Chen Dahao: Continue to create small and beautiful products丨Independent developer x Open Mai

The content of this article comes from the sharing of the "Independent Developer x Open Mai" event in the RTE NG-Lab plan, sharing guest independent developer @陈大好.

In this event, the administrator @Eric Woo from the W2solo independent developer community also shared the theme of "New Opportunities for Indie Developers in the Metaverse". Click "Read the original text" at the end of the article to view the two sharing sessions. Video playback.

01 About me

1. Introduce yourself

Hello everyone, my name is Chen Dahao. Currently we have a brand name called OneNice, some of you may have heard of our products.

Our team is in Beijing, and our products are all Apple ecological apps. From iOS to iPadOS, we have made a lot of tool type products. At present, our products are shown in Figure 1. If you are interested, you can check the details through the website.

■Figure 1

2. My product development path

My own work experience is mainly related to product operation, and there are two more important entrepreneurial experiences, as shown in Figure 2.

■Figure 2

In 2015, I started my first mobile Internet business and received angel round financing from Xianfeng Huaxing. What we have developed is a photo social product, which takes "selfie" as the entry point and is mainly aimed at young people. Like many early mobile internet startups, we didn't find the right business model and ended up failing.

In 2016, he started his second venture, this time it was also a mobile product. This product is a running community and received angel round investment from Lenovo and Hongtai Fund. After years of operation, we have found a reasonable business model, and both users and revenue have continued to grow. By 2018, the company was acquired by an industry leading outdoor company. Since then, from 2019 to the present, my main business has begun to face ToB, and I have been engaged in related work in corporate marketing consulting.

On March 24, 2017, I started indie development, and the reason why I remember it so clearly is because an article I wrote earlier recorded this day. After more than 100 days of hard work, on July 4th, 2017 my first product finally went live.

In fact, my major is not related to development, and my decision to try independent development was also encouraged by friends. After the first attempt, I have also developed other products one after another, some of which have received good responses, and two of them have entered the top five in the 2020 paid total list at the same time. So far, I have released a total of 13 products.

3. Independent development stage

Reviewing the independent development experience in the past five years, I think independent development will go through three stages.

The first is the "completion stage". In the early days, everyone may have an impulse: to develop a product of their own, or to meet a certain need of themselves or those around them. At this point, the first purpose of developers is to prove that they can make products even if they are not professional. After a while, we entered the "refinement phase", which I am still in. At this time, it will be found that a good product must not only satisfy the developer's own selfishness, but also be accepted by the market, which requires continuous improvement of the product. The last is the "perfection stage". At this time, all aspects of the product have been perfect, both from the point of view of user experience and team benefits. This is our ultimate goal.

Next, back to today's topic, I think " continuously creating small and beautiful products " is very important for independent development. These seven words are actually just three topics.

02 Continue to create small but beautiful products - continuous

In my second venture, I developed a product called "Hundred Days Run", which is aimed at a group of people who love to run. They regularly participate in activities through our products and meet more friends who love running.

In the early 4 years, this product has experienced a lot of key growth moments, during which there are four inflection points (also called tipping points). In the first more than one year, the daily activity of the product was about 300. The first inflection point we ushered in was Zhihu. At that time, the promotion of Zhihu had not blocked many keywords. We answered questions under various running-related topics (hit Advertising), brought a lot of traffic, and the daily active activity reached about 3,000; later we split through the posters in the circle of friends, and users brought referrals through sharing posters, and the daily active came in by leaps and bounds to 10,000; after that, we changed some fission attributes, and the daily active 10,000 rose to 100,000.

In fact, starting a business is the same as independent development. We may experience a moment like climbing a hill, and also encounter a moment of shock. In this process, we need to get to an inflection point. Looking back on my previous development experience, some products only get better benefits after two years, which may have never been thought of two years ago. What I can do is to continue to revise with system updates and user feedback. So let me give you a word - there are not many people who do it, and there are even fewer people who insist on it.

All growth is S-curve, and we need to work hard to get to every inflection point.

03 Continue to create small but beautiful products - create

1. Output is the best way to learn

Since 2014, I have written 100 articles in about two years. After years of hard work, I have a deeper understanding of knowledge, and I feel a sense of relief in an instant. Second-rate. I'm actually a bit of an introvert, but after giving a live talk, I suddenly found it wasn't that difficult either. When I finished an app, the fear I once had was gone. These experiences have taught me that output is the best way to learn. If we choose to develop independently, creation will definitely bring great value.

