Heydai
Know where your time goes
Our very first Product Hunt launch!
Feedback and support greatly appreciated:
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/heydai
Given that Heydai is a daily planner and time tracker to help you in 2024, what better way for Heydai to kick off the new year than with a Product Hunt launch?
More to come, but happy to be celebrating this milestone. Enjoy your day and New Year 🙏🏻
I'm excited to share this reimagined version of Heydai with you for 2024!
Heydai exists to help answer two questions:
- Where is my time going?
- Does my time match my priorities?
After several months of iterating, I'm confident in Heydai's ability to answer those two questions. Using the app now genuinely adds value to my day and I hope it will for you as well.
If you have an iOS device, I'd love feedback if you're willing to give Heydai a try. There's a 7-day free trial when you first sign up that I'm more than happy to extend via RevenueCat if interested – just let me know.
Thanks for your time and support 🙏🏻
It's been about 9 months since I last posted an update for Time Advisor (now Heydai).
In that time, I quit my job, rebranded the app, launched a beta, iterated based on feedback, and finally submitted something to the App Store. After one rejection due to insufficient info in the description, Apple approved Heydai on March 22 for App Store release. I set a pre-order date for April 1 while I finalized a few other things, and now Heydai is finally here.
In one sense, I'm really proud of what I've accomplished so far. Heydai is the culmination of all my career experience, years of thought, and so many late nights. It wasn't easy, but I proved to myself that I could do it after so many times not following through.
However, I'm also extremely embarrassed by how bad of an entrepreneur I am. After discovering the build in public community and the many lessons contained therein, I poorly attempted some idea validation before deferring to "some other apps like this are successful so I can be too."
I've also ignored all advice at finding a niche target audience, instead opting for what I read to be Pinterest's approach of starting generic and experimenting with different audiences after the core product is built.
But now I've spent months building something that might only be helpful for me. Even worse, I might continue doing that because I love the work and am passionate about my vision for what I want Heydai to become.
At the end of the day, I don't regret the choices I've made on this journey. Mostly because my deepest motivation all along hasn't been for any financial success, but that's a story for another post.
Where I go from here is a bit up in the air. I'm eager to dive deeper into ASO and see what what it takes to grow an app like Heydai. I also applied to an accelerator and made it to the final interview round held this week. I still have a bit of runway, but assuming I don't make the accelerator I will likely pick up a part-time engineering role somewhere to extend runway indefinitely.
No matter what comes next though, two things I am certain to continue: seeking to learn and learning to seek. Now go make every day your heydai 👇🏻
Thanks for reading 🙏🏻
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Congrats on the release! Your App Store page looks really nice.
To be honest, I think marketing a calendar/assistant app might be tough. You need to find who your target audience is and how to reach them. As you said, niching down might help to get started.
Maybe an explainer video could help too. I am unsure exactly what your app does/how it can help me (e.g. do I have to add data myself? does it automatically track data? does it suggest things to do?)
My biggest question is how AI ties into this, as most of the features mentioned are not AI related:
Key features: - Guided flows to plan and review your day - Unified timeline that shows your free time - Progress tracking for large tasks - Repeating tasks - Apple Calendar integration - Notifications to plan and review your day - Dashboard charts & history - Dark mode - And more-
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You should also display what the benefits are, how it helps my life, not only the technical features.
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Thanks for taking the time to provide this feedback, Cristian 🙏🏻 very helpful.
The AI aspect of Heydai is in how it recommends your agenda each day. Behind the scenes, Heydai is predicting how likely something will be done on time based on the due dates and rough estimates you set across all your things, plus other patterns it learns about your time. It uses those predictions to pre-fill your plan for the day, which you can adjust from there as desired.
I have a small explainer in the app before you sign in, but agree that there could and should be so much more.
Marketing is certainly a huge challenge. One unique-ish spin I think is emphasizing wellbeing over productivity, which Heydai is built for. I'm also considering building an experience to discover and collaborate with a life coach to set goals and stay accountable. Would shift marketing to life coaches as they could be champions for the app. Much more research and validation needed though.
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First of all, congratulations on the App Store launch.
Maybe you don’t see it like that, but in my book that is already a big deal. 💪
So you didn’t buikd in public, but you can still go in public, now and share what you learned, step by step and share that eith folks. Trust me, they will appreciate it, as long there is a value in your posts ( what you learned, what you would do differently etc. )
Once again, congrats.-
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Thanks for the kind words, Jan 🙏🏻 I think now that the app is launched, I'll feel comfortable sharing progress and learnings more regularly. More to come 🤞🏻
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After a month of learning and sharing, I’m ready to get back to building Time Advisor.
