John Gruber:
In December 2012, I started a company with my friends Brent Simmons and Dave Wiskus. We named it Q Branch. In June 2013, we launched our first and only product: an iPhone notes app called Vesper.
Yesterday, we announced that development was ceasing, and we’ll soon be shutting down our sync server. I am terribly sad about this. I love Vesper. I use it every day. I mean that in the present tense. I still use it. When we pull the plug on the sync server, I’ll stop, but until then it’s my go-to notes app. In my career, the only things I’ve done that I’m prouder of are writing Daring Fireball and the creation of Markdown.
What went wrong was very simple. We never made enough money. Why we didn’t make enough money, what we should have done differently to make more money — those are complex questions (which I’ll tackle below).
A transparent look at the business of selling an iOS app in modern times, one that anyone with even the slightest interest in app development should read with great interest. A cautionary tale.
Cool of him to share this. But his analysis might be too … analytical. It’s tempting to think “if only we had done this instead …” Reality is that startups mostly do only one thing – starting up.
Why not keep Vesper as a standalone app (disabling sync), moving it into a Hobby?
Vesper was a note taking app. It did one thing very well. There are a number of apps like this. The caution is to look at the market and decide whether the risk is worth the reward. There is not second guessing.
to his credit Gruber acknowledges that luck plays a part in any new endeavor. it is true.
It was pretty. I was under the impression, had it succeeded, that it would lead to more and different work from that team.
This always seemed like a vanity project for “Gruber & Pals”
In my opinion, the problem with Vesper was that it was a pre-sherlocked paid app that actually launched with a feature deficit compared to the built-in Notes app. In other words, there was a built-in app (not to mention free 3rd party alternatives like Evernote) that did the job of note-taking better than Vesper. It’s only differentiation was that it was nicely designed. I like nicely designed apps as much as anyone, but aren’t most people who appreciate that kind of thing going to require an iPad or desktop version for their note taking?
To be fair, it does sound as though multi-platform support was part of their road map. But it should have been obvious at the time that the idea that they could fund that development with sales of their iPhone-only app was unrealistic. Every competitor in the market (including Apple’s own app) was multi-platform. Multi-platform is table stakes in this market, and as such that needed to be a component of their minimum viable product rather than a goal to be worked toward years after launch. I don’t think they would have fared any better if they had started with a Mac app and worked their way to mobile.
I mean, for god’s sake, Gruber even mentioned that he would run Vesper on his Mac via the iOS simulator in order to get access to his notes on the desktop. If you’re jumping through those kind of hoops in order to access your notes then it should be obvious that any note-taking app that is not available everywhere is DOA.
Interesting that he acknowledges the economic and strategic impact of the pointless iOS 7 paint job on his business. And acknowledges that the Mac is still the only platform where you can pragmatically sell software. Both of those things represent gigantic Apple mistakes.
what “tale”? that if you don’t pay attention to marketing and sales, your app won’t sell? Gruber et al made some common mistakes. They assumed the name (Gruber) and the burst of free press that his friends/fans would give him were all they needed.
They then assumed that because the superiority of the app was SO clear to THEM, that it would be that obvious to EVERYONE.
Nope. Nope. You either give sales and marketing attention, or you don’t have sales. Even Apple knows this.
For me it was more like “That’s all it does?” when it launched. By the time it became worth the price to me, I was already using Evernote. And now Notes.app is all I need. Vesper just wasn’t essential software for a lot of people.
Ditto. If this were a Kickstarter, it wouldn’t have been funded. Then they would have known.
I’m a notes app. And so’s my wife.
I think it says a lot that they’d rather shut down than try to fix it.
Following thru on that luck plays a pretty big part, too.
True. I only know about Vesper because I read Gruber’s blog, but there are plenty of people who would’ve like a better note taking app who have no idea who Gruber is. Hard core Apple fans are not a large enough user base to sustain an app unless you don’t care about the money.