Post Black Belt in 2023: How I Attracted 1600 Users to My First Solo Service
- brand
- development
- jiu-jitsu
💡We are preparing English Version.
Introduction
Hello. I'm Quartz, the creator and operator of the Post Black Belt app. These days, the weather has become noticeably colder. Are you all finishing the year well? It's almost the end of 2023, and it's time to prepare for a new beginning. Personally, I'm satisfied with achieving all the quantitative goals I set for this year, but on the other hand, there are some lingering feelings of regret.
As a developer and running an indie app for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, I've learned a lot and grown a lot. In this post, I'd like to share the achievements and thoughts I've gained while operating Post Black Belt for a year from three perspectives. My experience is still incomplete, and there are many areas to improve, but I would appreciate it if you could read it with interest.
From a Product Perspective
💡Achieved 1,000 Users → As of December 2023, Achieved 1,600 Users!
Let's take a look back at the year from the perspective of operating the app service for the first time. As mentioned in the previous post, Post Black Belt is actually my first app service started to solve my personal inconvenience. I'm really thankful that 1,600 users have empathized with the service over the past year in 2023, and currently, 1,000 valuable diaries are being written every week. In the beginning, I made efforts to gather users through Instagram follows, but thankfully, currently, more than 100 new users are coming in every month through word of mouth.
So, who are the people using Post Black Belt? Many users are distributed in the order of the Jiu-Jitsu promotion system, with White, Blue, and Purple belts being the most common. Surprisingly, there are many youth colored belts (Gray, Yellow, Orange, Green) than I expected. It's often said that 70-80% of Jiu-Jitsu practitioners quit at the White belt level, but among Post Black Belt users, 33% have overcome this process and become colored belts.
One of the features I most wished for while creating the app this year was the release of the English version. Jiu-Jitsu is actually more popular worldwide than in Korea. After achieving a thousand Korean users, we added English language support, and people from various countries have been using Post Black Belt. Although the majority of users, 95%, are from Korea, visitors from the United States, United Arab Emirates, and Brazil, in that order, are using the app, showing the love for Jiu-Jitsu in various countries.
New Learnings
1. Operating a Brand Entirely on My Own
From a product perspective, the most impressive thing I learned while operating the app was how to run a small brand as an app service entirely by myself. At first, it started as a simple side project, but as the number of users increased and my passion and responsibility for the service grew, I gained a lot of knowledge through various media. Here are three books that left a significant impression:
Alone: Alone Startup
What I'm good at is development, but while operating the app, I had to handle everything from planning to development, operation, customer service, and promotion. This book allows you to acquire knowledge as if you are experiencing the author's entrepreneurship and operation process together. It answers the question, "What experiences and lessons have other people gained?" while running an app alone.
Small Brand: Entrepreneur's Branding
Personally, I felt that my weakness was in the areas of business strategy and brand marketing. This book was the starting point that made me think deeply about what value Post Black Belt should deliver to users and how users could empathize with Post Black Belt. The Post Black Belt I defined is a service that specializes in Jiu-Jitsu, helping practitioners efficiently acquire skills.
App Service: Lean Analytics
The biggest thirst I felt while developing and conceiving the service this year was, "I want to improve the service based on user data." This book suggests exploring metrics from various perspectives and starting with a single metric that can be measured every day when accessing data. In Post Black Belt, we use the number of active users, monitoring the number of users writing diaries daily through GA.
2. Efficient Planning by Prioritizing
The biggest practical constraint of a side project, which is not my main job, is time. Working 40 hours a week (and practicing Jiu-Jitsu every day 🥋), I had almost only weekends for myself. Over the past year, what I'm most proud of myself for is that despite this, I managed to release a total of 34 updates with various features quickly.
💡Why does this feature make the product better? (Reference: Lean Analytics): Is the effect of this feature measurable? How much time does it take to implement the feature? Does this feature overly complicate the product? How much risk is associated with the new feature? How innovative is the new feature? What do users actually want?
In reality, not all 34 updates were developed efficiently. There were times when I spent over a month developing a feature with great effort, only to find that no one was using it, or a feature I expected to perform exceptionally well turned out to be a burden. In this process, I could relate more to the 7 considerations that should be made before developing a feature as mentioned in Lean Analytics.
Therefore, now, even if I consider a feature absolutely necessary, I organize it after summarizing the 7 questions mentioned above and sort the order to be handled on the Kanban board. Rather than immediately starting development just because a brilliant idea came to mind, I prioritize determining the priority in the current state of the product. This approach has improved my time management and understanding of the product. At this point, I am organizing all the ideas related to the app on this board because a feature that I don't think is necessary right now may play a crucial role in a month.
Regret or Improvement
1. Monetizing the Service
When I first created Post Black Belt, gaining development knowledge was satisfying in itself. However, as a long year passed, I realized that operating the app as a hobby without revenue is challenging, and monetization is essential for app operation. There are clear limits to internal solutions for scalability and gaining development momentum (the exercise verification Instagram stories you all create at the end of the month are currently the biggest driving force! 💪). Therefore, in 2024, I plan to provide even better-quality features through a subscription model.
2. User Feedback and Log Monitoring
In the first half of 2023, I received a lot of feedback from real users through Google Forms or Instagram, which led to many updates. Notable updates include features for youth colored belts, various diary categories, and belt storage. However, in the second half of the year, I tried more planning and technical challenges that I personally wanted to explore. In 2024, I plan to take a period to revisit and improve the feedback received so far.
From a Development Perspective
💡Transition to a Front-end Developer Career → Successful Transition in February 2023!
