One Year Of Indie Hacking: How I quit my job and built my own app business

The world is full of coincidences. I've been looking for an app like Habit Tracker for a while now. I always feel like I'm not doing enough in all areas of my life. But with this view, you can quickly see that you actually manage everything somehow (sports, family, job, free time) Cool thing!

Thanks for sharing man ! And really love the GitHub style for the habits tracker ahah
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"Instead, my primary objective was to have fun, be creative, and build something for myself. If my apps yielded a financial gain, that would be fantastic, but if not, I was happy with the satisfaction of creating something I could call my own. "... Loved it.

HabitKit looks great, and your journey is an inspiration. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for sharing your experience, this is very interesting.

I'm curious about the following:

• Why had you quit your job and work on the project full time? What was the motivation behind it? As I know, lots of people build their side hustles without quitting their daily job because they are afraid of the financial risks. After their side hustle generates enough money, they start working on it full time.

• You mentioned that you start the second project HabitKit after you saw the slow growth of the first one. Why you choose to start a new project instead of improving the first one? I know some people would figure out why the growth is so low and try to fix it, learning new skills like marketing, sales, SEO, etc. Apparently your second project is doing much better than the first one. What have you done differently this time?

I like how you are sharing your journey, this will definitely give hope to new devs learning programming . Good work Sebastian!

Thank you for sharing these impressive experiences. I've followed you on Twitter and look forward to seeing any new updates, and also wish you all the best in your new career.

Hello Sebastian. Your story really inspires me! I am from Austria, actually an architect and self taught developer but I keep dreaming of quiting my day job just to focus on my projects and bring them to the next level! Kudos! Maybe there is a chance to work together?

Thank you for sharing, good luck!

Thanks for sharing. So inspiring man!

Hello Sebastian. I read your journey with interest. I have tried HabitKit and was very happy to see a review from the person who created it.
I became an office worker again, but I hope that I will succeed again next time. Thank you so much for sharing your great experience

So well captured! Happy that you got to experience this first hand. It isn't easy to go on this journey and deal with the uncertainty. I recently connected with a few people who were pondering how to take the plunge, would be great to make an intro and see how they can learn from your experience.

Nice products! I quickly went over to the iOS products to take a look. breaking the 50 review mark is such an accomplishment :)

Your experience denotes courage, Congrats
However, here are some thoughts:

Leaving a secure job without the right strategy can be risky and feasible only in certain circumstances (e.g. living in the parental home). It's important to have a solid plan in place before making such a significant change. Did you have a business plan before you quit your job?

Going back to being an employee after starting your own project can be a challenging transition. It is essential to carefully weigh the potential advantages and disadvantages of this decision. Going back to being an employee could in fact undermine your project, but it could also provide valuable experience and stability.
What is your feeling about it?

The period of Covid-19 has undoubtedly brought a lot of uncertainty in many areas of life, including work. Is your experience related to the pandemic or not?

Congrats on the progress!

Hopefully we can do this one day with Evoke

Congratulations on completing one year of indie hacking! It's inspiring to see someone leave their job and pursue their passion of building their own business. I would love to hear more about your journey and the challenges you faced along the way. What motivated you to start your own app business, and what have been some of your biggest accomplishments so far? Wishing you continued success in your endeavors!

Thanks for sharing, Sebastian. It's really motivating to read. I'm in a similar situation, recently left my job after a few years out of university. Hoping to just spend a year having fun, building, learning, until something sticks or money runs out! All the best

Thanks for sharing Sebastian, it was really interesting and inspiring to read your article. The two apps are exactly what I was looking for and so far I haven't found any satisfactory ones. I've now installed both and rated them with 5 stars ;) I wish you the best of luck for the future.

Thanks for sharing your experience. What a year you've had! We are on month 9!

thanks for sharing your journey man! i love this you have done an excellent work

I wanted to congratulate you on one year of indie hacking and thank you for your blog post. I can see so many similarities in our journey (despite the many differences) 💪

Congratulations. That seems like you dove into the deep end and really made it work for you! I am looking to interview individuals for a Founder blog, reach out if you would be interested!

Congratulations on your one year of indie hacking success! It takes a lot of courage and determination to leave a steady job and pursue your dreams of building your own business. Your story is inspiring and a great reminder that with hard work and perseverance, anything is possible. Keep up the great work and continue to chase your passions!

Well done mate! I wonder, did you know the problem you were solving, and who were you solving it for, before starting?

Congratulations

Thanks for sharing Seb! Super interesting to hear the great success you had launching your app. Given the number of users you have, did you expect higher revenue for your app? Any lessons learned on the revenue side of things?

Thank you for sharing your journey as an indie hacker. Your article provided valuable insights into the importance of validating product ideas and focusing on marketing and distribution. I appreciate your transparency in sharing both your successes and failures, which make your story relatable and informative. As someone interested in indie hacking, your lessons learned will definitely help guide me on my own journey.
myreminiapk.com

Thanks for sharing Sebastian!

It too recently quit my job, although am working for a friend so I have some income. I'm new to this buildinpublic journey and am attempting to build 12 apps in 12 months. I think I owe a blog post about it now, inspired by your post.

Would love to connect to the bird app. Cheers!

Thank you very much for sharing. <3

👏🏻 Thanks for sharing your experience Sebastian! I'm looking forward to your follow-up articles, especially the one about "the business and mental health side of things"

good that you have shared your awesome experience

Congrats Sebastian! Very nice write up.

I actually downloaded HabitKit about about week ago and I'm loving it so far. I'm going to add Liftbear to my routine as well since I have a home gym.

One of the lessons I took from your blog post, even though you didn't say it directly is that building the second app is always easier than the first because you can leverage your existing tech stack, designs, branding and possibly audience.

Best of luck with your new job. Keep building on the side.

Thanks for sharing. Was looking for a new habit tracker so downloaded HabitKit, loved the UI so I am now a lifetime member! If you could have done anything differently for your year of indie hacking, what would it have been?

Congrats, LiftBear might be just the motivation I need to start working out again!

thank you for sharing!

@SebaRoehl This was a great read!! Habit tracker looks amazing too. I can't help but ask you a couple of questions:

• How often did you tweet over the past year? Did you track any metrics?
• Did you start with 0 Twitter followers?

All the best.

I read your blog - the slow growth of your first app and website feels almost like a must! It greatly accelerates future development from lessons learned!

Hi @SebaRoehl,
Thanks for sharing your a snippet of your experience. Your apps' UI look slick.

Thank you for sharing your journey

ohh yes you said right about that