Underscore David Smith declares app support bankruptcy

Our favorite _DavidSmith has declared app support bankruptcy. With the success of WidgetSmith, I get it. He's got MUCH bigger fish to fry.

But I emailed a decently written bug request on September 24th, well before WidgetSmith blew up, and I just received this reply (to be clear, it's the first reply. Not even an autoresponse before, afaict), a short month and a half later.

No offense, and I think he'd admit it: That's email support bankruptcy.

Why good indie apps often have incredible support... initially

Again, as a developer with a small app store side business, I get it. It's tough to find the time to reply to every request, and the time it takes to reply is never a good trade off on its face. If I answer an email carefully once with a $15 app, I've probably lost money, and if I get into an email chain, it's, on some level, a time and resource sink I'll never climb out of.

But note: It makes sense to go overboard on support when you start, as you're looking for word of mouth at that point. If you can get your first 500 customers, then maybe you have a snowball big enough to lead to a sustainable business. And so lots of indie devs give amazing support (I'm looking at you, Daniel Jalkut) in ways that are simply unsustainable at scale.

The danger of success

I'm not sure when David made it to "sustainable snowball" stage, but I'm confident he's well past it and into avalanche stage with WidgetSmith now.

And I think this is a weakness of indie development. As much as David wasn't "in it to hit big", he's not against it. He's been writing apps for a decade (plus?) and taking a shotgun approach with good individual success. Now he's extremely successful*. What happened to that awesome support? (Disclaimer: I've never gotten awesome support from his apps, but at least with the hired help, I've gotten a reply or two.) 

As a sort of app experience comp, I'll also admit Marco's complete lack of support for Overcast, the podcast player, leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Always has. I've emailed and posted a few bugs to Twitter, and nothing. Not even a "like". 

That's fine, and it's not a dumb decision (see above on time), but it's not a decision I really appreciate as a customer. 

Hire a contractor to go through and reply, "That's interesting. Does anyone else have the same issue?" to every Twitter post. If the contractor finds enough of the same thing, have them tell Marco and get an update from him to post on the issue. What does that cost? $50 once every week or two? Overcast gets 150+ new subscribers a week on a bad week. That's $1000 a week new income. With 50% churn each year, that's still... carry the one... enough to hire someone.

And that's really the issue. Marco already had a single app whose business was bigger than the snowball but smaller than the avalanche on some level. He hasn't had to keep pushing out apps to find success. He's easily making $200k a year on Overcast, which I'd call success. He doesn't have to find another app (though, given his history, I'm sort of surprised he hasn't). 

This is the danger for users of indie apps: Indie apps with enough success find that word of mouth for good support is no longer particularly important. 

Leaving the toy store

I'm reminded of this post from Brent Simmons:

People in the village love toys, but they also like to get to know the village toy-maker.

Brent was talking about having a blog, but I'd extend that to all communication from the dev to the user. When the toymaker discovers their Rubik Cube and goes to the big city, you don't get to really know the village toymaker any more. What's more, you'll find they've stopped making your favorite toys.

So though it makes sense in David's case to declare support bankruptcy and to put his limited resources on the cash cow, it's an off-putting move. I don't want to check out "his apps here". Which of those are being supported now? Why not just point me to WidgetSmith? Isn't that effectively the message behind the message? "For at least the near-term, until the fire burns itself out, we're a WidgetSmith-only shop." Nothing inherently wrong with that. At least it's honest.

Here's the important point for David: Realize, at least for the time being, that you're no longer the village toymaker.

Suggestions

Here are some more suggestions to improve the email. As someone whose even taught business writing a few times, I don't feel it's out of turn to offer them.

• It's been over a month at this point. Again, on some level, why engage at all? You've already sent the "I don't quite have time" message loud and clear.
• But if you do communicate -- 
• Is there a FAQ of common errors/issues? Can you identify if my issue is on that?
• Is there a forum where the community might help? (Could you [hire someone to] stand one up?)
• Maybe try this: Ask me if I've found a solution in the last 45 days.
• (Spoiler: I have.)
• Give users a realistic timeframe before they can expect "real" help.

In any event, you probably shouldn't send out a, "I'm orphaning all of my children, you know, for now, at least," email if you're still adopting them. 

That is, he's still selling the app. If you don't have time to support it, drop it. Or make it free. Or use your newfound resources to support these other apps with non-technical staff (other news flash: my issue's solution was not app specific). Or hire a developer for these orphaned apps. Or...

The take home is that the #1 rule of business writing is to offer a win-win. You can give bad news if you can legitimately offer value to your users as you do it. If not, you're making the wrong decisions.

There is value in honesty. Perhaps just as important to keep in mind: There is value in being honest with yourself.

---

* He's really successful in the sense that WidgetSmith is/was really popular. But I am genuinely worried about his inability to pursue profit effectively -- he's only selling subscriptions to add weather and tides? 

There is nothing wrong with selling an exclusive color or layout in the app or to make stuff like that part of a subscription.

There is something very wrong with not coming up with more reasons to get a subscription at this point. Active support is a good bonus. Access to new widgets as they're developed, even just early access by a month or two, is a no-brainer.

If I had millions of users, you'd better believe I'd be selling more than just tides and forecasts, even if it's just a tip jar like on Pedometer++. People love the app. Give them reasons and ways to support your writing it.