u/YAZ326

https://preview.redd.it/pmfok4p4pakh1.png?width=1442&format=png&auto=webp&s=184ec651850566a8397f602911e639c2107356f2

I launched my app 9 days ago, and so far I’ve got 70 users, 1 paying customer, and 69 using the free version.

I’m genuinely really happy to have got my first paying customer this early. It was a great feeling knowing someone was willing to pay for something I built.

Now I’m trying to figure out the next part: converting more free users into paying customers.

For those of you who have launched freemium apps:

• What free-to-paid conversion rate did you see early on?
• What changes made the biggest difference to conversion?
• Did you focus more on improving the paywall, limiting the free tier, onboarding, email/push notifications, or something else?
• How long did it take before you had enough data to judge your conversion rate properly?

So far, I’ve also launched on Product Hunt and Hacker News and had a post get over 100k impressions on LinkedIn, but I’m still very early and trying to figure out what to focus on next.

I launched my app 6 days ago, and I have 1 paying user and 69 people using the free version.

https://preview.redd.it/eju8p4mcoakh1.png?width=1442&format=png&auto=webp&s=3891a147c2b6d4a1944d0928e1ad414638a4500e

I also did a launch on Product Hunt and Hacker News and am working on creating an Instagram. What I am curious to find out is how to convert the free users. What has been a good approach for you guys?

https://preview.redd.it/3gy4phhqscjh1.png?width=2858&format=png&auto=webp&s=fc11a9a08d024f0aef095c356aa6d9a04d8ef86f

I launched my app 3 days ago, which I have been building on the side for over a year, and today it made its first sale. I am honestly so happy; I never thought this day would come.

Just keep grinding and building, guys, this first sale made me really emotional, and I am super happy to announce it wasn't my wife or mum who were my first customers.

They are expecting it for free

https://preview.redd.it/av9ru3oogyih1.png?width=2858&format=png&auto=webp&s=a5d6c909e5d3138a3afc7d91efd3fad915b18f07

I posted yesterday about launching my app, which I have been building on the side for over a year, and today it made its first sale. I am honestly so happy; I never thought this day would come.

Just keep grinding and building, guys, honestly this first sale made me really emotional and I am super happy to announce it wasn't my wife or mum who were my first customers.

They are expecting it for free

I wrote a post here about submitting my first app to the app store about a month ago. You can read it here https://www.reddit.com/r/microsaas/comments/1uquh0k/after_a_year_of_nights_and_weekends_alongside_my/

Here's what actually happened between then and now, because I think it's useful for anyone building in this space:

The rejections, in order:

1. Both subscription products weren't submitted alongside the binary, they showed as dashes instead of prices on the paywall. Turns out I had a build environment issue where my RevenueCat API key wasn't being injected correctly, so the products couldn't load.
2. Apple flagged that I was forcing users to register before accessing purchases. I appealed twice, arguing my app is "account-based" (end-to-end encrypted journal — the key literally can't exist without an account). They rejected the appeal both times. Eventually I rebuilt the auth architecture so the app opens straight into journaling with zero sign-up. Turns out that's also a better product.
3. No sign-in with Apple**;** I had Google login, missed that Apple requires an equivalent. Fixed.
4. Various metadata issues — wrong paywall pricing hierarchy, missing EULA link, placeholder text in the description.

Four resubmissions, roughly six weeks of review cycles on top of the year I'd already put in.

Honestly, I genuinely cannot believe this day has come. I have been working on this for over a year alongside my 9-5, after work, during weekends, and evening sessions turning into 1-2 am debugging sessions, but I can honestly say it was totally worth it!

→ App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/innersight/id6747950401
→ Landing page: https://www.innersightjournal.com

I emailed my 46-person waitlist today. 46 people. After a year. That number made me laugh and also kind of emotional at the same time; every single one of them signed up because I hope they believed in the idea before there was anything to download.

I have no idea if this will go anywhere commercially. The hard part- marketing, retention, actually getting people to care- starts now. But I shipped it. It's real. People can download it.

But just wanted to write this for anyone still grinding and thinking about quitting, just keep going. Keep chipping away and launch your product.

https://preview.redd.it/qsyr5n1bmqih1.png?width=1751&format=png&auto=webp&s=606dc3b5d028e72d89edef4f8671eb32710e42b7

https://preview.redd.it/iqc8smk4mqih1.png?width=1376&format=png&auto=webp&s=f629fa1df26cd4401618ede5b9cded55ea397224

I wrote a post here about submitting my first app to the App Store about a month ago.

