Hayk Mnatsakanyan

20 months ago I quit making excuses and started building an app. Not for investors. Not for a business plan. Because every habit tracker I tried was either too ugly, too complicated, or abandoned after 6 months. So I decided to build one myself. My name is Hayk. This is the story of what happened next.

@NameFirstAI 20 months is a long time to keep saying 'not yet' to yourself. What kept me going was small moments — a user message, a good review week, one metric moving. You don't need everything to work. You just need enough to keep going.

@HaykMn_iOS the belief surviving 20 months means something. most people convince themselves they were wrong long before that.

There's a moment every solo founder knows. The product works. You love it. Your users love it. But the money isn't there. You have two options: 1. Keep building features and hope 2. Try something completely different I chose option 2. I can't tell you what it is yet. But it changed everything about how I work. More next week.

@johnsonbuilds The daily check-in loop — opening the app, marking habits, seeing the streak. That's what people actually come back for. The analytics and stats are what they talk about, but the check-in is what they'd miss. Working on making that moment feel more significant.

this is a tough spot — and surprisingly common “users love it but don’t pay” usually means they don’t hit a moment where paying feels necessary curious — what’s the closest thing right now that users are actually relying on inside the product? (not what they like, but what they’d be annoyed to lose)

@NameFirstAI That's the real unlock — you can't talk yourself out of solving your own problem. The rational case to quit never lands because you're not doing it for the rational case.

@HaykMn_iOS we do the same thing every morning. there's something about building for a problem you actually have — it makes "rational" quitting basically impossible.

@corneliusmark @gabrielbattlogg Consistency is underrated. Once your patterns are set, every new screen or feature just slots in. The cognitive overhead drops massively and you can actually focus on the product logic instead of the boilerplate.

@HaykMn_iOS @gabrielbattlogg This. Everything should follow similar structure. It makes adding something really quick and easy.

Hey, I’m from Austria and currently building my first app as a solo founder. It’s an all in one app combining planning, fitness, nutrition and finance. Would love to connect with others here what are you currently building?

@corneliusmark @gabrielbattlogg Speed to ship is everything early on. The faster you get real users on real features, the faster you know what to keep building. Over-engineering before that point is just delay with extra steps.

@HaykMn_iOS @gabrielbattlogg Yep and the faster the feature is delivered, which is the most important thing in iOS development.

@corneliusmark @gabrielbattlogg That internal package approach is smart. I've been doing something similar with SwiftUI — pulling shared components into a local package so each new view just plugs in rather than rebuilds from scratch. Cuts iteration time a lot.

@gabrielbattlogg @HaykMn_iOS It's very simple. I have all the building blocks for the base structure with which I build all my apps ready at my finger tips. This way I don't have to worry about boiler plate, it will just spawn when I need it.

@NameFirstAI Yeah — there were months where every metric said stop. But someone would leave a review or message saying the app helped them and you just keep going. The numbers don't capture why people actually care.

@HaykMn_iOS that feedback loop is also why the app never dies even when the numbers say it should.

@hirvesh @joseph_b972 @Habit_Pixel Appreciate that — and @habit_pixel looks solid. The patterns vs tracking distinction is real, most apps stop at tracking. Widgets were also one of my highest-impact updates, people want the habit visible without opening the app. Good luck with the build!

@HaykMn_iOS @joseph_b972 @HaykMn_iOS love your EasyHabits journey. Building similar—@habit_pixel helps people stick to routines through smart tracking. Been shipping widgets and design updates lately. The analytics angle is huge—people want to see their patterns, not just track them.

Man I actually realised.., smartest way to market your side project is to Build in public... but make it useful. Drop one insight weekly: 'User interview that scrapped my roadmap.' People follow for value, then buy. What's one insight from your build? Share it below.

@johnsonbuilds Right now they get a broken streak visual and a gentle prompt to keep going. No recovery mechanic, no real consequence. You've named the exact gap — it feels bad but not bad enough. A streak shield or recovery flow is probably the next thing to test.

this is actually a really strong insight — most people never get this clear on what the real hook is but I think the trap here is subtle: right now the streak creates emotional loss but not consequential loss so breaking it feels bad… but not bad enough to pay to avoid it the monetization usually isn’t about putting features behind a paywall — it’s about making that “loss moment” heavier or recoverable curious — when someone breaks a streak today, what actually happens to them inside the product?

