Tapbots 2.0
Last week we celebrated the 6th month anniversary of shipping Weightbot. Read on about our past and some exciting news about our plans for the present and future.
The Past (aka The Start)
Around the start of August of 2008 Mark and I were wrapping up a project at Oakley. We were chatting about something insignificant when I asked Mark, “Want to design an application for the iPhone? I’m thinking of doing a Weight Tracker”. I was thinking a simple application with a good feature set, a nice clean look to it. Well, Mark’s beautiful design had other ideas. After about 2.5 months of nights and weekends and about 70 custom classes we finally released Weightbot 1.0. The rest is history.
The Present (aka The Exciting Part)
We’ve been juggling day jobs with Tapbots for almost 9 months now. As of now that’s no longer the case. This month, Mark and I both gave our respective notices and we’re now going to be able to give Tapbots 100% of our energy. I think it’s nothing short of amazing that we are able to support ourselves with $0 investment (other than time) and all of it $1-$3 at a time. Weightbot sold 100k copies in its first 100 days, Convertbot is selling at about twice that rate. To say we’re excited about the future is an understatement. We’d like to thank all of you guys for getting us to this point.
The Future (aka The Big Plan)
So starting May 1st, we are both 100% focused on making the best iPhone software we can. We are putting some finishing touches on the 1.3 releases of Convertbot and Weightbot and hope to have them both over to Apple by the end of this week (just in time for the ADAs). Sometime in May we’re going to start on our 3rd application, we haven’t decided exactly what it’ll be, but the front runner concept should be really cool.
Longer term we aren’t looking to get any VC funding, grow to 100s of employees or get bought out by some big corporation. We may get help with support, testing and/or marketing, but development and design is going to just be us two for the foreseeable future. We think that’s the best way to keep the quality of our applications at the level that everyone expects. Our goal is to produce about 4 applications a year. We aren’t going to shovel out crap-ware to cash-in on our names. We aren’t going to write the next Office or Filemaker. We are going to write simple but incredibly polished applications that are created specifically for the iPhone/Touch devices. Two guys, lot’s of passion and a lot of hard work, that’s the Tapbots way.
Good luck with Tapbots 2.0 :) You are doing a really good job.
I wish you two the best of luck with your new venture, and judging by what you guys have already been able to push out, the future is looking bright.
Just keep those ideas flowing and designs creative and you’ll stay ahead of the game.
Oh yea I forgot you guys worked at Oakley! This is great news and I can’t wait to see the next bots!
Congrats! You both deserve it!
Im all behind Tapbots. Your attention to detail, your responsiveness to your users & the quality of the apps make this a great company. Long may you succeed.
I’ve been terribly impressed with both of your products (which I’ve bought), and want to wish you well in this scary endeavour and tell you I look forward to more from you!
You guys are awesome. Keep up the great work! :]
Good luck!!! I have both apps and think they are great. I look forward to future apps.
Congrats to both if you. Will definitely miss working with you guys on a daily basis but I’m sure your success will continue. Keep the great apps comin’!
Good luck you guys! I love both your apps and I’m looking forward to more great work!
All the very best with it! It’s a great story so far. Love your work.
Awesome news. Exciting stuff.
Good luck, guys! Your work is amazing stuff.
What a great, inspiring success story to anyone pursuing their dream!
I purchased Converbot as soon as I saw it, and it has one of the nicest designs of any app that I’ve seen.
Keep up the great work you guys are doing, and best of luck and much success with all your apps. I’ll be looking for more from you.
Awesome… congratulations guys. Look forward to more great apps.
Have you considered doing a business mileage tracker… kinda like Milog… only good?
Cheers!
As a guy with a soul-crushing workaday and an oppressive mortgage, you guys are my heroes. Seriously!
Congrats on your new venture. Respect.
Congrats guys. We’ll miss you at Oakley!
Congratulations, stories like this are a real inspiration to the rest of us. I’m pretty much sold on anything you put out just because they’re so fun. Looking forward to having a whole screen of Tapbots.
Love your applications. I am trying to restrain myself from buying Weightbot well… because I don’t have a weight problem! (But it looks sooo pretty). That really says something. The last update for Convertbot blew my mind. I don’t think I will ever have to convert different units of radiation but if we ever get hit by a nuke I will be prepared!
I am excited that you are now going to work on these programs full time and can not wait to see what you come up with next. I think I may have a home page just for my bots!
Best of luck and I am looking forward to what you two come up with next!
You guys are doing great stuff. Definitely at the front of the iPhone Dev. game. I love your concepts and business principals. Keep it up and I look forward to what you do in the future!
Congratulations on the much deserved success you two have had so far and will undoubtedly have in the future. I think a lot of designers/developers could learn a thing or two from your process, your focus, and your desire to stay small. I wish I knew an iPhone application developer who wanted to join me to do exactly what the two of you have accomplished, but until then, I’m working on both sides of an iPhone project.
