This is the long one. End-to-end: how a Tappa app gets from a one-line note in a journal to a profitable line in our App Store Connect dashboard. The numbers are real, rounded.

Stage 1 — Idea capture

Ideas live in one of two places: an ideas.md file in our shared Notion, or a quick note in the founder's journal. We do not act on most of them. The point is to never lose one and to revisit them quarterly.

Stage 2 — Research

Once a month, we pull the most interesting three ideas and run the niche-first method. Top-20 competitor scan, one-star reviews, search-volume signal, sanity check with a target user.

Most ideas die at this stage. The pass rate is roughly 1 in 8.

Stage 3 — One-page brief

The surviving idea gets a one-page Notion document: target user in one paragraph, the wedge, three competitive screenshots, the working title, the working price model, the rough engineering scope. Reviewed by the team for a week. Either we move forward, kill it, or shelve it for later.

Stage 4 — Design sprint

Oliver takes a week with the brief. Outputs are a Figma file with the core flow, the home screen, the paywall, and the App Store screenshots. Yes, screenshots first — if we cannot make a compelling screenshot of the app's core promise, the brief is wrong.

Stage 5 — Engineering

Nathan scopes the v1 against the design and gives a build estimate. For a typical Tappa app, this is 6–10 weeks of full-time engineering for one person. We do not start until we are confident the date can be hit.

During the build, we cut. Aggressively. The features that ship in v1 are the ones that earn their place.

Stage 6 — Internal beta

Two to three weeks of internal use across the team. Bugs filed, polished, polished again.

Stage 7 — TestFlight beta

Following the TestFlight playbook. Internal cohort, friends and family, public beta, then submit.

Stage 8 — Submission and launch

Eleanor prepares the App Store listing. Three to four screenshot variants are tested before launch. The first version goes out with phased release on. We do not announce loudly on day one — we want a few quiet days of real-world data.

At this stage, the app exists. The economics still need to be made.

Stage 9 — Find the conversion ceiling

The first 60 days are paywall and onboarding optimisation. We test:

A typical app gains 2–4x in conversion rate during this period without changing anything about the core product.

Stage 10 — Find the acquisition channel

In parallel, Eleanor works the ASO. We do not run paid ads in the first 90 days unless we have already proven organic conversion. Paid ads on a non-converting app waste money fast.

Once organic conversion is healthy, we test small paid budgets. If LTV / CAC works, we scale. If it does not, we stay organic.

Stage 11 — Profitability

A typical Tappa app reaches profitability at month 6–9. A few have been profitable from month 2 (RedRate). One took 14 months (Lunara, which was right on the edge of a category that grew under us).

Stage 12 — Compounding

From there, the app gets monthly updates, quarterly content drops, and an honest review every six months. Apps in the portfolio that compound get more attention. Apps that flat-line get a hard conversation: re-pivot, sell, or sunset.

What this is not

This is not a guarantee. About 30% of the apps that pass our research stage do not become profitable. We accept that as the cost of doing real work in a market that does not owe us anything.

The only thing this playbook reliably produces is a higher hit rate than the alternative — which, for most indies, is to skip stages 1, 2, and 9 and wonder why the math does not work.

The path is long. The work is slow. The compounding is real.