Buoy

After just over a year since starting, Buoy was finally live on the Mac App Store! The first week went pretty well in my book.

29 users installed the app which is just over 25% of my first goal, acquire 100 users.

Next I would set the following goals:

• 100 weekly active users
• 100 paid users

Progress was taking longer than expected, deadline was closing in, doubt ensued on whether I would even find product market fit.

V2 had lofty goals but I made the call to narrow scope and be as focused as possible on the core value proposition.

The always up functionality and making the task management piece as pleasant as possible as this would be the key hypothesis to test in the market.

Version 2 developments tarted with the freelancer. This was interesting as I could only afford to pay for 10 hours per week but thankfully this made me very thoughtful and intentional with what was to be built given the limited resourcing. Goal was to launch the coming October, 1 year post-inception of Buoy.

Previously, I had been using git locally but hadn't figured out how test locally. This wasn't until my friend Alex jumped in and schooled me up on running local environments. I still don't get docker but the exposure was a win!

Since then, I've spun up a Heroku pipeline using a staging app instance but needless to say, merging to master wasn't in my vocabulary after this lmao!

Shout out to AK, he helped me grow a lot technically.

I had always wanted to learn how to code a backend. I had never gotten further than a simple web page using jQuery, php, and a mySQL database.

I had always wanted to understand what went into building APIs. I started studying my ass off at YouTube university, watching any tutorial I could find to start standing things up.

This pushed my comfort level, however, I was thrilled to have reached a longtime goal and to be able to build sweat equity on the technical side of the product.

This helped me broaden the vision for Buoy..more on that to come later!

After teaching myself Figma, I started designing the first iterations of Buoy.

I found a freelance MacOS engineer on Upwork to turn these designs into reality.

Development ensued from November to March until the first version was able to launch on the Mac App Store!

This was a quiet launch for me, friends, and family to test the concept in action. I had already moved on to subsequent iterations of Figma designs for V2.

I was watching Startup on Netflix (Korean Drama Silicon Valley lmao) and realized the following:

• My day rarely goes to plan
• It's hard to prioritized tasks in different systems against each other
• I can't keep tasks I prioritized top of mind

Why not solve for this to make the most of my time and attention?

I decided to commit myself to solving this problem for me and hopefully for you too.