Looking forward to whatever bots you have in store for us in the future!
Hey guys, congrats on going indy and on your excellent apps! I imagine you guys are pretty excited about these turn of events as, you should be.
You’re also inspiring others to do the same: thanks for the inspiration.
Best wishes as you go forward!
It’s awesome to see a small project growing up so fast and so well! You know guys, anytime you need anything just let me know.
Congratulations and keep it up!
This is great news! You guys make some of the most well-designed apps in the store!
Not going to lie, I bought Weightbot simply because it was so sexy. I’m 5′9″ and weigh 115 pounds with no foreseeable way to increase in the near future.
Needless to say, I bought Convertbot in the first week it was released and have used it several times since.
Congratulations on your success!
You guys do really nice work.
I look forward to your future apps!
Congratulations guys, you’re a huge inspiration.
Judging by the success of your first two apps, I’m sure you’ll have no trouble reaching even higher heights over the oncoming months.
Really great work, congratulations.
Call me a fanboy, but I can pretty much say I’ll probably purchase every app you release. :-P
What’s that gonna cost? Like $12/yr. to support two guys who “get it”? No sweat.
Good luck!
Keep posting about them here, and we’ll keep buying them. Good luck with all you guys do, the applications look and work amazingly.
Congratulations! It’s so exciting when something that started out as a fun project takes on a life of it’s own. Welcome to freedom :)
Congrats guys! Okay, here’s an idea that I thought of when I purchased Convertbot:
Use the click-wheel thingy in Convertbot to control iPhones Mobile music player with the 3.0 release. Apple might not approve it, but I think that would be great.
Hell Convertbot would do the job nicely. Put the song title where in the conversion screen and if you click the middle button it opens a playlist instead of the calculator. I think it would be neat.
Good Luck.
Convertbot is very elegant – I use it a couple of times a day. My only complaint is that mass is not the same as weight. You might want to have conversions from mass to mass, then mass to weight on Earth!
FANTASTIC.
Being a partner in a 3 person UI firm myself and having taken the same plunge, I love what you’ve done and wish you all the success you truly deserve.
Best of luck
Congrats guys! We’ll miss you here at Oakley, Paul. I can’t wait to see what you two come up with next.
Congratulations! How can I become a tester for you all? I’m an iPhone developer myself and I know I can learn a lot from you guys and maybe help in the process
You guys are why I am so driven to build apps on the iPhone.
You guys are why I am so driven to polish everything I design and build.
You guys prove that effort, attention to the seemingly insignificant details, and sheer passion pay off.
I wish you the absolute best of luck with your noble intentions at Tapbots.
Congratulations. What was your approach for promoting the app?
Congratulations, guys! I cannot believe you created Weightbot and Convertbot in your spare time â they’re the most well-designed apps I’ve seen on the iPhone. Keep up the awesome work, and good luck!
I like it, you can expand the power to include ohms law, watts to amps, single phase and 3 phase. or wire size, then I can have all my foreman use their iPhones rather then calling me all the time ;)
This is so cool!
Thanks for sharing.
All the best, guys. You do incredible work and I am sure you will do very well full-time. I am happy to see such skilled people in the field and such beautiful apps in the App store.
why no rods and links?
Good luck guys. Both apps are stunning to look at, and incredibly easy to use. Shining examples for any aspiring iPhone developers out there.
I basically grabbed Convertbot on a whim because the price was right and I’ve needed to convert units on the road several times. It’s a really brilliant piece of work, so much so that I’ve handed my phone to plenty of friends and told them, “Just push the Play Demo button, it’s awesome!” My Dad bought a copy in the middle of a hockey game, he was so impressed. Can’t wait to see what you do next!
budgetbot! Sorry, got a bit excited. What I mean is my vote for a bot would be a Budget, cash-tracking app. Well I just think there is no real compelling Budget/Finance App available yet – a few come close but without the polish you guys would bring. I love that you understand that simplicity and focus, combined with a design ethos that frankly shows the way with bringing a little bit of fun in the world. I never thought converting Picas to Points could be such fun!
You are living the dream. You have a job that you are very passionate about. You are producing exceptionaly high quality work.
Congratulations
+1 for an expensebot – there is nothing good on the appstore in this category.
Great! Thank you very much! I always wanted to write in my blog something like that. Can I take part of your post to my site? Of course, I will add backlink? Regards
Hi guys – Brilliant programs. A great compliment would be Exercisebot – Exercise tracker
All my iPhone mates are now enjoying the bot programs
Particularly like the weightbot. Don’t exactly understand the solid and dotted trend lines, an explanation would be good. What about a weatherbot with historical data and analysis?