Habitual

Holger Sindbaek had already proven himself as a builder. His Solitaire website saw 3 million games played monthly. His Mac calculator was one of the most popular on the App Store. But after reading Atomic Habits by James Clear, he became obsessed with finding the perfect habit-tracking app. Every app he tried felt wrong—either drowning in graphs and complexity, or oversimplified with nice illustrations but no real substance. Like Goldilocks, he couldn't find one that was just right. So he decided to build it himself, partly because he wanted to scratch his own itch, and partly because he was eager to learn React Native.

Holger started with design in Sketch, drawing heavy inspiration from Things, a to-do app he loved for its understated, uncomplicated interface. He built Habitual in React Native using Expo, which offered over-the-air updates and cross-platform capabilities (though he never got around to Android). For monetization, he kept it simple: free for 3 habits, then a freemium model with monthly subscriptions, yearly plans, and lifetime purchases. He integrated Revenuecat to handle the subscription complexity. The app took about 1.5 months to build—longer than his initial 3-week estimate, as side projects tend to grow.

This is where Habitual's story diverges from Holger's other successes. His calculator and Solitaire games found users naturally through app store search—no marketing required. But Habitual needed a push. Holger posted it on Product Hunt, his main marketing effort. Unfortunately, he posted on a Sunday, when people aren't thinking about optimizing their lives, and the market was already flooded with habit trackers. The launch got "semi-good reception" at best. After that initial push, Holger had no marketing strategy. The app was left "dead in the water."

Holger's core mistake was underestimating the power of marketing. As a programmer who loved building but disliked marketing, he'd relied on products that could be discovered through search. His background hadn't prepared him for the work needed to launch a consumer app in a crowded category. He had the product-market fit (he still uses and loves Habitual himself, and a small community uses it), but he never converted that into commercial success. The app ultimately failed in business terms, despite being personally valuable.

Holger hasn't fully given up—he still maintains Habitual and uses it daily. But he's learned a crucial lesson: if he ever builds a consumer app again, he'll find a co-founder who's strong at marketing. Going into a saturated market requires either significant product differentiation or aggressive marketing. Habitual had neither. Today, Holger shares his story on platforms like Failory, hoping other builders won't make the same mistake.