201: Widgetsmith
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Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development.
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I'm Mark O'Arment.
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And I'm David Smith.
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Under the Radar is never longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.
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So David, a bit of a big episode.
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Before I pour congratulations all over you, tell me, what are these apps that I'm about
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to read off have in common?
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Gmail, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Zoom.
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They're all free?
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Those are all apps that your app, WidgetSmith, is getting more downloads than right now.
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You are ahead of Gmail, Instagram, Facebook, you're ahead of all of those apps.
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Your app, WidgetSmith, is number one in the App Store, has been number one in the App
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Store for, what, about a week as we record?
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It's hit number one Friday, September 18th, and we're recording on Monday, September 28th
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now, so about 10 days, and it's been number one the whole time.
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That is incredible.
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You're telling me.
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I am so happy for you.
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I have so many questions, but I really just want to hear from you.
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How did this happen, and then what is this like?
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Under the Radar is a tricky venue to do the long, long version of something when it's
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only been 13 minutes or less.
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I was saying, "The funny thing about this, I feel like I've been in training for this
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for almost a decade now."
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In July of 2011, I started a show called Developing Perspective, and that was never longer than
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Then 200 episodes ago, we started Under the Radar, which is never longer than 30 minutes.
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That was all in training and preparation for this.
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There is too much.
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Let me sum up.
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It's crazy, yes.
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I talked about WidgetSmith on Under the Radar a couple months ago, and it wasn't a secret.
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It wasn't this big novel thing that I've been tinkering away with in obscurity and suddenly
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showed to the world.
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It's like, "No, I've been talking about this for a long time in public, working on it,
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sharing screenshots, talking about it."
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The last week and a half ago, iOS 14 suddenly appeared, and we all frantically ran around
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trying to get our builds done and submitted.
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I launched WidgetSmith, and it launched the way I expected it to, which is the way most
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of my apps launch.
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They initially go out into the world, and the initial audience for them is the Apple
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That's the group of people that I'm a part of, and it seemed to be relatively well-received
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I kind of had the usual level of interest.
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Then, like I said, on Friday the 18th, it got picked up on TikTok of all places.
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It started being shared in a number of videos on TikTok, and it just kind of kept growing
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It very quickly became this thing where the tool and the ability that I feel like all
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summer, the developer community and the tech world has been viewing in this very utilitarian,
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very like, "Oh, Widget are interesting because of how much data I can show on them, and I'm
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going to do all this clever, and it's all about glanceable information."
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Once that got into the hands of the general public, and they realized that they could
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make their home screen look just the way they wanted and express themselves creatively and
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make it exactly how they wanted, it's one of those things where so often I make apps
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and people have to explain it or you have to talk about it to someone.
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The impression I've gotten now from millions of people is, as soon as they saw this, they're
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like, "I want this.
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I want that on my home screen.
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I want to put a picture of my kid here.
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I want to put the date here.
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I want it to be just the shade of green or just the shade of pink, and I want it to look
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As soon as they realized that they can do that and Widget Smith allows them to do that,
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they're excited.
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The app has just taken off and taken off in a way that I genuinely never thought would
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I've been making iOS apps for over 12 years now, and it's something that I have had a
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lot of success in that time and in that process, and I'm very fortunate for that.
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I've been very grateful for being able to do this for 12 years, that I think there are
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a lot of people who have started in this business trying to make it work and it just doesn't
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I've been very fortunate to just keep hustling along over the last 12 years.
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In my mind, that was the level of success or whatever I was ever going to get.
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I was making something that I'll find my niches and I'll build them out, and that's fine because
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it's just me.
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I'm just a one-man shop coding in my basement, and I don't need more than a niche in order
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to make a business because it's just me.
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And I'm not supporting a big team.
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I can just make this work.
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And I never expected that I would make something that became whatever the opposite of a niche
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It's clearly this.
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I hit a mainstream success.
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I don't know what the words are for this thing, but it's really weird when I see my name quoted
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in an article in Glamour magazine.
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Widdjesmith has been all over the place, but that was the one that totally was just like,
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That's fantastic.
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Of all the places that I could ever imagine seeing my name show up somewhere, that is
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the opposite of whatever it is.
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If I've ever saw myself in Macworld or something, it's like, "Okay, yeah, that's cool.
