Apptisan #44 - Bleep: How a Film Lover Turned Your Ideas into a Personal ‘Idea Palace’
In this edition, we feature Rolando, a Philadelphia-based indie developer originally from Peru & Bolivia, who transitioned from web design to product management and software engineering.
Name: Bleep
Developer / Team: Rolando
Platforms: iOS, iPadOS, macOS
Read this newsletter issue in Chinese (中文) .
Bleep’s creator, Rolando, is offering a week-long 20% discount for all Apptisan readers! Head to the App Store now to download it at the discounted price, and enjoy its beautifully minimalist space for your ideas.
Please describe your product.
Bleep is a visual space for bookmarks, notes, and images. I like to think of it as an idea palace where you have rooms for each hobby, inspiration, or area in your life you want to pay close attention to. It can be as serious or as fun as you want it to be.
The app features a square grid where each item has a nice preview card that can be reordered freely via drag and drop. Bleep also makes it easy to save stuff from your browser and other apps in your device.
Was there a ‘aha!’ moment that inspired your product’s creation?
I have tried many different styles of “productivity” apps to organize my life. From note-taking, to todo apps, and bookmark managers. But none of them managed to stick with me. I wanted something that could kinda do everything but also not feel overwhelming or complicated. It wasn’t features that I wanted, but more of a minimalist experience. I wanted an app that felt more like a destination instead of a quick utility. So I decided to build my own.
Beyond specific ‘aha!’ moment, how do you generally find and nurture creative inspiration in your daily life?
I love movies! And every decision that goes into the making them: visual storytelling, cinematography, writing, casting, etc. I probably spend more time analyzing films than their actual runtime. And even more time talking about them with my friends and my partner. It's a great way to get your creative juices flowing.
As a film enthusiast, what are some of your favorite movies, and do you have any go-to film websites, critics, or content creator you’d recommend?
I don’t have an ultimate favorite, but my current ones worth recommending are: Coherence, Triangle of Sadness, and Bring Her Back. They represent different genres and type of stories I like to see. Coherence is a very low budget yet profound sci-fi flick, Triangle of Sadness boils down to how power corrupts people who would otherwise act morally, and Bring Her Back is the latest horror movie that I watched and truly enjoyed.
I don’t have a go-to critic or creator these days but I think Every Frame a Painting, The Take, and Nerdwriter cover different aspects that I’ve enjoyed learning about and helped me gain better understanding of the craft!
Could you walk us through your typical workflow, from initial concept to a shipped product? What key tools or methodologies do you rely on?
Working on Bleep wouldn’t be enjoyable if I imposed too much structure on myself. Every time I try I end up burnt out. So each week I set out some goals and do my best to stick to them.
When planning features, I like to let ideas marinate. So you'll typically see me designing concepts I have no intention of building any time soon, and keep iterating them every so often until I'm ready.
When building, I tend to cut scope aggressively and spend more time improving on what’s left. This usually results in a better, more polished product.
How do you view the trend of using AI for design, coding, and rapid product launches? Did it impact Bleep’s development, and do you use AI for any daily tasks?
AI is perfect for indie devs. Working solo gives you a lot of creative freedom, but can easily overwhelm you and it's specially easy to end up working on the wrong things. For example, when brainstorming how to add an onboarding flow to Bleep, it suggested that I prioritize key touchpoints progressively as mini onboarding flows, such as helping people install the share extension (which allows you to save links quickly from anywhere on your device.) My original plan was to develop a grand, tour-like flow, inclusive of all Bleep has to offer. I still want to do it eventually, but with this approach I know I'm getting the most out of my limited time.
When coding, I can think of this very bad scrolling performance Bleep had on iOS. Hundreds of things could be going on, but I gave a picture of a flame graph (break down of time consuming functions) to an LLM and had it give me top 3 key areas that could be the bottleneck. After that, I investigated each theory until I landed on a shadow that was very expensive to render (and unnecessarily so.) The AI then suggested an alternative approach using blurred backgrounds (common for SwiftUI) which instantly solved the issue.
What makes your product unique compared to others in the market?
To me personally, the most lovable aspect of Bleep is the design. I’ve been quite ruthless in removing as much clutter as possible. At any given moment, you basically only see your stuff. Any other piece of UI is hidden or made secondary. I am also constantly making updates to polish little details, make animations delightful and every new feature is carefully added to prevent the app feeling bloated.
But if we want to get competitive… Bleep is just awesome value:
One-time purchase. No subscriptions. You get to own Bleep and still get updates.
Local-first. Everything loads instantly and you can even use it offline.
Cross-platform. Fully native, with iCloud sync across iPhone, iPad and Mac.