Here's what actually happened between then and now, because I think it's useful for anyone building in this space:

The rejections, in order:

1. Both subscription products weren't submitted alongside the binary; they showed as dashes instead of prices on the paywall. Turns out I had a build environment issue where my RevenueCat API key wasn't being injected correctly, so the products couldn't load.
2. Apple flagged that I was forcing users to register before accessing purchases. I appealed twice, arguing my app is "account-based" (end-to-end encrypted journal — the key literally can't exist without an account). They rejected the appeal both times. Eventually I rebuilt the auth architecture so the app opens straight into journaling with zero sign-up. Turns out that's also a better product.
3. No sign-in with Apple; I had Google login, missed that Apple requires an equivalent. Fixed.
4. Various metadata issues — wrong paywall pricing hierarchy, missing EULA link, placeholder text in the description.

Four resubmissions, roughly six weeks of review cycles on top of the year I'd already put in.

Honestly, I genuinely cannot believe this day has come. I have been working on this for over a year alongside my 9-5, after work, during weekends, and evening sessions turning into 1-2 am debugging sessions, but I can honestly say it was totally worth it!

I emailed my 46-person waitlist today. 46 people. After a year. That number made me laugh and also kind of emotional at the same time; every single one of them signed up because I hope they believed in the idea before there was anything to download.

I have no idea if this will go anywhere commercially. The hard part- marketing, retention, actually getting people to care- starts now. But I shipped it. It's real. People can download it.

But just wanted to write this for anyone still grinding and thinking about quitting; just keep going. Keep chipping away and launch your product.

Been collecting One Piece cards for about 3/4 months, and this is my collection so far. My favourite character is Kaido, but unfortunately I haven't had much luck collecting him. If I am able to get the OP04-044 SP and the Chinese version of that card, I would be super happy. But nonetheless still pretty happy with my mostly Japanese collection.

https://preview.redd.it/casrc5l23kih1.png?width=545&format=png&auto=webp&s=473cfb68a9e4b4b3f9c4df97b1e69053fc4d7625

https://preview.redd.it/133d0q943kih1.png?width=527&format=png&auto=webp&s=523e42a8000dc48c9e183162db6bffa7c5b0c5b3

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https://preview.redd.it/vjkbp9493kih1.png?width=539&format=png&auto=webp&s=890a704d05a08ec6d25e4bc6f452bc98e0863abe

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https://preview.redd.it/s5il5ohd3kih1.png?width=558&format=png&auto=webp&s=3ec8b0b6b07935851c20602e08a7d65d52977da1

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As the title says, I'm 35, a husband and father of two with a loving wife. I used to be an avid gamer before I got married at 26. I kid you not, I would game upwards of 10 hours a day on weekends and a few hours every night after work throughout my 20s. In my teens, it was football after school and then gaming until nighttime.

But as I got older, I had less and less time to game. Kids, wife, responsibilities, etc. I'd see videos of new games I wanted to play, God of War, FF7 Remake, Elden Ring, knowing full well I wouldn't get to them. Time was one issue; the other was that every time I tried to fire up my old PS4, the kids would immediately climb on me, trying to play or disturb me.

Here's the thing that's actually made me write this post, though.

Back in 2016, when Persona 5 first came out, I was 26, newly married, still had reasonable amounts of free time, and everyone was raving about it. I bought it. Started it. And then… didn't stick with it. I tried multiple times over the years. Every attempt, I'd get maybe 10 hours in and drift off. I always knew it was a great game. I just couldn't stay with it.

Now, at 35, with kids, a mortgage, and objectively less free time than I had nine years ago, I genuinely cannot put it down.

I've been thinking about why, and I think it's connected to something else that's shifted in me over the last year.

While building my side project, InnerSightJournal, a private journaling app for people who don't share their feelings easily, I started actually using it. Journaling my own entries, testing the AI reflection features on my own thoughts. And what came out of it, over a few weeks, was this uncomfortable realisation: I'd spent most of my 30s quietly cutting the things that made me happy out of my own life. Gaming was one of them. I felt guilty about spending money on myself or taking hours for anything that wasn't work, kids, or the house.

Journaling didn't fix that overnight. But it made me actually see it, which turned out to be the hard part. Once I saw it, giving myself an hour in the evening to do something I love stopped feeling selfish.

That was the mindset shift. The Steam Deck was the mechanism.

I went down the usual YouTube rabbit hole, ROG Ally, Legion Go, and every video kept circling back to "just get a Steam Deck." I finally ordered the OLED 1TB version. And Persona 5 Royal was the first game I loaded onto it, and I managed to get it on sale 😁.

