The things nobody bold you when you launched your "passion project".
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You'll be up at 1am chasing an edge case that hits exactly one user in a thousand. A login hiccup here, a macro math glitch there. 99% of people will never even see it.
Doesn't matter. You'll want it flawless for every single human who opens the thing, including the ones who'll never notice you fixed anything.
Perfect probably isn't reachable. You'll chase it anyway.
Then after all your work. Did you break something for the 99% of users?
This is the new struggle. Okie Dokie, back to it.
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Launched my passion project (an AI interior design app) on PH today, so this thread hits home. Things nobody told me:
Apple App Review will become a part-time job. I went through 12 builds before approval. Rejections for things I never saw coming — iPad layout support for an app I designed for phones, EULA wording, account deletion flow placement. Each rejection costs you 1-3 days. Budget for it.
The build is maybe 40% of the work. The other 60% is the stuff with no tutorial: App Store metadata, privacy manifests, subscription webhooks, trademark filing, LLC paperwork, figuring out why Google Sign-In throws DEVELOPER_ERROR only on the Play Store build (it's the re-signing SHA-1, save yourself a day).
Nobody is waiting for your launch. I shipped today and the silence is loud. The leaderboard is full of products with months of audience-building behind them. If I did it again I'd start posting the journey publicly on day 1, not at launch.
Doing this with a full-time job means your "launch day" is squeezed between meetings. Lower the bar for what counts as a win. Mine today: the app exists, it's live in both stores, and strangers are using it.
Still the most fun I've had building anything. Just go in knowing the unglamorous parts outnumber the glamorous ones about 10 to 1.