00:00:19 ◼ ► I mean, this is, I think, just a reality of life as you get, you know, like time, it feels,
00:00:28 ◼ ► Like, it's wild to think that Widget Smith has now been a part of my life and a pretty,
00:00:32 ◼ ► you know, significant major part of my life for five years, you know, for a toddler who's
00:00:40 ◼ ► Like, it's a long time and a lot has changed in that time, but weirdly and somewhat interestingly,
00:00:48 ◼ ► and I think the broad sort of focus, I think, that'd be interesting to unpack this episode
00:00:56 ◼ ► You know, we talk of that, you know, Under the Radar is a show about independent iOS app
00:01:00 ◼ ► development, and that is something that you and I have now been talking about for almost
00:01:05 ◼ ► And, you know, 10 years ago when we started Under the Radar, it was something we sort of
00:01:20 ◼ ► And five years ago when Widget Smith had its moment, you know, like I actually just published
00:01:26 ◼ ► a blog post about this that kind of walks through Widget Smith's sudden rise to popularity, which
00:01:32 ◼ ► sort of the long story short, in case you weren't here five years ago, is that Widget Smith was
00:01:39 ◼ ► This was in the September of 2020 when we were all kind of struggling through the pandemic
00:01:45 ◼ ► And it got, it sort of took advantage of stuff, work that I'd done for building Watch Smith,
00:01:57 ◼ ► And then when Apple added widgets, I was like, great, I'll just take Watch Smith and port
00:02:03 ◼ ► Didn't thinking too much of it, you know, I expected it would have the same audience as
00:02:10 ◼ ► And Widget Smith, on the other hand, about two days after iOS 14 launched and, you know,
00:02:18 ◼ ► I'd launched on day one, which was a whole story in and of itself because that was the year
00:02:23 ◼ ► that Apple announced during the iPhone video that the iOS update was coming the following
00:02:49 ◼ ► And then that following Friday, it, someone's, it started on TikTok as best as I can tell,
00:02:55 ◼ ► but people started making videos about using it to make very aesthetic home screens for their
00:03:08 ◼ ► And so now they had these whole new options available and Widget Smith was like right there.
00:03:12 ◼ ► And it turned out rather than it being a small market, it was actually a massive market.
00:03:20 ◼ ► And, you know, it was the number one app in the world for a couple of weeks thereafter,
00:03:25 ◼ ► which is still a wild thing to say, even five years on and having it been part of my life for so long.
00:03:33 ◼ ► And at the time I remember very distinctly, A, not knowing what on earth, what was, what to do.
00:03:38 ◼ ► Like there's nothing, there's no way you can prepare yourself for something like this happening.
00:03:44 ◼ ► Like you are just suddenly, you know, you're just suddenly, you know, your boat is rather
00:03:48 ◼ ► than being calmly going down the river, suddenly you are in the rapids and all you can do is
00:04:03 ◼ ► Do I now need to change my company fundamentally and structurally and significantly in order
00:04:15 ◼ ► Because the scale that it's operating at is now something that is many orders of magnitude
00:04:26 ◼ ► And so I had these conversations with people and I talked, you know, and it never really
00:04:30 ◼ ► went anywhere, but I was like trying to understand, do I need to hire like an engineering manager
00:04:39 ◼ ► Do I need to hire other people or other, like, what is going to happen as a result of this?
