Shipped my first ever mobile app. Not sure if anyone needs it.
I just launched Retrospect on the App Store. It's a weekly review app where you answer four questions about your week, turn your reflections into action items, and over time the AI surfaces patterns in your data.
I built it because I personally wanted something like this and couldn't find it. Whether anyone else wants it is what I'm trying to figure out now.
And that's the uncomfortable part. I spent months building before talking to a single potential user. No validation, no waitlist, no landing page. Just building because it felt right. Every founder knows they should validate first. Almost none of us actually do it.
The fear isn't really wasted time. It's shipping something you genuinely care about and finding out nobody was waiting for it.
I've already changed the positioning once. Started with "for anyone who wants to improve themselves" which in hindsight means nothing. Shifted toward founders and builders who want to move forward with intention. Still not sure if that's right either.
The free tier covers everything, notes, weekly reviews, action tracking. Pro adds AI insights on top.
I genuinely want to know: does this solve a real problem for anyone or does it feel like a nice to have? That's the question I'm trying to answer right now.
For me, it would actually solve something but I wouldn't have looked for it.
It would solve a weekly review that I'm doing on Friday night that after a week long of work feels a bit the facultative task I can afford not to do. Yet, I know it helps the next week.
If something would make it easy and yet make me reflect on the week, I would actually consider it. I checked on the App Store and there are 2 Retrospect apps, I'm assuming it is the one from yesterday. If I may I would make it a slightly more attractive in the problem it solves
I did the exact same thing with my iOS app. Months of building before I talked to a single user. Every tutorial says validate first. Almost nobody actually does.
The positioning change you made sounds right. "For anyone who wants to improve themselves" is the same as saying it's for everyone, which means it's for nobody. "Founders and builders who want to move forward with intention" is something a specific person can read and think: that's me.
On whether it solves a real problem: the fact that you built it because you personally wanted it is your best signal. The pain was real enough to spend months on it. The question is just finding the others who feel the same thing.
What's your plan for getting it in front of those people?
Glad it resonates, seems like a rite of passage for first time builders.
The plan right now is pretty scrappy. Posted on X because building a personal brand is the best marketing tool (or at least thats what everybody says).
Launching on Product Hunt Tuesday, and trying to find the right communities where people actually think in weekly cycles, founders, builders, people who run personal retrospectives.
Honestly the biggest challenge is that the people who would get the most value from this are also the people least likely to download a new app without a strong recommendation from someone they trust.
What worked for you when you launched?