How have you marketed your product, and what key lessons have you learned?
I am quite a student when it comes to marketing, but I found the most success in sharing my work in progress on X and Threads. I do YouTube as well but haven’t managed to be as consistent. I’m reserving it for long-term, more purposeful videos.
Aside from social media and content-led growth, I’ve spent a lot of time on improving my App Store pages which has proven to be a great way to work on my copywriting and design skills!
I have tons of lessons learned but honestly, it all boils down to the most anticlimactic realization: you gotta experiment early and often!
What has been some memorable feedback since your product’s release?
The most significant was the need for Bleep to be native instead of web-based. It started as a web app (that's what I was most comfortable at the time) but it became quickly apparent that being able to install it was the best experience for users and me:
Users benefit from a one-time purchase option, instant loading speeds, offline support, complete privacy, etc.
Allows me to focus 100% on the app experience vs. dealing with server maintenance, APIs, etc.
Beyond that, I'm constantly surprised by how many people reach out with feature ideas or even compliments. It energizes me and keeps me motivated!
How do you typically structure your day to stay productive and creative? Any favorite time management techniques?
I have a full time job in a competitive industry so time to work on Bleep is scarce and sacred to me. It is both a hobby and a long term venture.
On weekdays: I work at least 1 power hour per day, often more. I try to make these ones very early in the morning. But to be honest, these usually end up happening at night.
These power hours typically involve social media, marketing, addressing user feedback, bug fixes, quality of life improvements, etc.
On weekends: between 4-6 hours per day. I consider these my focus blocks for deep thinking, design or big lifts.
Are there any products out there that you feel deserve more recognition?
HEY—hands down. Such a delightful and refreshing approach to managing email. Every new contact needs to be screened by you and you need to categorize where they go upfront.
It may sound tedious but you get used to it and get a clean inbox as a result. I just love to see opinionated software that makes you reconsider your old ways of doing things.
One of my favorite features is Bubble Up. It helps you intentionally “forget” emails and have them show up at a later date as if you’ve just received them for the first time. I use this feature all the time. Go check them out!
Would you mind sharing your phone and computer home screens with us and a few of your go-to daily apps?
I have a fairly minimal setup! I don’t even like keeping things on my desktop so I hide all icons, dock, and menu bar.
Browser: Safari
Design: Sketch, sometimes Figma
Video editing: Final Cut Pro
Screen recording: Screen Studio
Photo editing: Pixelmator Pro
Coding: Xcode, Cursor, Neovim
Planning: Bleep, Notion, and a blackboard in my office
Which creators do you look up to, and what admirable qualities do you see in them or their work?
At the moment, I would say localthunk, creator of the video game Balatro. It’s a well thought out game, with a fun and addictive concept, lovely art and attention to detail. But what I found most impressive is that it was made by a single person. Working with others is great, but it’s really inspiring to see someone carry out their vision at every single level, and it shows just how much hard work and talent can take you.
Tell us a bit about yourself and what you envision for the future.
I’m an indie dev out of Philly, originally from Peru & Bolivia. I started my career as a web designer (back in the Web 2.0 days), and transitioned between roles in product management and software engineering. In reality, I just like all aspects that go into building stuff!
Bleep is my first commercially successful app, but I’ve been exploring the intersection of creative and productivity tools in one way or another for as long as I can remember. I’ve made: color pickers, open source layout tools, Figma/Sketch plugins, etc.
I will probably continue to work on Bleep for a while, but I’ll likely make new apps in the future, and maybe even games! You can keep up with my work on X, Threads, and YouTube.
Given your experience in product, design, and development, what insights or advice would you offer to other indie developers?
One that I always remind myself of is that you need to prioritize and make decisions based on what will lead to more momentum and excitement. There’s a great story in the book Creative Selection (super recommended read, btw) about how when Safari was made initially:
Apple engineers were building a browser from scratch, so they did what most of us engineers do and started with the hard problems first, and followed a methodical approach to execution. However, this led to a lot of friction and decision paralysis.
What they ended up doing instead was forking a popular open-source browser (not made for Mac initially) and hacked it together quickly so they can have a demo of what a fully functional first-party browser could look like. This got the team excited and inspired them to overcome the hurdles they had spotted in their initial approach.
This of course doesn’t negate the tremendous amount of hard work that went after to actually get it done, but it goes to show just how having a clear vision that you can refer to can help you overcome the mental burdens of the day-to-day.
About Apptisan
Apptisan is a portmanteau of “application” and “artisan”, signifying “a weekly exploration into the world of apps and the passionate artisans who create them.” Each issue is a conversation with global creators, aiming to uncover and present intriguing products to a wider audience.
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