Austin Blake, ready to take on the world with Mitynote

This is Austin, and he has big plans. Currently has Mitynotes and achvmnts on the App Store, with more apps on the way.

More info on Austin:

• https://www.mitynote.com/
• On Twitter

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Transcript

Jeroen Leenarts: 0:47

Hi, and welcome to another special additional Podcast. I'm sitting here with Austin Blake from 2196. If I'm correct, that's quite a lot of numbers, really. But you're an entrepreneur, you're creating apps for the App Store. And you're trying to create an ecosystem of apps you mentioned in passing. So it sounds like you're somebody who has a lot of plans. And also who has done a lot of things already. And I think that's an interesting story there to see how you've came to where you are right now, and what you've learned over the years. So awesome. Hi, welcome. How are you doing today?

Austin Blake: 1:26

Hey, good. Thanks for having me on, Jeroen. I'm super excited to be here.

Jeroen Leenarts: 1:29

So I'm just to jump right in 2196. Is that correct? Yeah, that's exactly right. Where does the name come from?

Austin Blake: 1:38

Yeah, yeah, you know, it's a common question, but it's a great question. 2196, everything that we do is helping people to achieve their goals. And so I was born in the year 1996, hoping to live to 100. So then that would be 2096. And then my goal is to build things that will live on after I'm gone. So 100 years after I'm gone is 2196. And that's kind of where the name comes from. So hopefully, all of our customers are inspired to build things now that their kids can use and the generations after us can use.

Jeroen Leenarts: 2:10

So but you already mentioned somewhat your age 96. So you're, you're not an old dude yet. So what happened to her? How, why did you decide to become an entrepreneur?

Austin Blake: 2:22

Yeah, you know, as far as entrepreneurship goes, it's always something that I wanted to do it, it sounds terrible, to me, some people can do it, and I applaud them. But it sounds terrible to me to sit at a desk, or even just have certain hours that I have to be at work. And that didn't sound like something that I wanted to do for the rest of my life. And also, I wanted to build something unique that wasn't out in the world yet. And so I saw an opportunity to do that in iOS app development. And I'm kind of jumping on it right now.

Jeroen Leenarts: 2:50

Okay, cool. So before we really start digging in on the on the product, really, I just want to discover a little bit about you really, because how did you get involved with computers? At what age did you get your hands on your first computer, and I'm not talking about a PlayStation.

Austin Blake: 3:09

You know, I actually never owned a PlayStation, I kind of wish that that might be the first thing I buy when I make some legitimate money here. But you know, when I was a, when I was super young, we're talking like four or five, my parents actually got a computer and put it into my room. And the only thing that it could do would play Sesame Street had a Sesame Street CD game that I could put into the computer. And that was awesome. So I spent tons of hours on Sesame Street games. And I was kind of fascinated with computers, and then developed an early fascination with Apple. As soon as I found out about everything that Apple was doing, and Steve Jobs was doing. So I was watching all the keynotes, probably from the time I was 1010, or 11. And so that really got me excited about what technology could do for people, and all of the new things that could be created and all the opportunity that was there.

Jeroen Leenarts: 3:59

Okay, so that was a really young age. And at what point did you get started with being productive on a computer then in the sense of software development?

Austin Blake: 4:10

Yeah. So, you know, I actually did video first. And so when I was probably 12, or 13, I got Photoshop and Adobe Premiere Pro and all that kind of stuff for Christmas, because my parents could see something budding there. And so I spent all of middle school in high school, editing videos and making movies with my camera out in the backyard with my friends. And that was exciting. But it came to a point when I wanted to be able to do things on my own and not have other people involved, right. With video. You always have to have other people there to act or to do whatever. And it was kind of frustrating community because I can't I wanted to work more when people weren't there, right, like at midnight, when I couldn't go film a movie with my friends. And so that was when I started exploring some other options. And coding was one of those first options that I came up with.

Jeroen Leenarts: 5:02

Mm hmm. And what was what was it in coding that attracted you and what caught your attention?

