I decided to close my mobile app 😿
Tags: reactnative, mobile, gcp
Published: 2024-03-30 20:07:30

Hi! I'm Yugo, a software engineer based in Vancouver.

I've decided to close one of my indie apps 😿
I'll share reasons and learning in this article.

## About the app

The app was "Listen", available on App Store and Google Play.
It helps English learners listen to podcasts with many features:

- Real Time Transcription
- Real Time Translation
- Dictation
- Reminder

![Screenshot of App Store's image](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/carbxpmzonq62hs0z9oz.png)

The tech stack is:

- React Native (Expo)
- GraphQL (Apollo)
- GCP (Cloud build, Cloud Run, firestore, etc.)
- OpenAI API (Whisper, GPT-3.5)

![Infrastructure](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/g7hv6t69da04pkjvppbb.png)

I created this app because I wanted to use English podcast as a learning material.

There are many English learning apps, but many of them aren't using the real English conversation.
It's very hard and boring to learn English with them.
Therefore, I wanted an app that offers authentic English conversations as learning material.

![boring](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/wr4t96go8utcwhrrr5kt.png)


And I want to create a whole service from scratch.
Despite having more than 5 years of experience as a software engineer, most of my time was spent adding features to existing services.
There were few chances to develop a service from scratch.
I believed I could learn a lot by creating an entire service.

Also, I just like creating something new 😆

## Why I decided to close my app

### Reason 1: Cost


![flying money](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/dre55r3tusut8jkoeexa.png)


About the app and backend, the cost is around $1 per month.

The problem is the OpenAI API.
I had to pay around $50 per month for using the Whisper and ChatGPT API, even though the app didn't have many users.
It's not so expensive, I can pay from my pocket.

However, it was enough to demotivate me.

On March 2024, OpenAI changed their price system to the up-front payment.
I feel this is the change to stop using the API and close the app.

I should have made a specific plan how to get profits to cover the cost before releasing the app.
Even if you can afford it, ongoing costs can affect your motivation.

### Reason 2: Busy!


![busy](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/5r8dnyg0267en0tnmqbr.png)

I was living in Japan when I started developing the app.
But now, I live in Vancouver and am attending college.

I realized I'm too busy to grow the app!

What I'm doing now is:

- Immigrating to Canada
  - going to college, preparing for the job interview, etc.
- Podcast
  - Weekly published. I have to record and edit it.
- Youtube (no relevant to the development)
  - Just for fun, but I want to spend time gaining more subscribers...
- Other indie app project
  - I have another indie app!
- And more...

Life is too short to pursue all my interests!
I want to narrow my focus to higher-priority activities.

We're not elves; our time is limited.
The best we can do is to reduce the number of things we want to do.

## But... I learned many things!

### Less is more for starting indie app

![eureka!](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/0hvttrjmkii9ich14h6g.png)

I should have not developed the app with so many features from the beginning.
I had to focus on improving the core feature.
I had been developed this app alone. Resources were limited.
Although I had many ideas and sufficient passion, it was challenging to develop all of them with good quality simultaneously.

Less is more!

### New tech skills

![share the knowledge](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/nee9u5ia41yfmw9rgoxe.png)

I learned many new tech skills from this app 🔥

As I showed in the infrastructure image, I used Cloud Run for the backend and GitHub Actions for deploying it.

This was the first time for me to create a Cloud Run deployment pipeline with GitHub Actions.

I had to learn about the Artifact Registry, Cloud Build, IAM service, Workload Identity, etc.

Also, I used OpenAI API for the first time in product.
There were many technics to use the AI effectively, like "Prompt Engineering".

For me, creating the new things is the best way to learn new tech skills.

## So, what's next for my indie hacking?

As I mentioned, I have another indie app, [CoraPic](https://www.cora-pic.com/en).


![Screenshot of CoraPic](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/f2nhmjduk93xspr8n9a3.png)


I released it 4 years ago and redesigned it 2 years ago.
I haven't updated it since then, but it's still operational and receives 10,000 views per month, primarily from Japanese users.

I want to update this site and growth the number of users especially in English version.
I believe I can get more profits from this app.🤭

Also, I wanna make mobile app version with React Native.
It may take time, but I will enjoy the journey.

---

If you are interested in me, let's 
 connect on LinkedIn!

https://www.linkedin.com/in/yugo-spice-ogura/