I'm embarrassed, but I finally did it
by Sean MoirIt'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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