The story of minutiae part II
A three part story told by Martin Adolfsson
Another member of NEW INC had told us about an app called Rando and suggested we look up its developer—maybe they could offer some advice on how to move forward. It felt like a long shot, but we had nothing to lose. A quick search led us to a TechCrunch article about the now-defunct app, which included an interview with one of its engineers. On a whim, we sent him an email, explaining our idea to document life’s in-between moments. We also shared the surprising success of our prototype phase.
Weeks passed, and we heard nothing. It seemed like yet another dead end—until, out of nowhere, we got a response. He was open to a Skype call but mentioned that he was no longer involved with the app. Still, he was happy to share some tips. After the meeting, he said he’d mention our idea to his manager to see if they might be interested in working with us.
More weeks passed. Then we finally had a real conversation. We explained how our friends not only enjoyed the concept but also wanted to keep using it. To our surprise, the conversation went better than expected. They seemed genuinely intrigued. We started discussing next steps. Finally, it was happening! We were going to turn this strange little idea into an actual smartphone app.
And then—nothing.
Months of emails, follow-ups, and phone calls led nowhere. Another dead end. We had hit so many by this point that we were ready to move on.
But then, out of nowhere—again—an email landed in my inbox.
“If you’re serious about this, can you come to Malmö, Sweden, in two weeks to start working on the project?”
I couldn’t believe it. This thing that was dead and buried had somehow come back to life—again. Without hesitation, we booked our flights.
We spent four intense days in Malmö, locked in a conference room, making painful decisions about things we’d never even considered before. (Again, we’d never built an iOS app before.) It was exciting, frustrating, and occasionally heartbreaking—we had to slaughter a few holy cows to make the concept work. But by the time we left, we had a very minimal MVP in place.
Then, thanks to an earlier interview on Monocle Radio, we had managed to get a decent number of potential users to sign up on our website. We were finally ready to invite some of them to test the beta version of the app.
This was the moment of truth. Would the excitement our friends had expressed actually translate to an outside audience? Or had they just been nice to us, while the entire concept was fundamentally flawed?
Thankfully, we had nothing to worry about. Even though the beta was extremely basic, the concept worked. Our testers loved it.
After three years, what started as a philosophical conversation had now been distilled into a fully functional smartphone app—one that was about to be released in the App Store.