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I'm super excited to be in Macworld, but it makes sense."
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But the places this app has gone and the attention it's gotten, and in many ways, honestly, just
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the most gratifying thing is the amount of happiness it seems to have brought people.
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In a time when there's not so much that's super happy and fun going on, it's been an
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outlet for people, I think, to be able to express themselves.
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Every time they pick up their phone, they smile because it looks just the way they like
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It shows them a picture of their kid, or it shows them a quote that gives them inspiration,
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or whatever it is they're doing.
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The things people are doing to come, or making their phone look like Windows 95 or Windows
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3.1, if that's what makes you excited and happy, more power to you, man.
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It's just really cool to see.
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Something that I spent the summer making, just casually in my basement, has now been
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able to bring that much creativity into the world.
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It's just staggering.
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Yeah, I mean, there's so many angles to this that we could talk about that we probably
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will eventually.
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It might take multiple episodes.
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It might be more than 30 minutes' worth.
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I love that this happened to you, because you have done so much out there, and you really
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have worked to this point.
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Like you said, there was this great clip where you were saying, "No one's going to out
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underscore, underscore," and that was a month or two ago, talking about how Widget
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Smith is the culmination of so much that you've done over the last few years, and the skill
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set you've built up over so many years to be able to get out there on day one and have
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something ready to go for new features of the OS.
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This whole practice and skill set you've developed over time has led to optimize you
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for success at this point.
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So that's wonderful.
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I'm also just so happy for you as your friend that this happened to you.
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This is amazing.
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I guess one thing I want to—and by the way, what the app does is great.
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As you said, just enabling all this creativity, that's fantastic.
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I absolutely love that.
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We did a whole bunch on ATP last week about how awesome this creativity is that people
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have unleashed.
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I will say something on that point, though.
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It's just something that you touched on that I just wanted to mention as something
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that is worth saying in this context.
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You just said some nice things about Widget Smith, and when you say it, and you say it's
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a nice app, and you say it's a good app, I still, in the back of my mind, think you're
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just being nice.
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And I just want to say that because—and I think this is just something that—I mean,
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we've talked about it countless times on the show, but I think it's important to
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say that feelings of being an imposter or being like, "One day you're going to get
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found out," and like, "I see all the problems in Widget Smith, and I know that it's in
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some ways not my best work.
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I made this at a time when the world was falling apart in a lot of ways, and I was horribly
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distracted, and the timelines were all weird, and I know I could have done better."
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And so I see it through that lens, and I still feel in some ways like an imposter as a result.
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But at the same time, I can also have the wherewithal to say that this is my—I counted
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it this week—this is the 59th app I've made.
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And it took 59 apps to actually have that breakaway hit.
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And it's sort of just that reminder to people who are starting out in this field—because
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I forget the impression that a lot of under-the-radar listeners are the kind of people who are like
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me 12 years ago, wanting to get into this, wanting to do it.
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And when they make something and they want to show it to the world, they feel like—they
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see all the flaws in it, and they see all the problems.
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And I just want to say, it's like, that doesn't go away.
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I have an app that has tens of thousands of five-star reviews, which is the most five-star
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reviews I have ever had for anything.
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It's probably more than the number of five-star reviews I've ever had for any of my other
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products put together.
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And I still feel like, "What are these people seeing in this app?"
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There's always that part of me that is going to focus on the negative, and I'm trying
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to tell myself in this process that that's not true.
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Clearly, it's not like I've somehow bamboozled the world and made this, and they're all
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downloading this app that's actually not good.
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It's like, no, people are liking it.
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People love it.
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It's making them happy and joyful, and that's great.
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But I just wanted to mention that don't feel like if you launch something and have
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those feelings, that's totally natural.
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That's totally normal.
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It happens—now I can say it—it happens at all levels of this game.
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Those feelings are going to be universal.
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And the reality is, that's not what defines your app.
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That's not what defines you as a person.
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Don't dwell on it, maybe.
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It's just the advice I have, because that's what I have to keep telling myself.
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Well, and you're never going to have the perfect app.
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If you think your app is perfect, you're not wired up right.
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You never have a perfect app.
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Software is never done.
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There's always more you wish you could have done, but deadlines happen, and events happen,
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and at some point you have to ship.
