Slopes Diaries is my ongoing journey to turn my indie app into a more sustainable part of my business. First time reading? Catch up on the journey so far.

What is Slopes? Think Nike+, Runkeeper, Strava, MapMyRun, etc for skiers and snowboarders.

After working nights and weekends since April, Slopes 1.0 launched on September 24 2013.

The launch ... didn't go exactly as planned.

A last-minute bug I found + the old app review snail-pace meant I missed the iOS 7 launch-day by almost a week. That delay compounded my launch-fun: I had a cruise (meh) in Alaska (awesome) planned for the week after my (original) release date to celebrate. This left me hitting "go" out in the Pacific Ocean on spotty metered satellite internet, disconnecting and reconnecting every ~30min to save bandwidth but still check if I got any traction. I had been working towards a big unveiling since that kind of launch was the life-blood of a paid up front app and frankly how all the cool apps did it.

My refresh-monkey'ing on the Pacific Ocean would leave me disappointed. It'd take me ~9 months to get my first press coverage, largely out of "wait, no one has written about this app yet?? This looks like a great app even if I don't ski!" pity (thanks Brett Terpstra). 😅

To say I wouldn't have expected Slopes to be where it is today, 10 years later, is a clichéd understatement.