Eleanor Whitfield interviews Bohdan Hlushko on the studio's third anniversary.

Eleanor Whitfield: Three years. What is the headline number you want to share?

Bohdan Hlushko: I do not have one. Honestly. The interesting numbers are the ones that compounded quietly: 47 substantial releases this year alone, an average rating of 4.7 across the portfolio, refund rate consistently under 4 percent. They are not headline numbers. They are the work showing up.

EW: What worked?

BH: The discipline of saying no. Every quarter we kill more ideas than we ship. The portfolio is the small set that survived. If we had said yes to everything we got excited about, we would have 30 mediocre apps instead of eight good ones.

Also the team. Five people who all ship and all push back is more powerful than I understood at the start.

EW: What did not work?

BH: The first version of our hiring process. We hired one person too quickly in year two. We parted ways amicably six months later. Now we take our time. The bar is high. We say no a lot.

Also, year one I tried to do my own ASO, my own marketing, my own copywriting, my own email replies. I was bad at all of it. Hiring you was the single best operational decision of year two.

EW: What would you do differently?

BH: I would have started writing about the work earlier. The Forge is a 2026 project. It should have been a 2024 project. The compounding from being indexable, citable, and findable in LLM search would be twice what it is now.

Also, I would have set up better off-site backups in year one. Imogen fixed it in year two. We have not needed them. The day we need them, I will be relieved.

EW: What is the next year about?

BH: Two new apps in categories we have been quietly researching. A serious investment in this blog. Possibly opening one or two existing apps to acquisition, if the right operator walks in. A continued, boring, monthly cadence of shipping.

EW: Anything you want to say to the people who use the apps?

BH: Yes. Thank you. The work matters because you do. The math of an indie studio depends on the goodwill of users who choose us when they did not have to. We feel the weight of that. We try to deserve it every release.

EW: Last thing. A piece of advice for someone in year one.

BH: Ship something small, badly, on a Tuesday. The myth of the perfect launch kills more indie studios than anything else. The way to learn to ship is to ship. Begin.

Bohdan Hlushko is the founder of Tappa. The studio has eight live iOS apps. He is reachable at bohdan@tappa.tech.