00:04:46 ◼ ► And the long story short for that is in the end, I decided, you know, I don't think I need
00:04:55 ◼ ► And the app would have done, you know, had a different path than it has had the last five
00:05:06 ◼ ► Like in many ways, it's not that dissimilar in my mind to if I'd gone down that path, it's
00:05:12 ◼ ► somewhat similar to if I just like sold the app and just sold it to some company who would
00:05:19 ◼ ► It wouldn't have been mine, um, in the way that it is still like a hundred percent of the
00:05:28 ◼ ► Um, it is something that I've, you know, it is mine in a way that, and maybe this, and there's
00:05:33 ◼ ► a little bit of obviously like, I don't know, like pride and, uh, sort of selfishness in
00:05:39 ◼ ► that, but like, I like that I can say that it's mine, that it isn't as much of, you know,
00:05:48 ◼ ► I think I, I wouldn't have necessarily been able to predict five years ago that it would
00:05:52 ◼ ► have been possible for, you know, and it's not that I'm saying I'm the only person doing
00:06:04 ◼ ► More recently, I hired, uh, Stephen Hackett and Mike Hurley to do some work for them on
00:06:11 ◼ ► Like I have, have help for supporting features inside of the app, but the core part, the like,
00:06:17 ◼ ► you know, the indie iOS development part of it is something that I've been able to keep
00:06:35 ◼ ► And while I don't think it's for everybody, and I don't think it's a path to success for
00:06:40 ◼ ► many people in the sense of building a sustainable indie app development business is incredibly
00:06:45 ◼ ► difficult and incredibly unlikely, um, unfortunately in many ways in the modern app store that I think
00:06:55 ◼ ► or something that is a compliment to another consulting business or something like that.
00:07:10 ◼ ► I think partly because there are some really fun and interesting aspects about being involved
00:07:15 ◼ ► in all the different parts that I'm not outsourcing and anything completely out of my day.
00:07:35 ◼ ► in the code, you know, fixing old objective C libraries and working in, you know, really low
00:07:55 ◼ ► And I sort of in a weird way, like I'm just glad to be able to report that five years on,
00:08:06 ◼ ► It's worked for me to have an app that has millions of users, um, but ultimately not be
00:08:12 ◼ ► maintained and managed by this massive team that, you know, even though the size of the
00:08:26 ◼ ► And, um, yeah, I don't know if it's not a transferable lesson necessarily, because I don't think there's
00:08:32 ◼ ► that many other apps in the world who have been made by one person and then went out to that
00:08:42 ◼ ► And so it's not necessarily a universally applicable lesson, but it is a lesson or something
00:08:48 ◼ ► Nevertheless, as, you know, as indie app developers, it's something that I'm very proud of.
00:08:57 ◼ ► Like you, you built, you put in a lot of time over the years preceding it to build up a bunch
00:09:05 ◼ ► You made something that a lot of people wanted and took and had value in and it succeeded
00:09:14 ◼ ► And I think it was, it is interesting to, to, to think about like the aspects of Widgetsmith
00:09:20 ◼ ► that made it so that you didn't re you weren't required to hire a big team as the users went
00:09:28 ◼ ► up, you know, that's, that's something that like you can, you can see in different apps.
00:09:35 ◼ ► on a much smaller scale, like how do I remove the need for my app to, to require a big staff
00:09:42 ◼ ► or, or to, you know, to require a lot more ongoing effort as the number of users goes up
00:09:52 ◼ ► Like how, how do you, like if my app suddenly had, you know, a hundred times the user count
00:09:56 ◼ ► that it has now, what, what would, you know, overflow basically like in, in either, either
00:10:03 ◼ ► on the technical side, on the support side, just otherwise like, you know, how, you know,
00:10:09 ◼ ► if I have 10 X or a hundred X the users, what would, what would need to change about how
00:10:20 ◼ ► I think for most apps that, you know, if you, if you start getting 10 or a hundred times the
00:10:29 ◼ ► Now, the good thing is, as you mentioned, like support is, if you have to outsource something
00:10:44 ◼ ► It doesn't, you know, it's not a perfect scaling thing, but it's, it is more scalable than many
00:10:48 ◼ ► But also on the tech side, like, you know, if you're making something where you are, you
00:10:56 ◼ ► know, having to scale servers, for instance, you know, server side support is, you know, very,
00:11:08 ◼ ► that is one of the harder things to scale in a lot of ways, depending on what you're doing.