Austin Blake: 5:09

Yeah, so it was actually during WWDC, I was watching the conference in between classes at university. And even during class, I kind of had my computer open just with WWDC playing at the bottom corner, you know, and eventually, it kind of hit me like, they were talking about these things that I hadn't heard of before. And I was like, you know, I love apple. I want to be a part of this community. You know, why do I not know what they're talking about? I know everything about Apple, but then they'd start talking about Xcode and swift and I was like, I don't know what this is. I want to find out what this is. And at the same time, I was getting frustrated with an app I've used called me Evernote, and I'd submitted so many feature requests to Evernote and never really heard back. And so that combined with the idea of wanting to start learning to code, I was like, You know what, I'm just gonna build my own note taking app that does exactly what I wanted to do. And that's, that's where it all started.

Jeroen Leenarts: 6:01

Okay. And do you still remember what year that was? Which was seen? Yeah, that

Austin Blake: 6:06

was 2018.

Jeroen Leenarts: 6:07

Okay. Yeah. So then people can have a reference on what Apple was talking about back then. So yeah, you just seem to have jumped right in a note taking app. Just yeah. Scratch your own itch, sir. Really? And that kind of snowballs. From there, it seems right.

Austin Blake: 6:26

Yeah, that's exactly right. So mighty note was the first app that I released to the App Store for notetaking. And then a couple years later, it was achievements when I wanted to learn Swift UI. And now we've got so we've got those two apps on the App Store right now. And we've got three more coming by the end of the year. So it kind of has just snowballed into a much bigger project that I didn't necessarily anticipate at the beginning.

Jeroen Leenarts: 6:49

And so just to grab back a little bit, because you already mentioned that, right out of your education, you really had the idea that you don't want to be a salaried worker, you just wanted to venture out on your own. When did you like earn your first legit money as a as a person? And that that can be selling lemonade as a small kid? But when was it? What was the key moment in your life?

Austin Blake: 7:16

Yeah, you know, my neighbors growing up, were awesome. I would write books I've always kind of liked to write. And so I'd write books and go sound to my neighbors for$20. And for some reason, they bought them. And so now I'm just looking forward to paying back that favorite, but that's probably the first legit money that I made on my own is going door to door selling my novels.

Jeroen Leenarts: 7:40

Okay. Yeah, this should have pointed you at something like Gumroad or something. But yeah, well, yeah. So um, yeah, that's where you got like, into creating products and selling stuff. But now we are at mighty notes and achievements. And what are the two apps? In a nutshell? What are these two apps about? You already mentioned note taking and achievements kind of gives it away. But can you explain it a bit in your words?

Austin Blake: 8:06

Yeah, so my, you know, the, it's, we call it notetaking, just because that's the simplest way to describe it. But what I wanted really was a digital scrapbook. So I mentioned I liked writing. So I was actually reading a book at the time trying to use Evernote. And I wanted to be able to store you know, a song connected to a YouTube video that I saw, connected to a picture that I took connected to an idea that I had for another chapter in my book, and there was no way to connect all of those things, right, other than literally writing down in text, hey, connect, you know, this song from The Dark Knight to this YouTube video at this link. But it wasn't very interactive. And so what made you know is is that solution, it you can put a song in there and play it right within the app. And you can tag it connected to a YouTube video connected to the chapter that you're reading connected to an image that you took, you know, a photo that you took, and so that that kind of scratches that itch for me. And that's what made you know, really his achievements is a habit tracking app. I was running a YouTube channel at the time all about Apple news and rumors, and wanted to make three YouTube videos a week so that I could hit my goal of 1000 subscribers by the end of the year. So to do that, I made achievements to track my progress and see what weeks I was hitting in what weeks I wasn't and why.

Jeroen Leenarts: 9:24

And what happened to the book on astronauts, did you finish it? Or?

Austin Blake: 9:29

Still, it's, I've deleted so much because I'm so focused on iOS development now. So, you know, follow back up with me and 10 years from now.

Jeroen Leenarts: 9:37

We'll see. So just to grab back a little bit. So in 2018, you were watching keynotes and other content in class, and then it hits you that you wanted to get into software development on the Apple devices. And what was the process? Then you just said that you jumped in and get you started developing your notetaking app. But there must have been a learning curve for something happening

Austin Blake: 10:02

there. Yeah, totally. And it was kind of a rough learning curve at first, as anybody is any self taught iOS developer can testify. I'm sure it's difficult at first, because there's so much terminology that you don't understand. It takes you a while to learn that all of the answers are on Google. But after a few months of learning iOS development, you just search everything into Google. But for reference for anybody getting started, there's a great course on Udemy you de my.com from Angela, you it's like the most it's the highest rated course. It's usually goes on sale for like 15 bucks. And that was awesome. That was the best I'd still recommend that to anybody. And then the other thing that I'd read comment that I didn't know about at the time is any of Paul Hudson's courses? So 100 days of Swift 100 days of Swift UI? Just look that up on Google? Those are awesome. And a really great way to get started.

