Hippo
Remember everything that matters about people you care about
2.5 weeks after the launch on Product Hunt I have my first Hippo user that converted into a paying subscriber after his/hers free trial! 🥳
No way of telling through the App Store if it's someone I know (I suspect my mom 😁) but there's plenty of other users (500 or so) in the pipeline. Over the next two weeks their trials will end so it's exciting to see how many will convert.
Meanwhile I'm working on marketing this week. Going to continue the launch in places where people that have a need for structured note taking are.
Check Hippo via:
https://gethippo.app
Today is a big day for me, I launched Hippo on Product Hunt 🥳!
Development of Hippo started about half a year ago when I got tired of the simple CRM in Airtable which I used to track notes about my friends and family. It worked, but it was quite complicated to use.
I decided to turn that database into an app, and now its ready for everyone (on iOS 😁) to try it!
Thanks to all the IndieHackers that tested the app and roasted my landing page!
Check Hippo on Product Hunt, I'm looking forward to your comments and questions!
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Congrats Roel, you made it!!
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Congrats Roel! I really love this idea. My memory is not what it used to be, and when catching up with friends I do catch myself asking questions I've already asked before.
Are you an iOS app developer? What other skills or things did you have to pull together to culminate in today's launch?
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Thanks! Recalling questions sounds familiar to me 😁
I'm kind of all over the place with my experience really, most recently I've done a few years of Product Management at TheFork, a restaurant website owned by TripAdvisor. Before that I did UX and development for a Dutch restaurant website (which was acquired by TripAdivsor). And I led its dev team.
All those things came in handy for this launch. And as probably more technical people have, the hardest part for me was to do the actual launch, landing pages and write copy.-
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Oh and I forgot my music making skills, I composed the music in the video myself 😁
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Congratulations @RoelvanderKraan! I love the demo video, out of curiosity, what software did you use to create it?
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Thanks! It was quite some work :)
- Captured video from the simulator
- Animated it with a device and background in Rotato
- Edited and added titles in Adobe Premiere Rush
Oh and fun fact, I created the music myself too :D
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Hello Roel, I really love the idea of an app you are building. Long time I have been researching the tool for personal use and this one looks promising.
I have downloaded an app, and when opened, it was empty. It made me quite sad I have to manually import all my contacts, when they are already in my phone. It applies same for the calendar. I suspect it may be a case for the other users as well - you communicate it's a paid app, which create certain expectations, and then you ask people to invest their time into "making it work". My recommendation is to build an onboarding flow before that. Create few steps, where an user can import all contacts from the phone with one tap, sync calendar and once it's done, show an information about pricing (or maybe postpone it and make it trigger by some "premium" action, or after some days of use). First deliver some value to the user, then ask for money.
Wish you good luck with next iterations and keep it up!
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Thanks for your comments! Hm you have a point, the on boarding is not so smooth as it could be.
You can import one contact at a time now but that is quite tedious. I'll think about designing an onboarding flow where you get to quickly pick the contacts you'd like to import.
Calendar integration is also high on my prio list.
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Love it. It's what ios's calendar app should be. I see this as an add-on to that.
I jot down a date on the calendar - when I'm meeting Liz. I want to put a to-do list on the event. Well I can't do that, so I need the description to contain a link a Notes file just to include that basic functionality.
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Exactly! That's a great use case for Hippo. I'm still working on Calendar import, but it would be great if you can make notes and to-do's for events. And link people to it that you don't want to bother with email invites (I never use calendar invites for friends or family)
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Why is your product better than free of charge Google Keep?
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Google Keep and other note taking apps are more for generic note taking. I use Evernote and Notion myself. I find it hard to structure my notes in a way that I can easily find what I wrote about a friend over time. My app is centered around people so that's much easier to do.
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Thanks for the answer.
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Awesome, We are also preparing to launch...
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Congrats I launched mine today too. I definitely should add a video though, yours looks great!
