yaha

Over the last few days I moved past the 200 subscriber mark for the yaha waitlist. This is both exciting, and also a little daunting.

200 isn't many. It's a small amount, but also not insignificant. But there's now 200 (211 to be precise) people waiting to use my little app, and the longer they wait, the less interested they'll be.

It's a tricky balancing act, between rolling out slowly, and not letting the list go cold.

I'm looking to keep them up to date with progress, but I know that no matter how much I keep them up to date, their interest will still wane. Ultimately it'll have waned a lot even a day after subscribing as the interest moment passes and life takes over again.

So I need to decide if I let the next bunch in soon. Probably should in the next couple weeks at least.

Where did the latest batch of sign ups come from? This tweet, which was RT'd by the guy I replied to, brought in around 15-20 new subs.

I've had a few people I've known install the app via TestFlight in the past few weeks, but today was the first time I invited a stranger on the internet to install it and give it a shot.

It feels great to have reached this milestone, as it's a big one. It's the first of many launches, and the most important, because without this one, there are no other launches.

I decided to spend the time on a call with folks, walking through the onboarding and getting them to tell me all the things they didn't like or found confusing, as well as any suggested improvements.

I'm 2 calls in, with one more today, 3 more already scheduled tomorrow and one on Saturday. Already have a bunch of notes from the two calls, some things I knew, others I hadn't thought of.

I really recommend doing the extra yards getting on calls with the first few users until you've reached the point that you've got 80% of the feedback you'll ever get. They say that within 5-10 folks you'll get to that point.

I've been using Skype for iOS for this, as it allows them to share their screen so I can see what they're up to as they onboard. Highly recommend and it's free.

If you're awash with money, lookback.io have been good for this and add some extra features on top.

All in all, psyched at getting people onboard, and raring to go on implementing the tweaks that'll get me ready to open up to the wider list.

I wasn't expecting many subscribers yesterday (100 was a stretch goal pre-launch), and yet 80 folks subscribed and confirmed, and another 34 unconfirmed.

Today I didn't really do any promotion, but a couple of friends with audiences tweeted about the app, and another 50 (confirmed) subscribers signed up, with another 9 unconfirmed.

That puts the totals at 130 confirmed subscribers, plus 44 unconfirmed. Far more than I was hoping for.

It's a bit annoying to have unconfirmed subscribers that I can't contact, but still, on the plus side there are a lot of people I can contact!

Expecting it to drop off quite a bit tomorrow, but we'll see.

After working on it all weekend, I shipped my carefully crafted landing page today.

I spent a lot of time caressing the details, writing copy that made me smile and adding in little design details that weren't exactly necessary but are what I call "digital craftmanship", taking care of the little details and showing that you care.

So far today launch has gone really well considering it's really all been via my personal Twitter and Instagram accounts.

I've had 350 visitors on the site, with 80 subscribers, plus another 34 who are yet to confirm their email.

I'd be psyched if I can hit 100 subs in the next couple days.

Finally got to the point where I can install the app on my phone, so I'm now test user #1!

Still a long way to go, but it's functional at a core level (despite some obvious missing features, like being able to re-order habits, and having an onboarding flow that makes sense).

Excited to finally be testing this out and dog-fooding my own app.

This morning I sat down to start work on the habit app, with 5 days clear ahead of me due to taking a day off in lieu, plus Easter weekend.

Before starting I thought, best ask myself why I'm building this app.

A few hours later, I emerged realising the reasons I wanted to build this app meant that the direction I wanted to take it in was quite different from the simple "like the one I already use plus two features".

So I dreamt up what my ideal habit app would look like. It'd work with my routines, it'd not threaten me with an all-or-nothing streak, it'd help me be more self-aware without being overpowering, it'd be minimal too.

With that in hand, I began work on an initial prototype.

I originally started work on yaha for two reasons, one to get back into making stuff, having taken a couple years out to focus on other things in life, and secondarily because I'd been using a habit app myself, and noticed it didn't quite fulfil what I was after.

I'd been using a habit app for a couple of years, even paying for it as I saw the value in tools that helped me build healthy habits, but I'd realised that recently I'd been using it less.

I thought the solution was to build a replica of what I'd been using, and add a couple of features (API integration and public profiles).

So I started down that route, first with a simple Vue setup, before moving to React (realising I'd be building in React Native, so React being a better place to start).