How I Built A Keyboard Assistant For iOS Without Coding Knowledge [$1K MRR Goal By Year End]
Hello! My name is AJ Picard, I grew up in a small town outside of Philadelphia, PA called Harleysville. I moved to Baltimore, MD from 2017 - to September 2023, and as of the past two weeks I’ve now living in Albania (My wife's beautiful home country).
I’m currently building two products, one is called OneTap, and the other is called stackFrame. OneTap is your Keyboard Assistant, living in a digital world we need to be able to do more than just type on our Keyboard right? OneTap brings Keyboard Shortcuts to your Keyboard which allow you to share photos, text phrases, links, and files and use ChatGPT all from your keyboard. Currently, we have Content Creators, Students, Founders, and Venture Capitalists all using our product.
Currently making $73 MRR from OneTap, $700+ revenue generated. stackFrame is still a work in progress. The best part is that OneTap doesn’t have any expenses so I get all the revenue!
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
When I was a kid I was surrounded by entrepreneurship, my dad was one before he passed and then my mom & stepmom both owned their own business. I always found being a CEO interesting, but the issue was I didn’t know what I wanted to own/build.
Growing up I was always playing basketball and it was something that took up a majority of my life, but in High School when the App Store launched I suddenly became obsessed with creating a successful app. In college, during my senior year, I raised a family friend's round to launch an app called GamingU which helped gamers discover new games to play.
At the time this was cool because I was a huge gamer and got sick of waiting on Game Informer magazine to check out the new games. I grew the product to around 3-4k total downloads before having to shut it down due to my lack of knowledge of building a business/creating a profitable app.
I ended up shutting the app down at the end of my senior year to focus on basketball. I went overseas for a couple of months and decided that life wasn’t for me, why? The reason was simple I became obsessed with the idea of building a successful product millions of people use. Before I continued on this journey I wanted to see if I had the skillsets to become a product owner, one of the biggest skills you need to have imo is being able to sell.
So, when I came over from overseas I dove right into selling AV (Audio Visual) equipment. Over those 2 years, I met/surpassed my sales quota and that’s when I realized I wanted to make the jump to become a full-time Entrepreneur. So, I quit my job in 2017, took the money my Dad left me in a Life Insurance fund, and began working on a location-based chat app idea when I had time.
At this time the only skill I had was being able to sell. I worked every day trying to raise a round of funding for the app I was building, I even went through 2 accelerators (2020 Startups, The Batchery) but still had no luck raising a round.
From 2017 - 2020 I was not only grinding on my startup but I was also teaching myself how to design and code. I started sharing design concepts of app ideas I had on social media and before I knew it I had people messaging me to create their website/app idea for them.
That’s when I opened my studio, Sauce Designs. I worked on that and my startup full time until 2020 when I found out my wife and I were having a baby! This led to me having to find a more secure job which is how I landed at MartianCraft as a full-time iOS App Designer.
I started at MC in Jan 2021 and I was fresh off shutting down the startup I worked on for the past couple of years. I was still eager to create a successful product but was determining what idea in my list of ideas that I wanted to build next. One of those ideas was OneTap, I had this idea because I was constantly sharing the same website links, files, and text phrases when building my startup/client projects. I thought to myself, why not have this content available to share at any time right from your keyboard instead of having to go search for that specific content (photo, link, file, text phrase) to share?
I knew this was the right idea to work on for many reasons. One, I didn’t see any other app/keyboard doing what I wanted to do with OneTap, which was to allow people to create keyboard shortcuts for photos, links, text phrases, and files so that they could share this content from their keyboard at any time. Two, I would use this product every day. Three, I’ve always felt that our devices Keyboard needed to be reinvented to cater to the digital world. There’s no reason you should only be able to type from your keyboard.
OneTap was different from my other ideas because it was focused on the keyboard and not an actual app. I didn’t have any background in building a keyboard app but I did have a ton of experience building apps. I started working on OneTap a couple of months before I started at MC!
Take us through the process of building the first version of your product.
When I decided to work on OneTap I spent my mornings and nights designing it in Figma. At the time Figma’s prototyping tool wasn’t as strong as it is now, but I was still able to present the user flow and how I wanted OneTap to work to these students. This process took about 3 to 4 weeks to complete.
Once this process was complete I needed to find a way to build the product for cheap. I got a ton of quotes in the 20k-40k ranges from developers I knew and that was a route I didn’t want to go down. I still didn’t have enough coding knowledge to build this nor did I have the time with a newborn on the way.
At the time I had most of my knowledge of coding in React Native and after the research I conducted OneTap was going to be something that needed to be built using Swift / SwiftUI. Not saying you couldn’t build OneTap using languages like React Native but it seemed like Swift / SwiftUI gave us the ability to build more complex keyboard features.
That’s when I found a program hosted by Albany University where you could submit your product to be built for free by a cohort of students. OneTap ended up getting selected and in one semester I was jumping on calls with 4 students to get updated on the development of OneTap.
By the end of the semester, they were able to at least create an MVP of the product that I could start showcasing. Link and text Phrase Shortcuts were the only Shortcuts working in the MVP since the students didn’t have enough time to research how to do get the Photo & File Shortcuts working.
This goes to show that there’s always a cheaper way, you just have to find a way!
