Launch a basic version fast and charge from day one

Zack Hargett… as a first year civil engineering major. She still is a civil engineer. So we were thinking about this. We were thinking a lot about how can we summarize things, help people learn. It's kind of a mishmash of things. And then we arrived at Coconote. There were some apps, not iOS apps, but actually web apps that were out there on the market doing a similar thing, but they weren't taking it seriously. And so we just decided to execute on it.

Zack HargettI would say one of the things that we did really, really well in hindsight is get momentum as soon as possible. So we had a free trial from day one, but we were in effect charging from day one. And this is where this will play out over the course of two years, David, Jacob. My fascination with checking the RevenueCat chart led to my wife to have basically an intervention. Like, "Zack, I think you have a problem. You check this thing way too often." And it started from basically day one, because we were trying to get momentum as quickly as possible. One way to look at momentum would be something on mix panels, so like usage and retention and very important metrics, but there's nothing quite like the dopamine high of realizing you're creating something valuable to the world and people are returning it.

Jacob EitingI think you captured some of it, right?

David BarnardHow long were y'all working on it before the April 2024 launch?

Brett BaumanNot super long. We really wanted to scope it down and launch something quickly and basic. And I would say we achieved that and it sort of worked when we launched, but that was fine. There's a lot about it, honestly, that looks the same today as it did back then, which is cool, but there was plenty of audio recordings getting lost and things like that.

Jacob EitingI guess it kind of feels like this is one of those cases where new fundamental technology breakthrough. This wouldn't have been an app you could have built two years prior, right?