About me

I'm Ivan, a mobile developer. I work full-time, and in the hours around that job I design, build, and grow independent iPhone apps on my own. 10 of them are on the App Store, 16 releases in total since August 2024.

Working full-time is not a footnote to the story; it shapes the way I build. Limited evenings force smaller scopes, fewer vanity features, and harder choices about which idea—or which existing app—deserves the next block of attention.

Small is the point. A small app can be finished and put in front of real people. That creates honest feedback: people either use it or they don't. Launching is only the start, though. I'm learning how to improve positioning, onboarding, retention, and distribution without losing the closeness that made the app worth building.

So the apps are a mixed bag on purpose: voice notes, reading, birthdays, workouts, a run of AI scanners. Some of them earn money. Some taught me something and nothing else. A couple probably shouldn't exist. They all count, and they're all listed on the projects page, including the ones that went nowhere.

Working alone means every decision is mine, which is the appeal and also the trap. There's no one to tell you the feature you spent a weekend on didn't need to exist. Publishing is how I get that feedback: the build log keeps me honest about pace, and writing things down keeps me honest about whether I actually understood what happened.

I've spent four years in Flutter, enough to hold fewer strong opinions about it than I used to. These days I reach for whatever fits the problem, and try to decide what the app is before deciding what it's written in.