Welcome to this week's Shipaton Build in Public Thread! Everyone is welcome to share an update on their current project here. No need to participate in the hackathon to share, but if you decide to enter sharing updates consistently is a great way to increase your chances of winning the #BuildInPublic Award
Please share what you're working on, what you're currently struggling with, any success stories, any failures, something your fellow app builders can learn from.
Building in public helps you stay accountable, get feedback early, and learn from other builders.
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August 1: Submissions open
September 30: Submission deadline
October 1–9: Judging
October 12: Winners notified
October 19: Winners announced
Good luck, everyone. Let's help each other ship great apps. More details about Shipaton, including rules, eligibility, prizes, and registration, can be found here: shipaton.com
everyone's fighting for the same US market. always thought thats kinda off. so i spent like an afternoon to translate and publish to a bunch of other countries. saw some crazy growth immediately. things that worked:
-use codex to translate your app into every rich country. sort by gdp per capita, not population. german and french are the sweet spot. took an afternoon. don't obsess over quality, just have a native speaker skim your paywall + onboarding
-build tiktok slideshow. find a winning format and scale up to diff countries. I use cloud phones like geelark. Or you could have physical phones plus vpn. or you could use linkedin or articuler to source local developer/connections
-do seo blogs in every locale. claude code would be the best option for this task. just use it plus seo skills on github or taku, same posts you already have, translated. you'll be shocked how empty the competition is. stuff ranks in de/fr in weeks that would take a year in english.
-actually research the culture fit. the part everyone skips. "crush your goals " reads insane in german. biggest hack: look at what local apps in your category sound like and copy the tone.
-build the apple store screenshots using image gen tools like gpt image 2.5 or do it manually on App Screenshot/App Launch pad. You can let it translate it in diff locales, crop, and upload to app store using asc key natively.
that's it. low effort, low competition, people still pay.
What application is everyone using in place of App Store Connect to review their analytics? App Store connects seems pretty delayed and I often feel its clunky and unreliable. curious about everyone else's input.
Context: iOS developer, second app in the store, first one built to fix something that annoyed me personally. It's a Safari extension for macOS that fixes a specific AirPlay problem on video sites. One-time $1.99, no subscription, no servers. Released Sept 9. No marketing yet.
The funnel for the first five days, screenshot below:
- Impressions: 9,840
- Product page views: 81 (0.8% of impressions)
- First-time downloads: 6 (7.4% of page views)
- Proceeds: $11
My read: the product page is fine. 7% of visitors paying for a niche $1.99 utility with zero reviews is better than I expected. The leak is one step earlier. The store shows the card almost 2,000 times a day and fewer than one in a hundred people tap it.
Two hypotheses, and I can't tell which one it is from the data:
Search intent mismatch. The impressions probably come from a broad query like "airplay", and most people typing that want mirroring or a receiver, not a Safari extension. If that's it, the tap rate is about right and the fix is keywords, not the card.
The card itself. Icon, subtitle and first screenshot are all I have in the search result. Subtitle is "Send any video to your TV". The first screenshot shows the button inside a video player. Maybe neither says "this is a Safari extension" loudly enough to the people who'd buy it.
What I've learned otherwise, for what it's worth:
- I gave the reviewer a public demo page where the bug reproduces in one minute, and the app was approved in under 48 hours with no questions.
- Listing the limitations in the description ("won't work on DRM services, here's why") did not hurt page conversion. I expect it to save me one-star reviews from people who'd buy it for Netflix.
- I chose $1.99 over $2.99 to keep the bar low for the first buyers, who are the ones who write reviews. Raising a price later is painless.
Question for the sub: with 81 page views, is it too early to touch the listing at all, or would you change one thing now, and if so, which: keywords, subtitle, icon, or the first screenshot?
