93: Stuff — Austin Blake

On the podcast: Austin Blake shares his journey from film student and Apple superfan to the creator of Stuff, a task management app built for people who care deeply about design and productivity. He explains the challenge of competing in crowded markets, building software that “feels right,” and what it’s like getting featured by Apple.

Top Takeaways:

🛠️ Out-persist the crowded market

You do not need to reinvent the wheel to succeed; you can stand out in a saturated space simply by committing to continuous development and polishing the user experience over several years.

🤖 Let AI agents review each other

When learning a new platform, you can accelerate development by using AI to generate code and setting up multiple AI agents to review and refine each other's plans before you inspect the final code.

⏱️ Shorten your trial to find the magic number

A month-long free trial is often too much time for users to feel the urgency to upgrade; reducing your trial to seven days can significantly increase your trial-to-paid conversion rate.

📦 Rethink native paradigms from scratch

Porting an app to a new platform requires more than stretching the UI; you must implement the platform-specific interactions, like keyboard navigation and native undo states, that users subconsciously expect.

⏳ Always triple your launch buffer for new platforms

App Store review guidelines are highly inconsistent across platforms; even if your app's core features are already approved on mobile, expect unexpected rejections and budget at least three weeks for a desktop launch.