It has been a light couple of weeks on SwiftStarterKits work. I've been writing cold emails to professionals in several fields, and researching the market of another idea I've been kicking around. It's a new muscle for me, and I'm trying to make a habit of it.
That internal fear of rejection, or feeling "like a fraud" are very real emotions, and are constantly present. These emotions inhibit seemingly basic tasks like reaching out to people, and even though I wish they would go away, they persists even after a decade of building software professionally. Shamelessly asking questions, digging to find human problems, and constantly putting yourself out there are new things for me. But hey, I suppose this is all part of the process.
On the topic of SwiftStarterKits, I'm mulling around another pivot. Away from the idea: "kits for many usecases", towards "kit for mobile first saas businesses". Rather than building many apps and supporting several licenses (which has been the goal), instead I want to focus on a single starter kit for subscription apps, and provide full repo + community access via a yearly license.
This would enable a single area of focus. Forcing messaging efforts towards a single customer profile, and allow more time on perfecting a single product (Instead of the several templates I had in the works).
Thankfully, nothing I've done so far is wasted in making this new vision a reality. The most substantial product I've offered to date (The Firebase Starter Kit) is going to become the main focus.
In the coming week I'll be transitioning the Firebase Starter Kit to a paid product, adding RevenueCat subscription support, and improving the onboarding flow. I'll also be overhauling the SwiftStarterKits website to support this new idea.
I'm excited and a little relieved about the prospect of this more focused vision. While I still believe in the original idea of building a generic "store" that contains products for many use-cases, it also is a much harder concept to truly validate. I've been having misgivings about the quality of product I would have been able to deliver if I continued to build and support apps in several product categories. With this new vision, I'm hyper focusing on a single use case, with a pre-configured set of tools optimized for building profitable mobile products.
Overall, this re-alignment of the original idea feels more manageable.
