Hey #MedTwitter, I'm a doctor who's passionate about getting more docs involved in tech. I've written a book designed to teach doctors, students and HCWs how to code quickly. I've released the first chapter on my blog. Let me know what you think!

Internet friends, I’m coming over to the UK and Europe in a few weeks - does anyone fancy a pint? Let me know

I recently read "Product Led Growth" by Wes Bush. He taught me that if you want users to keep coming back to your app, you need to craft a powerful onboarding experience. Here's a little snippet of the tutorial sequence I built for Olog, my shift-tracking app for doctors:

You can find the full blog post with more details here:

Lesson Learned: Rome wasn't built in a day. If you're dealing with large organisations, you don't need a working prototype. Start your discussions early.

9⃣ - Not talking to organisations earlier 💬 Without saying too much, let's just say there are some large organisations I'd like to integrate Olog into in the future. I felt compelled to having a product before I began these discussions which has put the project back months.

That way, no ideas slip through the cracks, and I have a repository of ideas I can access when inspiration is running low. I shudder to think how many ideas I wasted because I didn't capture them when I thought of them.

8⃣ - Not bottling my content marketing ideas earlier 🍼 A few weeks ago I set up a Notion dashboard with all my Olog content marketing ideas. Any time I get an idea for content, I can add it to the dashboard and save it for later.

In Olog's case, all of my sales have come from users who have been re-engaged with lifecycle emails. Lesson Learned: Well-timed lifecycle emails are a license to print money.

7⃣ - Waiting too long to build lifecycle emails ✉️ I watched a talk recently by solo SaaS juggernaut Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) who evangelised the power of lifecycle emails. Lifecycle emails are unreasonably effective at re-engaging users into an app.

6⃣ - Spending too long thinking about theoretically correct software architecture 🏛️ I think the scientist in me wants to have "technically correct" infrastructure, but it's very hard to do this correctly when the requirements of your app are likely to change so frequently.

No-one had specifically requested this feature, but I had my heart set on the fact this was going to be the secret sauce that made Olog great. As it turns out, this feature gets very little attention or use at all. Only one third of new Olog users choose to turn it on.

https://t.co/X8DRNNaeSz

5⃣ - Spending a Week Building a Feature No-one Wanted ⌛️ That feature was GPS work tracking - a system that automatically documents the time that you arrive and leave your work place using GPS:

4⃣ - Not Adding my Feedback Button Earlier 📰 A few weeks ago I added a "Report a problem or make a suggestion" button. Since then, I've had 20+ messages that have had suggestions, bugs, problems or even friendly messages, all of which is 100% user-initiated.

3⃣ - Not Building in Public 🏗️ By documenting the journey from idea to launch you can build an authentic audience to launch your product to. I chose not to do this, which made building publicity at launch time difficult. You can't flick it on like a switch 💡

2⃣ - Spending Days Building an Illegal Stripe Integration 🛑 Both Apple and Google have quite strict rules around how you can accept payments within apps that are available in their app stores. Make sure you're up to date with the rules of the platforms you're launching on.

1⃣ - Not launching with a way to get paid 💰 Most companies, especially the bootstrapped solopreneur-type companies, you should build a way to get paid as soon as possible. Otherwise, you're leaving money on the table.

It's my hope that by sharing some of these mistakes, as well as the lessons learned, I'll be able to prevent you from making them in your own business projects in the future.

💸 9 Mistakes That Cost Me Money When Launching My App📱 - A thread 🧵 👇 After launching Olog 13 weeks ago, it's now generating a small amount of revenue. The journey from the first line of code to having paying customers housed many mistakes that I'd never like to make again

Got my first paying customer for my app Olog last week. It's only a $60/year subscription, but I'm hoping there's more where that came from. We'll have to wait and see!