Announce the launch in the same subreddit, linking your earlier idea post

Joseph ChoiI've noticed this about popular apps. They kind of get their start on Reddit from the founder themselves, like the founder is just saying like, "Hey, I had this problem, and I decided to make an app for it." Was that kind of like the vibe of your first launch post on Reddit?

Kyle FowlerExactly. Yeah, it was um just very like yeah, very much just like, "Hey, I made this." And it helped that I made the validation post before, 'cause then I was able to be like, "Hey, I hope some of you guys some of you guys might remember me posting about this." And I heard that that happened. I know it's a big thing that a lot of people try to use Reddit for marketing now, and it's like so probably optimized more, but definitely made it not seem like an ad.

Kyle FowlerLike I I just felt like a I wasn't really a member of the community, so I felt very It was very hard for me to like post at the time, 'cause I felt like I was I'm not a big social media guy, so it was weird. But

Joseph Choi… cool. Like, you you actually said like, "Hey, I made this baseball card scanning app. Um, a few months ago I made a post about it and got a good response, and now I finally built it, and it's $4.99 on the App Store," and you actually linked it. It's pretty interesting. I feel like a lot of subreddits are kind of like anti-self-promotion and stuff like that. Did you have any issues like getting around the subreddit rules and stuff like that?

Kyle FowlerYeah, 'cause I I built it um It's a lot more to my story. But uh when I ended up hiring two of my friends during COVID to work with me, and we just split the rev 30/30 or like three ways. And so, I had one of them who was kind of our like marketing person, even though he was still We were all dev- developers. But he did some of the Reddit posts, and so later on like in r/footballcards, I think I got banned and they got kind of annoyed about it. But I was just like I didn't really care at the time 'cause I knew I was building something that directly helped people, and it would make their l- And I had validation from the prior posts.

Kyle FowlerSo, a little bit of trouble, but none on baseball cards. They were nice. But some of them just didn't get that many views. But knowing what I know now about uh hook optimization and stuff, I didn't know anything. I was just kind of like, "Oh, let me just try to make an engaging title here [laughter] and hope it works out."

Kyle FowlerI mean, I can look on the thing. I have App Store Connect pulled up here. Let me I can share that real quick. I don't think it was anything like crazy, but let's see here. Total downloads. Yeah, it was definitely a few, though. Like the launch I remember like 'cause we weren't making a ton of money, but it was a little bit enough that when I got recruited my friends, I was able to be like, "We won't make a ton, but we'll make some."

Kyle FowlerHere's the launch. [laughter] Launch day, we got 12. So, the Reddit post did its job.

Joseph ChoiRight. But that's cool, 'cause it was 12 paid downloads, which uh I think a lot of people that just do like the free uh free download and then subscription model, but you just did straight to paid, so it was like 12 12 paid downloads, so that was like 5 * 12, $60 on day one. [laughter] So, did you