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Congrats with your launch! Yeah I made this video yesterday, kind of last minute but I got a lot of compliments on it, so I'd definitely recommend to make one!
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Congrats dude!
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Thanks!
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Yes indeed, it helps me a lot to remember the things that would otherwise disappear in my noisy brain 😁
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Good news everyone! Apple approved Hippo to be released in the App Store! But it took a while, 13 days in total.
I waited 12 days while the app was 'waiting for review' before I reached out to the app review team to ask what was going on.
That helped a lot, I got a first reply (a rejection.. ) a couple of hours later. I fixed the issue they found, resubmitted the app a day after and it was approved only 3 hours later!
Now I'm preparing the launch, hope to go public next week 😬
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Looks really good! Congrats!
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Thank you!
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Congrats!
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Thanks!
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Congrats! What is the average wait for approval in the iOS store. Are you familiar with an apps that tried the preorder process?
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The average wait is 1-2 days I think, so in my case something went wrong I think.
I don't know any apps that tried the pre-order process..
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Congrats on approval @RoelvanderKraan!! What areas Apple focuses on while approving the app?
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Thanks!! In my case my app has a recurring subscription model so there are some things to take care of for that. Make sure the pricing is clear, you have terms/conditions and a privacy policy on the purchase screen, and some more things.
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looks super nice Roel, congrats on getting accepted. What was the problem they were asking to fix?
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images look sick, is the app native or cross-platform? I assume native since it looks iOS only.
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Thanks! It's native indeed. I wanted to learn Swift :-)
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After about 4 months of work I finally dared to press "Submit" in App Store Connect today!
I meant to do this about a month ago but I spent quite a bit of time to iron out the last bugs and improving a lot of small things in the user experience.
Making screenshots for the App Store took quite some time too, luckily I found Fastlane CI which has an amazing screenshot tool which even can put a nice device frame around it.
Now I have to wait until Apple's review team is done watching 4th of July fireworks 🎆 and hope they will approve my app in one go! 🙏
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Fingers crossed!
Released a simple landing page https://gethippo.app
Should help to attract beta testers from outside my own contacts. Used illustrations by Undraw and a simple grid CSS. No fancy javascript or frameworks.
Analytics are by SimpleAnalytics, a privacy-friendly alternative to Google Analytics.
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Some quick wins :)
- Add a favicon
- Add the product image in the header
- Change "Become a better friend, partner & colleague" to something about the product, that is the first thing they read and it mentions nothing about the product or how it will help them.
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I would keep the "Become a better friend, partner & colleague". It shows how the user will be better by using the product, which is a good strategy I think.
I would change the secondary title to be more explicit about the product for the reason you said.
Something like "With Hippo you can make notes, keep track of events and store to-dos for all your contacts."-
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Is that the number 1 pain point they come to the site for? If so keep it the same. If not have a look at the few below. They all talk about the product.
Evernote is "Feel organized without the effort"
Trello is "Trello lets you work more collaboratively and get more done."
Notion is "All-in-one workspace"
Google keep is "Save your thoughts, wherever you are""Stay in contact", "Staying in contact, simplified", "Staying in contact, made simple"
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Hi thanks for your suggestions! I was struggling with that sentence too.
I think it brings across what the app could bring you, but it might be too negative. It can sound like you're not a good friend right now. Also in another comment it came across as a product for people that want to pretend they care for people while they don't. So I'll take your comments and probably rephrase either the main headline or the subtitle below it.
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I really like the colors and the simple gradients work really well. I know you're not asking for feedback but I would like to give some from a consumer standpoint.
Are you the images actually what the app looks like? I think it looks clean and simple if so.
For your CTA, I think that your input form should have the same border radius as the submit button.
Go from thinking 😬💭 to saying 🤗💬
It seems that the left quotes are thoughts and the right is what you would say if you had used hippo? If that's the case, then I recommend redoing the first example; one says "her baby" and the next is "your daughter" - maybe something like "Due date is June 2019, and she's having a baby boy!"What are you building Hippo with?
