103: touch grass — Rhys Kentish
Notas do episódio
On the podcast: Rhys Kentish shares how he went from building quirky side projects to creating touch grass, a screen time app that keeps your distracting apps locked until you go outside and take a photo of real grass. He talks through how a rough prototype posted to Reddit and Hacker News turned into 40,000 pre-orders and 50,000 active users on launch day, why that success nearly landed him with a $20,000-a-week API bill, how a one-sentence pitch and a sense of humor became his best marketing tools, why building in public and a personal brand are the real defense against copycats, and how he’s rebuilding touch grass to turn a viral spike into long-term retention.
Top Takeaways:
🗣️ Say the app in one sentence, out loud, to real people
Before building, boil the idea down to a sentence and watch faces. If they chuckle, there's something there. If they don't, that's a signal too.
📣 Post the rough prototype, then give the viral post somewhere to go
An unpolished mechanism demo hit the top of r/SideProject; three months of polish later it went up again with a preorder page attached, so 40,000 people could hit a button before anyone saw a price.
🌍 If you're in Europe, post in the morning
A launch that does well on Reddit or Hacker News before the US East Coast wakes up is the first thing they see, and then the West Coast after them. Time zones are a free head start.
💸 Do the API math before the preorders land
A cloud vision API that's fine for a few hundred users was going to cost something like $20,000 a week at 40,000 preorders. Three sleepless days later it ran on-device.
🧲 Copycats are a signal, not a death sentence
Start from the assumption that nobody's copying you; if they are, you have traction. An idea with character, plus a name people recognize, is what they can't clone.
🔁 A viral spike isn't a business until people stay
50,000 users on day one, and the app was the first thing they deleted when they wanted Instagram back. The rebuild chases retention, not the next spike.
About Rhys Kentish:
🌱 Indie app developer and creator of touch grass, a screen time and productivity tool that locks distracting apps until you physically go outside and take a photo of real grass. A Welsh software engineer based in London with 10 years of mobile development experience, he's also built playful side projects like Beatstride and Tender, and now works at RevenueCat.
🌐 Learn more about Touch Grass
Follow us on X:
- Charlie Chapman - @_chuckyc
- RevenueCat - @RevenueCat
- Launched - @LaunchedFM
Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Introducing Rhys Kentish and touch grass
[02:23] From medical school to software engineering
[04:50] Finding creative expression through coding
[05:37] Building Beatstride and celebrating small launches
[10:20] The early experiments behind touch grass
[13:20] Turning doomscrolling into a creative app idea
[14:22] Going viral before launch
[15:05] The $20,000 weekly API problem
[16:12] How Reddit and Hacker News sparked growth
[18:48] Why a simple pitch resonated
[20:50] Choosing a freemium model
[22:23] Launching to 50,000 active users
[23:48] The challenge of keeping users engaged
[26:17] Why playful products stand out
[27:15] Building Tender and facing a legal challenge
[28:54] Testing app ideas with one sentence
[30:32] Building in public despite copycats
[32:09] Why personal branding matters
[36:11] Balancing side projects and unfinished ideas
[38:29] Rebuilding touch grass for long-term retention
[40:54] Turning screen-free time into a game
[43:25] Finding inspiration in creative indie developers