Now, I'll reflect on 2023 from the perspective of my main career as a developer. Even though I thought I worked tirelessly when I first started Post Black Belt last year, it seems like I worked even harder this year. As a solo developer, I had the experience of selecting a technology stack and exploring new technologies, and I was able to apply this experience well to my job. As a developer, I learned a lot from this experience.
New Learnings
1. Development is not Everything in a Service
At the beginning of this year, after releasing the app, the conclusion I reached was that "being a front-end developer is the optimal profession for operating an indie app." However, at this point, I believe that to create a good service and sustain it, you need a balance of business planning, operations, marketing, and design. In the first half of the year, I mostly dedicated my time to development, writing better code, and releasing new features. However, in the second half, I invested more time in contemplating and learning about the Post Black Belt service itself.
2. Using Good Libraries Appropriately for Rapid Development
This year, many AI services using GPT-4 have been released. As a developer, I had personal interest in this technology, and the feature I released within a month using LLM after learning about it from scratch is AI Black Belt. I was able to implement it really quickly using Vercel AI SDK and LangChain, and despite being in beta, quite a few people used it. Currently, I have temporarily suspended the beta service, but if this field continues to advance at a faster pace and better tools are developed, I plan to integrate it as a feature that can provide practical assistance to users in their Jiu-Jitsu training.
The fastest feature I released while developing Post Black Belt was the ability to easily check Jiu-Jitsu gi brands at a glance. About a week before Black Friday, while searching for overseas gis, I thought that other practitioners might be in a similar situation and it was developed in a very short time, only 22 hours, from planning to development. In this feature, the most important thing was to make it easy for users to add gi brands, as it was necessary to quickly reflect changes rather than modifying the code and redeploying it when sale information was updated. Therefore, I built a simple database using the Notion API, allowing users to easily add brands right from their smartphones (brand suggestions are always welcome!).
Regret or Improvement
1. How to Minimize External Dependencies?
Post Black Belt is an app that uses Expo to quickly develop for both Android and iOS. Expo Go provides an environment where you can test on real devices without having to build the app every time. However, Expo Go environment and production environment are different. Earlier this year, I wasn't aware of this, and I only developed in Expo Go, leading to issues where new versions were released, and the app crashed. To minimize the app's environmental dependencies, I now make sure to go through iOS TestFlight and Android's internal testing after the production build.
The most bewildering incident this year was when my Apple developer account was locked for about 6 weeks due to identity verification. Since the app requires submission to the store review, this process was also put on hold, and I had to wait indefinitely while not knowing when the identity verification would be completed. To reduce the dependency on store reviews, I considered implementing Expo Updates (similar to React Native's Codepush) to at least upload just the JS bundle, but since it would involve adding an external library, I put it on hold.
From a Jiu-Jitsu Perspective
💡Achieving Blue Belt → Achieved in July 2023!
Finally, how was Jiu-Jitsu in 2023, which was the reason I started Post Black Belt? When I first created the app, the Blue Belt seemed far away, but in the early part of this year, I was promoted three times, and thankfully, I received my Blue Belt.
In the first half of the year, I attended more to learn new techniques and get promoted. In the second half, it seems like I worked harder to obtain the skills that match the belt. Aside from a break due to an injury at the end of March, I can say that I attended the dojo a lot, even to the point where it seems a bit excessive. 😅
New Learnings
Jiu-Jitsu seems to get more challenging the more you learn. This year in Jiu-Jitsu, I made a lot of effort to confront and improve the things I didn't want to do. For example, to overcome my tendency to turtle defensively rather than getting into side control, I practiced shrimp escapes harder than anyone during warm-up exercises. I also consciously tried to use the guard position more frequently. Along the way, when I felt like I was not good at Jiu-Jitsu and lost interest, I bought new gis to overcome that feeling, and now I have 11 gis. 😎
Regret or Improvement
I have been thinking a lot about how to prevent knee injuries, especially after accumulating fatigue and getting injured at the beginning of this year. My instructor mentioned that belt promotions often involve giving up one joint, and since joint locks are part of the sport, it's unavoidable. To live a safe life, I rarely went to the orthopedic clinic, but this year, I visited more orthopedic clinics than ever before, and I even tried physical therapy for the first time. Nowadays, to protect myself, I use expensive protective gear and quick tapping.
I participated in two competitions in February and July, but I received disappointing results in both. The medals I received during my beginner days, when I knew nothing and went out to compete, ended up being my last medals. In 2024, I want to work harder and challenge the competition again as a Blue Belt.
Recap
I can't summarize all of 2023 in one post, but I feel like I tried and experienced a lot of things this year. Balancing between development and Jiu-Jitsu on weekdays and developing a Jiu-Jitsu app on weekends, there were times when it felt exhausting, but looking back on the year, I feel that I have grown a lot. At the beginning of this year, I expected that achieving my set goals might be difficult, but now I've achieved them, and it feels good. However, human desires are endless, and I wonder if I could have achieved even better results. Thank you to everyone who used Post Black Belt in 2023, and I will continue to think about how to make it a service that can help users with their Jiu-Jitsu training. Thank you for reading this long post, and Happy New Year!
Reference
- 개발자가 사용하는 노션 노트 공개 (프로젝트, 목표, 일정 관리): This is a YouTube video where a developer shares their Notion notes related to project management, goals, and scheduling.
- WHAT PERCENTAGE OF BJJ WHITE BELTS QUIT?
- Lean Analysis
- 혼자서도 스타트업
- 창업가의 브랜딩
- Expo Go