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And if you try to hold everything back until the absolute perfect time, you will never
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I mean, I look at my app, and I have tons of things that I look at, and I'm like,
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"Oh, I wish I had made that better," or "I wish I had time to make that better,"
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or "I'm making that better, but it's killed me every minute.
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It's not ready yet."
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My app is hopelessly broken and out of date in lots of ways, and I know that because it's
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my app, but yet it's still out there on the store, and people like it, and they use
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it every day, and I just have to deal with that.
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I'm very glad you brought up the imposter syndrome angle, because that never leaves
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At any level, you're right.
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That never leaves you.
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Although, the rate at which you are getting downloads and attention and everything on
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this is so much more than what I've ever seen.
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For reference, you have more than three times the number of ratings that my app that's
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been in the store for six years has, and you've gotten that in a week and a half.
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I mean, the scale of it is staggering.
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It's one of those things that there have been points in this process where the hourly
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downloads of WidgetSmith are exceeding the annual downloads of all my other apps.
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That kind of thing.
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It's rates and numbers that just don't make sense.
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I thought I have in my mind a certain concept of what an app looks like, and what it looks
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like to have a support queue, maybe as a slightly comedic example of this.
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For all my apps, I have a little button in it that says, "Would you like..."
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It's like, "Get help."
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You push a button, and it sends me an email.
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I use a help desk system to manage that.
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For WidgetSmith, I had the same thing, had it in the system.
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In the first week since this all hit, it's received something like 36,000 support requests.
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That's my nightmare.
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What was fascinating, and this is a good little thing to mention on the show, is there are
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certain things about being an independent that I love, about being a boutique experience
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in many ways.
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Sometimes I like to imagine myself as the handcrafted artisanal app creation, and what
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comes with that is you send an email and a person will read it and respond to you.
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That's part of that artisanal experience that you're getting from my little boutique.
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We started out that way, and I'm sitting there and we're trying to respond to these help
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desk requests, and at some point they start to be coming in at multiple per second.
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The help desk system that I use and my wife and my father were actually helping me with
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was trying to keep up.
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The help desk system couldn't manage it.
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They were coming in to the top of the list faster than you could click on something inside
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It was just a nightmare.
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Now we've hit the point where suddenly we're not that boutique anymore.
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We can't respond to all these people, and we just had to replace that with it's now
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if you email support, you get an autoresponder that has the FAQs in it, has a link to a video
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in it, and that's what people get.
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If you respond to that, essentially if you send us tube emails, there's a chance that
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someone might look at it just because you don't get the autoresponder twice and it goes
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to a different queue that we may or may not be able to look at, but it's a different thing.
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That scale is not indie scale.
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Indie scale is the place where I've been and I've hung out for a long time, and a busy
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day of support queue is like 100 emails, not like 100 emails a minute.
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I can't fathom this kind of thing.
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You're telling me I can't fathom what this is like.
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It probably does give you an appreciation for why bigger companies and services have
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things like autoresponders.
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As a customer, it kind of sucks when you hit that and you were hoping for an immediate
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human, but now you're kind of seeing why that has to exist.
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Because certain things just don't scale.
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It's the funny things too, of the number of just...
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I'm going to say I am so glad that this app does not rely on a web service that I have
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Whatever it was, even my little...
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If you go to the FAQ section, it's just a plain static HTML page on my website.
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That was putting...
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My website could manage it, but it was something that was up to 30-40% CPU utilization, just
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serving a single static HTML page that is pure text with no images.
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That's a lot for that.
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That's a lot.
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And it was fine, but I got to say, the few services that I do use...
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I use Dark Sky for my data still.
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I use RevenueCat, previously a sponsor, but not sponsoring this episode.
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I use them for my subscription management system.
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They held up great.
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I use World Tides as my Tide provider.
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They all stood up great.
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But I am very glad that I'm not the networking engineer.
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I have tremendous thanks and gratitude for the networking engineers who made all those
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services work, because I don't think they were expecting this colossal spike all of
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a sudden on a random Friday afternoon.
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But yeah, things are at a different scale than I've ever dealt with before.
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In a way, you're so fortunate that this happened to blow up for this type of app, where you
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don't have a lot of support work to do for it on the back end.
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You don't have a web service that you're running for.
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You have outsourced these key parts of it.
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These other services that held up great.
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This could have gone so wrong.
