Hayk Mnatsakanyan

Everyone is building apps now. AI makes it easy to ship code in a weekend. But here's what nobody tells you: behind every successful app there are dozens of people you never see. Data analysts tracking retention. PMs prioritizing features. ASO specialists in 8 languages. Content writers. Growth marketers. I built EasyHabits 20 months ago. Great product. 12 DAU. $5 MRR. The code isn't the problem. The problem is the 90% that isn't code. #BuildInPublic #IndieHackers

That reframe landed. We're testing exactly that — showing the paywall after the user logs their 3rd habit, not right after onboarding. The idea: by then they've built something. The streak is real. The loss is real. The goal is to show the paywall at the exact moment 'I can't lose this' is already in their head. Running the experiment in 2 weeks.

yeah that’s a really common direction people go — trying to show “more value” through stats or insights but the tricky part is: more value doesn’t always create a decision sometimes it just makes the free experience better the shift usually happens when it’s not just “there’s more to see” but “something I care about is at risk / incomplete / slipping” that’s where people actually pause and decide so instead of only asking “what else can we show”, it might be worth asking: 👉 at what moment does the user feel “if I don’t act now, I lose something I’ve already built”?

Everyone is building apps now. AI makes it easy to ship code in a weekend. But here's what nobody tells you: behind every successful app there are dozens of people you never see. Data analysts tracking retention. PMs prioritizing features. ASO specialists in 8 languages. Content writers. Growth marketers. I built EasyHabits 20 months ago. Great product. 12 DAU. $5 MRR. The code isn't the problem. The problem is the 90% that isn't code. #BuildInPublic #IndieHackers

@psghodge That line is so true. I shipped my iOS app 20 months ago. Code took 6 months. Everything after — ASO, content, analytics, retention — had no plan. Still figuring it out. 4 rejections is rough. What was the main rejection reason?

My IOS App is finally live after 4 rejections and resubmissions. apps.apple.com/us/app/deep-co… Now the real job of marketing begins! #indiehackers #buildinpublic

You're right, and that hits close. The streak loop works — people come back. But they never hit a moment where free feels limiting. My paywall close rate is 97%. Not because the paywall is bad. Because nothing before it creates the need. I think the missing piece is showing them what they're leaving on the table — progress data, trends, something that makes them think "I want more of this." One decision point, like you said.

this is true — but I think there’s a trap in how this gets framed when everything outside code becomes “the problem”, it’s really hard to know where to act in your case, it actually feels much more specific: you already have a loop people come back for (the check-in + streak) but there’s no clear moment where that loop demands anything from the user so it’s not really “90% outside code” — it’s more like one missing decision point inside the core experience once that exists, a lot of the “growth” layer starts to have something to amplify

What a successful app actually needs behind it: Retention analysis. Funnel optimization. Keyword research in several countries. Blog content for SEO. Onboarding experiments. Conversion tracking. Social media. Analytics dashboards. Each of these is someone's full-time job at a real company. For a solo dev, it's: do all of it after your 9-to-6, or don't do it at all.

@jainsahil The visitor-to-signup gap is the hardest part. I have the same problem with my iOS app — people land on the paywall and 97% just close it. What helped me was shortening the path to the first "aha moment" before asking for anything. What does your signup flow look like?

Day 2 of marketing my first SaaS. - 1100+ visitors - 50+ signups Getting people to visit the site but not many converting to signups. Still need to get my 2nd paying customer.

@0xShin0221 Same problem here. I run 15+ agents on Claude Cowork. The coordination layer between them took longer to build than the agents themselves. Voice-first dispatch is interesting — how do you handle when two agents need the same context?

Running 6 AI agents daily for months. The agents? Great. Fast. Reliable. The bottleneck: me. I became the manual dispatcher. Every task = context switch. Which agent? Which channel? Built something for this gap: v0-robster-talk.vercel.app Voice-first agent dispatch. Speak once. Agents work. They call you back.

@johnsonbuilds Appreciated! Feel free to reply here anytime — always open to connecting with fellow builders 🙏

@HaykMn_iOS ah got it — think your DMs might be closed on your side no worries, either works — you can open them, or we can just continue here there are a couple of quick experiments we can map out around: surfacing the “about to lose” moment and testing recovery intent without building

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.

@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.

@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.