TL;DR I built two iOS apps in about ten days total. Neither was planned as a product — both started as solutions to my own problems. In the first month on the App Store, people in 114 countries found them through organic search. No marketing budget. No ads. No influencer deals. Here is what the numbers look like, what they taught me, and why I think everyone with an idea should just build the thing. ...
TL;DR A Ducati rider from Slovenia asked me on Reddit today: “Did your app suggest anything good?” I’d just pushed WandR v1.0.1 with fixes that make the app smarter about understanding natural language and GPS. So while I was in DC on an errand, I pulled out my phone at Union Station, told WandR I wanted scenic spots for about four hours on a motorcycle, and let it plan a route. Five stops, 68 miles, a loop through Virginia — Great Falls, Manassas Battlefield, Burke Lake, and a covered bridge I didn’t know existed. This post is the answer to his question. ...
TL;DR I went heads down for about three months — no LinkedIn, no YouTube, barely any Twitter. In that time I shipped two iOS apps to the App Store, built an autonomous AI assistant that runs a nonprofit’s entire digital presence 24/7, and developed a workflow where AI agents scale my output 3-5x. This post is the full story: the career pattern that taught me to recognize seismic shifts, what I actually built, and why I’m back. ...