Jeroen Leenarts: 10:57

Okay, yeah, Paul, I had on a previous episode of a podcast and yeah, I think I refer to him as like the Jedi Master of strict coding or something to that regard. So highly regarded. And well, it was an honor to have him on the podcast, really? So So you mentioned some content that you consumed? And then you were off to the races? Or was there more that you needed to learn? Or do?

Austin Blake: 11:24

Yeah, it was, um, I mean, it first it's a lot of learning and that much developing. And so that can be kind of frustrating. But basically, once I took that course, I think I still haven't finished it to this day, I got about 75% of the way through. And at that point, I felt comfortable enough with everything that I decided to take off. So at that point, I started making and developing mighty note, and just searching up everything that I didn't know yet on Google.

Jeroen Leenarts: 11:52

And how many rewrites has mighty notes already entered?

Austin Blake: 11:57

Like, endless, I can tell you

Jeroen Leenarts: 12:00

that it's, it's insane. The more you learn, the more you want to rewrite really with software. So 2018, you started learning? And and what points was it on the App Store available for other people to see?

Austin Blake: 12:15

Yeah, I kind of soft launched it about a year later, it was difficult because I was working full time and going to school full time at this point. So it took me longer than I, I would have liked. But about a year later, I soft launched it and then released version two in 2020. And that was the one that I really started telling my friends about, you know, posting about on social media and kind of trying to get the word out there. And then we just launched mighty note three, this last weekend. And that by far is the version of my note that I'm the most proud of. We've got a good team together now working on it. And so we've got some really great features that would have taken me forever to just do by myself. But Mighty No, is a really great product now. So now we're reaching out to press and things like that. So with each launch, we've told more people about it and tried to get it out there more because it's just gotten so much better.

Jeroen Leenarts: 13:02

Okay, so that's that's three versions that you mentioned, they're each about a year apart, if I'm calculating that correctly. And at what point did you start gaining traction with with the product but mighty not?

Austin Blake: 13:16

Yeah, I didn't, it's been a really slow burn. And so hopefully, that's like some encouragement to have developers out there mighty. No, it really hasn't had its moment yet. And I'm hoping that might, you know, three kind of changes that around, we'll see. So far, we've had some good traction. But I mean, it's been out for almost three years. And well, almost two years. And it's just been kind of, you know, we've slowly worked up an audience, other apps. So like achievements had a lot more of a kind of a slip start and really kind of took off. But yeah, it might, you know, it's been a long process, long haul, but I have a lot of faith in its future still. So that's why we keep on working on it.

Jeroen Leenarts: 13:54

So that's something interesting that you mentioned, because that achievements was was a big success by your accounts when you launched it. And could you could you say that achievements was an enabler to invest more time into multi node?

Austin Blake: 14:11

Absolutely, yes. And achievements taught me so many things about doing press for apps. It I also learned swift UI with achievements. And so with mighty note three, we kind of reverse engineered a lot of Swift UI into mighty note. Yeah. And yeah, with with achievements, we totally learned about App press. And I think that's a good lesson. Like, just keep building until you learn what you need to learn. But, you know, don't don't get frustrated with current progress. Just keep going. Because yeah, achievments has helped a lot with the launch of 1903.

Jeroen Leenarts: 14:42

Okay, and and you also mentioned that you have a team working on Almighty node now, how did 2196 develop from like a single person being you to a team of people working on it, because I think that's one of the biggest steps that you can take, just to actually onboard employees or freelancers, on your, on your products, and just don't have to absolute control anymore on on what's being created. So can you tell us a little bit about that process, and also explain a bit when certain things happened? And what made you decide to actually start onboarding people to help you out?

