Starting my own indie app company

Roel van der Kraan
January 23, 2023
February 14, 2019

Ever since the web started I have been creating websites and apps. I built websites for local business in my hometown and ended up working for the largest restaurant website in Europe.

But in the recent years I switched from a technical/UX to a product management career. Being a product manager meant a lot of coordinating, planning and managing. Although that was a lot of fun and I released some great products with my team, I wasn't actually building anything myself anymore.

In the past months I had time off to reflect and look ahead. And I decided to get my hands dirty again and go back to programming and designing. I want to create stuff! I want to work on projects that I find useful and I think can be useful to others. So I'm going to build my own product. Which is exciting and super scary at the same time!

My goal

I'm starting an indie app company. The goal of this endeavor is to refresh my design and programming skills which I have neglected in the past years.

The plan

I quit my job so I can focus on this full time. I have given myself 6 months to see if I'm going to be successful at indie making. In this time I want to design, create and ship an iOS app. To earn money, the app will have some paid component, either a subscription or a premium feature set.

My aim is to have my first project in the app store by the end of March.

I trust my design, programming and product management skills but I'm less confident in my marketing abilities 😁 So I will also work on building a following and reach on different social media, blog about my journey on this site and recruit/interview possible customers.

My first project

The first app I'm creating is a note taking app with a little twist, I'll share more about this idea in a future blog post.