It’s easy to look at somebody like Jeremy Olson and think, “wow, this guy came out of nowhere and just dominated the app scene!” His created his first app, Grades, while still in college, and it won him Apple’s prestigious Design Award in 2011. From there, he founded Tapity, an app development company that just launched its newest app Hours. He’s also the co-author of the popular App Design Handbook.
But creating a beautiful product is only one step in the process of releasing successful apps. In this interview, Jeremy takes me back to the beginning, and shares how he used a journal-like blog to make industry connections and build an audience before he even knew what he was doing. He also talks about turning app releases into launch events, which explains why Hours was covered by almost every major tech news website.
With over a million apps in the App Store, app success really is all about the launch. Jeremy shares exactly how he does it.
Here’s what we chat about:
- The failures Jeremy faced before his public success
- Jeremy’s thoughts on Apple’s new programming language Swift
- Where the inspiration for Jeremy’s first app Grades came from
- Jeremy’s original challenges with Objective-C and how he finally broke through
- Why Jeremy isn’t afraid of having any of his ideas stolen
- Making interactions not just usable, but “delightful”
- The “marketing” work that Jeremy did before he launched his first app
- What “launch day” looks like at Tapity
- The power of an email list
- Why teaching is so important, especially in the tech industry
- Jeremy’s advice for people with an idea for an app but no app experience
Links mentioned in this show include:
- Apps: Grades, Languages, Hours
- Tapity
- How Hours became a top grossing app
- App Design Handbook
- Jeremy’s upcoming App Making Video Course
- Ready to create your own website? Here’s my free online course
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