Austin Blake: 15:24

Yeah, totally. And so that is such a tough thing. And I'll just say right now, I don't want to, like take us off track too much. But seriously, if anybody has any more questions about things that we talked about, you're a great person to talk to. I'm super open. If anybody wants to DM me on Twitter. I will provide any advice, any feedback, things that I wouldn't do against Feel free to message me there. But kind of in a nutshell, achievements, since it was a great success, I put it into the app competition at my school. And we got first place at the university app competition. And so we won some money that way, which was really great. And so that helped me start the team originally. And then kind of since then, we've kept on some contractors that really believe in the vision of mighty note. So I've got two guys named forte, and Le s, and we're all working together right now, on what comes after mighty note three, and they are just awesome. And they believe in the future. And so I'd say that, you know, first of all, get a product that has growth potential, right? And then find people that believe in the vision that you've set forth. And that's been just the biggest, you know, blessing from it. No, because there's no way that we could have released Mighty No three as it is, was just me working on it, it was too much.

Jeroen Leenarts: 16:43

Mm hmm. So and then. So the competition at your school was instrumental in providing some upfront financing for growing this team? And what was your thought process then? Because at some point, yes, sort of like a lump sum of money that becomes available. And then you could have just as well just, well spend it on other things, really, just having fun with it. But what made you decide that you wanted to invest it back in your products, and actually hire somebody or two people actually to do software development with you?

Austin Blake: 17:20

Yeah, you know, I almost bought a gaming chair, so that the temptation was there, because all of a sudden, you have this money in your bank account, you're like, Oh, this is great, I could be so much comfortable and more comfortable. When I'm sitting here, I could get some air pods max to listen to music while I'm working. But it's been really important for me to create a system that creates those finances. You know, it just kind of works for itself, going forward. And also, I really believe in what we're doing with 2196. And so it's not, it's not something that I see is just a pit where we're throwing money, but it's really something that I see is benefiting a lot of people already. And it has a lot of potential to do that in the future. And so really the competition, it wasn't the end all goal, right, winning the competition and getting that money. That wasn't the end, that was something that hopefully helps us get into more users hands.

Jeroen Leenarts: 18:12

And what was it like for you to actually be able to work together with two other software developers closely, because you're working on the same codebase, I can imagine that you're learning on software development pretty much skyrocketed from there now.

Austin Blake: 18:30

That you know what these guys are about as good as you can get as far as co workers and people that you work with, not co workers, but just like a team to get together. But it's rough man, like when you have your baby, and then you put it out into other people's hands, and you say, like, Hey, start working on this. All of the sudden structs aren't called what you think that they should be called. And all of a sudden, classes aren't used in the way that you intended originally, because you've got two other people that are building out these features. And so it was rough. But I mean, I'm serious, like, we have the best team, I could imagine. And it was it was about as smooth as it could be. But yeah, I mean, and then you have to learn, you know how to handle git source control a little bit better, and working on GitHub, and, you know, sharing that code with a team. So there's definitely a lot of learning curves there. And again, anybody that has questions shoot out to me, but there was kind of a lot of a lot to learn for sure.

Jeroen Leenarts: 19:26

Yeah, I can imagine. So and when you look at the the two products that you have right now, and you also have a roadmap for three more products to launch later this year. Is is 2196 Already self sustaining, in that it says enough income for continued growth and development into the future? Or is it still a very tense situation that you're working on?

Austin Blake: 19:52

Yeah, so we're not Apple yet. So we're, I wish that we were in the trillions, but we're not quite yet. But the good thing is that we're growing at a pace that we're all really excited about and really comfortable with. I quit my job back in February to focus full time on 2196. I was still doing video work before then. And so yeah, the good thing is that the growth is there, and the potential is there. So as long as we keep on working, I think it's going to work out.

Jeroen Leenarts: 20:19

Okay. So, um, just to switch gears a little bit. What school did you attend?

Austin Blake: 20:28

Yeah, so I'm actually still there. I'm, I'm finishing up my last year right now studying advertising. And it's Brigham Young University in the United States science grade school,

Jeroen Leenarts: 20:40

and has the HESI program that you participated in at the school was that helpful? In just getting your product out there and letting people know about it, or is it different what to teach you in school and what you need to do in practice?

