Simply Fluent Turns Five

Simply Fluent turns five today, it was registered as a company on October 18, 2021, and the app has been in the stores for a little over a year, so I wanted to write a little about what it's been like.

I started building Simply Fluent in 2018 because I had an idea of how to make reading in a new language feel great, and I couldn't just leave it to someone else to do it, so I took it upon myself to make it happen.

Over the years it's been very much an emotional roller coaster. I've had to learn every single thing by myself and fix every bug myself, and there were so many complicated problems to solve that it took me a long time. I've listened to feedback from testers and from strangers, hundreds of people who tested the app or saw it, and every good idea became part of what Simply Fluent is today.

When I registered the company I had just arrived in Portugal, and I thought I would be launching the app soon, but then a lot happened. I was stuck in Ecuador during COVID while I had to go to Estonia to open a bank account, which set me back eight months.

One of the things that took the longest was the onboarding. I rebuilt it so many times, because it was really hard to make something people could get through by themselves and understand the whole app from, without me there to explain it.

In between I travelled around South America twice and around Europe, and lived in a van for months, some months here and some months there, and went to a lot of events, so it wasn't a straight path.

Last year I finally launched the app, and I realized I had no idea how to launch an app. I had never launched anything before or marketed anything, and the app was full of bugs. It was a struggle to keep up with fixing them and improving the app the way people wanted while doing the marketing at the same time, and it started to feel scattered because of all the quick fixes I was making to keep people happy. I didn't feel like I was in control of the app anymore.

So at the start of this year I took a break and looked at what works and what doesn't, and then I redesigned everything three times. That became Simply Fluent 2.0, which came out in September.

Now with version 2.2 I feel really happy with where it is, and I'm really excited about where Simply Fluent is going. I can see positive trends in how people use it, and I've been getting a ton of good feedback and comments from people who are very supportive, which makes me very motivated, and this time around I feel like Simply Fluent is where it should be.

To celebrate, I'm doing my first ever sale: from October 18 to October 25, you get 30% off your first year when you start a yearly plan through the website. Here's the offer.

Whether you've just installed the app and had a look, or you've finished your first book in a new language with it, thank you for being part of this. I really appreciate every one of you who took the time to install my little project. And if you're here because you're curious what Simply Fluent is, thank you for reading this far.

I hope you'll stick around and see where it goes. I have a lot of ideas for Simply Fluent, and I think this is just the beginning.