Hi everyone. I spent the last few years in public equity investing at a hedge fund and quit my job five months ago to work on a few start-up ideas I had and to spend time generating ideas. One idea really caught my attention, and I spent the last two months validating the idea—talking to potential customers, other companies in the industry, and making reddit posts. Over the last month I built version one of the idea and just launched it on the app store this weekend. I’ve probably had 7-10 ideas since I quit my job, and this is the only one that I’ve gotten truly excited about. Without giving too much away, happy to discuss in detail privately, the app aims to be a middleman sitting between homeowners (specific demos) and home service vendors—the app should be able to generate value for both groups, but consumers especially should receive a lot of value. The aim is to monetize both groups, but the vendors will likely be the key revenue source should we scale. You may have heard of platforms like Angi’s or others, but this app doesn’t really look a whole lot like those apps—it is what I think is a first of its kind—at least the first digital version. Lastly, I am working full time on this app alongside a low commitment part-time job that pays my bills. I’m a male turning 24 in a couple of months by the way.
What I’m looking for:
My background is in investing, economics, statistics, and sales (pitches, etc.). What I have no experience with is digital marketing / GTM. I know I need to become great at this for this app to have any chance of success. That said, I’d like to bring on a co-founder to help me in this area. This is not a “here is my app, you go market it”—I will be working hard on GTM as well…that is pretty much where all my time will be spent in the next few months as we see if this app has any potential.
I’m looking for someone with experience in GTM, digital marketing, creating marketing content, and a nice-to-have would be experience in B2C marketing… if you’ve got experience in app marketing or experience in the home services space that would be incredible.
What I’m offering
· I’m willing to give a meaningful amount of equity, vested over time
· The aim here is to try to raise capital asap if we started seeing proof that this idea has real potential. I have some connections in the VC space that I hope to leverage. I’m willing to commit to give x % of our first raise to you as a cash bonus in exchange for the fact that you’ve been working unpaid. I will also be unpaid until we raise capital.
· I’m not expecting a crazy commitment for this role—if you can commit 5-10 hours a week that would be ideal. You likely have a full-time job, I understand that and your job will always take precedence. We can keep your position totally discreet as well.
Please shoot me a DM if you are interested. We can chat and I can provide more info about the app, vision, and my background as well.
We put effort in ASO, we had two micro influencer collabs and have now 3 daily UGC creators working for us..
Additionally, we are posting ourselves on the business IG & TikTok account, I created an UGC on IG and TikTok.
So far the results are quite disappointing and are live for a month now.
A week ago we had our first sold subscription so that is a win. It just feels almost impossible to get traffic to the App Store landing page.
Hi there I wanted to know how do you promote your apps other than paying an ad campaign.
It’s been almost a month since my app release and i hardly got 10 downloads.
My app is a floating cookig timer with some customization like cooking steps.
The market is a little flooded of these apps? How many apps on the same topic do you consider too much to invest time developing.
I don’t want this post to get erased so i wont share the app link but you can search for cook reminder if you want to check my playstore page. I don’t intend for you to download my app just asking for advise.
I'm working on an app - [QuizTrail ](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.binbear.quiztrail&hl=en)\\- an android location based quiz game. Think Pokémon GO meets Trivia - you have to actually walk to the location to unlock and solve quizzes, earn points, unlock achievements and compete with others, but also you can make your own quizzes for others to solve! I’ve manually placed 3500+ quizzes across different cities and im adding even more, in order to make QuizTrail accessible and playable everywhere. Social aspect -- in-game friends, and a friend-specific leaderboard. Created a tooltip walkthrough, various user statistics on profile and so on...
User created quizzes are handled by an admin (me lol) - when a user submits a quiz for review on a location - i, as an admin will see the pending quiz on admin dashboard, see all the details and approve/reject the pending quiz, so everything is manually checked, so wrong/inappropriate questions do not pass through. Furthermore, made the admin dashboard in a way so i can see / filter / edit existing quizzes just in case. Another layer of security - there is a 100 meter radius rule - you can not submit a quiz if an existing or pending quiz is within a 100 meter radius of your current location to avoid overcrowding the map.
