Have the cat leave a gift after a finished session, and trash if you quit

Pat Walls… And I can see why this is popular for a certain sort of niche audience, right? That kind of likes cats, they like cute things, they want to collect different furniture like you do in Animal Crossing. So it kind of makes sense to me, but I'm still trying to understand how this thing actually makes almost $20,000 a month when it's really just a Pomodoro timer. I'm curious why this does so well when there are thousands of Pomodoro timers out there.

RyanIt's really hard to innovate on the feature set of Pomodoro timers. There are already tons out there, but combining with a cat theme and the customization mechanics, we are able to add unique features that motivate people to keep using it. So a lot of best features coming from asking, how do we replicate the physical experience of having a cat in a digital app? The gift collection system was just inspired by the memes of cats bringing dead mice to their owners, so we thought, why not have the cat leave a gift after a successful session and leave a trash if the session fails? We have quotes for each cat based on their backstory and personality. Our users push us even further. So they wanted to actually interact with the cat, to pet the cat, so we added a meow animation that triggers when you tap on the cat or just say its name out loud. And definitely, my girlfriend's illustrations play a huge role in this. Her style is truly unique, and there's nothing quite like it in the market. So when we put everything together, Cat on Chair, it adds playfulness, personality that the competition doesn't have. Some of users shared great feedback with us. One user told us, after her cat passed away, she found a similar-looking cat in our app, and it feel like she could see …

Pat WallsWow. There's something about this that I just love. It is this app, it feels like handcrafted. It feels like a piece of art. It feels unique. Like no one else could build this app other than you and your girlfriend because of this idea that you have. I just think this is so cool. This feels like the future of software. Yes, I can use my Pomodoro timer, and it gives me utility, and I could build that in, you know, two hours with AI coding. But …

Pat WallsOkay, cool. Well, thanks for sharing that. I think there's huge opportunities in this space to build playful software. I think it's super cool. So on that note, I'd love to see it. Could you give us a demo of this Cat on Chair productivity app that makes almost $20,000 a month?

RyanYeah. So here's the app. Once you open the app, you will see the timer, obviously, and like different background furnitures. The gifts down there are the ones you collect from doing the focus session, and you can play around with it. So once you start, the cat will show up and jump on the chair. So when you are done, the cat will leave you a gift. You can take a break, like follow the traditional Pomodoro timer format, but you can also like focus 10 more minutes, and then you can sell your gift. Again, there's some cute animation here, which will give you a fish, and you can go on shop and switch to different cat. We also have different furnitures and different backgrounds. We have animated background as well. We have different features like the timeline where you can see all your focus history, and you can add a sticker here as well. We have a to-do list as well and a whole bunch of other features.

Pat WallsOkay. Well, thanks for sharing that. Super cool. Super unique. Never seen anything like it. Hopefully people watching get some inspiration on what you can do with software now and how software is going to change. Be more playful, be more fun. Maybe that is the future of apps. But anyways, the last question that we have ask everyone who comes on to Starter Story is, if you could go back in time, you know, when you were a product designer and you …