Things I learned along the way:
- Time Advisor is difficult to describe without showing
- My target group is too broad / non-existent (just people… lol)
- Success with a B2C app is going to be a huge challenge
- I have much higher product risk than market risk (re: The Mom Test)
- Framer is awesome
- And much more
All things to keep thinking about and iterating on.
New landing page:
It isn’t perfect, but it gets the main ideas across and gives me something to share until the app is ready.
Now I’m off to follow the last rule of 👍 in The Mom Test: “Go build your dang company already.”
Being an engineer, what’s the first thing I did for Time Advisor (after buying a domain, of course)? I started building an MVP 😬
And that was wrong.
The problem – one of many I’m sure – I didn’t really talk to anyone else to understand if they’d use it. While I started this adventure to solve a personal need, what works for me may not work for others. So I’m doing some course correction and put together a landing page using mocker.app by @SamHayden to help validate the idea with others.
Any feedback is greatly appreciated!
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Here is what happens when I land on your page.
First thing I read:
Time Advisor helps slow it down
What I think : Slow what down? What does that mean? I don't get it. I need to read the small sentance just before this one.
Then I read:
LIFE GOES BY QUICKLY
What I think : Yes life goes by quickly, but why would I want to slow it down? When life is slow, it's boring.
Then I read:
A time management assistant to help you be more intentional with your free time
What I think : Ok, like a calendar? More intentional? What does "be more intentional" even mean? Talk about the product already, what does it do?
Then I scroll and read:
Managing our time is overwhelming
What I think : What?! No. Managing life is complicated. But time? I never think to myself : OMG, I'm trying to manage my time, I'm so overwhelmed. It's about the things I do with my time, not time itself.
At this point I'm tired of reading. The ratio between interesting information versus time reading is not good enough, I close the page. I still have no idea what the product does or how it looks.
Sorry if this sounds harsh. I hope my feeback is helpfull. Good luck for your project and have a nice day! :)
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This is incredibly helpful, thank you! I much prefer honest feedback over sugar coating. I’ll have another iteration done later today that incorporates a lot of this feedback.
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When reading quickly your landing page I don't understand what you will do to help me.
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I have issues with managing multiple tasks and prioritizing tasks. Sometimes I lost track and backlog tasks never come up. Sometimes using a time management tool for small tasks seems an overkill. for 2 min task, I need to configure my time management app for 5 min. I haven't found a proper solution that fits my personal needs. Right now I am going full manual, pen and paper. Easier to note, go back and revise and prioritize.
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^ this - I'm the exact same but I use my iPad and Apple Pencil.
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You mention you skipped a few steps (oof!) and now it seems you're going directly to landing page design, which is again skipping steps.
Have you talked to potential customers—your target audience—before even this step?
I've found it's immensely helpful to find five or so people and just chat with them about what their problems are like in the relevant space. Done well, this can give you the exact insights you need to focus your project and especially a landing page.
(If you haven't yet, check out the book The Mom Test.)
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I think you are right that I am still skipping steps. My goal was not to create a real landing page, just a temporary one to test whether I can articulate the idea and get feedback on it. Turns out 1) I’m not very good at articulating it and 2) it’s not the same as actually talking to potential customers as described in The Mom Test (I read a quick summary and will def get the full book – thanks for the recommendation!).
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Here is my 2 cents.
I usually ignore these since there are so many in the market and so many startups with tons of money.
If it was me, as a indie hacker, I would never try to take on billion dollar companies head on. You have to attack from the 10% they don't want to touch since it is not enough profitable for them.
Here is an idea for you. Some kind of wrapper over Monday and Jira etc... that does something better but still play with them since the rest of the company does. Something with no install.
Then "Land and Expand". Push it to employees and before they have time to react you are in and they have to buy the Enterprise plan.
Good luck! -
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Hi looks cool, I would add some mockups / screenshots of the idea 😁
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Thanks, screenshots coming soon!
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Definitely a product idea that has potential for customers. I urge you to checkout reclaim.ai.
Their product automates time management (calendar blocking) depending on your daily activities and goals-
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There’s definitely some overlap, I’ll give it a try – thanks!
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The default Google calendar has this feature where you simply select things like "Learning to play guitar", "Doing exercises", etc, and Google calendar automatically add these activities to your calendar in your free time. So you'll compete with Google.
Also, as others have mentioned, your landing page is very confusing. Are you actually able to slow time? You lost me there.