Here's what I didn't understand at 26: Persona 5 isn't really about the palace-crawling or the combat, as good as they are. It's about hanging out with people. It's about after-school ramen with your friend, going to the batting cages with someone who's having a rough time, remembering someone's birthday. The whole game rewards you for spending time with the people in your life.

At 26, that was invisible to me. I skipped the social sim bits because I wanted to get to the "real" gameplay. At 35, after nine years of marriage, two kids, and a lot of unglamorous grown-up life, those parts are the real gameplay. Watching Joker text his mates, take his time, build something with the people around him… it hits differently now. It's basically the game telling you what I had to learn the slow way: the small stuff is the whole thing.

Playing it on the Steam Deck makes it even better. Pick up and play. Resumes from where you left off. Cloud saves. No booting Windows, no kids climbing on my lap because I'm at the family TV, just an hour before bed with a great game, in bed, quietly.

Instead of doom-scrolling YouTube Shorts or half-watching Netflix, I'm reliving one of the best parts of my life. My whole family has noticed the change in my mood.

TL;DR: Bought a Steam Deck, finally clicked with Persona 5 nine years after everyone else did, and it turns out the game got better because I did. If you're on the fence about the Steam Deck → just get it.

https://preview.redd.it/acsrti6ho0ch1.png?width=1405&format=png&auto=webp&s=11e9f57e9e9b287ee6210df43856884adc60cecf

I honestly didn't think I'd ever get to write this post.

A year ago, I started building my private journaling app with an AI companion that helps you reflect and turns your thoughts into a finished entry. Today I hit "Submit for Review" for the first time. Rather than just announcing it, I want to share how it actually got built.

I have a full-time job, wife and kids. so this was evenings, weekends, and the occasional "one bug before bed" that turned into 2 am. Progress was always up and down; some months I shipped features weekly, other months I barely opened the project. My biggest process learning: tiny, well-defined tasks survive a 9–5 schedule; vague ones ("improve sync") die.

Where it started: I was pasting my own journal entries into ChatGPT and noticed something uncomfortable: it would validate whatever mood I was in. Feeling sorry for myself? It agreed I'd been wronged. Overconfident? It cheered me on. That's comfortable, but it's not growth. That observation became the whole product thesis: the line between a diary and an actual thinking partner is whether it ever pushes back.

The product decision that defines the app: Iris runs on a CBT-informed framework. She's designed to ask the uncomfortable question and surface cognitive distortions rather than reinforce them, a thinking partner, not a digital yes-man. And because this territory is sensitive, there's a hard safety boundary: if a user expresses anything hinting at self-harm, Iris steps out of journal mode entirely and directs them to crisis resources. That behavior was non-negotiable and designed in from day one, not bolted on. I don't know if you guys read the story about chatgpt confirming to a lady that her therapist was in love with her or the chatgpt guided a 16 year unalive themselves. I wanted to make sure my app does not do that and genuinely helps the user grow.

The hardest technical problems and the decisions behind them:

• End-to-end encryption + AI is a genuinely hard combo. The core promise is zero-knowledge; entries are encrypted on-device, and I can't read them. But an AI companion needs to read your entry to respond. I had to decide where the trust boundary sits: entries at rest stay encrypted with keys that never leave the device, and AI processing only happens on explicit user action, on ephemeral data, never stored server-side. Getting comfortable with that trade-off (and being able to explain it honestly) took longer than writing the code.
• Key management. Passphrase-based encryption sounds simple until you hit recovery, device migration, and the fact that a forgotten passphrase means the data is gone by design. Decision: no recovery backdoor, but aggressive UX warnings and an optional local recovery key export. Scaring users less than the alternative terrified me.
• Building a rich-text editor. I massively underestimated this. "It's just a text box" — it is not. I eventually stopped fighting a custom implementation and built on an existing editor framework, then customized it. Learning: buy/adopt for undifferentiated hard problems; build only what makes your app yours.
• Syncing encrypted blobs. Conflict resolution when the server can't see the content is fun. I settled on last-write-wins per entry with local version history as a safety net. It's not perfect, but I think it's shippable for v1. Perfect CRDT sync was a rabbit hole I had to climb out of, but potentially something to look into for v2.
• App Store prep. Privacy nutrition labels, AI content guidelines, screenshots. The last 10% really is another 90%.

What I would tell myself if I were starting again:

1. Scope cuts aren't failures; v1 shipped with maybe 40% of my original feature list, and it's better for it.
2. Write down why you made each architecture decision. Six months later, tired, you will try to relitigate it.
3. Momentum beats motivation. The streak feature in my app exists because I needed it for the building process itself.