Austin Blake: 20:54

Yeah, you know, I could have switched to CS or something, once I started learning to code and finding interest in that I thought about it. But the thing is that I kind of end up hating whatever I study in school, and so I didn't really want to ruin coding for myself. And so I stuck with advertising. And the good thing is, since I don't have to do it, it's still interesting to me. Oh, the guy who does a lot of advertising for Apple actually graduated from BYU, which is what got me interested in the advertising program. Okay. And it has helped in figuring out campaigns to run on Twitter and stuff like that. So it has applied in a small sense.

Jeroen Leenarts: 21:30

So and when you're, when you're starting your products, and you're launching it, what are some of the best tips that you that you can give people? Because I know that there's quite a lot of listeners to my podcasts are actually working on their own small projects. And that's trying to bring out there as well.

Austin Blake: 21:49

Yeah, totally. So you know, one of the best things that you can do, I think, is, is tell a story about your product, right? So advertising isn't just going out there and saying, Hey, I've got this app achievements, it lets you track your habits and set goals, period. And then like posting that to Twitter, like, that's not really gonna, it's like, okay, there are so many habit tracking apps on the App Store. But if you can find a way to like, tell a story of how it's helped you, or make it interest, like, highlight some unique feature or, you know, highlight why the app is different than other apps. That's the best thing you can do. And then I'd also say, I'm not the best example of this. But I would recommend and encourage everybody to kind of build in public, that seems to be something that's becoming more popular, I sure like to see what developers are doing in the backend when they're building in public, I love watching it, I'm just not the best at posting about it. But it is a great way to get people seeing what you're doing to get people excited about what you're working on. And get some traction before you're even ready to launch. So that that probably be my number one recommendation,

Jeroen Leenarts: 22:55

and what are your recommended articles or resource that people should have a look at? Is there anything that that sticks out to you?

Austin Blake: 23:04

Yeah, um, you know, I'm actually gonna I was I've been working on a thread on Twitter that I'll post about some of those resources. So I'd say check that out. But there's definitely there's good articles on medium to look at. I don't have any article names off the top of my head. But that's a good place to look. And I also say, Look at what some of the bigger companies are doing. I think that there's a there's an app called Join chat is the Twitter handle. And they just every once in a while they post a really insightful design choice that they made into their upcoming app that's not even out yet. And, and that, I'd say follow them because they're doing some really interesting stuff. And they're actually one of my competitors. So I'm just making it harder on myself right now. But they are really good people to look at for for app press.

Jeroen Leenarts: 23:52

And for people considering to follow you on Twitter. What are typical things that you that you tweet about and that you retweet on your timeline?

Austin Blake: 24:00

Yeah, so I tweet a lot about I'm trying to tweet more about what we're building with 2196 trying to build in public more, right, like we just said, and then basically anything that has to do with iOS, you'll see it on my timeline. So I don't retweet enough apparently, I need to retweet more somebody told me as I mostly just post original content, but we do have a lot of fun

Jeroen Leenarts: 24:21

when working on this. There's there's a lot of things that you did already in those those few years that you're now active on your product. So you you learned software development, you launched two products already. You got familiar with the process of of hiring some freelancers to help you on your project. And what were the biggest challenges that you've had to overcome? What are things that you, in hindsight, would say, I wish somebody warned me about this? Or I wish somebody told me about it?

Austin Blake: 24:57

Yeah, the number one thing that I kind of wish that I'd knew that I'd known earlier, I'm actually still working on it. But I'd encourage everybody to look out for this. It's, it's kind of, I need a good name for it. It's like learning averse. You get to a certain point, or at least I did, when you feel like okay, I know how to do this now, right? Like I've coded to apps. I know what I'm doing. And so what I tend to do is not learn anything else. So if I'm reading an article about something in iOS development sphere, and I see something that I don't understand a word or phrase that I don't understand, what I'll do is I'll skip over it. That's my natural instinct. I think that that's kind of typically human is if you don't understand something to skip over it. But what I've been trying to force myself to do recently is when I don't understand it, to dive into into figure out what it is a really simple concept that I wish I'd learned earlier is filtering and mapping and contact compact map. I didn't know about those things. And so I'd run a foreign loop for like, every time I needed to filter things out. Dark filter is like so much easier. It's so much better on this on the processing too. And so that was one of those things that I'd seen all over the place and just skipped over it. Finally, I was like, what is that anyways, plus, I saw it in the code that some of my team had written. And so I was like, I wanted to learn about it. And now I'm going back through all my apps and just applying it to every single place. And I've had so much fun, like taking all my foreign leaves and just putting a filter instead. But the lesson from this is, if you see something you don't understand, seriously learn about it. And if you don't want to go into a huge rabbit hole, right, because it could take your whole day of like learning about all these concepts, but at least understand what it does at least understand why it exists. And under understand the basic premise so that you can understand it in the context of the article, right? The more things you skip over, the less you'll end up understanding. In the long run. It's kind of exponential in the things that you don't know if you skip over.

