Solo dev here. I built an app around a single question.
Hey everyone! Just launched my first iOS app today.
I'm sure you've seen the equation: 1.01^365 = 37.78
If you get 1% better every day for a year, you end up nearly 38x better.
Flip it around: 0.99^365 = 0.03.
Getting 1% worse every day and you basically stop existing.
Same tiny daily choice, 1,200x difference in outcome.
I kept seeing this in motivational posts and tweets but there wasn't any tool that makes you feel it. So I did.
The app is called 1% Better.
Every day it asks you one question: Were you 1% better today?
You tap yes or no. That's it. The app compounds your answer and plots your actual growth curve against the ideal 37x line in real time. You can literally watch yourself compound.
Some product details:
The neon glow on the graph is three shadow passes stacked on top of each other over Catmull-Rom interpolated curves. Spent an embarrassing amount of time on this.
No backend at all. Your data lives on your device and your iCloud. I have zero access to anything
1 tracker is Free forever. The Premium (with free trial) let's you add more. The paywall only kicks in when you actually tap "Add Category" for the first time. Felt wrong to start a countdown clock before someone even wants the premium stuff
ProductHunt link: https://www.producthunt.com/products/1-better-habit-tracker?launch=1-better-habit-tracker
App store link: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6761054951
This is my first launch so I'm still very much learning the distribution game. Building the thing was the easy part. Getting people to find it is a whole different skill.
Would love any feedback on the app or the PH page. Happy to talk about the build if anyone has questions.
the neon graph is your distribution strategy, you just haven't used it yet. someone screenshots that curve and posts it somewhere - that's the acquisition loop. make the graph shareable.
Yes absolutely, I do have a share image button for every tracker
nice - then the loop is there. just a matter of surfacing it when someone's streak is hot
The streaks vs compounding framing is genuinely smart. Every other habit app punishes you for one bad day by resetting to zero. Compounding means one off day just flattens the curve slightly, you don't lose the progress you already built. That's a much healthier mental model and honestly the kind of difference that makes someone recommend an app to a friend.
On distribution — the people who'd love this probably aren't searching for "habit tracker." They're the ones frustrated that every app they try makes them feel guilty for missing a day. If you can show up in communities where people talk about building consistency (not just productivity tools) you'll find your early users there.
perfact!
Congrats on the launch !! The idea was very nice and this could be a good way to test it. There’s a competition where you can submit it — entry is $19 and winner gets a Tokyo trip. Also, prize pool just opened at $0 so chances are best right now. Tokyolore.com
Congrats on the launch! The compounding curve visualization is a smart way to make an abstract concept feel real — most habit apps just show streaks, yours shows the actual math playing out which is way more motivating.
"Building the thing was the easy part. Getting people to find it is a whole different skill." — this hit hard. I just finished building Glow Journal, an AI skincare app with on-device skin analysis and dermatologist booking. Took months to build, production-ready, 30+ screens. Now I'm in the exact same place — the distribution problem is a completely different game.
The paywall decision is interesting too — waiting until the user actually wants the feature before showing it feels much more respectful than the usual "start your free trial" popup on first launch. Did that approach affect your conversion rate at all?
Love this — I’ve tried habit apps before but most feel heavy, this “one question a day” idea is actually something I’d stick with. The visual compounding part is a smart touch.
You turned a motivational quote into something people can actually see and feel, that’s the real product here.
If users start caring about not breaking their curve, you’ve built something way more powerful than a typical habit tracker.
Original idea... Good!
Hi man congrats on the launch. That's a very nice idea ngl. It triggered me because Im working on an app for self development as well and this name was in the running ahah. Anyway, once again I really like the concept.
This comment was deleted 5 months ago