

Retickr: A Year In The App Store - danabramov
http://about.retickr.com/blog/2012/09/retickr-a-year-in-the-os-x-app-store/

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fearless
Previous post from a year ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3115872>

Kudos on the transparency, it's refreshing.

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btrautsc
thanks, we think it is extremely important.

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jimg
just curious - why would you sunset an app that has traction and move into the
mobile arena where users are even more hostile against paying for anything?
Wouldn't charging for the desktop app at least give some runway?

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amolsarva
Impressive self-analysis

Striking how low the numbers are on the Mac App store. It seems it just
doesn't work in the same magic insanely huge way that the iPhone store works

A criticism: my take is you never really got many downloads, even when you got
those first few thousand. Lame stuff on Cnet gets tens of thousands of
downloads. Popular but unprofitable shareware gets millions.

Were people telling you that 10k downloads was really awesome? Did you have
any engagement metrics (usage of the app) suggesting people were going bananas
with time in the app?

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jbigelow76
That's a pretty sobering write up. Good luck to the team with Fireplug.

If anybody from the team is reading, it's not really any of my business but
I'm going to ask it anyway on the off chance they feel like sharing: it looks
like there's a time line of at least 12 months (probably more factoring in
time to MVP) and a team of anywhere from 4 to 6. How did you guy's sustain
your living costs during that time, consulting, credit cards & savings,
incubator money, day jobs?

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btrautsc
founder savings. then a very small seed round. then we completed a round of
funding.

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rolandal
It's great to see the labeled points on the graph relating to the timeline of
events/mentions. I think it's worth to note that all startups should keep
careful track of what types of events/mentions work well, and which don't.

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jhought3
Thanks, we try to keep track of as many data points as possible.

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clarky07
I see it doesn't exist in the store anymore. What is the reasoning behind
removing it completely from the store, as opposed to just stopping work on it
and leaving the latest update in the store?

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btrautsc
we are no longer supporting the product

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rcknight
Any reason this isn't available in the UK app store? I realise you are
discontinuing it, but was keen to at least have a play after reading the
article.

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btrautsc
we actually officially removed retickr from the App Store. Sorry friend.

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rcknight
Ah, i saw the part about sunsetting at the bottom of the article but didn't
realise it was effective immediately!

Shame, best of luck in the future!

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stevewilhelm
"We are taking the valuable lessons from a year of trial by fire."

I am wondering what those valuable lessons might be.

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btrautsc
Wow, that could be countless posts, but briefly:

iterate quickly (as fast as possible). keep the burn rate low. hire the best
possible. get advice from people who've been there. users want features,
listen to them & deliver when you can, but always value their opinions. Second
that, always be nice to users. customer service = marketing.

just to name a few.

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debacle
Which of those valuable nuggets of wisdom did you not possess right out of the
gate?

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btrautsc
point taken; albeit seemingly obvious, sometimes there are gaps between
Reading_Understanding_Acting

and of course there were many more lessons, those were the cliffsnotes, or
tl;dr version

