How I Built A Todo App As A Side Startup
Hey, I’m Vojtech, and these days I travel around Europe. If I'm having a great week, somewhere with the ocean. If it’s a good week, I’m looking at the mountains. My home base is in Slovakia.
This summer, I’m launching FocusTask, which has been a side project for about a year. It’s a todo app, and my vision is to make it the “Superhuman of todo apps.”
If you’re wondering how it differs from countless existing todo apps - here’s a screenshot! It shows a few ideas - perhaps the most important being the priority columns. Spoiler: There’s much more!
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
When I was in college, I had a simple plan. Get my degree, and take all my hacking full time. Build a business.
Building apps out of my ideas has been my dream since I was a kid. Honestly, it was never about money or freedom. It was about having these ideas and coming up with these little inventions.
Just before graduation, I got an offer. I could be engineer #2 at a FinTech startup in New York. I thought I'd learn a bunch, so I accepted the offer. Somehow, the years went by, and my dream was on hold. I think a lot of future entrepreneurs are in that situation right now.
In early 2021, I decided it was time. I didn't care that I had a job. I'm okay with side projects. I read an article called The Unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up every day, and it inspired me a lot.
I picked an idea. I've never really been satisfied with any of the to-do apps. At work, we use these sophisticated issue trackers (check out Pivotal Tracker and more recently Linear.) So I thought: I want that for my daily life!
Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.
That part was pretty simple. I didn't talk to any customers. No market research. I just built what I wanted to use. When you start as a side project, it gives you freedom. Your life doesn't depend on it.
After I’d tackled the basics, it was time to start using it. I still remember the day when I moved all my to-dos into FocusTask. That was great!
One of the reasons it went so smoothly was the technologies I picked. I didn’t have to worry about any of the mundane work, such as setting up servers. I just developed the features.
Describe the process of launching the business.
Once I had a usable prototype, it was time to find some customers. (That’s generally bad advice for startups - it should be the other way around.)
I picked 10 people from my waitlist sign-ups and emailed them: “Hi, wanna jump on a call? I’ll show you how it works!”
We scheduled a call, and I couldn’t sleep the entire night before. I’d just spent a year building something that no one might like or even understand!
Somehow, that first call led to my first paying customer! It must’ve been a bug in Stripe, I thought. But lo and behold, I’d had MRR. I could now have a free coffee every 30 days.
That was in the spring of 2022, the “beta launch”. I acquired a few more customers that way. A recurring request was the mobile app, so I went back to the lab for a few more weeks.
Someone once told me these productivity apps are like watches - there’s enough room on the market, and you’ll find customers who’ll buy even the weird ones.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
Right now, I have three main sources of customers:
- Tomato 2, my Pomodoro app. There’s a tiny ad inside of it. (This would be called engineering as marketing, except I’d built it a long time ago.)
- Users signing up for FocusList, my other productivity app. (I send them an automated email.)
- My Twitter account. I just keep tweeting screenshots of whatever I build. People seem to enjoy seeing my progress.
As you can see, I’m relying on some free stuff I’ve built before. One of my little apps had 1.7k upvotes on Product Hunt back in the day!
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
Just getting started! Right now, there are about 10 paying customers. This number might be slightly outdated because, by the time you read this, we’ll be officially launched!
After we release the Android app and the desktop apps (Mac and Windows), we’ll be ready for a Product Hunt launch, which should happen in September or October.
From there, I’ll see what happens next. I’ll be using it every day, improving it, and thinking of new ways how to acquire customers.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
I think my main lesson is to build something you understand very well. I made some attempts with areas I didn’t understand, and it ultimately failed.
With FocusTask, I’m just focusing on an area that I understand perfectly. I’m building for myself. However, even with FocusTask, I might still be wrong. Maybe my idea for the perfect to-do list is too weird.
I don’t worry too much about that. Someone once told me these productivity apps are like watches - there’s enough room on the market, and you’ll find customers who’ll buy even the weird ones.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
Postmark for sending transactional emails. Customer.io for automated emails. Behind the scenes, the data is stored in Firebase, the frontend made using React, and the mobile app using React Native. Everything is deployed on Vercel.
This stack allows me to do zero work other than build features. It’s so simple. If I think of a new feature, I sit down, and it’s done in an hour.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
Building apps out of my ideas has been my dream since I was a kid. Honestly, it was never about money or freedom. It was about having these ideas and coming up with these little inventions. They just come to me, and I just have to build them.
I can’t be quite happy unless I’m hacking on a project of my own. That essay by Paul Graham summarizes my mind perfectly.
And one of my favorite authors is Bob Goff. His books always nudge me to do something about my dream. His advice is to “book that flight.”
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
Do it early in your life. Once you get settled into a nice comfy job, it’ll be much harder to leave. When I’m looking back at the 20-year-old me, I didn’t have a single worry. That’s a good place to start a business, because when you think too much - you’ll give up.
Where can we go to learn more?
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
