It takes less than you think to start. Zero dollars of investment. You can keep your day job. Just two months of nights and weekends. Then launch it. Maybe it’s not perfect yet. But get it out there.
That’s what the guys at Tapbots did. Six months ago they shipped Weightbot, an iPhone app for tracking your weight. It sold 100k copies in its first 100 days. And a newer app, Convertbot, a unit conversion app, is selling at about twice that rate.
Now they’re leaving their day jobs and giving Tapbots 100% of their energy. The plan is to keep things tight though…
Longer term we aren’t looking to get any VC funding, grow to 100s of employees or get bought out by some big corporation. We may get help with support, testing and/or marketing, but development and design is going to just be us two for the foreseeable future. We think that’s the best way to keep the quality of our applications at the level that everyone expects. Our goal is to produce about 4 applications a year. We aren’t going to shovel out crap-ware to cash-in on our names. We aren’t going to write the next Office or Filemaker. We are going to write simple but incredibly polished applications that are created specifically for the iPhone/Touch devices. Two guys, lot’s of passion and a lot of hard work, that’s the Tapbots way.
The Tapbots way sounds like a pretty smart way.
Brandon Durham
on 08 May 09Very inspiring!
rjb
on 08 May 09Love the design of their app… Gorgeous.
It’s really wonderful to hear a team with such an understanding of themselves, what they want and the direction they are heading.
The best of luck to them!
Rob
on 08 May 09The other benefit is that since they are doing something they care about their quality of life goes up. They might not be making as much money but when you are doing something you really like doing, then it doesn’t matter.
Diwant Vaidya
on 08 May 09Inspiring, like @Brandon said. I’ll pass this along to my brother, who is making games for the iPhone in a similar moonlighting kind of schedule. I hope you all support him as much!
Jeremy Olson
on 08 May 09Right on! As a college student, I feel this model is perfect. I’ve got a part-time job but my brother and I are using our spare time to build iPhone apps that we (and probably other college students) would love to use. It may become a business. Who knows?
The beauty of it is that at the end of it all we either (1) fail and learn from our mistakes (as well as add iPhone dev. to our resumes) or (2) succeed and quit our day jobs (without owing anything, conceptual or monetary, to any VC).
I like it. Its fun.
Micah
on 08 May 09Wha? Someone made tons of money with very little work on an iPhone app? This is big news!
Seriously, this is just the latest get-rich-quick iPhone app story. In reality, the app store is no different from any past gold rush (Facebook apps, anyone?). Some get really lucky and strike it rich. Others get nothing. Still others work hard, advertise, iterate, and basically stick to fundamentals. Some of them manage to eke out a decent return.
Let’s try to stick to the real-life stories instead of profiling the lottery winners.
Jeremy Olson
on 08 May 09Micah, I don’t think Tapbots fall into the lottery winners category. Why? Because one their most successful app (ConvertBot) is not category defining; nothing novel like “iFart” or “iSteam”. No, it happens to fall into the conversion app category with dozens of competitors (many of which are free).
Funny then. You wouldn’t expect ConvertBot to sell well. Its apparently nothing new. But it is. The category isn’t new but the implementation is; the polish is; the fun factor is.
This case study should give us hope. Yes, apparently it is just a few developers getting “lucky” but here it really isn’t luck; it is implementation.
Micah
on 08 May 09I won’t argue that implementation doesn’t make a difference. However, I’m willing to bet that luck, marketing, and hype play a much bigger role. Hype and advertising can work some amazing magic. Otherwise there would be no market for late-night infomercials.
Plus, I’m guessing that if you have one successful app, it’s probably much easier to sell the next one. That’s what branding is all about. People by products that start with “i” for just that reason. They know the Apple brand has a good reputation.
I wish success to all iPhone app developers. I just hope they’re ready for the potentially crushing blow when riches don’t come in the first month. In my book, that’s no failure, just how it works. Keep at it, keep working, and you’ll probably eventually make enough to tell yourself it was worth the effort. That’s a truly happy day, believe me :)
Jeremy Olson
on 08 May 09Micah, I actually agree with your warning to developers. The idea that one can throw a bunch of apps into the app store and make millions is ridiculous (and extremely rare). I also agree that other factors, such as marketing, may also have a strong impact on the success of an iPhone app.
That being said, I think the key to Tapbots success (and the reason for many developer’s failure) is not primarily extraordinary marketing, hype, or luck (Tapbots folks, please clue me in if I’m off). Tapbots apps stand out from the crowd. You see the screenshot or demo and you want it. I have even shown ConvertBot to friends. Its just that cool.
Unfortunately, most developers simply don’t have the capacity to build such apps. Most developers are not designers. Tapbots was smart: an excellent developer teamed up with an excellent designer. This is key.
Polish. Beauty. Fun. Those words describe a tiny proportion of iPhone apps and, from what I’ve seen, if your app makes it into that category your chances of success multiply. Its extremely difficult and requires taste, skill, and patience but, as Tapbots story proves, it can pay off.
Happy
on 11 May 09Congrats to the Tapbots team. Weightbot and Convertbot are two well designed apps that are such a pleasure to use. The sounds and visuals are fun. The apps are simple. The functionality is useful. They’ve hit the rare tri-fecta of entertainment, easy-of-use, and functionality. I’m glad to see it pay off.
Happy
on 11 May 09The Tapbots guys deserve their 6 figure sales because they didn’t design and build a desktop or web-app scaled down to the iPhone screen. Instead, they made an distinctly iPhone app. With its touch interface and accelerometer, the iPhone allows for a completely different UI than desktop or web. Tabbots takes full advantage of these features to make their software feel like actual, physical products.
Using their products feels like you are interacting with a hard product, not with a representational software interface. Physical products don’t have drop-down select lists or menu bars or navigation screens. Physical products have wheels and buttons and knobs that you grab and twist and push with your fingers that make clicks and whirs and whooshes. Tapbots products do too, making using their products more life-like, more intuitive, and more fun.
The beauty of the iPhone and other similar phones is that they can morph into almost any tool. When doing so, they should act like the tool they represent – not like software representing the tool they represent. On this count, Tapbots got it right.
Joel
on 12 May 09It’s really interesting to see how developers are working with the interface constraints of the iPhone to produce great apps.
There’s a lot of junk in the app store but there are some really great apps in there too. The best ones seem to be super simple, as is Weightbot.
Way to go.
mr.negative
on 12 May 09Who would buy that? Get off your phone and go for a walk fatty!
This discussion is closed.