Unpopular opinion: For hackathon projects or early startups - 5 users who paid you $10, or 5 early users who deposited $200-300 into your protocol - that's not bullish. That's $50 in revenue. Or $1000 in TVL. What's bullish here?...

Day 153 of My Founder Journey. Today I worked on my second game, 1010. It’s a casual iOS game that I built years ago, and I’m giving it some love again. Today’s updates: → Updated CocoaPods and SDKs. → Added more analytics. → Integrated RevenueCat. → Getting it ready for App Store review. I also learned something interesting from my Alias game. I’m getting new free trials every day, but so far none of the users on the 3-day free trial have converted to paid. On the other hand, some people are subscribing directly to the monthly plan without a trial. I’ll watch the data for a bit longer, but I’m already thinking about removing the free trial and replacing it with a low-cost weekly plan for people who just need the game for a party. And one more thing… A lot of people have been asking if I stopped building @cashflow_fi. I haven’t. I’m just taking a short break to have some fun building different apps, running experiments, and learning from real users. I’ll be back to Cashflow soon. I have a lot planned for it. See you tomorrow.

PSA: weekly Office Hours for @superteam members, 2pm UTC, Jul 29th We help with: token issuance, fundraising, marriage issues, cofounder fallout, accelerator applications, distribution etc. This time joined by @chelms34 from @metaplex to chat about capital formation on @solana

An important update on Solflare Card. Our card issuing partner Kulipa is winding down due to solvency issues and can no longer support Solflare Card, so cards stopped working abruptly today. If your card declined on you at a checkout today, I'm sorry, that's a lousy way to find out. I know many of you spend with this card every day. One thing matters above everything else: your funds are safe and there's nothing you need to do. Solflare Card was built the hard way, on purpose. It's self-custodial end to end, so there's no deposit, no top up, and no balance parked with the card provider. The card spends straight from your wallet at the moment of purchase. Not one cent of user money was ever held by them. With a typical card program the issuer holds your balance, and when that issuer fails your money gets frozen behind a bankruptcy estate while you wait in line as a creditor for your own funds. On Solflare you open your wallet and your USDC is sitting exactly where it always was. You can move it or spend it right now, same as any other day. This is how we handle every integration we ship, not only the card. We assume any third party API can fail tomorrow, then build the observability and safeguards so that when one does, user funds are never on the line. Our partners know how high that bar is; sometimes we're a pain in the ass about it. It's also the reason your money is untouched today. Some of you will ask why we picked Kulipa in the first place. Fair. Our requirement was the best possible user experience: native look and feel, with your funds staying self-custodial the whole way through. Back then the standard offer was an iframe on top of a deposit account, your money handed to someone else, and we refused that. Kulipa was the underdog willing and able to build the truly self-custodial stack with us, so we bet on them. We pushed hard to keep the program alive: we tried to help find Kulipa an appropriate buyer, we looked at every option for continuity, and throughout that process we were reassured the program would carry on. It didn't. The debt was too deep and the company essentially collapsed. We would have liked to give you far more notice, but the final stop caught us off guard too. Now the part I've actually been excited about. The issuing ecosystem has matured a lot since that first bet, and the next version of Solflare Card has been in the works for a while, built on infrastructure ready for where Solflare is today. The plan was to keep it quiet and announce it properly once it was ready. With cards stopping today, there's no reason to keep it quiet anymore. The new program has all of your feedback incorporated: Apple Pay and Google Pay from day one, higher limits, cashback, and the rest of what you've asked us for. Self-custodial, obviously, working with the same accounts you already have in your Solflare wallet. It's a serious upgrade for every current cardholder and for everyone who's been waiting to get one, and it lands in a few weeks. Self-custody was built for exactly this. The card is paused, not gone. More details soon. HOLD STRONG

I don't provide liquidity nearly as much as I used to. Not because I don't like LPing. Because I got tired of constantly checking whether my positions were still in range. After a while it started feeling like I was managing liquidity instead of providing it. Aqua is one of the first ideas I've seen that mitigates that problem from a different angle. Instead of splitting capital across multiple pools, the same assets in your wallet can back multiple positions. Simple idea. I am exploring now how it works on practice and will keep you posted. If you're into LPing, check it out. Provide Liquidity →

There numbers feel a bit insane, don't they? 6h 13m avg engagement time per user. 8.2% 41-day user retention. A game that I launched more than 10 years ago, and last time updated in 2021.

