The Indie Sticker Pack

WWDC is next week, and this year it will be an online experience for obvious reasons. That has not stopped our wonderful community to creatively come together and maintain some of the annual traditions. I am really excited that this week has already kicked off with two such efforts that Tempo is part of.

We opened up sign up for WWDC Virtual 5K yesterday, and today the indie community launched the Indie Sticker Pack! ❤️

You can learn all about the virtual 5K here and here. What I want to highlight in this post is the concerted effort that started from a simple tweet and brought the indie community together to create this epic sticker pack.

• The initial inspiration came from Becky Hansmeyer’s tweet and it instantly caught many indie developers’ attention.

• Sam Henri Gold and Nathan Lawrence quickly brought us all together on slack.

• This was less than a month ago, late on May 22, and everyone was quick to get their icons ready within a couple of days for Sam to get going.

• Sam owned and facilitated all the big moving parts, with so many details,

  • Logistics around what it would take to put 100s of stickers, from 90+ developers, into a package, and ship them around the world. This is challenging at so many different levels — cost of shipping, cost of printing, best color profiles to use for printing vs digital copies, size of icons to fit everything into a reasonable package, accommodate different icons, layout, and on and on.

  • Get a website up and running for everyone to be able to place orders.

  • I am just amazed by everything that was done in such a short span.

• The same stickers (plus some more 😃) are also available as an iMessage sticker pack. This was made possible with George and Gianpiero’s help.

• To take the inspiration further, Charlie Chapman made an amazing video that I have watched over a dozen times. 🤩

It’s an epic book of indie delight 😍

These stickers are beautiful. I still haven't ordered mine, because I can't settle on how many 🙃. But they are gorgeous, I love the sheets format. When you order, you won’t get one, two, but 10 sheets of awesomeness!!!

This is rare, and I want to preserve it as the legacy of the indie community during a critical year of our lives. It’s a byproduct of the creative collaboration of a bunch of independent developers. Most of us work solo, on our own, or in very small teams. It was inspiring to witness all the artists go at it together, moving at a blazing pace. And none of it would be possible without Sam!

2 Worthy Causes ❤️

If I may, let me just say one more thing — it is only $12.99 for the entire package, and all your money goes towards two great causes,

• WHO's COVID relief fund

• The Equal Justice Initiative

I feel really honored and proud to be part of such a creative, compassionate, and wonderful community. And I hope you will join us by buying a few of these sticker packs.

Going Indie

“ To give anything less than your best, is to sacrifice the gift. ”

— Steve Prefontaine

On July 31, 2019, I left my full-time job as a software engineer. It paid well, and I got to work with some talented folks on an interesting product, but it wasn’t something that I have been wanting to pursue next. So as crazy as it sounds, and I am still uncomfortable about it, I have taken the first step towards that next. It’s ambitious, exciting, and nerve-racking. The general idea is to build things independently, of high quality, with strong ethics, what feels right, and make that into a sustainable indie software business.

I have no clue if that is doable. I could crash and burn in 12-18 months, but let’s not digress too far. For now I do not want to think about plan B, but focus on what I can do to build a successful indie business.

Where do we start? I have had this side project called Tempo. Tempo is a fantastic app for runners. Runners love it. It has 3 years of slow-paced, but solid development under it, and a bunch of paying customers. I believe it has a lot of potential for various reasons. And it converges my love for running with the craft of building products into one. So that’s where we are going to start.

There's a solid roadmap for Tempo that I am starting with. A lot of it is based on feedback and feature requests from real runners over the past 3 years. My focus here is going to be simple, and based on the same core principle that Tempo was built with: build the best app for runners, with strong emphasis on privacy and quality design. Do that at a healthy pace, make constant progress, and keep shipping, while paying careful attention to revenue and growth.

That’s my general indie plan, my next adventure.

I can really use all the help I can get. If you would like to help, here are some ideas,

• If you run with an Apple Watch, please download Tempo and subscribe. And if you don’t find Tempo good enough yet, please reach out, and let me know how I can make it better for you to subscribe.

• If you do any kind of app reviews or publishing, please write about Tempo. Again, if it’s not there yet, please let me know what would make Tempo worthy of your time.

• Help spread the word by telling your running friends and family about Tempo. You can share it easily by suggesting to checkout tempo.run.

• If you are an indie developer, let’s connect. I would love to learn as much as I can about making this work.

You can find me on twitter @rmatta, or email rahul@indie.sh.

Hello, world!

“ With self-discipline most anything is possible. ”

— Theodore Roosevelt

Slowly and steadily, I am almost ready to launch Indie. So I figured I should say hello here.

What does launch mean? It's launching Indie's first project: Tempo. It is code complete, tested and ready to ship. Approved and ready to be released in the App Store.

You can read more about Indie here. 

Here's why I built Tempo.

Looking forward to this journey!