June 2024 update + focusedOS post launch
New name, Product Hunt launch, Wall of Love, Confidence Rising, and Setapp for Focused Work.
Hi everyone! It’s Michael here again - a couple weeks late into June… 👋
What a crazy fun month it has been already after launching my latest product focusedOS a few weeks ago!
What happened to focusOS?
I chose to rename from focusOS to focusedOS to avoid stepping on toes.
There were other similar names I explored like flowOS and zenOS but they were either too crowded to search or it was hard to grab a good domain name.
focusedOS was my first pick and I was lucky enough to secure the .com domain (focusedOS.com), which I’ve found really hard to do for my other apps.
Even the social media handles were free; X / Twitter, Mastodon, YouTube, TikTok.
I think this worked out great in the end, and as a wise person recently put it to me;
Focus on the important stuff man. The name isn’t.
Product Hunt Launch
I was pretty happy with how the Product Hunt launch panned out.
focusedOS reached 5th Product of the Day with 226 votes and LOTS of comments - amongst great competition.
There was a moderate bump in downloads, a decent amount of trial starts across the day, and I was got a fancy badge to add the landing page website!
Not a bad result considering I decided to create a Product Hunt page only 3 hours before the next round of products were showcased.
I hunted my own app and reached out to people that thought the app might be interesting to support.
Wall of Love
focusedOS had received so many kind compliments at this point I figured it would be a great idea to keep them all in the one place.
The website then became super long to scroll so I created a dedicated page for them; focusedOS.com/love
It was really awesome having all kinds of people sharing how much they love the app, and the website now has lots of social proof!
Shoutout to 9to5Mac, AppAdvice, and LifeHacker for covering the app too. 😊
Confidence Rising
I don’t think a launch can be classified a win without first defining a goal ahead of time, and making an effort to reach that goal.
X downloads, $X revenue, X% retention, reviews - or something less metric based - marketability, general reception, etc.
I created this app because it’s easy to market organically and solves a basic problem for many people that work from their Mac (or iPhone/iPad) - focusing and productivity.
focusedOS has met my expectation since a lot of people “get” it and appreciate its ease of use.
In terms of metrics, it reached $100 MRR from just over 50 paying customers a couple weeks in!
If you are one of them and are reading this, thank you so much for supporting my work. ❤️
I’m experimenting with a 7-day trial at the moment, since I feel it’s a good period of time before somebody can fully appreciate its value, and make their decision whether to upgrade. (…linking all your devices together is a damn cool feature!)
Early retention is also super high for the Mac app so it looks like I’m on the right track. The iOS app could be improved… but this is mainly a Mac focused product.
I’m also constantly sharing updates on X / Twitter, Mastodon, and LinkedIn almost every day now, and I’m constantly surprised how much engagement the app is getting. I think I will continue this new habit!
Focused Work is coming to Setapp!
One other thing I have been working towards is adding Setapp support for Focused Work. (my very first indie app)
If you haven’t heard of Setapp before, they are a large collection of powerful Mac apps available by subscription, and they have recently expanded to iOS with a new alternative marketplace to the App Store in the EU - currently in beta.
They reached out in recent months asking whether I’d like to be one of the first apps on Setapp Mobile, and I gladly obliged.
This has been a huge goal for me for many years - to join Setapp - and I am so happy and thankful I got the tap on the shoulder!!
And yes, I am also working hard to also add Focused Work on Setapp Mac. 😉
Hopefully focusedOS might make it on there someday soon. That’d be extra special.
That’s all for now.
I hope focusedOS will continue to have a strong June and I can’t wait to sink my teeth into some marketing activities over the coming weeks. 🚀
Thanks again for supporting my work and reading my musings, talk to you again soon!
Cheers, Michael
Really cool!