Jeroen Leenarts: 26:59

Okay? And what are the plans beyond releasing the three apps that you have in development right now?

Austin Blake: 27:10

Man we are, I'm so excited about what we have for the future, the all of 2196 is about helping you to achieve your goals, right and building things that are going to live on after you're gone. And one of the ways like in the future, humans do so many menial tasks right now. Like we we spend a lot of time doing things that that really could be automated and don't need to be done. So let's say you need you know, your haircut, you have to schedule that every two months or whatever, you need to remember to go get a carwash, you need to remember that your milk is going to expire, and you need to go get more milk. We don't We shouldn't have to remember this stuff, we need to be focused on more important things right and creating more important things than refilling the milk in the refrigerator. And so what we're doing at 2196 is trying to automate these processes, creating artificial intelligence that kind of does these things for you. And so when I say an ecosystem of apps, mighty note, achievements, stuff, which we have coming out soon, super excited about, it's a to do list app, all of these things are gonna work together to kind of manage your life for you. going as far as creating journal entries for you, obviously, you're gonna want to go back and edit those add a personal touch to it. But there's no reason that mighty note shouldn't be able to remember your favorite song this week. And keep that in your journal so that you can look back on it later, and that your kids can look back on it. And 20 years from now remember, oh, yeah, Dad's favorite song, back in July of 2021 is, you know, whatever, by Taylor Swift, and like, there should be a way to just automate all of that. So that's what we're doing with 2196. We're automating those things that you shouldn't have to worry about. And so it's really, really exciting.

Jeroen Leenarts: 28:57

And that sounds like some really big plans that you that you have there, and doesn't involve a backhand as well that you need to develop or is already available, or what's the process there?

Austin Blake: 29:10

Yeah, so So kind of our digital assistant, his name is Apollo. Apollo is only present in achievements right now. So let's say I have a goal to drink eight cups of water every single day, and I'm failing miserably and only drinking for Apollo will pop up and say, Hey, Austin, let's, let's try and lower this goal a little bit, you can also set a savage mode on Apollo. So he'll kind of insult you, it'll be like, hey, Austin, I knew that you couldn't do this, bring your goal way down to five cups a day, you know, and let's set something more reasonable. And so that that's what we have of Apollo right now. But Apollo is developing really quickly in the background, he'll be present in stuff. So for example, if you finish everything you need to do today, and have a little bit more time on your hands, Apollo will smartly choose and recommend some tasks to you. Either something scheduled for tomorrow that you could do today, or something that you have on your quote unquote, someday list that you eventually wanted to get to. And Apollo will be like, hey, why not start that right now? You know, I see that you're done for the day. And it's only three o'clock in the afternoon. Why not work on some other stuff. And so that's kind of the the inklings of Apollo that are coming out right now. And Apollo will continue to expand to be kind of your digital Butler. So we can all be Bruce Wayne and Batman in a sense, and have somebody to do things for us and take care of us.

Jeroen Leenarts: 30:27

So and this is all run on the on the device, or is there a back and forth?

Austin Blake: 30:32

Yeah. Oh, sorry. I didn't even get to that party question. Sorry about that. It's a right now. It's all happening on device. We don't want to process any of that. And I want to keep it private to the users. And so that's why we chose to do it that way. Yeah.

Jeroen Leenarts: 30:42

So yeah, privacy is is a concern. With all the development at 2196 Does, yep. Okay, it's

Austin Blake: 30:50

totally in the users hands. Okay.

Jeroen Leenarts: 30:52

And let's see. So yeah, the company 2196 Is, is now still only you if I'm correct, and you're hiring some, some extra help through freelancing. At what point do you think that you might actually switch from being like a solopreneur to an actual company when an employee?

