GomScope

Supercharge your Bear notes

No Employees
Founders Code
Solo Founder
Productivity
Writing

Bear is a fantastic note taking app, but it lacks a handful amount of features like graph view or bidirectional links between notes. GomScop will help users explore their notes and discover meaningful connections.

February 2, 2021 Passed 1k USD revenue

36 paying customers and 1,013 USD so far.
It's not subscription, so not recurring.
When I started this project, I never thought of this revenue. This project itself is a good one I can put my passion into, but also its income will be a good seed money for me to start other things.
For example there are good saas tools I can utilize but didn't use because of the cost. Now that I have a passive income, I can leverage it.

January 29, 2021 Officially Launched

So far we've had 24 users who purchased the app. The total revenue is $671. It's been a good beta period. The users in the community slack have provided so much feedback and I iterated quickly. I feel confident that this can go public, so just sent an email to 222 people from the mailing list. We'll see how it goes 馃

December 31, 2020 13 paid customers, total $361

Getting closer to the official release. The alpha testers and beta users (who paid) are actively giving me feedback. I've made a lot of progress so far.
Having paid customers before official launching is so good in many ways. They proactively give feedback, I guess, because they paid and want the app to be better. It's good to know there are people buying it for the current price.

Initially I didn't think of code-signing this Mac app, meaning when user first installs it, they will see a popup like "this isn't verified. you really want to open it?" I didn't care much. I didn't want to spend about $100 just to get rid of it. Now that I already have $361, I could invest $100 to get rid of it and add the auto-update feature.

It's definitely good to earn some money before the official release 馃憤

December 25, 2020 Got 9 paid customers, total $249

I'm glad I made a decision a week ago to release the beta version in public. It got me 9 paid customers for total $249. It maybe not a lot of money but clearly shows there are some people willing to pay for what I do. It encourages me a lot. Some of them are actively giving me feedback which is insightful. I plan to release the stable version in two weeks.

December 19, 2020 First customer 馃帀

After getting 10 alpha testers, I've been working on the app and released 4 versions to the testers.

Last week, someone reached out asking if the tester seat is available. I said sorry but would release it soon.

Today someone else reached out asking when it will be released. I said "It will be released in a month or two."

And I thought.
"The current version is not perfect but it's already usable. Why not release it now and lose a month or two?"

So I decided to release it as "beta" with reduced price. Once I really the official version, I will increase the price. Not sure how much yet.

So I sent a DM to the person to say it's available for purchase. And the first transaction is done! I've been working as software developer since 2011 but it is my first time every earning money outside company.

Now I'm going to send an email to the 220 subscribers that they can already purchase the beta version with the reduced price even though the app isn't perfectly polished yet.

November 28, 2020 Second alpha release

I published the second alpha version last night. Now I check my previous milestone here in IndieHackers, it was only 4 days ago I released the first version.

I guess I'm in a very rapid iteration. This new version includes new features that both I and the community members wanted.

Although this testing community is going well in my opinion, I'm striving to find channels to acquire users once it launches. I posted about GomScope once in r/bearapp but they deleted my second post because they think it's spam-y.

November 24, 2020 I've released the very first alpha version!

Yesterday I released the very first alpha version to the 10 alpha testers. We have a dedicated Slack I've started a week or so ago. So far, 4 people have installed it, and I'm starting to get feedback. I really like the velocity so far.

I was thinking of improving the note viewer but according to the feedback, the next minor update is going to be all about graph view.

November 16, 2020 147 People Waiting for the GomScope

GomScope has got 147 people waiting for the product on the mailing list and just got 10 alpha testers in a private Slack workspace after sending an email to the subscribers yesterday.

We will iterate the app based on their experiences and are planning to get beta testers in a month.

November 3, 2020 First PoC

I had an idea to visualize the Bear notes as a graph to help people understand the connections between notes, which can lead to new discoveries of ideas.

I've made the first PoC and put it on r/bearapp.

https://www.reddit.com/r/bearapp/comments/jn7o27/thinking_of_generating_a_graph_out_of_my_bear/

About

Bear is a fantastic note taking app, but it lacks a handful amount of features like graph view or bidirectional links between notes. GomScop will help users explore their notes and discover meaningful connections.