Happy Monday, everyone!

It’s Josh again, like almost always! Last Monday slipped right past me and there was no issue, but we’re back, and back on an actual Monday this time, so I’m calling that a win 😅

I don’t have any of my Shipaton apps out yet, but one is VERY close. It’s a simple idea for a big problem in my life… and the app itself is a little extra. I’m hoping to have it out by next Monday 🤞

And outside of Shipaton, I’ve been having a blast with Mostly Good Metrics (MGM), and it’s been a big couple of weeks. It’s a lot faster now, and it speaks MCP, so I can point Claude at my account and just talk to it: build funnels, query the data for insights, put together a dashboard, whatever I need. I’ve been running it that way all week and it’s hard to go back.

Oh, and the old-school Indie Dev Monday interviews are coming back over the next few weeks. The full sit-down Q&A kind, like the early days. I’ve missed doing those, and I have a feeling you’ve missed reading them 🥹

This week Robin sent in an update I loved, all about the unglamorous middle of indie life: waiting on Apple, shipping anyway, and a little app-flipping bet that’s starting to pay off. Let’s get into it.

🎉 Chicago, come hang

If you’re anywhere near Chicago, RevenueCat is throwing a Shipaton Houseparty at Soho House on Thursday, September 3 (2 to 9pm). An afternoon of co-working with feedback from the RevenueCat team, then lightning talks, then food and networking into the evening. Not a conference, not a meetup, just builders hanging out and shipping together. It’s free but space is limited, so grab a spot through the link 🚢

🧭 Journey check-ins

Robin Kanatzar

When we left off, Robin (@RobinKanatzar) had just wrapped up her big ASO overhaul and said the hardest part was the waiting. Well, the waiting got a new twist. App Store review times have slowed way down lately, and it’s not just Robin feeling it. There are more apps than ever hitting the queue right now (the whole Shipaton crowd is shipping at once, me included), so everything is backing up.

So she did the very indie thing and stopped waiting on it. She’s still shipping MyCommute updates every single day, just pushing them out through the public TestFlight beta while the App Store review sits in line. And her wildfire tracker, the one she built while she was being evacuated herself and hoped to enter for Shipaton’s Peace Prize, has been stuck in review for weeks. So she’s building a web version to get the idea out into the world faster. Maybe she still sneaks in with an iOS build in time, maybe she doesn’t, and either way the thing ships.

But if not, oh well! The idea will be live regardless.

And now the fun part 🥳 Robin’s whole thing is “app flipping,” buying an under-optimized app and making it better, and it’s actually working. Her Blackjack trainer was doing $25 MRR when she bought it a few months ago. After a handful of small changes and the ASO work, it’s up to $87 MRR. It’s early, and she still wants a full six weeks of data before she calls the ASO experiment a win, but the arrow is pointing the right way on both apps 📈

And she left me with the best possible argument for her whole strategy:

It’s in times like these that I’m grateful to have a portfolio of small apps, so as I’m waiting on analytics or reviews on one app, I can switch to another app in my portfolio and do something to push it forward while I’m waiting.

A stuck review can’t stall you if you’ve always got another app to work on 🤍

Follow Robin’s journey →

Michelle (Saku Studio)

No new dispatch from Michelle (@miesvdakker) this week, and that’s alright. Last we heard she was carrying her hard-won Bloei lessons into her Shipaton app Mica and racing toward a TestFlight, so I’m reading the quiet as a good sign that she’s deep in the build. That’s the one I’m waiting on, and we’ll get the story when it’s ready 😊

Follow Michelle’s journey →

💬 Something new I’m cooking up

So far these journeys have been mostly a one-way street: Robin and Michelle send me updates, and I pass them along to you. But I want to make it more of a conversation. My plan is to start asking each of them a few small questions along the way, the kind of thing you’d actually want to ask a dev you’ve been following, so you get more than just a status update. Think of it as the interview format from the old issues, just in smaller, ongoing doses.

Nothing formal yet, but keep an eye out for it in the coming weeks 😊

📬 Look at me

The inbox has been so good lately. Here’s what landed:

Traveler’s VPN by Sean Baker. A VPN that’s smart about direction: abroad, the apps you want fast and local (maps, taxis, payments) stay local, while Instagram, WhatsApp, and Gmail tunnel home. No more all-or-nothing switch. iPhone, iPad, and Mac, from $2.99.

SeeDis by Oliver Draese. A fast, private image browser for Mac and iPad that stays smooth past 100,000 photos, all on-device. Oliver mentioned the whole App Store listing is shipped with fastlane deliver, which, well, I felt that one 🥹 One-time $9.99.

Truck Kicker by Claire. A one-thumb arcade ride where you kick trucks sky-high across 8 cities, with little quiet moments tucked into the chaos (a butterfly lands on your finger, you feed seagulls at the wharf). Claire said last issue’s NeoCam writeup is what made her hit send 😊 Free.

Chute by Jackson. Drag a file, link, or screenshot up at your Mac’s notch and it lands on your iPhone, no share sheet, because it automates AirDrop for you. He built the first version in 48 hours after losing one too many screenshots. Pay-what-you-want from $9.99, macOS.

Abendrot by Matthew Ball. A free, open-source Mac screen warmer that cuts nighttime blue light by warming your displays around your local sunset, a more science-minded take on f.lux or Night Shift. Free, MIT licensed, code here 🙌

Race Results by Manuel Escrig. A free companion app for MotoGP, Moto2, and Moto3: live results, schedules in your local time, standings, and Home Screen widgets. Manuel and I actually met at RAGA in New York last year, so it’s a treat to see his app in the inbox 🏍️ Free.

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

👀 Who should we follow next?

Nominations are always open. 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.

Thank you to everybody who made it to this footer! And a special thanks to Robin for the honest, unglamorous, right-in-the-middle-of-it kind of update. That’s exactly the stuff this newsletter is for ❤️

See you next Monday 👋