Indie Interviews
Can you tell us more about yourself and what led you to become an indie maker
I’m Trent, 27, living in Austin, TX with my wife and our two cats.
I started my journey indie hacking back in high school. My first project was a janky Flappy Bird clone called Space Bird. At the time, I didn’t really know how to code, but I found an open source Flappy Bird clone on Github. After modifying all of the physics variables, designing my own assets, and learning how to implement levels, I released it on the App Store.
That project didn't last long, but it did give me a taste for how fun indie iOS development could be.
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?
The only app I have right now that is publicly available is Twig - a journaling app for couples - and I'm pretty sure I broke all the rules of product development while building it.
The idea came from my own needs at the time. My wife and I were still just dating, and living 6 hours apart (long distance wasn't fun). Her birthday was coming up and I wanted to make a scrapbook of our fun memories together. But making a scrapbook turned out to be really messy - even if I made a great one, continuing to add to it would be a pain.
So I decided a couple’s journaling app would be better. Over the course of two weeks, the first version of Twig was born, and we started using it.
It took me a lot longer to get Twig on the App Store, though. I kept going back and forth about how other couples would want to use it, and I could never decide on a monetization strategy. At one point I told a friend “I'm not sure I even want to release this thing.” Their response is the only reason Twig exists today:
“Just launch it for free, exactly how it is right now.”
I'm glad I listened to that friend - without conducting any user interviews or market testing, the first public version of the app was good enough to garner a few hundred regular users.
How does your day-to-day app development workflow look like?
For my entire indie journey, I've been a moonlighter - I work a full-time job during the day and squeeze in a little bit of development time at night. This only works thanks to how low maintenance Twig is. It's also one of the main reasons I don't have a large library of apps. Just supporting and maintaining one app takes up a lot of my time.
All said, I'm a pretty bad example of day-to-day development routines. I've gone long spans of time not working on any project, or letting Twig go a while without an update while I explore other project ideas. At one point, I told myself Twig was dead since it had been over a year since I touched it. But now I've got several updates lined up and there's more couples using it today than ever before.
How do you launch and market your app?
Marketing Twig hasn't been easy. My most expensive marketing efforts were also my least effective - I wasted a lot of money on Facebook Ads and TikTok influencers.
There are two things that have proved effective, though. First, Twig is now listed on a few different dating blogs as a must-have couples app. This drives a very small amount of high quality traffic to its App Store listing. Second, I've been prompting power users of Twig to leave ratings and reviews in the app for a couple years now. It's taken some time, but it's now approaching 500 App Store reviews with an average rating of 4.7 stars. This is huge for visibility in the App Store. Organic App Store discovery is the greatest driver of Twig downloads.
What are the future plans for your app?
Right now, the core feature-set and overall design of Twig is pretty aged. I launched the app in 2019, and while it has gained a good number of features in that time, it looks somewhat outdated. So I want to slowly introduce these new design elements to bring Twig up to 2023 standards.
Beyond that, I don't really have a grand vision. I just want Twig to continue being a fun place for couples to share their moments together.
Do you have any interesting lessons learned or tips for other indie makers?
Yes, definitely. Here's a quick list:
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✨ Just launch whatever you have. Like I explained above, Twig almost didn't exist today because I was overthinking the launch. After launching and hearing back from users, I realized that it was worth it to keep chipping away at it.
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✨ You can always come back to a project. If you launched one thing and want to work on another, that's fine. Let one project go stale while you dealt with other stuff? You can always come back around to it. Nothing is lost.
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✨ Your projects aren't your identity. App Store reviews are harsh. Bugs can cause bad experiences. When things go poorly, don't beat yourself up. It happens. We're always going to have higher standards than we're capable of accomplishing.
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✨ Do the simplest thing next. In the past, I've discouraged myself by trying to change too much at once, or launch one major v2 when a small increment would have been just as good. Biting off more than you can chew is a losing game. Keep it simple.
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 have one major regret - spending $1500 on a TikTok influencer post. I sort of got scammed here. Even though the post did get 60k views within a few hours, it drove basically no downloads. Long story!
So when it comes to marketing, I'd focus on spending smaller amounts of money on a variety of channels. Especially channels that will stand the test of time, like blogs and websites.
Apart from this one marketing regret, a general trend for myself has been doing everything slower than it could have been done. You can see this in my story above - launching slowly, overthinking each release, etc.
Were I to restart Twig today, I think I could get to where I am now in half the time, with less money and a lot less worry.
Are there any other products that you are particularly proud of? Could you share some details about them
Absolutely. I have one pre-release project that is stretching me in many ways. It’s a stock analysis app designed to put noteworthy stocks front and center for casual investors to consider. There’s a lot of math and backend work involved - plus licensing with NASDAQ.
Just like Twig, I came up with this idea by first making a version just for myself and my own investment purposes. I'm getting a lot of value from using it, so I hope the same will be true for others once it's released.
Here’s a thread that shows off an early version of the app.
If you’re interesting in testing this on TestFlight as soon as it’s ready, feel free to email me: 📨 trent@hey.com. I’d be happy to hear from you!
Are there any indie makers or creators whose work you admire and follow closely?
Definitely - there’s a handful of indie developers that I learned a lot from on Twitter.
- Rudrank: Great writer and developer who covers all sorts of iOS topics.
- Spencer: He built and sold a Twitter scheduling web app. We briefly collaborated on an iOS client for the project. Really driven and motivated creator.
- Jordan Morgan: He’s got a big presence on Twitter and for good reason - super high quality iOS tips. He embodies the high quality software experience Apple intends for all users to have.
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