when I got stuck back then. Today, you can use ChatGPT as a teacher, and it can fast-track your learning for sure. It's also great for time-consuming tasks that machines are just more efficient at.
Thanks so much for the advice! I'll definitely emulate this as this is how i've done my learning for new technologies in the past. My approach right now is using as much no-code tools as i can for right now, and practice marketing as I study Javascript and CSS in the background.
And yeah, Chat GPT has definitely accelerated my learning quite quickly as well.
Thanks so much for the advice and insight! Would love to connect on twitter if you are there!
Of course! I enjoy talking about this stuff and helping others because I remember when I was first getting started too.
That's a good approach. As long as you're consistent and focused, you'll be learning quickly. I look forward to seeing your future projects! I followed you on Twitter, so I will be in touch.
If you don't mind I would like to help you with seo and in particular choosing the right keywords. I assume that your niche is Journaling and self improvement and also your target customers are person who looking to keep track their life and get better
Here are the analysis result and keywords that you can target for your particular market : SHADOW NOTE KEYWORDS ANALYSIS
From the analysis you could see that self improvement with self improvement tips for mental health, self improvement books and daily habits for self improvement as the long tail keywords, have better overall volume to difficulty ratio.
I analyze the keywords using the tool that I made. This tool enable you to find the best keywords for your specific market and target customer. The tool will go tru thousands of keywords and analyze it based on its volume and difficulty to give you the best keywords and long tail keywords for your market.
You can try it out yourself here at decentool.com and it is free to use.
Azhar,
Thank you Azhar! That sounds like a useful tool you built. SEO is definitely something I'd like to optimize for more in the future so I will check out your product when I get a chance. Right now, my focus is making sure the onboarding process is smooth so that I have no trouble on launch day. I will check your product out down the road though. Feel free to connect with me on twitter @merakiminded1