6 Months into Building a Consumer App, Here's Where We're Headed
Bryce here. I'm one of the co-founders of Mise.
My co-founders and I had the same problem most busy households have: by 6 pm on a weeknight, there's no decision-making energy left for something that should be simple. We'd scan the fridge, order takeout, or default to the same three things.
What we actually needed was to make that call on Sunday, when we had a clear head and twenty minutes to think.
That's what Mise is. A few minutes on Sunday swiping through recipes. The ones you pick become a grocery list. You shop once. The week takes care of itself.
Six months of building got us here. The number I care about more than downloads is second meals cooked. We are currently sitting at about 15% W2 retention, after about 35% of beta users who planned a meal in week one came back and planned again in week two. Not "did they try it," but "did Sunday become a habit?" That's our actual bet.
Couple practical things if you're going to poke at it:
It's $6.99/month after a 7-day free trial. That's enough for one real Sunday session — the moment that tells you whether this works for your house or not.
Genuinely curious how your first Sunday goes if you try it, and even more curious to hear from anyone who's tried to solve "weeknight dinner decision fatigue" before — what worked, what didn't, where you gave up.
The idea of moving the dinner decision from weeknights to Sunday is a subtle but important shift.
Measuring "second meals cooked" instead of downloads also feels like the right success metric. It gets much closer to whether a real habit is forming.
Agreed, thanks Aryan!
With a background in both marketing agencies and smaller start-ups, we wanted to focus on a metric beyond ROAS and short-term value. We are trying to build something that lasts!
Makes sense.
The interesting part will be seeing whether that long-term metric actually predicts the behaviors that turn a product into a habit.
Looking forward to seeing what you learn.
The W2 retention framing is the right one. For a consumer habit app, I'd also split "planned again" from "cooked from the plan again" because the second one tells you whether Sunday planning survived the weekday chaos.
I like that approach/split. How would you recommend building that out or visualizing that in terms of user actions?