I have long planned to reposition the app, but the time required to do a proper job of it seemed a huge hurdle considering the resources available to do the job. But in the fullness of time, the stars have aligned and I am committed to the project. The driver for doing this is this excellent insight by Sam Altman:
The app had always had a rather bland positioning, a product without a clear intended user, and the only positioning was what could be mentioned in the App Store description, basically a list of features and focus on quotations, wisdom, etc. The marketing truism is that if you are talking to everyone, you are talking to no one, so nobody listens, especially in a very crowded marketplace for quote apps.
While the app had always had significant resources fit for startups, it was never the primary focus, so nobody in that segment really knew about it. And with zero marketing dollars, and a price for the app of zero, it was challenging, at best, to do anything significant to change that.
Up until about 6 months ago, all of the programming was delegated. And the delegatee for the last several years was doing the work pro bono, in exchange for my mentoring services. So it was always on the back burner and subject to his other priorities.
What's that old saying: "If you want something done right, you're going to have to do it yourself." Fair enough. But I wasn't really looking at getting addicted to coding again. I had pretty much left the world of hard core coding a long time ago, and I remember how it can take over my life completely. But now I'm retired and looking to enjoy my rapidly dwindling years playing freestyle frisbee on the beach, shooting pool, etc.
And then I got into chatGPT, and Codex... After the uncomfortable learning curve, it was amazing how I could get things to happen and never have to look at the real code at all. Vibe coding! What a game changer. So I got into so many of the improvements that were in the backlog waiting for my only pro bono programmer to free up an hour or two to focus on the app. Not anymore! I got addicted again.
And for the last several months, the app has steading improved to the point where it is bulletproof and looking like something I'm proud to put my name on. Now it is ready for a new life as a product for its new target market: Startups, specifically founders of startups and their team.
That repositioning requires a good bit of reprogramming as well as other supporting activities, and I'll get into them in subsequent posts. For now, it's onward and upward; to infinity and beyond! Stay tuned as the adventure unfolds.
