Happy Monday Wednesday, everyone!

It’s definitely not Monday anymore, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still send an email 😇 Monday got away from me, and between a busy work day and a coworker BBQ, Tuesday did too. Today is even busier, but I woke up feeling the words!

Previous iterations of me would have seen “didn’t send on Monday” as a defeat and skipped the whole week. But not now! Monday isn’t a rule. It’s the branding. It’s the vibe. It’s the excitement for a new week. And we can still make that happen on a Wednesday.

ANYWAY… I just wanted to thank so many of you for the kind words about bringing Indie Dev Monday back. I didn’t know so many of you missed it as much as I did 🥹 I owe a bunch of you emails, so expect those… sometime 😉 I have a lot of future Indie Dev Monday content brewing in those replies and I can’t wait to share it.

I don’t have any updates on my personal projects this issue. Last week I was focused on family life and work. But I’m itching to get back to them and ship them early for Shipaton 🤞

But in this issue, I want to introduce you to two indie devs we’ll be following! I’ll stop writing now so you can go read their intros below 🫡

🧭 Meet the first journeys

So here they are: the first developers we’re going to follow along with. These are snapshots on purpose. The whole point is that we get to check back in over the coming weeks and months and see how things actually turn out. 😊

Each of them also has their own journey page that grows as they send updates, and you can see everyone we’re following at indiedevmonday.com/journeys.

Robin Kanatzar

Robin (@RobinKanatzar) is an iOS and Android engineer, an accessibility advocate, and, in her own words, a new mom shipping app updates between diaper changes 😅. She started her indie journey back in January, and instead of betting everything on a single app, she’s building a whole portfolio of small utility apps. She’s also experimenting with something I find genuinely fascinating: “app flipping,” where you buy an under-optimized app that’s already on the store, make it better, and grow it from there.

Right now her focus is MyCommute, a traffic monitoring app she’s committed to updating every single day until it’s in a state she’s proud of. (If you have a regular commute, she genuinely wants to know what you’d want fixed or added.)

Where she’s headed: getting her portfolio into a strong position before her second child arrives in September. In her words, “It’s a race against time, and I might be that person who brings her computer and Fable 5 into the delivery room. Wish me luck.” 🤍

Follow Robin’s journey →

Michelle (Saku Studio)

Here’s a fun one. Michelle came to us through her husband Joost, who longtime readers might remember from all the way back in issue #84 🥹. A whole family of indies.

Michelle spent years as a data analytics team lead before deciding, at the start of this year, to give indie development a real one-year shot. She taught herself Swift while working her 9-to-5 (building an app for her board game hobby, which became Game Shelf) and now runs Saku Studio, a growing lineup of apps built around things she loves: StitchStash for cross stitchers, SewMate for sewing, and Hookly for crocheters.

Where she is right now: very much in the building-and-learning phase, trying to become a better developer, designer, marketer, and entrepreneur all at once. StitchStash is starting to gain real traction, which is the exciting part, though she’s refreshingly honest that it’s not sustainable yet. Her next big challenge is growth: ASO, marketing, and getting her apps in front of more people.

She’s also got three more apps in progress, including one with Joost for people who are pregnant or trying to conceive, focused on what you can eat instead of everything you can’t. The dream, as she puts it, is to sustainably support her family by building products people genuinely love. 🤍

Follow Michelle’s journey →

📬 Look at me

A few of you emailed lookatme@indiedevmonday.com about apps you just shipped or updated, and I love getting these. Here’s what landed recently:

Binge by Erik Nascimento (Brazilian, based in Portugal). When TV Time shut down on July 15, a lot of people lost the one thing they actually cared about: the conversation. Binge rebuilds it with per-episode reactions and comments, a friends feed, collaborative lists, and a free TV Time import. Native SwiftUI and Compose, free, no ads.

Kern by Josip Petrić (Pozega, Croatia). Turns any non-fiction book into recall cards from just its title, then resurfaces them on a spaced-repetition schedule so you actually remember what you read. No highlights or exports needed, so paper and library books finally count, and no streaks anywhere on purpose. (He also gave fastlane a shout, which… well, hi 👋)

Nib by Yuki (Japan). A notepad for Mac, iPhone, and iPad where you record straight into a note and your words become searchable text on-device, with the audio never leaving your machine. AI can turn it all into structured minutes, but every AI edit shows up as a diff you approve or discard, and one accent color is reserved for anything AI touched. A lovely little honesty signal.

Unbothered by Vibhas. The anti-motivation quote app: one dry line a day, like “You don’t need a morning routine. You need sleep and to be left alone.” No streaks, no guilt mechanics, the exact opposite of being told to wake up at 5AM.

Building or updating something? Send it to lookatme@indiedevmonday.com and it might show up here.

🏷️ Indie App Sales: July edition

One more heads up, whether you love a deal or you’re a dev chasing a spotlight: Indie App Sales runs its July edition July 28 to 30. It’s a community event put together by Matt Corey, where a whole batch of indie developers discount their apps at the same time. You get a few days of genuinely good deals, and every purchase goes straight to a small team or a solo dev instead of a giant company.

Want to shop it? Head to indieappsales.com during those three days. Discounts come through App Store sales, promo codes, or special links, so check each app’s instructions.

Want to get your app in? Developers sign up through the site to list a discount for the event. It’s a low-effort way to get real eyes on what you built.

👀 Who should we follow next?

Nominations stay open, always. If you’re building something (your first app or your fifth, a game, an open source project, anything at all) I’d love to hear about it ❤️

Hit reply and tell me:

  • What you’re building
  • Where you are in the journey
  • What you’re hoping to do next

I’m not looking for polished success stories. I’m looking for the ones that are still being written.

Thanks for being here for the first real check-in of this new chapter 🤍 See you next Monday 👋