Overall, I like it and I think it looks good. I would like to try it when you release it. Keep it up!
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Thanks Casey for your feedback! The images are a simplified version of the app. But they're not far from the real thing. I'm using these now because I'm changing the interface quite a lot, now I don't have to update the site all the time :)
Good points on the radius and the quotes, I'll have a look at them.
I'm building Hippo in Swift. So it's going to be iOS only for now. I really wanted to learn Swift and develop a native app (and bring it to Mac later)
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Sounds great! I am looking forward to more updates! If you ever get stuck, HWS(hacking with swift) is awesome.
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Roel, I just tried to use UpHabit (you mentioned them as your main competitor if I recall correctly) and wanted to give you an insight to my first-use experience.
They did two things that immediately broke my trust and scared me off:
(1) they demand to create a user account before being able to use the app (hard stop for my initial "yay, I'm trying a new app"-feeling)
(2) they offer to sync my contacts (and email contacts), but save that data on their cloud...I read you're keeping the data local (or if the user chooses to sync it via iCloud) and I think that's a very important differentiator for Hippo that you should highlight in all your marketing efforts! :)
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Yes, most apps that I compete with require both sign-in and full access to your contacts. Like you, that is a direct No from me, so that is why my app doesn't require an account (I don't even have a server running for this app). And Contacts access is completely optional, you can just create a contact by typing a name and you're done.
Good idea to highlight this more!
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I've always needed such product. At the moment, I'm using Notion table and adding notes about people as comments inside every entry.
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Hi Neil, I hope Hippo could replace your Notion table at some point :-) Can you tell a bit what you're usually noting down in Notion?
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Name, last touch date, latest concern / achievement / problem, next touch date, what to contact them about, interests, connected people or family, tags (country, where we met), and preferred communication channel.
Let me know if you'd like to go deeper 😉
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+1 for suggestion to add favicon.
- For some reason on the first read it sounded like a tool for persons that want to pretend they care about other people, but they don't (like a "sales man" asking you for your life just to sell you something)
When I got to your bio I understood better that's for the complete opposite, people that tends to forget details but want to improve that.
I think an opening sentence about the problem could help. Your bio at the bottom it's fine.
"Do you have this problem or want to improve in ______ .... Hippo helps you to ....."
- In the Secure section, probably would be better to use: "we" instead of "I"
Super small thing, the e-mail signup field could be larger (maybe?)
https://i.stack.imgur.com/0y1KI.pngKudos for the app, ui looks super clean and nice.
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Thanks for your feedback! Good point on your first impression, and that is definitely not what I wanted to bring across. So I'll see if I can rephrase it using your suggestion.
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Awesome job Roel, I've signed up for beta. Let me know if you need any feedback from look and feel perspective.
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Sure Roel, here you go.
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I see that there is no navigation/header at the top which can be really useful. Even though you don't have multiple pages to navigate to, you can still have navigation redirecting to different sections on the same page.
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In the hero section, overlapping copies over the illustration is not recommended. If the illustration is not that signifying then it can be displayed as a background after making relevant coloring changes.
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CTA can be more evident by choosing a color out of a different palette.
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Alignment of copy and illustration should alternate on every section. Right now all the sections have copy left aligned and illustration right aligned.
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Need to add a footer with copyright information.
Let me know if you have any questions.
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Hi Monik, great! I hope to distribute the next beta in a few days. And yes, I can use all the feedback you have so feel free to have a good look 😄
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Roel, overall the landing page is good.
I would remove your section: I'm Roel and put it in your footer about Roel. It takes too much real estate and your product should be front and center.
Another comment is stop using the Illustrations by unDraw they are too generic? I have seen these illustrations on at least 5 -10 other landing pages. I would instead add photos of your product and photo's of people especially for your site - since it is for people you care about.
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Looks good, Roel. I put my email in for the beta. :-)
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Hi creator!
