MAU Vegas Recap
TLDR; required attendance for any dev that is making the switch (or thinking of making the switch) from salary to indie.
I first heard about MAU (Mobile Apps Unlocked) Vegas on the AppMasters podcast.
I wasn’t entirely sure it was for me — it’s a marketing conference, not a developer conference.
But then the MAU team gifted me a ticket (shoutout to the abandoned cart gods), and Steve P. Young (aka AppMasters) announced he was hosting a Day 0 event and next thing I knew, I was booking a hotel.
But because I decided so late, flights from Burbank to Vegas were $500. Hard pass.
So I got up at 6am, hopped in my car and drove the four hours instead. The event started at 11:00am and I pulled into the parking lot at 10:58am. Perfect 😅.
Day 0 - AppMasters Event
Let me just say, if this had been the only thing I did all week, it would’ve already been worth it. And that’s because the night before, I got an email from Alexus Diaz at Paddle asking if I wanted my app audited live during the event.
That was a nervous but instantaneous yes.
Nervous because that means you have to make yourself vulnerable to others opinions while being in the same room with them. But instant yes because, well, that’s why I came. To learn and to get help!
So my turn came and my onboarding flows and App Store screenshots rightfully got picked apart in front of (what felt like) some wildly successful indie app veterans.
Incredibly insightful. Brutally helpful (but in a nice way).
The main takeaways:
When I talk about why I built the app, it lands.
But my onboarding and screenshots don’t sound like me at all.
The story doesn’t resonate because I’m just listing a bunch of features.
I should lean harder into the cancer prevention and anti-aging angle — that’s what resonated!
Thank you Steve, Nathan, and the Paddle team for organizing that event! You made this trip immediately worth it!
So that event wrapped at 4pm and there was a happy hour back at the main site… or I could double-down, drag myself to a Lagree studio, and find a way to promote my other app Lagree Buddy (aka tell the instructor and anyone wearing an Apple Watch in class about the app).
I looked at the sad state of my activity rings for the day and knew my answer. I ended up at Lagree Lab and got my ass handed to me!
Sidenote: It’s always fun going to a new studio and the instructor sees me (a man) and goes, “oh this is your first time here … ? Is this your first time … to Lagree … ?”
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Day 1 & 2 - Networking & Talks
I’m not going to bore you with the details but I am going to leave you with my absolute #1 takeaway from this event as a dev moving from salaried to indie. And it’s kind of a hard one to swallow but …
The magic isn’t in the code. It’s in the marketing.
I mean, obviously, you still have to make a great product and know what you’re doing but not in the way I’ve made it my whole identity for the last 10 years.
I already knew build it and they will come was a fallacy. But it’s one thing to be told that and another to feel that. And that’s what I felt when I was at this conference. It broke my brain a little (in a good way).
I’ve been blocking myself by thinking that if I’m not writing code, I’m not making progress. Building more features hoping for more customers is not the solution.
And building the marketing arm of the indie business is still building — it’s just a different kind of building (shoutout Murphy for that gem).
So if you’re a developer making the leap to indie — or even just considering it — MAU Vegas is required attendance because it will force you out of your IDE and expose you to the entire non-technical aspect of building apps.
Small personal footnote:
There was a Top Golf event at the end of Day 1 that I selfishly loved.Because I had just spent the entire day humbly introducing myself to everyone like, “Hi, I’m a developer. I know nothing about marketing. Please talk to me like I’m five.”
So being the “hot shot” at Top Golf was a nice way to end that day loll.
Someone even told me they stopped their conversation to watch my swing and even got asked to give swing tips. Mobrand team, if you’re reading this — please send me those videos!