u/Romero-pantelic

I'm a solo founder building a household management app for couples and families called Miiro. My wife and I kept losing track of things. Groceries, calendar stuff, meal ideas, who's doing what. Not because we're bad at it, but because everything lived in a different app. Notes in one place, calendar in another, grocery list somewhere else, recipes bookmarked in a browser tab from 2023.

So I built one app to handle all of it. Shared calendar, tasks, grocery lists, meals, and an AI assistant that actually does things for you (more on that later).

The first 50 users

I launched the first version about 4 months ago. Got my first 50 downloads and felt amazing. People were signing up. The idea was validated. Right?

Wrong.

I started reaching out to users. Asking what they thought, how they used it, what was missing. And the feedback hit hard.

"It's ugly." That one stung the most. I'd been staring at this thing for months. I thought it looked fine. It did not look fine.

"I don't really get how it works." There was no onboarding. None. Zero. I just dropped people into the app and hoped they'd figure it out. They didn't.

On top of that, I'd built so many features and tools that the menu and settings became impossible to navigate. I never noticed because I knew where everything was by heart. New users didn't. They opened the app, saw a wall of options, and had no idea where to start.

"These features aren't really new." And they were right. A shared calendar? A grocery list? A task manager? None of that is new on its own. But people did like the idea of having it all in one place. The bundling was the value. I just hadn't made that clear, and the execution wasn't good enough to keep them.

Out of those first 50 users, only about 10 stuck around.

The decision to stop building

This was the hardest part. I had a roadmap full of features I wanted to add. But I forced myself to stop. No new features until the foundation was solid. If people think your app is ugly and confusing, adding more stuff just makes it ugly, confusing, and cluttered.

So I went back to zero.

[Before/after screenshots here]

The 2-month rebuild

I spent the next two months rebuilding almost everything. New design system, proper onboarding flow, simplified navigation, and the biggest change of all: Sam.

Sam is an AI assistant built into Miiro. Not a chatbot that answers trivia. Sam actually does things for your household. You can tell Sam "order groceries for taco night" and it will find a recipe, build a grocery list, check prices at your local store, and place the order. You can say "plan something fun this weekend" and it searches restaurants, activities, whatever fits.

Right now grocery ordering works with Dutch stores (Albert Heijn, Jumbo, Plus, Crisp, Picnic) and US stores through Walmart and Kroger, which includes Ralphs, King Soopers, Fry's, Fred Meyer, Harris Teeter, Smith's, Dillons, and more. Together that covers a huge chunk of the American grocery market.

Under the hood, Sam is powered by Claude with 13+ tools it can call on. For stores with public APIs it connects directly. For stores that don't have APIs, it uses an on-device web agent that browses the store's website the same way you would, using your own login session. No server-side scraping, no bot detection issues. It's early and expanding, but when it works it feels like magic.

I also built proper onboarding from scratch. Instead of dumping people into an empty app, it now walks you through setting up your household step by step. You immediately see how things connect and what the app can do for you.

The results

I just crossed 100 total downloads. Getting about 5 new downloads a day organically. But the number I care about most is retention.

From the first 50 users: 10 stuck around (20%). From the last 50 downloads: almost 40 are still active (80%).

Same concept, same target audience. The difference is execution.

What I learned

1. Stop building and talk to your users earlier than you think you should. I waited until 50 users. I should have started at 10.
2. "It's ugly" is painful to hear but it's the most actionable feedback you'll get. Design matters way more than I wanted to admit.
3. Features aren't a moat. Everyone has a to-do list app. The way features work together is what makes people stay.
4. If there's no onboarding, there's no product. People won't figure it out on their own. They'll just leave.
5. You are not your user. I knew every screen, every menu, every setting by heart. So I never noticed that the navigation was a mess. Get someone who's never seen your app to use it in front of you. Watch where they tap, where they hesitate, where they give up. That will teach you more than any analytics dashboard.
6. AI is only impressive if it does something real. Nobody cares about a chatbot. People care when it actually orders their groceries.

What's next

Still a long way to go. I'm working on better analytics, smarter suggestions that actually help instead of nagging you about overdue tasks, and expanding grocery ordering to more stores. The app is live on iOS if anyone wants to try it.

Happy to answer any questions about the build, the tech stack, the feedback process, or what it's like building a consumer app as a solo founder. And if you have brutal feedback, I can take it now. I've been trained.

