Four years ago, so mid 2017, I was a Frontend React Developer for several years already at a small startup HR company in Berlin. The Boss of the company signed up for the Berlin Marathon but wasn’t able to make it, because he just received his first child. He offered me his spot for a little favor.
He owned and seems to still own the domain https://www.silvestercountdown.de/ , which offers a super simple service to show a countdown till new years eve. Not very complex but it seems valuable for some people as he said he makes some decent add revenue with this page every year. Naturally at the time everything needed an App. So this favor for his Marathon spot was to a Android and iOS App of his countdown.
Beeing a mainly javascript Frontend Developer I had no clue how to built a native iOS nor Android app. Sure I know some Java and C but it seemed quite an endevour to pick up Java App Development for Android and Objective-C for iOS. Writing a singel Codebase for both Platforms wasn’t a big thing back than and the frameworks for that were super shitty. Often the solution was a simple browser window showing a mobile Webpage. Luckily, however, at the time React-Native emerged and seemed to be a viable alternative for building decent apps. And I knew React!
Using React-Native four years ago was quite novel but not bleeding edge. The experience was quite nice and building the app was straight forward for me. The tutorials were great already back than and expo was also already a thing. Not stating any pitfalls one could stumble into building mutliplatform apps, my biggest hurdle back than to overcome was to understand the AppStore and Google Play mechnics. How to create a native production build, how to sign it correctly, how to upload it and one often underestimated parts was submitted all of the necessary App details. I’m looking at you Terms of Privacy.
Finally I’ve jumped through all the hoops and ended up submitting the App to the App Store and was in the review process. 24 hours later the review came in. The App does not have enough functionality. Devasting, but not surprising, given it’s just a plain countdown till new years eve. I told my Boss about the review. Not sure anymore what is reaction to it was, nevertheless, I’ve tried and we were even. As I don’t even had a Android Phone to test it back than I wasn’t even trying to go trough the Google Play Process.
As the productivity flywheel still had some energy left, I wanted to add more functionlaity to the code to get my first app to the App Store. Naturally, for that time, I pivoted to a Todo App, because yes there a not yet enough todo apps out there. HEY but mine is different! But how I thought?
Back in University I took a course on embedded systems. A big part of an embedded system is it’s scheduling of tasks. There where different scheduling algorithms, like First Come, First Serve or Highest Priority First. As I had already built a countdown functionality in the App, I’ve decided on scheduling the users tasks via the Shortest Deadline First algorithm.
The user simply needed to add a deadline for each task they added and the app will order them which of the tasks had the earliest deadline. Showing only one task at a time the my already built countdown, Bingo! So the user should focus on a single task at the time, i.e. buying a birthday gift, before tackeling the next. And as the next task had a later deadline, everything would work out completing the tasks in that order, great! I’ve called this “revolutionary” concept Mono Tasking and the App Monota for short. Uff.
Tying it all together, adding a Avenir as a modern font, using some swipe gestures to move around the app and even making it bilingual because I hated the hard coded strings in my code anyways. Submitting it all again to the Apple Review. It got accepted! Great, I instantly released it and was super happy to have pushed through from start to finish to publish my first App for everybody with an iPhone to install.
I had no efforts on promoting this app, it was a yet another todo app after all. That was okay, I had no expecations of developing this app further. It lacked a lot, first and foremost a way to monitize it. The App Store analytics showed low interest in the App, next to no one installed it. I was even shy of promoting it to my friends and colleagues. Ashamed of the lack of functionality, usefullness of a Mono Tasking app and a single five star rating by myself.
However, half a year later, I had a pleasent surprise due to building the App. Apple itself contacted me! They said they liked my App and consider me of one of the most promising App Developers in Germany. Furthermore, they are hosting an event for these Developers showing of the new iOS SDKs and offer workshops. Insane! It was such a cool opportunity and I was honored to beeing invited due to this rudimentary app. If I needed to guess why they invited me, it was because of the bilingual feature and mobile friendly UX.
The event was great, free food, like minded people and Apple like presentation and workshops. And at this event I’ve met some new livelong friends who later the same year would became my new colleagues. I would call this all in all a great success!