Creator of Streaks and Full-Time Indie iOS Dev: A Top Dev Interview With Quentin Zervaas

Focus

As well as building Streaks, you also currently run the CocoaHeads Adelaide. Why did you decide to run a CocoaHeads chapter, and how do you manage to find time contributing alongside running as an indie developer?

I’m based in Adelaide, Australia – there are a number of app developers based here, but there’s no regular meet up. There have been a few attempts in the past, so figured it was time to make something more regular.

It’s a fairly small group currently, and they’re all supportive and reliable with attendance and spreading the word, so the biggest challenge each time is finding a speaker. Not a lot of time is required currently, but hopefully, it will grow in the next year and then perhaps ask me again! :]

How do you manage the wearing of multiple hats, for example, Product Owner, Developer, Tester, Marketeer?

You just need to know what you’re capable of. If you’re not, get somebody who is capable. Also, there’s a ton of online services to help with things. I used to roll everything myself (for example, server monitoring). Now it’s a much better use of time to spend a few dollars on a third-party service.

For example, I use I Can Localize for translations rather than trying to translate everything myself (or retaining my own translators), I use GitHub to host git repositories. I could run my own server with Gitlab and do it that way, but that’s a distraction. I could write my own server monitoring code, but I use a service that specializes in it. Sometimes it’s fine to not reinvent the wheel.

Procrastination is a real problem for many indie developers. How do you avoid this?

At the start of each week (and each day) I try to get a sense of what I need to achieve. If I’m really overwhelmed or have a ton of things to do, I’ll plan the day ahead, allocating blocks of time to specific projects. Without doing this you can easily spend all of your days on the one thing that really excites you, rather than that other thing you really need to get done.

I normally run over on the allocated chunks of time, but then I readjust them, but it seems to work.

Don’t get distracted by the fun of starting new projects: try to actually ship stuff. This can be pretty hard, so do it in manageable chunks. Your version 1 doesn’t need all the bells and whistles. Maybe just 1 bell and 1 whistle to begin with ;]

Even if the project fails and doesn’t go anywhere, you will have learned something for the next thing.

Where To Go From Here?

And that concludes our Top App Dev Interview with Quentin Zervaas. A huge thanks to Quentin for sharing his journey with the iOS community :]

We hope you enjoyed reading about Quentin’s story at being an iOS indie app developer. In the end, a keen eye to detail and believing in your product seems to be key to Quentin’s success.

Quentin’s eye for detail on making sure the app is as clear to understand for all languages is really important to be a worldwide success and to be recognized from Apple with an Apple Design Award. We hope you can take some advice from Quentin in your development.

If you are an app developer with a hit app or game in the top 100 in the App store, we’d love to hear from you. Please drop us a line anytime. If you have a request for any particular developer you’d like to hear from, please join the discussion in the forum below!