The Advantages of Working On an App You Care About — Christian Selig, Apollo

Posted an early build of Apollo in the Apple subreddit, where it took off and many people asked to beta test. The beta filled up, leaving a backlog of people who couldn't get in. After a long beta (1.5-2 years, with feature creep and testers asking for release), launched with a $2.99 pro upgrade.

Ran a dedicated subreddit next to the app, so feedback had no friction. Instead of a formal roadmap, each month he put whatever users were most vocal about on the roadmap, built it, and repeated for years, while using the app heavily himself and keeping final say on direction.

When a popular request didn't fit (e.g. restoring deleted Reddit comments from scraper caches), he explained the reasons users couldn't see, such as the safety of people who deleted comments that doxxed themselves, instead of silently refusing.

Picked a $2.99 one-time pro upgrade (possibly $1.99 in the first week) with little thought, because the incumbent Reddit app Alien Blue charged about $2.99.

After moving Apollo to subscriptions (about $10/year), the lifetime option launched at $19.99, only about two years of subscription. He later raised it to around $30-40.

After graduating, skipped a job offer path and built Apollo full-time on Apple internship savings, living with about six friends to keep costs low. Treated it like a startup with a burn rate and a date by which the app had to ship.

A week before Apple Vision Pro launched, YouTube said it would not ship an app. He reused Apollo's YouTube-embed code (YouTube's documented iframe embed player), styled it to look native to visionOS, and built it in one to two weeks for launch day. Priced at $5 one-time, reasoning that owners of a $3,000 headset can afford it. Approval came the night before launch.