I've completed your Hippo Landing Page Audit Submission Landing Page Audit.
Here some sneak peak;
Hippo Landing Page Audit Submission's Overall Score: 64
Your best score is on Compatibility / Performance
And you need to focus to improve Story
You can see the details about your project from https://productdoctor.co/audits/5120238201If you want to measure other values of your website by exploring other audits that we have, Product doctor is a digital product check-up tool for indie hackers and product owners. Understand your products' UX potential, draw your road map and discuss the next steps with our experts!
You can check out productdoctor.co website and checklist other values of your digital product!
Invited the first beta testers to Testflight. Good variety of users: family, friends but also the PM of apps from my previous job. Not many people from outside my own contacts yet, have to see how to get more signups from external people.
Hoping to get some serious feedback and data on how they use Hippo.
After doing research and working on a prototype in Airtable, I'm starting development for Hippo in Xcode today.
I've decided to develop a native Swift iOS app. I think I can get the best experience for my users doing so, and I love to learn Swift. Also, I don't know much of the cross-platform frameworks.
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Hi Roel, I just left a comment on your other post - which answers my question.
Swift is great! If you are looking for cross-platform for an app like hippo, you could look at flutter or react-native. I think both of those options would work great for something cross platform.
Good luck!
25 Comments
Exciting :)
Would love to hear how many convert from the free trial.
Yes, it is 😱 I have no idea what to expect so I'm eager to find out. I'll post another update in two weeks or so when I know more!
That's awesome! I guess interrogating your mom is the next necessary step for the business. 😉
She is denying to have anything to do with this... 🕵️♂️
Hey Roel, congratulations! I had a look at your website, very nice landing page. Hopefully I can reach that level of sophistication soon! Can I make one suggestiong though - I really dislike websites playing music automatically, and I don't think it adds anything. Just my opinion though, you may disagree.
Thanks 🙏 I totally agree with you on the music playing and that was not my intention! I guess safari on Mac blocks that automatically, I'll turn it off!
Great! I would rethink the pricing, though. I believe if people are ok paying $2, they would also pay $4 or more. And it will be nearly impossible to market with that little revenue per user.
I recently doubled my prices (from $9 to $18) and didn't see any drop in conversion rate (low number though).
Hi, great advice! I picked a price point which is below existing note tools because I feel my app is not mature enough yet to ask more. But you're right, investing in marketing would probably be not worth it with this little revenue per user.
I'll think about it!
Hi Roel, congrats on your huge achievement!
What I am wondering is your timeline.
Which came first,
Thanks!
I started building the product first. Then a few months in, I started building the 'pipeline'.
I recruited about 40 beta testers via various ways, including posting here on Indie Hackers. I also joined Makerlog, a great community with fellow indie makers. And slowly built a twitter following.
A couple of weeks ago I launched on Product Hunt. Having even a small following helped a lot to get Hippo featured. I got quite some leads from that launch.
Right now I'm focusing on marketing more in niche groups, I'm planning to reach out to quite a lot of them in the next two weeks.
Huge congrats!
👍 Not enough yet to cover my Makerlog Gold subscription 😹
I'm going to need to see some Stripe verification 🤣. Congrats man! The first 10 customers are the hardest to get!
Haha 😁 The App Store doesn't support Stripe so you have to take my word for it 🤗
This is awesome! Keep up the great work.
Edit: Also, did you change the icon? It looks great!
Thanks 🥳! And yes, it's a new icon designed by @moorstas. I love it!
Congrats dude just got my first paying subscriber too!
We've got this 💪
Ah nice! Congrats! 🔥
Good start
Congrats, getting the first paying customer is always great 🎉
Congrats! I know you must be feeling great!
It's a good start 🥳
Great! Congrats, Roel!!
Congrats
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Haha 😁 That's a good trick!
No plans for an Android version yet, I'm working on a Mac version and iCloud sync right now. Sorry..
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