I have created my major app, Time Nomad [1], out of pure curiosity. Don’t laugh, scientific minds… I wanted to see how astronomy and astrology coexisted for hundreds of years without all that new age nonsense that corrupted the ancient discipline.

So I made it different. It’s more of a toolkit to calculate and grok movements of celestial bodies and find moments of specific alignments. That is pure fun. I have enjoyed maths and computational challenges, while the users surprised me by liking the app’s ability to give quick answers about what (and equally importantly when) is happening in the sky — from an astronomical standpoint. No voodoo language needed, just pure geometry.

Why am I saying all this? Taking an old idea and giving it a new modern spin can win hearts. There are communities of people who are open to support that.

[1] https://timenomad.app

Edit: After just an hour or so, I'm inspired. Not only am I excited to use your app to track my time, but—as an app developer—I'm inspired by the user experience you've designed. I can't thank you enough for the "export to file" feature.

[1]: https://timelines.app/

[2]: https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/taking-control-of-your-time/

My advice would be to create a product that YOU need and design it how you would want it to work if it was an app someone else made. Then dog-food the hell out of it.

Also, make sure not to compete directly with enormous companies because you will always lose. If an enormous company creates a feature that could Sherlock your app, find a way to pivot. Always be on your toes.

Finally, recognize the strengths you have that large companies cannot provide. For me, that is support. My customers can instantly get access to the person who wrote the software and don’t have to go through multiple tiers of support to get the correct answer. Several customers have said the support I provide is the main reason they do not use my larger, better-funded competitors.

I just heard this quote somewhere: What is success? It's being able to do what you want to be doing.

If you're not able to do that then of course you will need to do something else. But if you are able to do it, then you are "good enough".

I’ve personally find it easy to reach “tech enthusiasts” but much harder to penetrate towards normies who would really benefit from the product but don’t read HN, tech blogs etc.

Sad to say I've only recently come to this realization. It applies to pretty much anything, whether it's building a business or exercise or learning to draw. And if your motivation can't sustain you long-term, change your perspective so that you have a motivation that will let you see it through. "Make something cool and get rich" doesn't take you very far once you step back for a moment.

My impression is that in the B2B sales there’s a huge component in terms of being a corporation to give some sort of credibility.

I left a well-paying engineering day job in 2009 while earning only $500/month on my indie apps in the hope of growing the business. The Mac/iOS developer conferences scene was great at that time ( NSConference, anyone) and I made a lot of connections and dev friends with whom I'm in contact still many years later. The dev community is still pretty good and helping.

Marketing apps has become a real hard problem these days, though, because most of the press doesn't care about apps anymore, unless they are from the big corp, or they just focus on Apple's own news and rumours.

Still, it's very fulfilling to see people who use your apps and recommend them.

That’s not true. To thrive in corporate you still have to be creative to navigate all the BS plus you have to do whatever you have to actually do.

Not to downplay solopreneurs as they have their own challenges but still…

"He told me about a small group of successful indie developers that he was a part of and alluded that maybe once they are looking for more members, I could try applying to join them. Half a year later, I applied and I got in."

Quite frustrating to figure out who too, unless you can find some debug ports or an SD card holding configuration.