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From the blog
Notes on technology, software, and artificial intelligence
June 30, 2026
On startups
When I got my first iPhone (the 3G, peak iPhone, fight me), it bugged me that there was no way to download anything without going through Apple.
So without overthinking it, I sat down and wrote a plugin for Mobile Safari. The API was undocumented, but it happened to match regular Safari, and it let you download torrents with a single tap: the first and only torrent client for the iPhone at the time. The odds of getting that into the App Store were exactly zero (torrents are bad, mmkay?), so I published it on Cydia, the alternative store for jailbroken phones, and went to bed.
I woke up to 300K downloads in 8 hours. Hell yeah, I'm rich!
Not so fast. How much do you think I made off this? Five dollars.
My business experience at the time being roughly nil, I went with the obvious move: ads. I dropped an AdWords banner into the app and signed up for an account. Bam, banned. Torrents are bad, mmkay?
Okay, what about donations? I added a button to the app's page. Result: nothing.
I added a banner literally begging for donations. Zero.
What I got instead of revenue was an inbox stuffed with cries for help, everything from crash reports to people venting about their lives. Hundreds of them. I answered a few, and one grateful user finally did send me five dollars.
Eventually I slapped some shady banner network onto the site (basically zero clicks; the guys behind it later just vanished off the grid), stripped every contact link from the page, and abandoned it. But I did walk away with a few lessons.
Lessons learned:
If there is demand and no supply, your project takes off like a rocket, no advertising required. The best growth hack, it turns out, is being the only option.
If you are building on someone else's platform, be ready for that platform to crush you at any moment. It is their house. You are just renting a corner, rent-free, until you are not.
People will not pay you a cent unless you make them. They are kind but cheap. Generosity peaks at "thoughts and prayers," not "and here is five dollars."
Many users, many headaches. A popular project is not a payday. It is a part-time job you never applied for and do not get paid for.
