Eva

Eva

@evactivate.bsky.social

๐Ÿ‘ฉ๐Ÿปโ€๐Ÿ’ป Indie dev and solopreneur ๐Ÿš€ Building conteflow.com - a fun content creation tool that interviews YOU for stories and insights X profile: x.com/evactivate

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So many new faces! Nice to meet you guys! ๐Ÿ‘‹ Here's my mini introduction: - I'm from California - Quit my SF job 6 years ago to become an indie hacker - Moved to Taiwan with just 2 suitcases - Committed every dumb dev sin possible - Finally bit the bullet and started building in public this year ๐Ÿ’ช

Since a month ago, I noticed a tiny but super engaged group of users using my app differently They've basically ignored all the social media & content creation features (you know, the whole point of the app ๐Ÿ˜…)

Instead, they're ONLY using the AI chat feature. Like, multiple times a day, every single day So here goes nothingโ€ฆ Iโ€™m going to extract that feature into its own standalone AI chat app and see what happens ๐Ÿ‘€

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Thank goodness I had SOME guardrails so only 24 users were affected instead of hundreds But they got flooded with like 20-40 push notifications from my app in minutes So yeah, personally emailing every single person right now ๐Ÿ˜ญ

Well that escalated quickly (in the best way!) inngest founder reached out personally with 6 months of credits and looking into root cause. I already liked inngest a lot as a product but their founder customer support is amazing too! ๐Ÿ’™

Being the cheap person I am, I tried to stay on inngest's free plan for as long as possible until I couldn't So I finally upgraded to their pro plan and unleashed thousands of backlogged scheduled events that I didn't even know were there ๐Ÿ˜ฑ

I'm like a couple months late but finally launched Conteflow's web app (www.conteflow.com)! ๐Ÿ˜ญ And I got my first stripe subscription from web app! ๐Ÿฅณ

Eva@evactivate.bsky.social

One of the most requested features is finally getting my full attention The web app for Conteflow is coming in a few weeks!

I disappeared for weeks because life went full chaos mode for a while โ€ข One grandparent in ICU from cancer tumor โ€ข Other grandparent in ICU from stroke โ€ข Close friend diagnosed with cancer โ€ข One parent caught in legal crossfire as scapegoat Thankfully the worst has passed. I'm back building

People either love or hate my app's onboarding This split drove me crazy for months: One half loved how comprehensive the personalization is The other half hates how long it is and drops out I finally found the perfect solution and I'm kinda mad I didn't do this earlier #buildinpublic

A simple social profile import is all that's need to: - extract writing styles from past posts - build a profile bio - generate voice profile - generate content categories Pretty excited to see what the onboarding analytics will look like after this is pushed to production!

Suddenly getting a lot of love from Google Play and I still have no idea why ๐Ÿ˜ณ Users that discovered the app through Google Play literally jumped from <10 users a week to >200 a week #buildinpublic

Welp, always check balcony drains before a typhoon Had to go out in my bathroom slippers to clear clogged drains cuz rainwater was flooding into the bedroom๐Ÿ’€ At least the rain was warm

I think I'm feeling a tiny hint of burnout lately Maybe cuz I'm like 1-2 weeks away from launching the web app so it gives a false sense of seeing the finish line when it's actually another starting line

At least it's nowhere near as bad as this really bad burnout I had couple years ago That time was so bad that I couldn't open my IDE or look at code for several months Learned my lesson this time and pacing myself better to keep the burnout demons away ๐Ÿ’ช

Currently in that magic flow state where features are just flowing ๐Ÿ˜Œ Knocked out voice profile analysis, AI interview, post generation, quick posts AND draft editor Just a few more to go: - Schedule - Published - Onboarding - Settings - Stripe Aiming to launch by end of next week! #buildinpublic

So I'm building this voice profile analysis feature and discovering all these weird writing habits I never noticed before Apparently I start like 25% of my posts with 'So' (which I'm literally doing right now) #buildinpublic

Taking an involuntary break from my app turned out to not be so bad Not being in the weeds helped put some distance and i ended up thinking a lot about the bigger picture and future directions lately It gave me some tentative ideas and clarity about who Iโ€™m building the app for

People who juggle a day job AND building a business on the side are seriously built different I'm working on a client project for only a week and I'm unable to context switch to my app at all You guys are superhuman (or killing yourself lol)

Got some feedback from a couple generous users ๐Ÿ™ And the verdict is: hurry up and build the web app and add voice mode to interviews ๐Ÿซก

