How Contrast grows

Contrast is the indie app business David founded in April 2008, starting with a phone-only app for logging gas and mileage in the car. It arrived a month after an earlier mileage log and set itself apart by following iPhone design rules. Its early break came from a link on John Gruber's Daring Fireball that fall, which David calls a turning point; he has now owned the business for 17 years.

• Contrast's mileage app got a Daring Fireball link in fall 2008; Gruber said he picked it because it was a phone-first idea that made no sense on a Mac, and David calls the link a turning point.Contrast
• When Apple had not approved his developer account before the App Store launch, David emailed about five Apple evangelists listed on WWDC 2008 slides; John Geleynse phoned back and became an early contact inside Apple.Contrast
• David funded the company by writing his parents and uncle an investment case arguing the App Store removed the cost of hosting a store, bandwidth and payment processing; they invested.Contrast
• Before the App Store opened, he bought a second iPhone, jailbroke it and installed the roughly 500 jailbreak apps to learn what apps could do; no result was reported for this.Contrast

Summary written 2026-09-26 from the tactics below. Figures are as founders stated them.