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It's a nice problem to have.
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When you have so many new customers getting your app that it breaks something, that is
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a nice problem to have.
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But that doesn't make it any less stressful and painful when it happens.
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And so the fact that that didn't happen here, with the exception of your deluge of support
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email, but with that exception, how did it go?
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Were there any critical bugs that were being a big problem for you?
00:17:40
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So there are a couple issues that are just, A, the first thing I want to say is it is
00:17:45
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so hard to work out the scale of a problem in this kind of context.
00:17:51
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Because in a normal app, if I have three people emailing me about a bug on Twitter, that feels
00:17:59
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like it's a pretty big thing and I need to take a look at it.
00:18:03
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So if you're in a situation where you have hundreds of people telling you about a bug,
00:18:08
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but it turns out that it's a bug that, if you look in your analytics, the crash reports,
00:18:13
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is actually only affecting a few thousand people, but that's actually a pretty small
00:18:18
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percentage of the user base, all of the numbers get completely strange and complex to work
00:18:23
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And there's a few couple iOS bugs that I've had to work around, just because I'm pushing
00:18:28
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the widget system to its absolute limits, and that's part of what makes WidgetSmith
00:18:34
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But there's definitely a few bugs there.
00:18:36
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I had one slightly amusing and very costly bug that I didn't realize at first, where
00:18:41
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typically the way that my system works is I show example weather data in the app until
00:18:48
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you're a member.
00:18:50
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And so rather than hitting dark sky for the actual weather, I just show, essentially I
00:18:55
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have some example data that I have just pre-baked into the app.
00:18:59
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So it turns out that the line of code that shows the example data was commented out,
00:19:05
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because I had to comment it out until I finished something in the membership system, and then
00:19:08
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I forgot to go and do it.
00:19:10
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So my day one bill to dark sky, substantial.
00:19:15
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Very substantial.
00:19:16
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I was able to fix it, and it's fine.
00:19:19
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Like it's not like it's some crushing amount of money that I've had to pay, but
00:19:22
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it was just this like, you know, sort of many thousands of dollar mistake that I don't
00:19:27
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Usually my mistakes like that, I would have caught it eventually when I'd be like, "This
00:19:30
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number seems high," but it was very, very high for the first few days until I found
00:19:36
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that, incorporated that into a bug fix update.
00:19:39
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And now it shows example data rather than actual data.
00:19:43
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So that's the example of something where it was the sort of slightly comedic version
00:19:46
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of a bug in this first version.
00:19:50
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And it's the crazy thing too of how I am so thankful for phased releases now.
00:19:57
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I have never been more thankful for Apple's system where you can phase out a release.
00:20:01
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So I submit an update, it goes out, and it goes to, you know, it goes to like 1% of people
00:20:07
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in the first day, then 2%, then 5%, and it kind of slowly trickles out.
00:20:11
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Because the thought of pushing out like accidentally pushing out a crashing bug or some like crazy
00:20:16
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thing where, you know, I've, over my 12 years, I have shipped many, you know, many updates
00:20:20
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that turned out to be horrible mistakes.
00:20:24
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Like the thought of doing that and it going out to this kind of scale of users is kind
00:20:29
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of terrifying.
00:20:30
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And so I'm very glad that I can push it out very slowly.
00:20:33
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You know, like all my updates have gone out in the phase thing and it's just, you know,
00:20:37
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so far so good.
00:20:38
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I've been able to not accidentally like brick millions of people's phones, but that's good,
00:20:43
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you know, like it's always in the back of my mind now that one day that is going to
00:20:47
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Yeah, I would imagine that any update you issue has got to be quite stressful when you're
00:20:51
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dealing with that kind of numbers.
00:20:53
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At the same time, I also feel urgency to get it out because some of the issues are like
00:20:56
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things that I need to, you know, like pretty quickly get out or adapt the app to make it
00:21:00
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actually do what people care about.
00:21:02
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Like they don't care about all the crazy esoteric features I have in the app.
00:21:05
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They want more fonts and they want more colors.
00:21:07
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And so like I got to get this stuff built as fast as I can and push it out.
00:21:11
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So there's definitely a funny tension that I usually don't have where, you know, it's
00:21:15
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like, hey, you should, well, it's like I want to give it as much time as I can to test and
00:21:18
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develop, but I also need to get it out because it's a rare opportunity.
