Indie Frame #5 — Angelo Stavrow talks excitement-driven development, his apps Per and Thought Detox and his forthcoming app Cheqin
Please tell us who you are, where you’re from, and how you became an indie iOS developer
I’m Angelo, and I’m from Montreal, Canada!
In a past life, I worked in accounting and small business consulting. I missed creating things, though, and so — creative accounting being frowned upon — went back to school to complete an electrical engineering degree. Like many EEs, I ended up working in software by way of quality engineering and support engineering at various organizations.
When I got my first iPhone (a 3GS!), I realized that I really wanted to build for that specific platform: a small, elegant device with a single screen resolution and a whole new way of interacting with applications. So I founded a tiny business called Dropped Bits in 2012, and a couple of years later had some apps in the store.
Q: Tell us a bit about the history of your apps and your indie App Store experience.
My apps have always been a side business, and so I’ve mostly just made tools that scratched an itch. My first app is no longer on the App Store, but it was a graphical future-value calculator that helped you determine the value of a one-time, weekly, or monthly amount over time. My second app, Per, came at the suggestion of my wife — a quick and easy way to compare price-per-unit to help with buying decisions. Apparently, I really like finance apps.
My third app, Thought Detox, was developed as an iPhone version of a web app I built when I worked at Glitch. I’ve always been interested in self-care and personal development, and the app was created as a way to help you work through unpleasant thoughts. If anyone’s interested in my opinions on self-care apps, I was interviewed by Anil Dash on this episode of the Function podcast.
In general, my indie App Store experience has been… boring? I’ve had a couple of spurious rejections, which were quickly resolved, but otherwise it’s mostly been a straightforward build-upload-release cycle. It’s all the other parts of running a indie dev micro business that are tricky, and I try to discuss them in Dropped Bits’ monthly newsletter.
We’re currently planning out what we are doing over the next few months in Shareshot. What plans do you have for your apps over the coming months, and how did you decide what to work on next?
One thing I’m aiming to do is make Dropped Bits less of a hobbyist pursuit, and more of a Real Business™️ that generates material revenue. I knew I wanted to build something related to finance, but struggled for a while on decided whether I wanted to build a B2B-ish app that helped other indie devs and microbusiness owners, or something that would help people with personal finance.
It turns out that as much as I love helping small business owners, I was excited about helping regular folks better understand their relationship with money. And so I’m building Cheqin now, to do just that.
That’s basically how I decide what to work on next — excitement. I try to back things up with data, and do some research on the existing app landscape, but frankly, if I’m not excited about it, I’m not going to really do much work on it. And when it’s a new app, it’s easy to come up with more features than you can possibly deliver in a one-point-oh release.
Yes, of course, there’s always the maintenance work to keep up with Apple —oh good, dark mode icons— but I try to worry less about that and more about what’s useful for my users.
You’ve been very supportive of Shareshot which we appreciate! We’re interested to know how what you like about it.
I like to build in public. One thing that I think people like to see is visual progress on an app, and Shareshot is amazing for grabbing a screenshot, making it pretty, and sharing it out on social in seconds. It’s invaluable as an indie dev.
Add to that a team that’s super responsive to suggestions and bug reports and it’s a five-star app for me!
Are there features you’d like us to add to Shareshot to make your life easier?
A few things come to mind!
- I’d love a Mac app! Maybe it’s habit and maybe it’s presbyopia, but I feel a lot more comfortable examining and editing images on a big screen for social and blog posts.
- It might be a challenge, but being able to create an image that incorporated some combination of iPhone/iPad/Mac/Watch screenshots would be really cool for marketing purposes.
- As someone who’s using this for my own apps, I’d love to be able to subscribe independently of my Apple Account. I use the app on both my personal and business devices, and while Shareshot is inexpensive enough to merit two subscriptions, it would be nice to subscribe directly via Montana Floss and access the app on all my Apple Accounts. Getting a proper business invoice would be a side benefit, too!
Here you can find out more about Angelo’s apps Per and Thought Detox.
If you are an indie who enjoys using Shareshot and fancy being featured in a future instalment of “Indie Frame”, please contact me. We love to share the love!
