The personal workaround that became a business
Teleprompter Pro didn’t start with market research; it started with a frustrating freelance video gig. In 2010, Joe was a 19-year-old freelance videographer working on a low-budget pilot. They needed a teleprompter, but he was “too cool to write on a piece of paper and hold it.”
He tried using Apple Pages on a first-generation iPad to scroll text, but the experience was clunky. He couldn’t even easily get a black background. Having recently downloaded Xcode, he decided to build a simple scrolling text app himself.
“It just sort of moved some text up,” he recalls. But when he put it on the App Store alongside a few other random projects, it was the only one that gained traction. It solved a genuine problem for people doing video production. For the next seven years, that simple utility app generated steady, organic revenue while Joe worked a full-time job in web and graphic design. It wasn’t until 2018 that the app’s revenue allowed him to quit his job and go full-time indie.
The App Store river and the illusion of control
Many developers attribute every spike in downloads to a brilliant new feature they just shipped. Joe takes a more humbling view of his app’s growth trajectory.
“I think we assume that literally everything is happening to us and that we’re responsible for any of the success,” he notes. The reality is that the App Store is a massive river. Sometimes your app is just sitting right in the current, benefiting from a small algorithmic tweak or a new search trend.
Joe embraced this reality early on. “We’ve never, ever had a day of zero revenue ever,” he says, even during the years when he was barely updating the app. Accepting that he didn’t control every single variable freed him from constantly chasing the algorithm. Instead, he could focus on building a reliable product and let organic momentum do the heavy lifting.
The unexpected ROI of personal customer support
When Joe finally transitioned to full-time indie development, he found himself spending an enormous amount of time answering customer support emails. Many were simple questions—like explaining that a user’s orientation lock was on—but he felt a deep responsibility to ensure every user got a helpful answer.
While it consumed his working days, that direct line to users became his most valuable product research tool. “A lot of questions we get are just super simple… but I sort of feared that that would turn into one-star reviews or someone abandoning the product,” he explains.
Those conversations led to crucial feature additions, like adding a video recording option, and eventually highlighted the need for better onboarding. More importantly, taking the time to personally respond built immense goodwill. Users who were initially frustrated often became loyal advocates, simply because they received a genuine reply from the app’s creator rather than an automated corporate response.
Why an email list is the ultimate safety net
If there is one piece of advice Joe insists on, it’s the importance of owning your audience. From the very early days, he asked users for an email address. He didn’t have a grand marketing plan; he just liked the idea of being able to announce cool things to people.
That simple decision became the foundation of his business stability. “I’m quite convinced that that is the single most important thing I ever did for my career,” he says.
When he transitioned Teleprompter Pro from a paid upfront model to a subscription model in 2020, he didn’t have to rely on App Store release notes to communicate the change. He could email his users directly, explain that existing customers were grandfathered in, and offer a discount to those on the fence. When he launched his new app, Captions (Recap), earlier this week, he emailed a segmented list of users who actively record video, offering them the Pro upgrade for free if they pre-ordered.
The App Store algorithm can change overnight, but an email list ensures you never have to start from zero.
In the full episode, Joe also discusses the stress of navigating an unexpected “spam” rejection from App Store Review for his new app, the benefits of attending industry events, and why slow, steady growth is often the healthiest path for indie developers.