AudioPen · B2C · voice-to-text note app
Do one thing well and skip tempting nearby markets
Founder credits focus (and being early) for standing out; no numbers
Workedpositioning-nichefeature-development
What they did
AudioPen does one thing: voice to clean text. He was tempted to expand into adjacent markets where apps were doing well, but consciously stuck to doing the simple thing well, while competitors tried to do too much.
What happened
He attributes success to being early and to slow, consistent focus on one thing
- Stage
- Launch (Post-launch)
“But AudioPen focuses on doing one thing very well. A lot of the other apps try to do too many things at the same time and end up getting distracted.”
“I've been very, very tempted to expand into adjacent markets just because, you know, apps there were doing very well, but I've consciously stuck to doing the simple stuff well.”
Related topics
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More from this episode
- AudioPen: Build 4-5 tiny tools in a week, post each on Twitter, keep the winnerOne of them got far more love than expected and became a $15K/month app
- AudioPen: Message the people who liked your prototype and ask whyLearned their use cases and designed the full version around them
- AudioPen: Open a waitlist before the app is ready and let beta testers inBeta testers paid on Stripe within 12 hours, without being asked to
- AudioPen: Build in public on Twitter for years so people trust your launchFounder credits it for first-day sales; users say they like following his journey
- AudioPen: Sell $99/year and $159/2-year plans that don't auto-renew, with a limited free tier5,000+ paying customers out of ~200K users