Took me forever to decide on these 2 questions: 1. What's the most frustrating thing about using the app right now? 2. What problem were you trying to solve when you first tried Conteflow? Looking forward to eating some humble pie soon ๐Ÿฝ๏ธ

Got an emergency request from an old client so Iโ€™ll be away from building for a whole week or 2 ๐Ÿ˜ญ Normally I'd be very grumpy but this is for a special client who named their internal tool (that I built) after ME No one has EVER named anything after me before

I've been wrestling with this tricky onboarding step for the past month Itโ€™s a relatively high effort question with a user drop-off rate of like 20% I rewrote the copy like 3 or 4 times but none of them made a difference

Then I changed the order last week and moved it near the end of onboarding And just like that, user drop-offs fell from 20% to 5% Turns out I scared off new users by simply asking too soon ๐Ÿคฆโ€โ™€๏ธ

I recently checked where users heard about my app and it's appearing in the most random places I've been heads down fixing and building for weeks, barely did any marketing... But somehow it reached 2,500 signups in a month ๐Ÿ˜ณ

New users said they found my app through: - instagram - tiktok - telegram - word of mouth - linkedin - youtube - podcast - x/twitter - newsletters - reddit - facebook - even 1 from xiaohongshu (Chinese social media)

I donโ€™t even have an account on most of these lol My app doesn't have any built in viral features so it means a lot to me that there are strangers sharing about it ๐Ÿ™

Finally wrapped up my (painful) X and LinkedIn integrations ๐Ÿฅณ My feature creep monster also couldnโ€™t help adding "just one more thing"... โ€ข Image attachments โ€ข Notifications for scheduled posts โ€ข Haptic feedback on everything! Forcing myself to stop now so I can actually ship

LinkedIn is winning against X for shittiest developer experience How do you guys create a test profile that last longer than a day? Even after I followed every rule in their TOS for test profiles, my test profile still get restricted Like is it normal to require a gov id for a test profile? ๐Ÿ’€

After a decade of working in B2B, I'm tired of building for distant users that I never get to talk to Yeah, B2C might be harder, more competitive, and less predictable... The grass might not be greener in B2C, but at least I'll get to see real people using what I build

Currently debating which is worse: X or LinkedIn API integration Honestly, I thought X's API was a headache until I met LinkedIn's mess Their documentations are freaking crazy, half the time whatever scope or endpoint youโ€™re using is deprecated or for the wrong scope

TIL: The fastest way to give yourself a heart attack is to accidentally drain a couple hundred users' credits ๐Ÿ’€ The culprit? Credits were being deducted for EVERY scheduled interview... ...whether users showed up or not (most forgot they had scheduled interviews)

My app going mini viral several weeks ago felt amazing until I realized most users were not my ICP ๐Ÿ™ƒ It's a weird emotional rollercoaster: Day 1: "OMG it's happening! People are downloading!" Day 7: "Wait... why is retention dropping?" Day 14: "Oh... these aren't the users I built this for"

Only 20% of users are my ICP (entrepreneurs and business owners) The majority of users came out of curiosity, played around, and left. However, there is one good news 10% of entrepreneurs and business owners who completed one interview became paying customers!

Sometimes the most incredible support comes from the most unexpected places I was ready to give up my apartment to extend runway Then my landlord told me to stay and not worry about paying rent for the next 6 months I really wasnโ€™t expecting the person I pay rent to become my biggest benefactor ๐Ÿฅน

There are two basic features I super regret not adding in my mobile app from day one No upgrade reminders = some users still on old versions No rating requests = missing those sweet app store ratings ๐Ÿ˜ญ

Today was a fun day ๐Ÿ’€ Tried logging into my LinkedIn developer account Phone verification required: Phone #1: Failed Phone #2: Failed Phone #3: Failed Phone #4: Failed Got blocked for too many attempts... Only to realize hours later I was using the wrong email ๐Ÿคฆโ€โ™€๏ธ

Been living in debug mode for a week, but finally got the app submitted for review ๐Ÿ˜ฎโ€๐Ÿ’จ Next up: actually building what users asked for! โ€ข Publish to social media platforms (esp LinkedIn) โ€ข Web app Back to building! ๐Ÿ’ช

Been coding like a madwoman in my coding cave lately Thereโ€™s nothing like seeing how real users use the app to realize how many little leaks there are ๐Ÿ˜… Half of my dev time is spent on improving onboarding rn

Thanks to all the amazing feedback from users, my todo list keeps getting longer ๐Ÿ˜† I hope there's no penalty for sending too many app updates to app store reviewers...I think I've sent like 5 in the past 2 weeks alone