🎯 No more random knowledge: I built Yena to feed your career what it actually needs.

🚀 From idea to App Store in 1 month and 20 days

I’m Toan, founder of Yena: Knowledge & Growth.

For years I’ve struggled with one thing: learning consistently in a way that actually matches my real work. I’d try courses, newsletters, YouTube playlists… but they were either too generic, too long, or not aligned with my day-to-day responsibilities. I wanted something that knew my role, my goals, and my gaps — and then quietly pushed me to grow a little every day.

That’s why I started building Yena.

How Yena started

About 1 month and 20 days ago, I committed to shipping the first version of Yena as a real product – not just an idea in my notes.

The first challenge was onboarding:
What information do I need from a user to truly personalize their learning?

I spent a lot of time just thinking and iterating on this:

• What’s your profession and role?

• What are your current strengths?

• Where are your gaps?

• What are your short-term and long-term goals?

• How much time can you realistically dedicate each day?

The goal was to collect enough data to personalize the experience, without overwhelming users with a long survey. Getting this onboarding right was the foundation for everything else.

The hardest part: truly personalized, non-duplicate knowledge

Once I had the structure of onboarding, the next big problem was:
If Yena is going to deliver daily, tailored knowledge, how do I:

1. Make sure each piece of content is relevant to that specific user, and

2. Avoid showing the same thing twice, or similar things that feel repetitive?

This part took the longest.

I worked on:

• Designing how knowledge is tagged based on role, skill level, and goals

• Making sure the same topic doesn’t show up over and over in a boring way

• Tracking what a user has already learned so each day feels fresh and builds on top of the previous ones

This is still an area I’ll keep improving, but I’m proud that even the first version is already focused on not wasting people’s time.

Making progress visible: streaks, leaderboard, analytics

Learning is easier to stick with when you can see your progress.

So after the core experience worked, I built:

• A streak system so you’re rewarded for showing up every day

• A leaderboard to add some friendly competition and social proof

• Analytics so users can track what they’ve learned and how consistent they’ve been

The idea is simple: if Yena asks you to invest a few minutes daily, it should also show you how that investment compounds.

Launching on the App Store

Now, Yena is live on the App Store.

The first version is far from perfect, but it’s real, shipped, and ready for people to use. Right now I’m focusing on distribution and experimenting with channels like TikTok and Instagram to reach professionals who want to grow but don’t have the time or energy to search for the “perfect” learning material every day.

I need your honest feedback (even brutal)

I’m at that stage where honest feedback matters more than anything.

If you try Yena, I’d be truly grateful if you could tell me:

• What feels valuable?

• What feels confusing, annoying, or pointless?

• What made you want to continue… or close the app?

Please don’t hold back – even brutal feedback is welcome. It will directly shape how I improve Yena in the next iterations.

Building in public: my journey with Yena

Alongside the product itself, I’ll be sharing my journey here on Indie Hackers:

• What I’m trying for distribution (like TikTok/Instagram), and what actually works

• What features users love or ignore

• What breaks, what fails, and what unexpectedly succeeds

My hope is that this can be useful not only for me, but also for others building products around learning, personalization, or habit-building.

If you’re interested in daily, personalized learning or just enjoy following indie product journeys, feel free to follow along. And if you download Yena and share your thoughts, thank you – it means a lot at this early stage.