There were multiple points where I was sure this would be one of my many abandoned side projects. I genuinely didn't think I'd reach this stage, and I'm super happy I got this far, regardless of what review or launch brings.

Now I guess the real hard bit starts once (or if!) the App Store submission is approved, haha. The Marketing 😅.

Happy to go deeper on any of it, E2EE architecture with AI features, building alongside a full-time job, or the editor issues. And if you're working on something right now, keep going. A year of small sessions adds up.

Also would be keen on any marketing advice. I have a waiting list of 40 people to email once the app is live — the site is https://www.innersightjournal.com/ if you want to see what it looks like or judge my landing page 😄 or even join the waiting list

I honestly didn't think I'd ever get to write this post.

A year ago, I started building my private journaling app with an AI companion that helps you reflect and turns your thoughts into a finished entry. Today I hit "Submit for Review" for the first time. Rather than just announcing it, I want to share how it actually got built.

I have a full-time job, wife and kids. so this was evenings, weekends, and the occasional "one bug before bed" that turned into 2 am. Progress was always up and down; some months I shipped features weekly, other months I barely opened the project. My biggest process learning: tiny, well-defined tasks survive a 9–5 schedule; vague ones ("improve sync") die.

Where it started: I was pasting my own journal entries into ChatGPT and noticed something uncomfortable: it would validate whatever mood I was in. Feeling sorry for myself? It agreed I'd been wronged. Overconfident? It cheered me on. That's comfortable, but it's not growth. That observation became the whole product thesis: the line between a diary and an actual thinking partner is whether it ever pushes back.

The product decision that defines the app: Iris runs on a CBT-informed framework. She's designed to ask the uncomfortable question and surface cognitive distortions rather than reinforce them, a thinking partner, not a digital yes-man. And because this territory is sensitive, there's a hard safety boundary: if a user expresses anything hinting at self-harm, Iris steps out of journal mode entirely and directs them to crisis resources. That behavior was non-negotiable and designed in from day one, not bolted on. I don't know if you guys read the story about chatgpt confirming to a lady that her therapist was in love with her or the chatgpt guided a 16 year unalive themselves. I wanted to make sure my app does not do that and genuinely helps the user grow.

The hardest technical problems and the decisions behind them:

• End-to-end encryption + AI is a genuinely hard combo. The core promise is zero-knowledge; entries are encrypted on-device, and I can't read them. But an AI companion needs to read your entry to respond. I had to decide where the trust boundary sits: entries at rest stay encrypted with keys that never leave the device, and AI processing only happens on explicit user action, on ephemeral data, never stored server-side. Getting comfortable with that trade-off (and being able to explain it honestly) took longer than writing the code.
• Key management. Passphrase-based encryption sounds simple until you hit recovery, device migration, and the fact that a forgotten passphrase means the data is gone by design. Decision: no recovery backdoor, but aggressive UX warnings and an optional local recovery key export. Scaring users less than the alternative terrified me.
• Building a rich-text editor. I massively underestimated this. "It's just a text box" — it is not. I eventually stopped fighting a custom implementation and built on an existing editor framework, then customized it. Learning: buy/adopt for undifferentiated hard problems; build only what makes your app yours.
• Syncing encrypted blobs. Conflict resolution when the server can't see the content is fun. I settled on last-write-wins per entry with local version history as a safety net. It's not perfect, but I think it's shippable for v1. Perfect CRDT sync was a rabbit hole I had to climb out of, but potentially something to look into for v2.
• App Store prep. Privacy nutrition labels, AI content guidelines, screenshots. The last 10% really is another 90%.

What I would tell myself if I were starting again:

1. Scope cuts aren't failures; v1 shipped with maybe 40% of my original feature list, and it's better for it.
2. Write down why you made each architecture decision. Six months later, tired, you will try to relitigate it.
3. Momentum beats motivation. The streak feature in my app exists because I needed it for the building process itself.

There were multiple points where I was sure this would be one of my many abandoned side projects. I genuinely didn't think I'd reach this stage, and I'm super happy I got this far, regardless of what review or launch brings.

Now I guess the real hard bit starts once (or if!) the App Store submission is approved, haha. The Marketing 😅.

Happy to go deeper on any of it, E2EE architecture with AI features, building alongside a full-time job, or the editor issues. And if you're working on something right now, keep going. A year of small sessions adds up.

Also would be keen on any marketing advice. I have a waiting list of 40 people to email once the app is live as well.