We spent 605 days in paid closed beta. The biggest win came from removing features.

Arch Calendar launches here on August 4, so I wanted to share something before then.

We ran a paid closed beta for 605 days. Not free. People paid from day one, which meant every piece of feedback had money behind it.

The counterintuitive part: our biggest retention gain did not come from shipping anything. It came from cutting features that looked useful on a roadmap and did nothing for the people actually using the app. Week 24 retention roughly doubled after we removed things.

Meanwhile, most calendar and task tools right now are going the other direction: more AI, more automation, more of your day handed off to something else. We went with a different bet. The tagline is "What did you do today? Not your AI. You."

Curious what other makers think: when did subtraction beat addition for you? And for anyone using a calendar or task app daily, what is the one feature you wish yours did not have?