00:11:12 ◼ ► But like, you know, if you are, if you all of a sudden have a hundred times the user count
00:11:16 ◼ ► and you're maintaining some databases somewhere for your users, like that's going to be quite
00:11:23 ◼ ► And then once you're running a bunch of services or servers, it's like, okay, well, how
00:11:31 ◼ ► If you're, if you have a hundred times the users, are your costs going to go up a hundred
00:11:37 ◼ ► Like whether it's, you know, you're paying for, you know, some AWS resource, are you going
00:11:44 ◼ ► Will you be able to pay for that with the money that these hundred users will bring in?
00:11:48 ◼ ► And again, in this case, like, it seems like you've made some very smart decisions around
00:11:54 ◼ ► how you deal with server side resources and dynamic resources such that that's not a problem
00:12:07 ◼ ► I think it's, and it's a good, maybe a checkpoint or a learning for people to have when you're
00:12:11 ◼ ► building, anytime you build something like asking your, it's easy in some ways to only think
00:12:18 ◼ ► about the, like the expected case, but it's in many ways, it's like thinking about what happens
00:12:29 ◼ ► And because it's sometimes, it's like sometimes, you know, we think about the biggest problem
00:12:34 ◼ ► being if something fails, you know, that if you, you put, you put, you put an app out and
00:12:39 ◼ ► And it's like, well, it's like the, the floor of that is zero, but the ceiling is, can be much
00:12:45 ◼ ► higher and much more complicated and can bring with it a much higher challenge and is something
00:12:53 ◼ ► And so it is definitely something that I think is worth thinking about whenever you build
00:12:57 ◼ ► It's like, would this scale to a hundred, a hundred times the number of people who I think
00:13:04 ◼ ► And if it doesn't like be very careful and be very aware because it is something that, you
00:13:10 ◼ ► know, I try very intentionally and very consciously about to avoid things that wouldn't scale.
00:13:16 ◼ ► And then some of that scaling is also even just from a understanding that you're potentially
00:13:23 ◼ ► saying no to opportunities or options because they wouldn't scale or wouldn't stand up to
00:13:33 ◼ ► the high degree of scrutiny that something being successful would have in a way that is, you
00:13:40 ◼ ► Like there are things, certain types of popular widgets that I just don't do because, you know,
00:13:51 ◼ ► You have one on my, I have one on my phone, someone else's one on their phone, and I can
00:14:00 ◼ ► Now, the nature of that is something that involves moving personal data and potentially very personal
00:14:07 ◼ ► And anytime you do that, you're taking on a massive burden and a massive, massive sort of
00:14:29 ◼ ► Everything is pre-baked and, you know, be able to put onto a CDN and let Cloudflare deal with
00:14:36 ◼ ► Like I'd recently launched in Widgetsmith a wallpaper feature where people can, you know,
00:14:40 ◼ ► I have a bunch of wallpapers that I'm licensing from artists and places to, you know, the people
00:14:53 ◼ ► And it really doesn't matter if, you know, 10 people download it, 10,000 people download
00:15:00 ◼ ► It doesn't really scale and my costs don't scale because of the way that Cloudflare works.
00:15:12 ◼ ► done that if I had not, you know, if I'd not had this philosophy, but I think I've benefited
00:15:18 ◼ ► from having that very conservative, very thoughtful approach that like if it's, if I'm doing something
00:15:23 ◼ ► that doesn't scale to lots of people or would carry with it complexity and challenges that
00:15:29 ◼ ► would require institutional change, you know, that I would need to have if, you know, if
00:15:34 ◼ ► you, anytime you start dealing with user generated content, suddenly you need moderation and you
00:15:38 ◼ ► need all kinds of other things and you're becoming liable for other stuff that you start potentially
00:15:42 ◼ ► needing to hire people to deal with or exposing yourself to a lot of time and energy that someone,
00:15:51 ◼ ► this big, you know, sort of the big Jerry, like scary word of just like making sure that
00:15:55 ◼ ► if you have user generated content and someone puts something in somewhere that is problematic
00:16:06 ◼ ► Like none of my systems involve any data storage of any personal data from anybody at all.