I'm a solo founder building a household management app for couples and families called Miiro. My wife and I kept losing track of things. Groceries, calendar stuff, meal ideas, who's doing what. Not because we're bad at it, but because everything lived in a different app. Notes in one place, calendar in another, grocery list somewhere else, recipes bookmarked in a browser tab from 2023.

So I built one app to handle all of it. Shared calendar, tasks, grocery lists, meals, and an AI assistant that actually does things for you (more on that later).

The first 50 users

I launched the first version about 4 months ago. Got my first 50 downloads and felt amazing. People were signing up. The idea was validated. Right?

Wrong.

I started reaching out to users. Asking what they thought, how they used it, what was missing. And the feedback hit hard.

"It's ugly." That one stung the most. I'd been staring at this thing for months. I thought it looked fine. It did not look fine.

"I don't really get how it works." There was no onboarding. None. Zero. I just dropped people into the app and hoped they'd figure it out. They didn't.

On top of that, I'd built so many features and tools that the menu and settings became impossible to navigate. I never noticed because I knew where everything was by heart. New users didn't. They opened the app, saw a wall of options, and had no idea where to start.

"These features aren't really new." And they were right. A shared calendar? A grocery list? A task manager? None of that is new on its own. But people did like the idea of having it all in one place. The bundling was the value. I just hadn't made that clear, and the execution wasn't good enough to keep them.

Out of those first 50 users, only about 10 stuck around.

The decision to stop building

This was the hardest part. I had a roadmap full of features I wanted to add. But I forced myself to stop. No new features until the foundation was solid. If people think your app is ugly and confusing, adding more stuff just makes it ugly, confusing, and cluttered.

So I went back to zero.

[Before/after screenshots here]

The 2-month rebuild

I spent the next two months rebuilding almost everything. New design system, proper onboarding flow, simplified navigation, and the biggest change of all: Sam.

Sam is an AI assistant built into Miiro. Not a chatbot that answers trivia. Sam actually does things for your household. You can tell Sam "order groceries for taco night" and it will find a recipe, build a grocery list, check prices at your local store, and place the order. You can say "plan something fun this weekend" and it searches restaurants, activities, whatever fits.

Right now grocery ordering works with Dutch stores (Albert Heijn, Jumbo, Plus, Crisp, Picnic) and US stores through Walmart and Kroger, which includes Ralphs, King Soopers, Fry's, Fred Meyer, Harris Teeter, Smith's, Dillons, and more. Together that covers a huge chunk of the American grocery market.

Under the hood, Sam is powered by Claude with 13+ tools it can call on. For stores with public APIs it connects directly. For stores that don't have APIs, it uses an on-device web agent that browses the store's website the same way you would, using your own login session. No server-side scraping, no bot detection issues. It's early and expanding, but when it works it feels like magic.

I also built proper onboarding from scratch. Instead of dumping people into an empty app, it now walks you through setting up your household step by step. You immediately see how things connect and what the app can do for you.

The results

I just crossed 100 total downloads. Getting about 5 new downloads a day organically. But the number I care about most is retention.

From the first 50 users: 10 stuck around (20%). From the last 50 downloads: almost 40 are still active (80%).

Same concept, same target audience. The difference is execution.

What I learned

1. Stop building and talk to your users earlier than you think you should. I waited until 50 users. I should have started at 10.
2. "It's ugly" is painful to hear but it's the most actionable feedback you'll get. Design matters way more than I wanted to admit.
3. Features aren't a moat. Everyone has a to-do list app. The way features work together is what makes people stay.
4. If there's no onboarding, there's no product. People won't figure it out on their own. They'll just leave.
5. You are not your user. I knew every screen, every menu, every setting by heart. So I never noticed that the navigation was a mess. Get someone who's never seen your app to use it in front of you. Watch where they tap, where they hesitate, where they give up. That will teach you more than any analytics dashboard.
6. AI is only impressive if it does something real. Nobody cares about a chatbot. People care when it actually orders their groceries.

What's next

Still a long way to go. I'm working on better analytics, smarter suggestions that actually help instead of nagging you about overdue tasks, and expanding grocery ordering to more stores. The app is live on iOS if anyone wants to try it.