Day 152 of My Founder Journey. I shipped an update for my Alias game on Friday. One thing I didn’t expect… It was surprisingly fun to watch new free trials and paid subscriptions come in over the weekend. I think RevenueCat push notifications are becoming one of my favorite notifications. 😄 Today I shipped another update: → Added new categories. → Added lots of new words across multiple languages. → Submitted another build to the App Store. I think that’s enough for Alias for now. I’m going to let it grow, see how people use it, and come back with more updates later if needed. Time to move on to my next apps. See you tomorrow.

Day 151 of My Founder Journey. Today I registered a domain for one of my new app ideas: postpilot(.)app 🚀 Over the last few days, I started posting my daily videos not only on X and Telegram, but also on Threads, YouTube, and Instagram. And I quickly realized how much time it takes to publish the same content everywhere. So I’m building a tool to solve my own problem. The idea is simple: → Generate YouTube thumbnails automatically. → Crop videos for Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and other platforms. → Schedule and publish everything from one place. I’m keeping it mobile-first and plan to share the first version through TestFlight. My goal is to build it in 3-4 days. I’ll show you as soon as it’s ready. See you tomorrow.

Day 150 of My Founder Journey. Still waiting for my app to get through App Store review. After nine days of “Waiting for Review,” I decided to resubmit it. I have a feeling something got stuck, since reviews usually take just one or two days. While waiting, I switched gears and worked on one of my old mobile games. Today’s progress: → Added onboarding. → Integrated a RevenueCat paywall. → Added support for more languages. Now it’s time to test everything and submit the update for review. Hopefully this one won’t take nine days. 😅 See you tomorrow.

Day 149 of My Founder Journey. I'm back. Two weeks ago, I realized I was burned out. I never expected it to happen to me, but it did. Looking back, I think I made one big mistake: I became too focused on Cashflow, Colosseum, and grants. When those didn't work out, I felt... empty. So I'm changing my approach. I'm bringing fun back into building. Instead of putting everything into one bet, I'll be working on multiple apps, running lots of experiments, and celebrating every small win - new users, new paying customers, higher MRR, anything that moves me forward. Here's what I'm working on now: → Cashflow - the first TestFlight build is almost ready. → My new app - still stuck in App Store review for more than a week. → A few mobile games I built over 10 years ago. They still make around $500/month, and my goal is to grow that to $2,000/month. Most importantly, I'm going to document the whole journey. I am back with my every day videos! See you tomorrow.

Day 148 of My Founder Journey. Still waiting for Apple to approve the app. What’s funny is that while the app has been in review, I’ve already shipped a bunch of new features. They rejected it twice, and each time I submitted a new build with even more improvements. The current build has been waiting for three days now. Hopefully, today is the day. 🤞 On the bright side, everything is ready for the Product Hunt launch. I also got approval from the Product Hunt team after they flagged my account as a company profile (apparently using a duck as your profile picture isn’t allowed 😅). Now it’s just a waiting game. Chilling today. See you tomorrow.

Day 147 of My Founder Journey. No big updates today. Still waiting for Apple to approve the app. Hopefully it’ll happen tonight. 🤞 In the meantime, I’m preparing everything for the Product Hunt launch. The video is done. The screenshots are ready. Now it’s just the final details: → launch messages → emails Almost there. See you tomorrow.

Day 146 of My Founder Journey. Just got a rejection from Apple. It’s okay. For most of my new apps, it usually takes two or three review rounds before everything gets approved. 😅 Fixed the issue and already resubmitted the build. Also spent today working on growth. I’m trying to get 500 votes for the @BinanceUkraine grant. Right now I’m at around 80, so there’s still a long way to go - but I still have five days left. And one more thing… As soon as the app is approved on the App Store, I’m launching on Product Hunt. Preparing all the assets, screenshots, and copy. Let’s see how it goes. See you tomorrow.

Day 145 of My Founder Journey. I took five days off from building in public. And honestly, I needed them. They gave me time to think, reset, and rethink my priorities. For the next three months, I’m focusing on just three things: → Users → Growth → Revenue No more building features just for the sake of building. Every feature, every experiment, every decision has to move one of those three metrics. The first experiment is already ready and will launch as soon as it is approved. Also, thank you to everyone who DM’d me asking where I disappeared. I really appreciate it. I’m back. See you tomorrow.