6 Lessons Learned From The Podcast and How I’ve Implemented Them.

Lesson 1: Don’t make a To-do list app
Ok, I made a weather app. That’s probably just as bad, but my app is different! Lol. As I was listening to the podcast, I got the message I should build something simple and something I’m passionate about. I love programming, I love developing apps, I love playing DnD, and I thought a DnD themed weather app would be simple.

Lesson 2: Launch your Minimum Viable Product
I think the most minimum I could have done would have been a simple fantasy picture with the current Temperature and weather condition in the corner. But that’s not what I was going for. My MVP was going to be animated. A forest background, a hero of some kind doing different things, walking, fighting, resting. My parameters were 3 animations, 1 location, and have the actual weather in the scene reflect the forecast, i.e., make it rain or snow on the hero if that’s what the actual weather.
I’m way past that now, lol. I currently have 3 heroes doing 4 animations, in 4ish locations, 3 enemy characters to fight, and 3 different colored dice to choose from. … I haven’t done my “Launch” yet.

Lesson 3: Launch within 2 months
Well, I started in August I think, …. It’s the end of December. Not 2 months, but I should be launching next month! (Famous procrastinating words).

Lesson 4: Build in public
So, I’m building this night and weekends while keeping my day job. I have a wife and 4 kids including a 6-month-old. I haven’t been on social media in years, I’ve tried to post on twitter, didn’t really work for me, I can’t be consistent with that. However, I was part of a DnD community on Discord, I wasn’t active in that, but tried to make the effort. I posted and replied to general conversation and on subjects I new something about. I was able to make some friends in the community and started marketing to them. Some of my early testers are from this group and I have a few others interested in the app, but they need to wait for iOS, I’m only working on Android at the moment. I recently started in a second Discord server and I’m trying to get into reddit.

Lesson 5: Sell to businesses
My weather app is not targeting businesses. Going straight to consumers.

Lesson 6: Charge more
Most weather apps are free. I was not going to do advertisements in my app, I think that would ruin the experience. After listening to the episode about … I think cheap flights newsletter. I decided to charge an annual subscription. Less church because it only comes up once a year instead of every 4ish weeks. I also am doing 4 tiers of subscription, $12, $24, $36, and $45 per year. I still need several thousand users to quit my job, but I think it’s doable.