Behind the Scenes: Our 2023 Challenges and 2024 Ambitions

2023 was a big year for us. We started with the goal of creating a product used daily by 4,000 people or paid for by 80. We did a ton of work, learned a lot, and ended the year with 15 customers paying $10/month. At the end of the year, we paused to reflect on that progress and adjust plans for 2024. We wrote this article to share those reflections with our loyal users and others following along.

It's nerve-wracking to share an honest reflection and open ourselves to criticism. We know people will read about our efforts and think, "why are they doing that when they could be doing something more effective?" Facing that feedback dents the ego. However, protecting our egos comes at the cost of truth and accelerated progress. We aspire to soften our egos and prioritize real improvement over appearance! So, without further ado, here is our 2023 reflection and 2024 plan.

2023 Reflection

January - March 

For the first three months of 2023, we spent much of our time pursuing funding. We spoke with ex-founders and investors, created a pitch deck, and applied to accelerators.

A highlight was our YC interview with Michael Seibel – it felt surreal chatting with someone we've listened to for years. Michael was “excited about us, but not our product.” As we've learned, consumer SaaS at a venture scale is extremely difficult, so VCs are understandably hesitant to back products without substantial traction.

We could have repositioned our pitch to emphasize our long-term plan of selling to enterprises. However, we realized we were spending all our time considering what VCs wanted rather than what we wanted – the thrill of making a genuinely valuable product. So, after some rejection and reflection, we decided that, for now, we're more interested in creating a small, profitable product over a billion-dollar company. That's not to say we'll never pursue a venture-scale opportunity – just not now.

The biggest change to the app during this period was rebranding from ProcrastinationApp to Doer. We wanted a more positive framing based on our customers' ideal end state rather than their problem.

With the rebrand, we also introduced our first audio lesson. Although commonly requested, audio hasn't been an obviously good feature. Now that we have audio, users often ask to read instead of listen. In hindsight, we could have surveyed people on their preferences before deciding. We may reintroduce reading options, but it's not a high priority presently. We have bigger fish to fry.

April - June

In April, Kemble packed up his life in Melbourne and moved to NYC, enabling us to collaborate in person for the first time in a while. It was great to problem-solve together without needing to schedule calls. This boost in motivation energized us!

At that time, our app served primarily as an introductory tool for overcoming procrastination, not a complete program. We had envisioned a comprehensive curriculum with ten content units but initially prioritized enhancing the app's features over investing heavily in content creation. As a result, after completing the first four units, users were greeted with a message promising more content soon. Naturally, we started receiving emails asking when “soon” was.

These emails showed us that the most impactful retention tool was the simple journey page outlining the ten planned units. It offered users a glimpse into the future and motivated them to persist with their daily reflections. This insight shifted our strategy - we prioritized developing the core features of audio lessons and reflections over other elements.

This meant producing more audio lessons and designing unique reflection formats for each unit. By creating lessons in quick succession, we really improved. Our first audio lesson had poor sound, awkward transitions, and took weeks to produce. After making a few more, we hit our groove - both the quality and speed drastically improved.

Around June, we were intrigued by an email from a German high school consultant who had discovered our app and was using it with students. This opened up the potential for licensing to educational institutions. We began meeting with teachers, school principles and district superintendents to explore the viability of that path. However, we ultimately found this was distracting us from the obvious problems preventing broader usage of our app. So again, we refocused on satisfying our existing users.

If our goal was making billions, pursuing schools and businesses may have been the right call. However, we first wanted to create something that was genuinely helpful. We wanted to make $1 before attempting to make a billion.

July - September

Up until this point, we worked sporadically without much consistency. So, in August, we made a stronger commitment to meet regularly. We agreed to work together at the cafe outside our office for 2 hours each weekday morning before work. We instituted a ritual that if one of us was late, they would buy the other a coffee and hand it over while apologizing for "letting down the team." This ritual reinforced the seriousness of our endeavor, a habit we've maintained for five months now. 

Toward the end of September, we completed all ten content units, finally having a full guide to overcoming procrastination. With that milestone met, we decided it was time to start charging for the app. So, we began implementing payment infrastructure, opening a business account, and collecting fees from users.

Toward the end of this period, we also added a "connect" page in the app to reduce friction for users to provide feedback. They could either leave written comments or book a coaching session with Jordan through his open calendar. To our surprise and delight, people actually scheduled time to speak with us. It was an odd but gratifying feeling to jump on calls with strangers who were genuinely interested in following our advice.

October - December

Throughout October, as Kemble worked on implementing the payments infrastructure for the app, I focused on converting all of our existing content into free materials to generate interest in using the app. During this time, we created 12 blog posts, 10 podcast episodes, and several short videos on the science and psychology of overcoming procrastination. That content, along with people simply finding our app in the app store, has reliably generated a steady stream of new users to the app each month. 

After introducing paid subscriptions in November, our first paying customer emailed us to report a bug but also mentioned (unprompted) that she was happy to pay for the app and had been recommending it to friends. This genuine endorsement gave us a sense of pride and excitement, further fueling our motivation to build something valuable for users!

However, that email highlighted our biggest problem - bugs! Over the past ten months, as we added and removed features, we accumulated technical and usability issues. Reviewing the app store, the most frequent negative feedback was on reliability, sometimes making the app completely unusable. Resolving these issues became our top priority for 2024.

We ended 2023 with 15 paying subscribers, falling short of our goal of 80. Although we didn't hit our target, we were pleased with our progress and felt we were on a path toward greater success if we persisted.

Charging for the app allowed us to focus on feedback from power users. For most of the year, we didn't feel close enough to customers, so this was a positive change. Through conversations with users, we learned our most common customer is a Ph.D. psychology student who has seen a therapist for mental health challenges. Given this insight, in the coming year we may consider ways to specifically target those groups - perhaps even by giving talks on campuses!

2024 Ambitions

So what is our plan for 2024? We are committed to making this app work. We believe that if we can improve reliability, even without adding features, we can grow our paid user base by at least 10X over the next six months. Our goal is to generate $2,000 in monthly recurring revenue by July. If we don’t reach that, we will stop and re-evaluate if we want to continue with this product. If not, we will likely switch to building something new with venture-scale potential.

Regardless of the outcomes, this is what we want to be doing. In a sense, this is our life's work. We aspire to have a tangible impact on accelerating long-run economic growth by creating genuinely valuable products. Generating revenue is a clear signal of value creation and keeps us honest. Optimizing the app to grow revenue is great practice for what we want to excel at.

Doer reflects our personalities. We've both been described as "pushers" - we push people to do more and aspire to accomplish more. We take pride in helping people realize their latent potential. Therefore, we take pride that our app helps users achieve important goals. We're excited about the possibility of scaling that impact to more and more people.