Happy to answer any questions about the build, the tech stack, the feedback process, or what it's like building a consumer app as a solo founder. And if you have brutal feedback, I can take it now. I've been trained.

I'm a solo founder building a household management app for couples and families called Miiro. My wife and I kept losing track of things. Groceries, calendar stuff, meal ideas, who's doing what. Not because we're bad at it, but because everything lived in a different app. Notes in one place, calendar in another, grocery list somewhere else, recipes bookmarked in a browser tab from 2023.

So I built one app to handle all of it. Shared calendar, tasks, grocery lists, meals, and an AI assistant that actually does things for you (more on that later).

The first 50 users

I launched the first version about 4 months ago. Got my first 50 downloads and felt amazing. People were signing up. The idea was validated. Right?

Wrong.

I started reaching out to users. Asking what they thought, how they used it, what was missing. And the feedback hit hard.

"It's ugly." That one stung the most. I'd been staring at this thing for months. I thought it looked fine. It did not look fine.

"I don't really get how it works." There was no onboarding. None. Zero. I just dropped people into the app and hoped they'd figure it out. They didn't.

On top of that, I'd built so many features and tools that the menu and settings became impossible to navigate. I never noticed because I knew where everything was by heart. New users didn't. They opened the app, saw a wall of options, and had no idea where to start.

"These features aren't really new." And they were right. A shared calendar? A grocery list? A task manager? None of that is new on its own. But people did like the idea of having it all in one place. The bundling was the value. I just hadn't made that clear, and the execution wasn't good enough to keep them.

Out of those first 50 users, only about 10 stuck around.

The decision to stop building

This was the hardest part. I had a roadmap full of features I wanted to add. But I forced myself to stop. No new features until the foundation was solid. If people think your app is ugly and confusing, adding more stuff just makes it ugly, confusing, and cluttered.

So I went back to zero.

The 2-month rebuild

I spent the next two months rebuilding almost everything. New design system, proper onboarding flow, simplified navigation, and the biggest change of all: Sam.

Sam is an AI assistant built into Miiro. Not a chatbot that answers trivia. Sam actually does things for your household. You can tell Sam "order groceries for taco night" and it will find a recipe, build a grocery list, check prices at your local store, and place the order. You can say "plan something fun this weekend" and it searches restaurants, activities, whatever fits.

Right now grocery ordering works with Dutch stores (Albert Heijn, Jumbo, Plus, Crisp, Picnic) and US stores through Walmart and Kroger, which includes Ralphs, King Soopers, Fry's, Fred Meyer, Harris Teeter, Smith's, Dillons, and more. Together that covers a huge chunk of the American grocery market.

Under the hood, Sam is powered by Claude with 13+ tools it can call on. For stores with public APIs it connects directly. For stores that don't have APIs, it uses an on-device web agent that browses the store's website the same way you would, using your own login session. No server-side scraping, no bot detection issues. It's early and expanding, but when it works it feels like magic.

I also built proper onboarding from scratch. Instead of dumping people into an empty app, it now walks you through setting up your household step by step. You immediately see how things connect and what the app can do for you.

The results

I just crossed 100 total downloads. Getting about 5 new downloads a day organically. But the number I care about most is retention.

From the first 50 users: 10 stuck around (20%). From the last 50 downloads: almost 40 are still active (80%).

Same concept, same target audience. The difference is execution.

What I learned

1. "It's ugly" is painful to hear but it's the most actionable feedback you'll get. Design matters way more than I wanted to admit.
2. Features aren't a moat. Everyone has a to-do list app. The way features work together is what makes people stay.
3. If there's no onboarding, there's no product. People won't figure it out on their own. They'll just leave.
4. You are not your user. I knew every screen, every menu, every setting by heart. So I never noticed that the navigation was a mess. Get someone who's never seen your app to use it in front of you. Watch where they tap, where they hesitate, where they give up. That will teach you more than any analytics dashboard.
5. AI is only impressive if it does something real. Nobody cares about a chatbot. People care when it actually orders their groceries.

What's next

Still a long way to go. I'm working on better analytics, smarter suggestions that actually help instead of nagging you about overdue tasks, and expanding grocery ordering to more stores. The app is live on iOS if anyone wants to try it.

Happy to answer any questions about the build, the tech stack, the feedback process, or what it's like building a consumer app as a solo founder. And if you have brutal feedback, I can take it now. I've been trained.