00:21:22
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00:22:27
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00:22:30
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Now I'm curious, David, what you're basically doing right now is like riding a wave.
00:22:36
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And I've never surfed, so forgive me if this metaphor is totally broken in some way, but
00:22:40
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like you're riding this massive wave.
00:22:43
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And I would imagine there's a lot going on of just like trying to stay on top or worrying
00:22:49
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what's going to happen when you are no longer on top.
00:22:52
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We all know like all good waves, this will come to an end at some point or it will reduce
00:22:57
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down to some point.
00:22:59
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How do you currently view like, are you like aggressively trying to stay on top?
00:23:03
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Are you having to fend off like competitors and copycats and stuff?
00:23:07
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Like how is that?
00:23:08
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How are you seeing all that?
00:23:09
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And what do you, how do you plan to do whatever you're going to do over the next like few
00:23:15
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Yeah, so I think, A, in some ways I have a benefit of the reason Widget Smith is popular
00:23:24
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and doing well has nothing to do with anything that I did from a marketing perspective or
00:23:30
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►
something, some action I took to get it where it is.
00:23:34
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Like it is an app that is, as far as I can tell, just growing purely by word of mouth
00:23:40
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and being something that it's just, it's become the, like, if you think of iOS 14 widgets,
00:23:46
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►
the conversation is going to involve Widget Smith.
00:23:48
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And I hear all these stories of like people's, like the crazy one for me is all these like
00:23:53
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people's children who, you know, like these middle schoolers or high schoolers or whatever
00:23:56
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►
it is who are talking about Widget Smith and you know, they're sending their parents like
00:24:00
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the home sharing request to download the app and it's just out there.
00:24:05
◼
►
And so in that sense, like there is nothing I know in my like indie playbook for how to
00:24:11
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►
stay on top of something like this.
00:24:13
◼
►
Like we are already well past anything in my playbook.
00:24:16
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►
Like I am just, I'm just along for the ride in many ways.
00:24:19
◼
►
And all I am doing at this point is doing my best to give the best experience to the
00:24:25
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customers that I have now and to continue to kind of just fill out the app into this,
00:24:31
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►
into these areas that clearly my customers like and want.
00:24:36
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►
And like where this goes in, you know, that I even know like the next, like the few weeks,
00:24:41
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►
I mean, it's kind of mind bending that it's been like a week, but it's like, I, it feels
00:24:46
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►
like the kind of thing that while it's a fad in so far as I'm never going to have a week
00:24:52
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►
like the last week I had, I don't expect like that's just unrealistic.
00:24:57
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But I do think that if people are going to keep these widgets on their apps on their
00:25:02
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home screen and they like them and they want to keep, you know, engaging with them and
00:25:06
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►
changing them and they like having, you know, it's a picture of their kid and every time
00:25:10
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they take a new picture of their kid, they're going to open up widgets Smith and change
00:25:14
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►
out the picture in the picture frame, essentially like that.
00:25:18
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There's going to be a lot of very substantial like future in this app and other people are
00:25:24
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►
clearly coming for it.
00:25:26
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►
You know, there are like, there are lots of copycats and people who are trying to make
00:25:31
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►
widgets and widgets and like, that's fine.
00:25:33
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►
Like I can't do anything about that.
00:25:35
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►
I'm, you know, I'm trying to be thoughtful.
00:25:37
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It's like I'm protecting myself from a trademark perspective, but from a people making widgets
00:25:41
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►
perspective, like there's nothing I can do there.
00:25:45
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►
But I explore my hope and expectation is that there's enough people who just genuinely like
00:25:51
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►
widgets Smith and like what it does and that the, the resources and the effort it would
00:25:56
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►
take for someone to truly just like overwhelm me is substantial.
00:26:02
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And I don't know what that looks like.
00:26:03
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►
And the reality is in some ways I kind of, I'm, I'm, I'm okay.
00:26:07
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►
Like if I never got another download of widgets Smith and this was it, like I have more customers
00:26:13
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►
that I know what to do with as it is.
00:26:15
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►
So I'm not super worried about that future.
00:26:17
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►
And I just want to keep giving these people what it is they want, like making, giving
00:26:23
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them more tools to make their phone something that they love and, and, you know, make, makes
00:26:27
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them smile when they see it.