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No, but it should feel like life is slowing down. At least it does to me when I pay close attention to my time.
I've used a lot of apps, but somehow I missed the memo with Google calendar goals. This is very close to what I'm going for with the free time recommendations in Time Advisor, so that's a bit demoralizing. My vision for the app still has several differentiating features/workflows, but it's difficult to convey without showing.
I really appreciate the feedback, these are good challenges for me to keep iterating on. Thanks for taking the time!
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Of course you can't chose how to feel, but it's part of the process. Just smile and keep going.
You might have to iterate, pivot, or maybe niche down. There might be some kind of people that needs it for X reason, I don't know.
But don't try to reinvent the wheel. If you don't know any big company making money from this it's because maybe there is no market for it.
Don't worry. If you can't find any niche for this idea, I'm sure you'll find plenty more ideas.
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If you don't know any big company making money from this it's because maybe there is no market for it.
Todoist has over 10M ARR as far as I know. Google calendar goals also seems like decent market validation to me – just because it's free doesn't mean they're not making money from it.
Just smile and keep going.
That's the plan!
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How is it better then a dozen of others?
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A lot of apps focus on being more productive. Time Advisor focuses on balancing that productivity with living in the moment (e.g. spending time with family, getting outdoors, reading, whatever you enjoy doing, etc.).
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What I'm missing personally is the how. Maybe screenshots might help, but I'm not really inclined to try the product just yet because I don't really know what it does and how exactly it works.
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Understood, thanks! I’ll have another iteration done later today that refines the message and focuses more on how.
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Awesome, looking forward to that!
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Landing page V2 is here 😁 https://timeadvisor.app
I put a little more effort into this one using Framer. My Figma (and design skills generally) are very lacking, but Framer made it easy to build some basic visuals.
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Mockup looks good, my only concern with such time-tracking tools is that personally I find that I spend more time tracking/planning than actually doing the work. Maybe you could describe how easy/hard it would be to use the app and how much time it would take/save.
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That’s really helpful, thanks! Time tracking is important and difficult to get right.
Some things I can automate – calendar, workouts, etc.
Some things I can infer/learn – sleep, meals, etc.
And the rest I’m building ways to provide quick feedback for – when completing things and during the end of day recap to fill in unknowns.
I’ll try to sum this up and add it to the page.
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Thanks again for the feedback, everyone! Landing page V2 is finally here:
https://timeadvisor.appAlong with a new Landing Page Feedback post.
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This comment was deleted 3 years ago
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I went through startup school a while back and made the mistake anyway 😅
It’s just so much easier to get started building something, but it likely won’t be the right thing.
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I don't know. I did this myself and just built the thing instead of doing all this landing page nonsense. It might be different if you are trying to introduce something very unique to the market. I worked on an already established idea which had lots of alternative products.
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On September 22, 2020, I decided to step away from my first major startup effort, Concurrent.ai. I was extremely proud of the idea and my execution of it up to that point, and it confirmed for me that startup founder is a journey I desire.
However, while preparing my application for YC's Winter 2021 batch, it finally dawned on me how much of a long-term commitment running a funded startup would be. As much as I enjoyed working on it, Concurrent.ai was lacking one crucial thing that I knew would eventually lead to my complete burnout – it wasn't the difference I wanted to make.
Instead, I kept coming back to a previous idea I had worked on but never followed through with, centered around the question:
- What if you could give people more time?
- Or rather, what if you could help people find more time? Is that the same thing?
I think it is, and I can't think of a greater gift to give others than time. You find things by looking for them, and Time Advisor is coming to help us all look – I'm committed to it.
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Committing to something is where it all begins! What's your take on time management?
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There are two high level aspects to the app:
- Recommending what to spend time on throughout the day
- Providing insights about how time is actually spent
Recommendations fill in gaps on your calendar and balance things you need to get done with things you want to be doing.
Insights come at the end of each day and week to review whether "how you want to spend your time" equals "how you spend your time," and can suggest how to bridge the gap between them.
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1 Comment
It looks slick! I like the U.I. and the concept is solid. I read through your previous posts. I would say that coming here for the first time I see a great product, not necessarily the struggle that it took to get here (in a positive way).
Good luck with it! I think that finding a niche will come with time and if you are getting use out of it that will help.
Maybe your niche could be developers? We are a lot that struggles with this in general. Not knowing where our time goes. And we have very specific needs to study and organize our personal time that not everyone has.
I know for me, I face the challenges of figuring out how to organize my time over the next year so that I can learn and grow my income.