Devon Waller

Code was never the bottleneck. Distribution is.

[Devon Waller @OperatorFlux]

My paywall has no close button.

You get past it by paying or by restoring an old purchase. Restore sits in plain sight.

In July I found it had no link to my Terms or Privacy Policy. Apple requires both.

The buy button stays dead until the App Store returns the real price.

[Devon Waller @OperatorFlux]

In August I deleted my own production database.

I had two Supabase projects with nearly the same name. I picked the one I was sure was retired.

It was not.

For two days my live app pointed at a database that no longer existed. Nobody noticed, because nobody installed it.

[Devon Waller @OperatorFlux]

I build from Switzerland and post for people on US Eastern time.

Every growth playbook I have read assumes the founder is awake when the audience is.

My morning window opens at 2 in the afternoon here.
My evening window closes at 2 at night.

[Devon Waller @OperatorFlux]

My App Store token lives 20 minutes. The read I run against it makes 37 calls and takes longer than that.

22 came back 401, got counted as unreadable, and my download number quietly became a floor instead of a total.

I fixed it and ran it again. Same answer. One in 30 days.

[Devon Waller @OperatorFlux]

Same video file, posted to both platforms in the same minute. Different captions.

September 4: 3,013 views on Instagram, 289 on TikTok.
September 14: 3 on Instagram, 763 on TikTok.

Both read on September 16.

[Devon Waller @OperatorFlux]

I read X's open-source recommendation code to stop guessing.

Hashtags have no documented feature path.
First-hour engagement decides whether a post reaches beyond followers.
Posts within four hours compete.

I removed the hashtags and moved my posting times.
Day 30 will tell.

[Devon Waller @OperatorFlux]

On day one my analytics flagged 11 posts as winners.

Every one was a 25% engagement rate on 16 views.

Four taps.

A rate with no minimum sample size is not a metric. I set a floor and the 11 winners became zero.

[Devon Waller @OperatorFlux]

Before I wrote any code, I ran the app by hand for three people.

Their goals lived in a shared spreadsheet.
I sent the reminders and did the weekly check-ins myself.

They finished 30 goals.
So I turned that spreadsheet into an app that gets goals finished.

[Devon Waller @OperatorFlux]

I had been telling myself that TikTok never produces a save. 40 posts, 13,285 views, and the saves column is every single zero.

The same table puts the reach on all 40 of them at zero too.

I quoted one of those zeros as a finding. The other I knew was just broken reporting.

[Devon Waller @OperatorFlux]

One of my reels read as a 34x breakout.

I was comparing a video to still images. Against my other videos it was 3.3x.

Four days later, with the same reach, it read 20.5x.

The post never changed. The videos behind the median did.

[Devon Waller @OperatorFlux]

On September 10 my subscription dashboard said 51 new customers in 28 days.

The App Store said 2 first-time downloads in 30.

The 51 counts anonymous IDs. Reinstalls, my simulator, dev builds.

Check what your tool counts.

[Devon Waller @OperatorFlux]

On September 2 I gave myself a rule with a date on it. Any format still at zero saves and zero follows by September 16 gets cut.

The slide images: 14 posts, 207 views between them, reach adding up to 72. The best one did 27.

I cut them on the 13th.

[Devon Waller @OperatorFlux]

On September 3 I posted three videos to TikTok inside eight hours.

Read again today they sit at 255 views, 767 and 257.

The 767 and the 257 are the two that went out 89 minutes apart.

[Devon Waller @OperatorFlux]

On August 28 I posted my Apple Search Ads receipt: 1,828 impressions, 25 taps, $19.71 spent, 0 installs.

The 0 is wrong. The campaign report I pulled today says 2 installs, both on August 2.

I had posted those same 2 installs myself five days earlier.

[Devon Waller @OperatorFlux]

On August 28 I posted that the saves column had never been anything but zero.

One reel changed that on September 4. It took five saves and 3,011 views.

The median for my videos in that window is 120 views. No other post in it has a single save.

[Devon Waller @OperatorFlux]

One of my TikToks has 34,381 views.
Every other post lands between 250 and 300.

I bought the 34,381 views with TikTok's Promote button.
They brought zero follows.

[Devon Waller @OperatorFlux]

My best post in 30 days is a one line affirmation on a plain background.
624 views.

The goal breakdowns, the ones with the actual method in them, sit around 270. That is the median across 28 posts.

The quote did 2.3 times the median.

[Devon Waller @OperatorFlux]

Four campaigns in my Apple Search Ads account.

Two are paused because I paused them.
Two still say ENABLED.

Those two have not served an impression since August 9. Their end date passed 24 days ago and the status still reads ENABLED.

[Devon Waller @OperatorFlux]

I am building a second app while my live app has zero paying customers.

The standard advice is to focus.
That advice assumes I already know which app deserves the focus.

I do not know that yet.
So I am taking two bets instead of polishing one guess.

[Devon Waller @OperatorFlux]

My App Store rating is 5.0.
It comes from exactly two written reviews.

Both were posted on July 23.
Nobody has written one since.

A perfect rating based on two reviews is not a rating.
It is two people who liked the app.