Austin Blake: 31:15

Yeah, so I consider Aeleus Infante right now who are on the team to be, you know, part of the team. And so we're all kind of working on it together. But, you know, the vision for us in the future is to have a whole lab of those new IMAX and to create the rainbow of iMac colors and have a bunch of people on the team all working together. And so we can create a lot of great content, great tools for our users, that's the vision is as fast as we can get there, the faster we can get there, the better. Right now I have a goal to buy a new pair of shoes, but I'm not doing it until we reach a certain threshold of subscribers. So that's kind of the point that we're at right now. I've got holes in all my shoes, but eventually we'll, we'll get to the point where we have all the new iMacs lined up on a desk is definitely the longer term vision.

Jeroen Leenarts: 32:00

So and is the capacity to develop new stuff. The only thing that that's holding you back, or are there other challenges that you need to overcome as well?

Austin Blake: 32:10

Yeah, I mean, we got to, that's definitely one of them. You can only do so much, with 168 hours per week. But I'd say that we've also got to get people to know about it. That's why I'm super excited to be talking here on the podcast. That's one of the reasons. And you know, and we got to get people knowing about the apps and using the apps. That's kind of another hurdle that we're facing right now, which comes back into the advertising that we talked about, right, creating consistent advertising campaign. So we're definitely putting a lot of focus on those things. But it's definitely a challenge to balance, how much advertising do we do versus how much development do we do? Because one theory says if you build it, they will come right. And so keep on building the best app possible. And eventually, you'll just get like 100,000 users in a day, and everybody was gonna love it. And the important thing is that you do have a terrific product for when people do come, you don't want to miss the opportunity, because your products not ready yet. So that that's true to a point. But if you just keep building and never tell anybody about it. Yeah, you're gonna you're gonna run yourself into the ground.

Jeroen Leenarts: 33:18

Yeah. Cuz then then people still won't know that as a great product out there. So switching gears a little bit, if you look at at Swift, because that's probably the main language that you're working with. Yeah, right from the start and every every day really? What are some of the best things that show that you like about your development with Xcode and swift? What are some of the things that that really make you smile when, when working on your products?

Austin Blake: 33:49

Man, X codes, awesome, but you tend to look, I tend to focus on the things that I don't like about it. But let's see things that I will see x codes great, man, I really think that as far as far as learning to code and learning to develop, goes, I would recommend everybody to start with Apple's ecosystem, right? So learning Swift, downloading Xcode on your computer, getting Swift Playgrounds, on on a Mac and on the iPad, if you have one. I think Apple's done an awesome job is something that I want to replicate my own company in the future. But they've done such a good job opening up the realm of coding to more people and like, kids are learning to code, which is awesome. And I'd say that they have the easiest start would be an iOS and Swift. They've made it so simple, and so understandable. So it's really awesome for beginners, I think.

Jeroen Leenarts: 34:45

Okay, so and that also looks good, right on a Mac. Yeah, that's

Austin Blake: 34:49

totally true.

Jeroen Leenarts: 34:51

Is there anything that we've forgot to mention Austin? Oh,

Austin Blake: 34:55

man, we've had so much fun. I think we've covered all the bases. I you know, I'd say seriously, anybody that's listening, you have any questions or anything I can help you out with, like, drop me, you know, drop me a DM on Twitter. I'm going to leave my DMs open. And I seriously just want to help out and I love to see what people are working on. Like, that's one of the most exciting things for me and kind of what gets me up in the morning is like, the idea that we're all kind of part of this community, building awesome applications together, you know, building ways to improve people's lives. So seriously, just let me know what you're building on Twitter. It's my name is asked Boston, a ust BLS t o n. And I seriously just want to hear from people so that'd be the last thing I'd say in any way that I could help anybody out. Let me know in that as well.

Jeroen Leenarts: 35:41

Okay, cool. I will make sure to link your Twitter handle from the show. Not because it's always easy to click something then having to type it out. While right hearing it forever. So, with that, Austin, I want to say thanks for your time because it was it was very engaging conversation. And I'm really looking forward to the launches of your products later this year. And I really look forward to see how things will pan out for you.

Austin Blake: 36:10

Awesome. Hey, Jerome, thanks so much for the time I seriously appreciate it.