Email from the professor at the University of Albany I wanted to hide the contact information for privacy reasons.
Describe the process of launching the business.
Once I had the MVP I started sharing it on Twitter in the #BuildingInPublic & Siri Shortcut communities. That’s how I connected with a developer named Om Chachad and he reached out wanting to help work on / improve OneTap.
His reasoning was he already built multiple Siri Shortcuts that were being used by thousands of people already and the fact that OneTap was bringing Keyboard Shortcuts to your device's keyboard he was all for it. So Om started improving/fixing up the product.
I decided to work with Om because I saw how much he loved the product and how much he wanted to improve it. Plus he was already a seasoned Siri Shortcut Developer and I felt like that aligned perfectly with what we were trying to do with OneTap. Plus he also agreed to work at a discount price.
I was promoting the product every day while also building our website. Before I knew it we had 400 beta testers using OneTap and a website published all for less than $500. I then launched OneTap on the App Store and Producthunt. Producthunt launch was a huge success since we finished #3 Product of the day!
One lesson I learned is instead of using the public link to promote the beta of OneTap I would have tried to collect emails from our beta testers so that I could stay in touch with them via newsletter. With the public link, it didn’t require users to share their email.
OneTap was called ZoZo before our name change here are some of the early designs.
The biggest thing I would say every founder should have is grit/consistency. You need to be able to show up every day no matter how hard it can be.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
I would say when it comes to growth your biggest thing is making sure you’re marketing the product every day on social media, running ads & launching on tool websites like Producthunt.
I haven’t done much marketing for OneTap except sharing updates on Twitter on a daily basis. Twitter has been gaining more traction now due to me being consistent with my updates. I also have started responding and tweeting people to connect. This has allowed me to gain additional followers to promote OneTap which has been helping in terms of brand awareness. I also try to share tips that I’ve learned throughout my journey & tips on topics like design. I’ve also ran a couple of Google ads, but not for long… the reason’s due to not having a ton of a budget to use on Marketing. Most of OneTaps traction is from me manually reaching out to publishers and creators, and sharing my progress building in the #buildinpublic community on Twitter.
I would highly suggest building partnerships with other products this is something I’m focused on doing.
Also what helps retain users is building features that they’re requesting. Since launching we’ve got requests for AI, iCloud Sync, and Sharing Keyboard shortcuts and we went ahead and added all of those features into OneTap.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
Right now OneTap is doing well, we are 100% profitable which is amazing. We’re profitable because we have zero server costs and we will continue to have zero server costs due to us saving all the User's data via User Defaults.
100% gross margin for every OneTap Pro subscription that is purchased by our customers. All our sales are from posting on Twitter and creating videos on TikTok / Instagram.
You can check out some of our performing Videos and tweets below.
Operations are simple, post as much as I can about the progress so far on Twitter, and then from there reach out to publishers/creators to promote OneTap or reach out to VCs for funding to use on Marketing.
Right now my short-term goal for OneTap is to hit 10k Users, and $1,000 MRR by the end of the year and then from there continue to grow to be acquired.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
I would try to do everything yourself if you can, the more you can do the more you can save. If you can’t do it yourself find someone to team up with that will compliment your skills. For example, if you’re a technical person find someone good at marketing so you can build the product and they can market it.
Discovering the University of Albany Computer Science program was the best decision I’ve made throughout this whole process. It allowed me to get an MVP at no cost and more importantly, helped me get to the market quicker. Focus on building an MVP, releasing it, collecting feedback, and building from there.
We randomly got asked to be featured on Mac Rumors, Apple Insider, and Mashable. Looking for more good luck like this in the future.
The biggest thing I would say every founder should have is grit/consistency. You need to be able to show up every day no matter how hard it can be.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
I use the following tools for my business:
3rd Party tools I use for Analytics;
- MixPanel - Track user journeys
- App Store Connect - Track user analytics
- RevenueCat - Track revenue/subscriptions
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
I always try to tune into as many How I Built This podcasts as I can and then I envision myself being on the show one day talking about OneTap. I also love hearing other founders' stories and how they were able to build a successful product. You will be surprised how much luck has played into the success of the products you use today!
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
This one is easy, continue to learn as much as you can, and more importantly realize that this journey is a marathon, not a sprint. Oh and if this journey was easy, everyone would be doing it. If you want something quick, Entrepreneurship is something not for you more than likely…
One mistake I’ve seen people make is using overseas developers because it's “cheaper”. I always suggest never going overseas because they can always take your product, not build the product and take your money, or just flat-out build a terrible product. If you have the funds, pay someone you know to build it or build it yourself.
Please keep learning as you’re building your company, never stop. It’s the only way to stay ahead of the curve!
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
I am looking for someone who specializes in marketing to help blow up OneTap. This role would turn into a cofounder role if this person is interested but it would take some time before they jump to that position. This marketing person will run TikTok, Twitter & IG. We would be collaborating every week setting up our Marketing plan each week.
If you’re someone interested in marketing and you want to be a product owner, get in touch, and let's take OneTap to the moon.
Where can we go to learn more?
- OneTap Website
- Download OneTap
- OneTap Twitter
- OneTap TikTok
- My Portfolio
- My Twitter - Connect with me here!
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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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.
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