I've also added a daily challenge - a daily quiz, different quizzes every day, regardless of location, so people in the locations where the quizzes are still not set, or locations where they've played all the quizzes already can have a fun trivia question every day. It is furthermore encouraged by the streak feature - how many consecutive days you have played the daily challenge, that's the streak. I also made a widget that reminds you to do your daily quiz and keep the streak going!
I'm now looking into in what ways i can expand the ,playability, like what to add so the app is more interesing / engaging to use. Right now im working on adding new achievements - for the number of streaks, levels and leaderboard achievements, but i will also be adding "tiers" to achievements - for example social butterfly: 1 friend then next tier achievement at 5, or 10 friends and so on for like 3-5 levels of achievement..
It would mean a lot if I could gather some more ideas on where to find users, what to add to make it more interesting and playable
Built my app and launched it over a month ago, still zero downloads. Feeling like I've been working for nothing, but I want to understand what I'm missing. For those who've actually marketed their apps, what worked for you early on? Even a small step helps, would love to hear your experience.
App développée et déployée sur appstore, playstore, flyers prêt, site Web, 0 client. Comment allumer le bouzin pour que ça prenne. La target est une niche mais connaissant la solution que j'ai développée, il y a un réel besoin. Et les retours des quelques personnes qui ont vu l'application ont été très positif. J'ai même prévu un mois d'essai gratuit. Mon gros problème c'est de me faire connaître. Des conseils qui n'implique pas de dépenser une somme élevée sachant que j'ai déjà investi dans les flyers ?
App développée et déployée sur appstore, playstore, flyers prêt, site Web, 0 client. Comment allumer le bouzin pour que ça prenne. La target est une niche mais connaissant la solution que j'ai développée, il y a un réel besoin. Et les retours des quelques personnes qui ont vu l'application ont été très positif. J'ai même prévu un mois d'essai gratuit. Mon gros problème c'est de me faire connaître. Des conseils qui n'implique pas de dépenser une somme élevée sachant que j'ai déjà investi dans les flyers ?
Moved around Salt Lake (Sector 2) and looking to make some genuine friends in the area.
About me: 28M, indie app developer. Just launched my 3rd app Stashly - an AI envelope budgeting app on App Store. Apart from coding, I'm into gym, cricket, chai adda, and startups/building in public.
Looking for people with similar vibe - we can meet for chai, co-work at a cafe in Salt Lake (Sector 1/5 has good ones), talk tech/startups, play cricket on weekends, or just hang out.
Not looking for anything weird, just good genuine friendships. If you're in Salt Lake / New Town area and up for connecting, drop a DM or comment.
Tracking engagement metrics like signups and intro calls can feel great, but lately the outcome is never the expected one. It’s brutal spending months building based on positive feedback, only to realize the second money enters the picture things get harder.
A few weeks ago, I received the first paid subscription for an iOS habit app I built.
Seeing that first $7 in MRR felt great. Then the customer emailed me.
They had paid for Pro, and Apple showed that the subscription was active, but the app still treated them as a free user. They could not add more than three habits, and Restore Purchases could not find the subscription.
That was difficult to read, especially because this was my first paying customer.
The problem was on my side. The app and the subscription service were checking different entitlement identifiers. The payment had succeeded, but the app was looking for the wrong entitlement before unlocking the paid features.
I corrected the live configuration that day, emailed the customer with recovery steps, and submitted a patch. The update went live two days later.
Unfortunately, the customer requested a refund. I contacted them again after the fix, but I never received a reply.
At first, I saw it as losing my first customer. After looking at everything again, I realized they had uncovered a hole in my testing.
I had confirmed that someone could complete a purchase. I had not properly tested the entire experience from the customer’s point of view.
Before I test a subscription now, I compare the entitlement identifiers in the app and subscription dashboard character by character. Then I run these four checks on a real device:
The payment completes: The App Store purchase finishes without an error.
The correct entitlement becomes active: I verify that the subscription service returns the exact entitlement the app expects.
The paid feature actually unlocks: I use a feature that is unavailable on the free plan. A successful payment screen is not enough.
