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Building an Apple Design Award-Winning Photo Editing App — Majd Taby & Jasper Hauser, Darkroom
Description
Our guests today are Majd Taby and Jasper Hauser, co-founders of the Apple Design Award-winning app, Darkroom.
Prior to founding Darkroom, Majd spent time at Apple, Facebook, and Instagram working as a product-focused engineer. Alongside Darkroom, Majd has also published a photobook documenting the Syrian Refugee Crisis.
Jasper is a 3-time Apple Design Award winner, with 18 years of industry experience in creating digital products and mentoring people. Prior to founding Darkroom with Majd, Jasper founded Sofa, which was acquired by Facebook in 2011.
In this episode, you’ll hear about:
- What Apple looks for in a featured app
- Why getting press isn’t always great for conversions
- The benefits and drawbacks of bootstrapping your app
Follow Us:
David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnard
Jacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeiting
Majd Taby: https://twitter.com/jtaby
Jasper Hauser: https://twitter.com/jasperhauser
Here’s the Outline of Our Interview with Majd and Jasper:
(2:06) Majd’s feature on The Launched Podcast; Jasper’s feature on Design Details.
(3:08) Majd’s background at Instagram and passion for photography; Matt Brown.
(5:00) How Darkroom was founded; iOS 8 PhotoKit.
(6:04) What differentiates Darkroom from other photo editing apps.
(9:23) Jasper’s background in design and photography; joining the Darkroom team.
(11:19) Why Apple featured Darkroom so heavily after launch; The Factory; Rdio.
(13:46) Darkroom’s pricing structure and business model; VSCO; Snapseed.
(18:09) How useful is it to have your app featured by Apple?
(19:03) Frustrating aspects of App Analytics traffic attribution.
(21:39) What happened after Darkroom launched—and plateaued.
(24:36) Product-market fit: Darkroom had 450,000 MAUs and was making $70,000 per year even after Majd stopped working on it; Heap.
(30:58) Combining Apple’s design principles with Facebook’s analytical, process-driven thinking.
(33:06) User feedback, experimentation, and lessons learned.
(37:04) The switch from in-app purchases to subscriptions; grandfathered IAP users.
(40:28) Is the subscription model right for every app?
(42:46) How users reacted to Darkroom adding subscriptions.
(45:40) The CSS Flywheel.
(46:00) Why Majd and Jasper haven’t taken VC money.
(50:40) Darkroom’s $5M goal; diversification and optimizatio