Indie Interviews
Can you tell us more about yourself and what led you to become an indie maker
I’m 47 living in Copenhagen with my girlfriend and our children of 12 and 16.
I'm a long time programmer making my money on the computer since the mid 90s doing game development for Commodore Amiga and PCs back when those still ran DOS. I had worked a number of places when completing my computer science education in 2004 and I was certain I would rather build my own products than work for other people having already reached my quota for mediocre management.
Programming is extra fun when you get to make high level product decisions and with only one work-life I need to make the best of it. With a few years of experience you become immensely valuable to any company employing you and it seems natural to give that advantage to your own company.
But this was easier said than done. I tried to make a living selling software libraries but had trouble finding buyers. Consulting kept me fed the next years but this started to change around 2009 where I had moderate success with an iPhone drawing app made for my youngest child.
I did a few more apps that never found their audience but Working Copy, my Git client from 2014 showed potential and over the next years I was able to make it profitable enough to quit consulting. I now had enough free time and focus to develop a two-way syncing mechanism for SSH servers and this was the backbone of Secure ShellFish putting a server filesystem in the Files app.
How did you come up with the idea? How do you generate ideas for your apps or projects, and how do you identify the problems or needs your app can address?
I look for app ideas that I would want to use myself, where I think my knowledge and experience makes me suited for the task and where I expect other users to appreciate the work.
There had been requests from Working Copy users for deeper integration with SSH servers but bolting on SSH features would make the app a strange mix of Git and SSH client.
But I had experience with the Files app APIs and the SSH protocol.
How does your day-to-day app development workflow look like?
My work day is structured for long stretches of uninterrupted time for deep programming work.
I start out by handling user support before I leave for the office. This means I can immediately start programming at the office and I try hard to ignore emails and phone calls for a few hours. After lunch I do additional support since my focus is already off but most days I'm able to regain my focus and do a few extra hours of programming.
At the end of the workday I make a note of what I want to achieve the next day; another simple trick to increase my chances of starting the next day well.
How do you launch and market your app?
I'm not good at this but I try to drum up interest on Twitter and Mastodon showing screen recordings and inviting people to participate in TestFlight betas.
All my apps are developer tools with small specialised audiences and getting App Store editorial or websites to mention the apps is a struggle.
What are the future plans for your app?
Right now I'm working to add support for authentication agents and agent forwarding to Secure ShellFish. I have been envious of the terminal echo prediction in systems like Mosh and I'm working to bring something similar to my terminal at the SSH level.
Do you have any interesting lessons learned or tips for other indie makers?
Being indie can be lonely.
It has helped me to share an office with friends even though we don’t work in the same field. I also participate in local iOS meet-ups and I'm part of a small indie developer Slack.
I can go a few months working alone but more than that and I slowly become more and more quirky.
This is common advice and is only possible when things are going well but having money for 6 months of expenses removes a lot of anxiety and will in most ways make the indie life just as economically secure as a regular job.
Looking back, are there any decisions or actions you regret not taking before or during the development and launch of your apps? Is there anything you would have done differently?
I wasted years doing consulting wishing I was indie because I didn't make enough money on my own apps. Consulting made it hard to put in sufficient work to make the apps profitable dragging me away from what I wanted. As soon as I was able to put in 100% time on my own apps staying profitable became a lot easier.
I regret not cutting down on expenses in my younger years as this would have allowed me to bootstrap much faster. Controlling expenses becomes a lot harder once you have children.
Are there any indie makers or creators whose work you admire and follow closely?
Gus Mueller the developer of Acorn the image editor for Mac is a huge inspiration. He is a shining example that one person can make extremely deep and useful software maintaining and updating to keep it relevant for many years.
Thanks for reading til the end. Hope you enjoy the interview as much as we did. Below are some useful links mentioned throughout the interview
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