Built a baby registry app as a solo mom with zero coding background — here's the 4-month journey

This is one of the best pieces of feedback I've gotten. Thank you for taking the time to actually think about it! Both of those were on my radar when I was building this platform. On the expiration date problem - this is the exact reason I built the Bump Journey and all of the separate trackers like Milestones and Memories. Baby arrives, registry closes, and the natural next question is "now what?" My journey handles feed logs, diaper changes, water intake for parents and pumping tracking. Milestones tracker keeps parents connected to what's happening developmentally. Thank You Notes management extends the coordination past the shower and is honestly so helpful because that is one of the things I forgot to do with both pregnancies and being so busy once baby arrives. The infrastructure for post-registry family logistics is everywhere within the app as it was important to not only be as helpful as possible but to extend that help well into post partum which is where most registry apps leave you. But the couple or partners are at peak coordination pain during the registry phase, and that's the moment to earn the long-term relationship. The registry was also built for more than just preparing for baby. Cash Funds for future goals like education and sports. Milestones tracking for multiple kids like mine, I had twins and wanted to track them separately since they are on totally different timelines. The partner approval workflows for gear purchases that continue past the newborn stage. Basically making both parents equal owners which I made the default system for family life, not just the shower! On the distribution wedge - registry users share their link with family and friends. That link sends them to the app which requires a download and sign up just like anyone would have to do with Amazon. The flow of the app has them choose how they want to onboard: as expecting themselves, a current parent, adoption or surrogacy or as a supporter. This allows for app use from any stage in life. If the user chooses supporter, they skip onboarding and are taken to the supporter dashboard. There is a person icon in the top right corner of the first 3 onboarding types which takes them to the supporter dashboard. There is a gift icon on the top right corner of the supporter dashboard which takes user to the home dashboard that the first 3 onboarding types see but will prompt the user to go through the onboarding in order to personalize their journey. This means if they are expecting, they will see a pregnancy tracker on their dashboard. If they chose the adoption/surrogacy path, it has pregnancy sensitive language. All in all, this prompts each user to sign up but allows them to switch between user and supporter whenever they like with ease. They can also edit these choices on their settings page. That is my seed-planting opportunity for future registry users who start as supporters. Genuinely appreciate this. Both threads I worked on diligently and strategically to make as easy and smooth as possible. If you're building something too, I'd be interested to hear about it!

Honestly, figuring out what people trusted was way harder. The building side is uncomfortable but linear. You either get the feature to work or you don't. Debugging has a right answer. Emergent, Codemagic, RevenueCat, MongoDB — none of them are easy for a non-coder, but they follow rules. You learn the rules, you build the thing. Trust doesn't follow rules like that. Early on I assumed people would trust OneNest because the features were genuinely better than the alternatives. Dual-parent login. Twin/multiples support. Cash Funds. A registry app built by an actual mom of three under four. On paper, the value proposition should sell itself. It doesn't. What I've learned is that people trust three things, roughly in this order: 1. Someone they already trust telling them about it (a friend, a family member, a small creator in their niche) 2. Consistent, honest presence over time (a Substack you keep showing up on, a founder posting real behind-the-scenes rather than curated marketing) 3. The product itself Notice the product is third, not first. The best feature set in the world doesn't overcome distrust of a brand nobody's heard of. So most of my energy the last few months has actually gone into the trust layers rather than the product layers. Writing 20+ Substack essays. Building genuine relationships with baby brands rather than transactional affiliate deals. Being visibly imperfect on LinkedIn and TikTok rather than performing polished founder theater. Every honest post I make is a small deposit into the trust bank. The building work is easier because it has an end state. The trust work never ends. Thanks for asking a real question — most people ask about the tech stack.

Appreciate this. The 22 rejections were brutal in the moment but I'm actually grateful for them now — each one forced me to be more precise about what OneNest is and isn't. You're the second person this week to point at the "both parents, equal ownership" positioning as sharper than "baby registry app." That's a signal I should be listening to. Honestly, I've been under-using it. My App Store listing just got a face-lift for this exact reason. Nobody scrolls past a category-standard tagline. You've named the wedge correctly. Every screenshot, subtitle, description line, Substack article, and SEO page should reinforce the "both parents, equal ownership" angle FIRST, and register second. It's the thing no other registry app offers, and it's the thing that actually matters to families where one parent has been silently doing all the coordination for years. I've redesigned the App Store listing this week. This feedback lands at exactly the right moment. Both parents, equal ownership. Not "another baby registry app." Making that shift now. Thanks for the direct read on it.

Thank you! Means a lot 🪺

Thank you — the balancing act is real, and messages like this one help on the tough days. You're right on the security point. Building it in early is much cheaper than retrofitting after users start showing up. Anything specific you'd flag as commonly missed by solo founders early on? Appreciate the well-wishes.

You've named something I felt for years before I could articulate it. Every registry app on the market treats "one primary account holder" as a neutral technical default. It isn't. It's a decision about who is expected to do the coordination work of preparing for a baby, and that decision has been the same in every registry product I've ever used: the mother. Nobody at Babylist or Amazon or Target sat in a meeting and said "let's design this to reinforce that moms carry the mental load." They just built what seemed obvious to them. And what seemed obvious happened to encode an entire cultural assumption about family labor. That's the part that made me want to build OneNest. Not the missing features. The unexamined defaults. Every product architecture is a bet about how humans behave. Most of the time nobody notices the bet because the architecture matches the culture people already live in. But when your family doesn't match the assumed default — dual working parents, adoptive families, surrogate families, families where dad IS the primary planner, families with two moms or two dads, families where a grandparent is coordinating for a young solo parent — the friction is instant and constant. Making both partners equal owners in OneNest isn't a feature. It's a different bet about what a family is. You picked up on the thing that actually matters. Thank you for saying it out loud.