We caught up with Fred and Mike to hear a bit of their story behind the app.
Where did the idea for the app come from?
Were you trying to solve a problem you’d experienced, or did the inspiration come from somewhere else?
Our main interest was mobile.
After you came up with the idea, what was the next step?
We didn’t have huge expectations.
Eventually there were enough users and feedback that we realized we had found something interesting.
We stopped the other projects to focus on Simplenote.
How did you choose which platforms to target and which to ignore or wait on?
Simplenote started as a project to figure out how to build for iOS.
Before that we worked on a pretty big project for the very first Android machine.
What was your biggest roadblock and how did you overcome it?
Getting more users was difficult in the beginning.
We hired a PR firm one month, but it didn’t move the needle.
Posting on forums and just being proactive with customer support seemed to work best.
What was launch like for you?
The very first launch was not very eventful.
We had downloads that numbered in the dozens per day perhaps.
We emailedJohn Gruberabout the app and he had some feature requests and feedback.
Eventually he posted about it onDaring Fireball, and we had our first big day of downloads.
How do you handle user requests and criticisms effectively?
We’ve always valued user feedback.
Now, how do you split time between developing new features and managing existing ones?
Now that Simplenote has been acquired byAutomattic, we need to juggle other priorities as well.
It’s very tough keeping it feeling new.
What advice would you give to others that want to take on a similar project?
Have someone you’d like to see featured?