00:16:16 ◼ ► Like there's no, I have no nothing about my users in a direct and concrete way other than
00:16:21 ◼ ► the people who email me, which is, you know, at some point, obviously I know him from whatever
00:16:25 ◼ ► they've emailed me about, but that is just a strategic and structural choice that I've chosen
00:16:33 ◼ ► I don't have all these things because they would bring with them scaling challenges that,
00:16:53 ◼ ► It was in the wake of the Google reader shutdown when all of a sudden everyone's like, oh crap,
00:16:58 ◼ ► And like I made one and I, while I, before I was an iOS developer, I was a, uh, you know,
00:17:05 ◼ ► I do not think Feed Wrangler would have stood up to a hundred times the number of users that
00:17:13 ◼ ► And I know that because even at the relatively small level of usership that it had, but it
00:17:25 ◼ ► know, outages and all kinds of problems and things because that was a structural problem
00:17:30 ◼ ► in some ways that I built myself, built for myself, where I had a system that made scaling
00:17:39 ◼ ► And I'm sure there are people listening to this who are like systems engineers, who that
00:17:42 ◼ ► is their specialty is like working out how to shard databases and doing all this kind of
00:17:48 ◼ ► And like, I just don't, if that's an opportunity that would require those kinds of skills, I've
00:17:56 ◼ ► And I feel good about that because it's allowed me to keep this build, this business and the
00:18:00 ◼ ► structure that I really enjoy, but I'm conscious and very aware that that is a thing that you
00:18:05 ◼ ► have to be able to say no to if you want to say yes to staying sort of small and indie.
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00:19:19 ◼ ► One of the themes of what you're saying here, of what has enabled WidgetSmith to scale and
00:19:25 ◼ ► for you on the business side to almost not scale at all or to scale very little, is a lot of
00:19:39 ◼ ► Like, I intentionally have not created any way in Overcast for users to write text or post
00:19:47 ◼ ► images that would be visible to other users because then you have user-to-user communication,
00:19:53 ◼ ► then you have things like harassment, illegal content being posted, takedowns, like all sorts
00:19:59 ◼ ► And so, you know, and you look at the problem set of a podcast app, it's like I can do 95%
00:20:07 ◼ ► of what people want without incurring some of those giant burdens that would require a staff
00:20:15 ◼ ► You know, one of the areas that I can't do is if I did have 100x user growth all of a sudden
00:20:23 ◼ ► I don't have the headroom for that in my servers and I would have to, and it wouldn't be just a
00:20:30 ◼ ► Like, you know, certain things would have to be re-architected, things like database spreading
00:20:37 ◼ ► But, you know, the good thing is the podcast app market doesn't move that quickly, so I'll
00:20:42 ◼ ► But, you know, by saying no to some of those like big wildcard, like those big warning features
00:20:50 ◼ ► like user-generated content or even on the content production stuff, like if your app, like
00:21:07 ◼ ► But at least that doesn't, you know, the need for that doesn't grow with the number of users
00:21:11 ◼ ► And so you can look at your business and you can say like, I, the decisions you make for
00:21:15 ◼ ► the business, what to do with the product, what not to do are very, very important because
00:21:20 ◼ ► it's obvious like if you, in many cases, it's like, oh, I can, I can do some high percentage
00:21:29 ◼ ► But if I add this one thing or change this one thing about it, it's going to skyrocket the
00:21:35 ◼ ► And in some ways, this, I feel like we don't, as in like American business culture, in so
00:21:43 ◼ ► many ways, things are prescribed to you like, well, this is just what you do this after you
00:21:50 ◼ ► You know, oh, you've, you have a popular app, you got to go raise some money and really blow
00:21:54 ◼ ► it out of the water or hire, you got to hire a big staff, you got to start doing email marketing,
00:22:02 ◼ ► And one of the things that I respect a lot about you is that you are not fooled by those
00:22:18 ◼ ► And I, and a lot of people, myself included, we get easily swayed by the, the cultural pressures
00:22:35 ◼ ► Most of the time, a lot of times it's people who want to sell you things or who want a piece