00:26:30
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►
And I feel like the reality is like, if I keep doing that, then hopefully it'll continue
00:26:35
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►
to grow and it will continue to find, you know, find new audiences.
00:26:40
◼
►
And I have certainly the great benefit that I was like, I think Apple for the lot of my
00:26:45
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►
customers don't like is every one of these widgets says widget Smith right underneath
00:26:51
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►
Every time someone shows a screenshot, it tells you what app it is.
00:26:54
◼
►
It's got it right there.
00:26:55
◼
►
And it's like the name of many of my, many times when I've been naming apps, like I've
00:27:00
◼
►
missed the mark.
00:27:01
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►
This one, I feel like, you know, watch Smith was the, you know, the, the origin of the
00:27:06
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►
name, but applying the same name to widget Smith.
00:27:08
◼
►
Like it's, it's, it's a easily spellable, memorable, straightforward name.
00:27:13
◼
►
You know, it's not something that you have to like, think about how you spell.
00:27:16
◼
►
It's just like widget Smith and you put it into the app store and it'll be my Apple show
00:27:21
◼
►
And I love that because it's there.
00:27:24
◼
►
If you see it and you, if someone used to, you know, someone shows you their screenshot,
00:27:27
◼
►
their, their home screen, it says widget Smith right there.
00:27:30
◼
►
And then you go and go to the app store and get it.
00:27:32
◼
►
And so I hope that it's just going to keep going.
00:27:34
◼
►
And I imagine there's going to be a lot of sharks in this water because, you know, there's
00:27:39
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►
clearly an interest in a market here.
00:27:41
◼
►
And you know, I'm not a shark.
00:27:43
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►
That's not me.
00:27:44
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►
I'm not a, I'm not going to sort of, I don't even know, like go fight the shark games.
00:27:49
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►
I'm going to keep doing my own thing in my own way.
00:27:51
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►
And hopefully enough people like that.
00:27:54
◼
►
And clearly, you know, to our point at the beginning of the show, like as much as I can
00:27:57
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►
sometimes see the, the, see the flaws in the app, there are clearly lots of people who
00:28:02
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►
see the benefits and see the attention and see the care and the craftsmanship hopefully
00:28:06
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►
that I try and put into my products.
00:28:09
◼
►
And hopefully the future will continue to be bright as a result.
00:28:13
◼
►
And like, I don't even know what kind of time horizons I can think about for an app like
00:28:19
◼
►
Like, I, you know, it's like, it's a week in and a week is nothing in the app store.
00:28:24
◼
►
You know, I've been doing this for 12 times, 365 days, not seven days.
00:28:29
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►
So I have a long enough memory to know that, you know, things will come and things will
00:28:33
◼
►
go in the app store, but hopefully, you know, my future with WidgetSmith is going to be,
00:28:37
◼
►
you know, bright and continuous.
00:28:39
◼
►
And if I can't make a good business out of an app like this, like I don't deserve to
00:28:43
◼
►
be a businessman, I suppose.
00:28:45
◼
►
Well, I'm just, I'm so happy for you.
00:28:48
◼
►
This couldn't have happened to a better person and you deserve all of this.
00:28:51
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►
And you just huge congratulations to you.
00:28:54
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►
My final question, and you know, we'll have more to talk about in later episodes.
00:28:59
◼
►
My final question though, is, you know, you are not one to indulge yourself in ridiculous
00:29:04
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►
things too often.
00:29:06
◼
►
What did you do to celebrate?
00:29:09
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►
I celebrated with my family and we talked about it and we were excited about it and
00:29:14
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►
we had a lot of like looking at numbers change rapidly and we just, it was really nice that
00:29:20
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►
I was able to be with my family when we were doing that.
00:29:23
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►
And we celebrated as a family and kind of be able to recognize the fact that, you know,
00:29:28
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►
while it was the thing that like I made when I was sitting at the desk, it was supported
00:29:32
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►
and encouraged by the people around me.
00:29:34
◼
►
And so that's what we did to celebrate.
00:29:35
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►
It wasn't some big grand thing.
00:29:37
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►
It was just, we shared the moment together and I think that was really special.
00:29:43
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►
Thanks for listening everybody and we'll talk to you in two weeks.
00:29:46
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[BLANK_AUDIO]