@NameFirstAI This is the one. 20 months in and I still can't always tell. The only partial signal I've found: if real users keep coming back on their own, it's probably real. If retention only works with push notifications, you're probably wrong.

@HaykMn_iOS the trap is not being able to tell which it is. "ahead of the market" and "wrong about the market" feel identical from the inside.

@hirvesh @joseph_b972 @Habit_Pixel Appreciate that. The streak vs pattern distinction took me a while to get right — streaks motivate but patterns tell you if the habit is actually sticking. Home screen access was a boring fix that had a surprisingly big impact on daily opens.

@HaykMn_iOS @joseph_b972 @Habit_Pixel This feedback is gold! Analytics showing patterns instead of just streaks—that's the angle. Home screen visibility making the difference for consistency. Love seeing builders who understand why these details actually matter.

@URSACREDMIRROR @joseph_b972 Pricing. Spent 3 weeks going back and forth on trial length and price points instead of just launching and testing. Ended up picking almost exactly what I had in week 1. Cost me a month of real data.

@NameFirstAI Exactly — conviction is easy to defend, data is harder to ignore. Seeing 60% of users drop before creating a first habit was the thing that finally forced me to fix onboarding. No amount of belief would've caught that.

@HaykMn_iOS behavior data cuts the noise. still doesn't answer early-vs-stubborn — but it's a lot harder to rationalize around than your own conviction.

@NameFirstAI That comment hit different. One person saying 'I actually woke up earlier because of this' is worth more than any download count. Keeps you going on the bad weeks.

@HaykMn_iOS someone changing their morning routine because of what you built — that's not a vanity metric. that's the whole point.

@johnsonbuilds Yeah DM makes sense — would be useful to think through both angles. Sending you one now.

yeah that actually makes it even more interesting silent drop-off usually means the loss isn’t being surfaced clearly — not necessarily that it isn’t felt this is one of those cases where small changes in how the moment is presented can completely change behavior might be easier to map this out properly in DM — there are a couple of simple ways to test both: whether the loss can be amplified and whether recovery is something people actually reach for happy to walk through it with you if helpful

@johnsonbuilds —

yeah — that’s exactly the tricky part when it’s silent, it usually means the user never hits a clear “decision moment” they just slowly drift away so instead of focusing only on when they’ve already dropped, it might be worth identifying the last moment they still care that’s usually where both retention and monetization can shift a lot there are a couple of simple ways to test this without changing your core loop — mostly around when and how you surface what they’re about to lose don’t want to overcomplicate it here, but happy to share a quick structure if you end up testing this

@NameFirstAI 100% felt this. I kept polishing the onboarding instead of telling anyone the app existed. Eventually had to force myself to stop shipping features for a month and just distribute. Hardest thing I've done building this.

@HaykMn_iOS the builder’s instinct is a trap. 'one more polish' feels like progress, but usually it’s just a way to delay the pain of marketing. choosing distribution over building is the real ego death for a founder.

@MickaelBuilds 100% — the right people at the right time can genuinely shift the whole trajectory. Appreciate the kind words 🙏

@HaykMn_iOS Respect for the honesty. Building something great takes time. Meet rights ppl can help ;)

Week 1 of sharing my story here. I've been building alone for 20 months. The app is something I'm proud of. The revenue is something I'm not. Next week I'll talk about everything I tried to fix that — and why none of it worked. The week after that... I'll show you what I'm actually doing now. Trust me, it's weird.

@peantunes Nice one Pedro, I like it.

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@tdinh_me This is why I keep building my app even at $3/month revenue. I'd rather make something I use daily and genuinely helps people than chase quick money with low-effort content farms. The internet has enough trash. We need more people building tools they actually care about.

Honestly, what they do is not illegal. HOWEVER, if you already making good money or have a decent net worth/ lifestyle, you owe it to society to stay away from making money by generating trash on the internet or wasting other people’s time and attention. Make a better world.