2. Build assets that can continue to grow

I think there are three types of assets. One is to bring fixed income for a fixed period of time. For example, traditional factories will bring as much income as the number of goods produced. The second is that a fixed time brings continuous benefits. For example, the time it takes to write a book is fixed, but it will bring continuous benefits in the future. The third is that someone else's fixed time brings their own continuous benefits, such as a factory owner.

These three methods have their own advantages and disadvantages. Independent development is a balance of risks. It is more inclined to bring continuous benefits for a fixed period of time. If a product can bring some benefits in the next year, two years or even ten years, Well, I think it's a very good asset, no matter how much or how little.

3. Best Practices for Multidimensional Capabilities

I am deeply touched by this point. I started independent development under the condition of lack of knowledge. I found that it involves a lot of work, such as testing, design, operation, research, promotion, sharing, etc. Horizontal expansion of the field.

4. A happy business model

I think that developing apps independently is a very happy business model. Many companies have very cumbersome processes, and even some factors are beyond our control.

For example, as far as I have been exposed to before, it is actually very troublesome to open a store in a mall in Beijing. But for independent development, only one computer, one mobile phone, and one WiFi can be used for global users, especially under the epidemic, this is a very good business model.

04 Continue to create small and beautiful products - small and beautiful

1. How to make the product small

I have stepped on a lot of pits in the process of developing products. One of the products, after I immersed myself in the development of the product for a year, the launch effect was not satisfactory, and it did not pass the verification of the market. The second reason for the failure of the product is that the product positioning is not accurate, and the backend is developed under the condition that the user can complete it locally. In addition, I also tried to be long, but found myself inexperienced and ended up taking a lot of detours. Through these failures, I would like to share some experiences with you.

Regarding how to make the product smaller, what I want to mention in particular is restraining demand and launching it quickly . When doing independent development, especially in the early stage, what we want is to get the results quickly, get feedback quickly, and respond quickly. So if you can cross-platform, don’t cross-platform, if you can’t need a server, don’t need a server, if you can’t log in, don’t log in, if you can have one less function, don’t add another function, and if you can go online in ten days, don’t extend it to a month.

2. How to make products beautiful

Regarding small but beautiful, all you have to do is to find potential needs. Choice is indeed more important than effort. If you choose the wrong one at the beginning, then no matter how hard you work, it may be worthless in the end.

Of course, what I'm talking about is in the perfecting stage, that is, when I want to do things better, I must think from a deeper perspective, so make choices. According to the current experience, I think that we can find needs from three aspects: first, our own needs, because we also represent the needs of some people; the second is the verified needs, you can have special ideas, but Its risk will also be relatively higher; the third is the need for insight potential.

In addition, in order to be small and beautiful, there should be no obvious shortcomings . This is what I am doing in independent development, especially in the last two years, because with the further development of development, I find that I will become very difficult. Even if I have good ideas, the effect cannot meet expectations, and I lose myself. Confidence, this is because you have shortcomings in some aspects.

At this time, you can check and fill the gaps through your own efforts, or you can make use of the strength of the team to make up for it through cooperation with experts in the field. So if you want to carry out independent development and make the product more perfect, you must do everything possible to avoid shortcomings in all dimensions.

Finally, I recently developed two products, one is called OneMusic, which is a retro music player tool that connects with Apple Music and Spotify. Its function is to restore the historical players to the software. The second is a product we made before, called OneWidget. We are currently doing a functional update of the system lock screen widget. If you are interested, you can download and experience it.

Thank you all so much, it's an honor to share it here.

What is RTE NG-Lab?

RTE NG-Lab is a long-term plan jointly initiated by Shengwang and the RTE developer community to provide communication and assistance to people who are concerned about the field of RTE (Real-Time Engagement). We hope that more people will participate, explore and innovate together, build new technologies, new products, and new scenarios, improve real-time interactive experience, promote and accelerate the implementation of real-time interactive projects, and jointly build the next-generation RTE technology ecosystem. The RTE NG-Lab program includes three parts: Idea Box, Code Lab, and NGLab Incubator.