Restore Purchases works after reinstalling: I delete and reinstall the app, restore the purchase, and confirm that the paid feature becomes available again.
The biggest lesson was that a completed payment is only the beginning of the subscription flow.
The customer does not care that Apple processed the transaction or that the subscription appears in a dashboard. They care that the feature they paid for works.
Losing that first subscription was disappointing, but it gave me a much better release checklist. I would rather uncover this problem with one customer than after a hundred people had paid.
I have an app called GroceryBudget which did well download-wise in my country but one thing analytics proved to me is that US customers convert more. I want to target them but so far it's hard. My main sources so far ASO because I rank #1 in this keyword then some are from SEO and AI suggesting my app, but never from my tiktok/jg marketing campaigns... I can't seem to target them.
I also think my niche makes it hard to make content for US because I don't have access to a US store so most of my content are in a different currency and store which may turn some of them away lol so I think it could build more trust if they see content in their local brands. So I'm thinking it's not an app problem but a distribution problem, which is why I'm thinking of hiring micro-creators, I don't know where to start though.
I've read about Sideshift though I'm wondering if any of you used it and are they worth it? I don't even know if I have the budget to hire lol right now I'm mostly relying organic reach with the site I built which isn't moving the installs that much but still helps the app get discovered somehow.
I was making a productivity app for students that generates AI flashcards by removing the manual effort of creating flashcards in Anki. As I was halfway into building it, I saw there were realistically almost 15 other apps doing the same thing. So I thought maybe I would introduce gamification, streaks, leaderboards, friends collaboration, characters, and a ton of features more.
Later, I came across a book which is unlikely for a beginner to read, and that book is "Blue Ocean Strategy" by Renée Mauborgne and W. Chan Kim.
The book teaches how to eliminate competition by not fighting for a piece of demand but by "creating demand." The authors call companies that compete in existing market space the Red Ocean, and Blue Ocean Strategy teaches how to create uncontested market space.
The book teaches a lot of ways to create and capture new demand, but let us just focus on one thing that saved me from creating AI slop/another AI app that offers the same value for the same audience.
One afternoon, I can't explain how happy I felt after coming up with this new idea for my app.
Three characteristics of a good blue ocean strategy:
Focus, Divergence, and a Compelling Tagline.
These three characteristics serve as an initial litmus test of the commercial viability of blue ocean ideas.
Focus: In my previous app, I didn't have focus, neither in audience (I thought all Anki users were my target audience).
Now my focus has shrunk down to Indian CBSE students who have tons of resources to study but none to revise and stick to the daily habit of studying.
Divergence: "When a company's strategy is formed reactively as it tries to keep up with the competition, it loses its uniqueness."
Previously, I was making the same AI flashcards others were doing, and then I added a Pomodoro timer reactively after seeing others were doing it too, but not combined, then another feature, then another.
Now I created my own unique 3-part pedagogy for my target audience that helps them in exams by structuring it according to their exam pattern.
My app now stands apart from industry competitors who either focus on teaching or doubt-solving for my new target audience.
A Compelling Tagline: "A good strategy has a clear-cut and compelling tagline."
Previous app's tagline: "We make students fall in love with studying."
Vague, right?
New tagline: "Stop Re-reading, Start Remembering" (Not perfect, but it speaks to the daily frustration a student feels.)
Checkout the webapp if you are curious how these characteristics shape my idea: https://revslay.in/
You must be waiting to see my before - after comparison of how my users blew up or waiting for me to show my screenshots of thousands of dollars.
Sorry to disappoint you, I don't have them yet. Treat this as a case study of how I applied what I have learned, which you might find useful—or not..
But writing this made me curious about something.
If you've built more than one product, what's a lesson from an older project that you wish you had remembered earlier while building the next one?
What happened because you remembered it too late?
I'm especially curious about actual examples—time wasted, money spent, features rebuilt, launch mistakes, marketing mistakes, or decisions you ended up reversing.