00:22:40 ◼ ► So they, they obviously have slanted motives a lot of times, but we have the ability to
00:22:46 ◼ ► say no and to say, actually, that's not how I want to run my business and to choose a different
00:22:56 ◼ ► because they're, they're going to want you to do things either in a way that benefits them
00:23:03 ◼ ► And so they want to say like, well, this is obviously the next step because this is what
00:23:10 ◼ ► Like one of the great things about it being your business is that as long as you're staying
00:23:16 ◼ ► in business and you're, you're satisfying your own needs and goals, you can generally do things
00:23:29 ◼ ► If there's certain costs that other people say you have to go into this area, even though
00:23:37 ◼ ► And I think a huge part of indie scalability has always been figuring out what to say no
00:23:56 ◼ ► you some version of that, or it might, it might not get you as big as you could potentially
00:24:01 ◼ ► It's like, if you can, if you can make, you know, 75% of the money as the maximum possible
00:24:14 ◼ ► Um, and that seems like, it seems like you are in particular a master of that kind of logic
00:24:19 ◼ ► of like, of being able to look at, at what everyone says, like, this is the obvious next
00:24:31 ◼ ► Well, maybe, maybe another way of saying that, and this is getting a little bit, we can, maybe
00:24:35 ◼ ► we can end with a little bit of philosophy, but it's the sense of like, I think one of the
00:24:39 ◼ ► more fundamental things in life and this applies in business or just in so many parts of our
00:24:44 ◼ ► life is sort of being able to have a good definition for enough and like, what is enough for someone?
00:25:09 ◼ ► like, I think there's an element in business that the, so much of it is structured around
00:25:26 ◼ ► And I understand in some ways that philosophy for a publicly traded big company who like in
00:25:35 ◼ ► some ways is structured around the idea that it is about maximizing profit and it is about
00:25:49 ◼ ► I'm going to make a small, you know, take whatever, $10 million, put it into this thing.
00:25:56 ◼ ► Like that is all about growth and about, you know, if that's turning that $10 million into
00:26:12 ◼ ► And I think in my case, and it's, you're very generous in the way that you described me,
00:26:16 ◼ ► but I don't, it's like, I'm not doing this perfectly, but it is definitely something that
00:26:19 ◼ ► I think I'm, have been able to navigate with Widgetsmith in particular, that understanding
00:26:26 ◼ ► that if I want to optimize for, I mean, like functionally I'm making a business because
00:26:33 ◼ ► I want to support my family, like, and support your family can mean a lot of things and making
00:26:53 ◼ ► Like there's lots of things that would stop serving my family and that fundamental goal.
00:26:58 ◼ ► And I think because you, if you can, if you can frame your, your, your business, your work,
00:27:03 ◼ ► your, you know, your career around something that is tangible in that way, like you're able
00:27:07 ◼ ► to much better define enough for yourself because you're trying to serve something bigger and
00:27:16 ◼ ► And so like in my case, I am confident that Widgetsmith could have made more money in the
00:27:27 ◼ ► whole bunch more money, like I'm pretty confident that would happen, but I'm perfectly content
00:27:32 ◼ ► and happy that I didn't have that because I made choices that meant that it's done very
00:27:43 ◼ ► I feel very grateful to it in my life, but it's a choice that I made that it's okay for
00:27:48 ◼ ► it not to be always growing, for it to be something that it gives me more than enough income and
00:28:04 ◼ ► And I think that is in some ways the thing that I am most delighted about to be able to
00:28:15 ◼ ► situation like this occur and to stay in indie because you decide that the indie life is enough
00:28:20 ◼ ► for you, that you don't have to turn into a corporate thing that's trying to, you know,
00:28:30 ◼ ► just grow and, or it can grow to a place that's stable and nice and comfortable and allow you
00:28:43 ◼ ► And I, who knows if Widget Smith will be around in another five years, but I hope it will be.
00:28:48 ◼ ► And I hope it will be in some ways because I'm making lots of small sustainable choices
00:28:56 ◼ ► It's like, no, no, we're just going to keep incrementally making it better and better and