I'm a solo founder building a household management app for couples and families called Miiro. My wife and I kept losing track of things. Groceries, calendar stuff, meal ideas, who's doing what. Not because we're bad at it, but because everything lived in a different app. Notes in one place, calendar in another, grocery list somewhere else, recipes bookmarked in a browser tab from 2023.

So I built one app to handle all of it. Shared calendar, tasks, grocery lists, meals, and an AI assistant that actually does things for you (more on that later).

The first 50 users

I launched the first version about 4 months ago. Got my first 50 downloads and felt amazing. People were signing up. The idea was validated. Right?

Wrong.

I started reaching out to users. Asking what they thought, how they used it, what was missing. And the feedback hit hard.

"It's ugly." That one stung the most. I'd been staring at this thing for months. I thought it looked fine. It did not look fine.

"I don't really get how it works." There was no onboarding. None. Zero. I just dropped people into the app and hoped they'd figure it out. They didn't.

On top of that, I'd built so many features and tools that the menu and settings became impossible to navigate. I never noticed because I knew where everything was by heart. New users didn't. They opened the app, saw a wall of options, and had no idea where to start.

"These features aren't really new." And they were right. A shared calendar? A grocery list? A task manager? None of that is new on its own. But people did like the idea of having it all in one place. The bundling was the value. I just hadn't made that clear, and the execution wasn't good enough to keep them.

Out of those first 50 users, only about 10 stuck around.

The decision to stop building

This was the hardest part. I had a roadmap full of features I wanted to add. But I forced myself to stop. No new features until the foundation was solid. If people think your app is ugly and confusing, adding more stuff just makes it ugly, confusing, and cluttered.

So I went back to zero.

The 2-month rebuild

I spent the next two months rebuilding almost everything. New design system, proper onboarding flow, simplified navigation, and the biggest change of all: Sam.

Sam is an AI assistant built into Miiro. Not a chatbot that answers trivia. Sam actually does things for your household. You can tell Sam "order groceries for taco night" and it will find a recipe, build a grocery list, check prices at your local store, and place the order. You can say "plan something fun this weekend" and it searches restaurants, activities, whatever fits.

Right now grocery ordering works with Dutch stores (Albert Heijn, Jumbo, Plus, Crisp, Picnic) and US stores through Walmart and Kroger, which includes Ralphs, King Soopers, Fry's, Fred Meyer, Harris Teeter, Smith's, Dillons, and more. Together that covers a huge chunk of the American grocery market.

Under the hood, Sam is powered by Claude with 13+ tools it can call on. For stores with public APIs it connects directly. For stores that don't have APIs, it uses an on-device web agent that browses the store's website the same way you would, using your own login session. No server-side scraping, no bot detection issues. It's early and expanding, but when it works it feels like magic.

I also built proper onboarding from scratch. Instead of dumping people into an empty app, it now walks you through setting up your household step by step. You immediately see how things connect and what the app can do for you.

The results

I just crossed 100 total downloads. Getting about 5 new downloads a day organically. But the number I care about most is retention.

From the first 50 users: 10 stuck around (20%). From the last 50 downloads: almost 40 are still active (80%).

Same concept, same target audience. The difference is execution.

What I learned

1. Stop building and talk to your users earlier than you think you should. I waited until 50 users. I should have started at 10.
2. "It's ugly" is painful to hear but it's the most actionable feedback you'll get. Design matters way more than I wanted to admit.
3. Features aren't a moat. Everyone has a to-do list app. The way features work together is what makes people stay.
4. If there's no onboarding, there's no product. People won't figure it out on their own. They'll just leave.
5. You are not your user. I knew every screen, every menu, every setting by heart. So I never noticed that the navigation was a mess. Get someone who's never seen your app to use it in front of you. Watch where they tap, where they hesitate, where they give up. That will teach you more than any analytics dashboard.
6. AI is only impressive if it does something real. Nobody cares about a chatbot. People care when it actually orders their groceries.

What's next

Still a long way to go. I'm working on better analytics, smarter suggestions that actually help instead of nagging you about overdue tasks, and expanding grocery ordering to more stores. The app is live on iOS if anyone wants to try it.

Happy to answer any questions about the build, the tech stack, the feedback process, or what it's like building a consumer app as a solo founder. And if you have brutal feedback, I can take it now. I've been trained.