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day 403 of building @trycandleapp, a game to help friends and couples connect more made on candle :) thank you to business insider for writing a story about us! if you're curious about our journey, check it out pair with someone td businessinsider.com/y-combin…

day 402 of building @trycandleapp, a game to help friends and couples connect more made on candle :) pair with someone td and as always lmk if you have any feedback

day 401 of building @trycandleapp, a game to help friends and couples connect more :) we’ve now crossed over $250k in revenue in the last 28 days, surpassing $3m annualized rev while staying freemium one of the hardest parts is balancing a fantastic free experience while also giving people a strong enough incentive to upgrade. ill give my take on this in a later tweet for anyone thinking of moving off a hard paywall. really proud of the team and everything we’ve learned building this so far. we also have some awesome new features coming soon around memories that we’re really excited about, stay tuned :) pair with someone td and as always lmk if you have any feedback

day 400 of building @trycandleapp, a game to help friends and couples connect more :) another fun format that’s been working pretty well for us recently with a solid install -> start trial conversion, 200k views, 1:10 like to view ratio so hook is: “pov you decided to check the time but you have your gf’s status, distance, and wallpaper on your lockscreen” starts with someone super excited from a side angle reaction shot checking their phone, then transitions into a super quick tutorial showing how to add the distance time together/countdown widget to your lockscreen show the value prop of y how to do/setup y thing pair with someone td

shoutout @faionur for organizing! We had a great time at usv :) this is day 399 of building @trycandleapp, a game to help couples and friends connect more

day 398 of building @trycandleapp , a game to help friends and couples connect more really excited to finally launch check ins today :) one of the most requested and long awaited features for candle, now built directly into our daily challenge flow it’s a super lightweight, low pressure way to check in with your partner/friend once a month one of the challenges here was figuring out how to provide people with a simple communication framework while still feeling lightweight, some reasons why we think this matters long term: - small unresolved feelings don’t silently build into resentment over time, this is a huge reason people end up drifting apart/leaving - relationships generally get stronger when people feel safe revisiting hard moments instead of avoiding them - regular reflection helps people better understand how the other person thinks and experiences the relationship download the latest update today, and as always we’d love any feedback pair with someone td

day 395 of building @trycandleapp, a game to help friends and couples connect more :) another mini milestone today, we just hit 20k live users on the app :) can you handle this load @parthematics. pause pair with someone td

day 393 of building @trycandleapp, a game to help friends and couples connect more :) new format for the long distance niche, again, try to capture that hyper specific pain point that couples/friends face when doing long distance. (in any niche you are building for, talk to your users to help uncover those pain points, the way you do this is by asking them, "tell me about the last time you experienced y problem, and really hear the details in their story) first part is trying to capture the feeling you get after ending a really engaging/fun call with someone. laptop shows the brightness at first, then goes dark after closing it to emphasize the emotion. hook is: “how it feels after the call ends” about 3-4 seconds transition to the value prop (maybe 2-3 seconds) with a really simple shot of someone holding the phone with a cute/fun message or doodle on the homescreen drawing widget. we’ve noticed that having a shot of someone holding the phone is generally better than a screen recording. was lookin into this and generally hand held phone shots have higher identification and helps people visualize that they already own it/use it which could lead to better conversion for thi id keep audio minimal with no words to reduce distractions pair with someone td

come check it out if you’re in nyc!

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day 390 of building @trycandleapp, a game to help friends and couples connect more :) this week we’re making some really fun updates to our date ideas and activities feature. goal is to make it way easier to find small, unique things to do with a friend or partner, whether you’re long distance, nearby, or just trying to make a random day feel a little more special stay tuned pair with someone td

day 389 of building @trycandleapp, a game to help friends and couples connect more :) at candle, each person has a list with the 3 most important things to get done that day extra tasks ordered by priority. before we used the notes app, but @parthematics built a super simple open source tool for us to stay organized, unfinished tasks roll over automatically each day and you can access what you need to get done quicker try it here: github.com/encore-ai-labs/gs… install: brew install --cask encore-ai-labs/gsd/gsd we’d love any feedback :) pair with someone td

day 388 of building @trycandleapp, a game to help friends and couples connect more :) these next 2 weeks we'll be fixing a bunch of bugs and giving our landing page a refresh (which is not the best rn) some really fun updates coming soon too. stay tuned :) pair with someone td and let us know if you have any feedback

we’ve now made over $200k in the last month with no weeklies while staying freemium depending on ur goal, scale your creator team and build 3 format lists, one for views, one for installs, and one for trial starts. we keep a library of the top 5–10 generally formats for each, update it monthly, and focus on iterating those. ~90% of all vids are iteration-based and 10% is completely new / experimentation based this is day 386 of building @trycandleapp, a game to help friends and couples connect more. pair with someone td and as always lmk if you have any feedback

day 385 of building @trycandleapp, a game to help friends and couples connect more :) past 3 days have mainly been scaling our creator team internationally and testing our new beta we’ve also been going deeper on research around relationship quality and its second order effects. the strongest predictor of long term health and happiness isn't fitness, genetics, iq, or income, it's the quality of your relationships. and there's a famous 80 year longitudinal study behind this that was highlighted in The Good Life by Robert Waldinger. one takeaway was that small, consistent moments of connection with friends/partners compound over decades into measurable differences in lifespan and life satisfaction i linked an article w/book if u guys are interested pair with someone td and lmk if you have any feedback! :) magazine.hms.harvard.edu/art…

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day 381 of building @trycandleapp, a game to help friends and couples connect more :) new update submitted! for the past few days we’ve been working hard on translations across the entire app it’s actually pretty difficult to get everything right across all surfaces, prompts, push notifications, onboarding, labels, paywalls, and even app store screenshots all had to be translated we’ll be expanding to many more languages soon. if you catch anything off or broken, lmk! pair with someone td! :)

@trycandleapp finally, next goal sub 3% monthly churn

day 380 of building @trycandleapp, a game to help friends and couples connect more :) new format/hook breakdown that you guys can try: “when i wake up from my 8 hour nap and forget i have a gf” super simple but really relatable format we’ve been trying. start with a confused/surprised side angle waking up shot, then transition into showing the angry message from your partner on canvas, reply through the drawing feature, hit save/send back what makes this one work well is the product is shown through behavior, not explanation. you’re demonstrating the magic of replying with drawing instead of text naturally inside the skit. the audio matters a lot too, a lot of the greatest hooks in the world will trigger some core emotion instantly, either target humor, fear, tension, anxiety or desire also sound is processed more automatically than reading, this is specifically why we use the phone vibrating sound here -> to help increase the emotion faster. and in general, relatability matters a ton. when you are thinking of hooks, try asking: “what’s a hyper specific experience/problem that happens to a lot of people?” a few more examples: • when your phone dies mid-argument and your partner thinks you’re ignoring them • when you open a text to reply later and completely forget • when you’re at the gym and miss 8 notifications from your partner etc pair with someone td! :)

day 379 of building @trycandleapp, a game to help friends and couples connect more :) new format / hook breakdown : “pov: you’re on facetime and she suddenly says ‘wait mute your mic for a second’ and looks furious” @ethanbld1 has been cooking with this one, seeing really solid conversion on our gallery/drawing widget feature keep it under 10 seconds, start with a shocked/surprised face for ~3 seconds transition into showing the home screen with the drawing widget prop apps around it to encourage commenting, save, go back to Home Screen. We ripped this quite a few times with decent avg ig view counts above 4k pair with someone td! :)